Racing: Festival time runs short for Friend

RACING was treading water yesterday, almost literally at muddy Nottingham and more generally elsewhere, as bookmakers and punters awaited scans, blood tests and running plans for the horses which matter.

Though the Cheltenham Festival is six weeks away, the margin for accident or error has already all but evaporated. Take, for example, the news that Staunch Friend, who would be a leading Champion Hurdle candidate if fit and sound, may be a definite Festival non-runner before the weekend. Mark Tompkins's gelding knocked a tendon when winning the Bula Hurdle in December, and though he is back in light exercise, he might not stand a rushed preparation.

'Staunch Friend is fine and perfectly well in himself,' Phil Green, secretary at Tompkins's yard, said yesterday. 'Mark will have the horse scanned to see how his injury is healing and will then make a decision within the next week. He's still a young horse and has got a big future whatever happens. If the guv'nor thought there would be a risk to the horse by running him in the Champion, I'm sure he'd be inclined to wait.'

Rolling Ball, one of Martin Pipe's Gold Cup challengers, is another whose Festival entry fee may have been wasted. The 1991 Sun Alliance Chase winner has recovered from a bruised foot sustained in the King George VI Chase on Boxing Day, but Stan Clarke, his owner, believes that the Midlands National, at Uttoxeter, and then the Grand National, is a more realistic schedule.

Clarke's Gold Cup hopes may now rest on the inexperienced shoulders of Lord Relic, who was an excellent novice hurdler but has yet to jump a fence in public. The Northfleet Cleaning Novice Chase at Lingfield on Friday, when Lord Relic makes his chasing debut, may thus take on the unexpected status of a championship trial.

'We know he's good and I'd already say he will jump fences better than he jumped hurdles,' Clarke said. 'It's just been the virus that's kept him off the course this season. There's been no injury problem, he's a very strong-limbed horse.' The Sun Alliance Chase would be an alternative Festival engagement for Lord Relic, though Clarke already has a strong candidate for that contest in Honest Word, a runner at Leicester today.

There was a positive, if oblique, guide to the well-being of Jodami at Sedgefield yesterday, as the Gold Cup winner's trainer, Peter Beaumont, saddled his first winner for 76 days. Choctaw took the handicap chase by seven lengths to offer firm evidence that Beaumont's string has shaken off its malaise.

Jodami will fly from Liverpool to Dublin on Saturday before attempting to win the Hennessy (Irish) Gold Cup for the second successive year at Leopardstown the following day. 'He will just do a short bit of fast work tomorrow morning, but I couldn't be happier with the horse,' Beaumont said.

Short, fast work is what Lanfranco Dettori is making of the Flat jockeys' championship. He followed up a four- timer at Wolverhampton on Monday with a 46-1 treble at Lingfield yesterday, and is now 1-2 favourite with Ladbrokes to claim his first jockeys' title. Noblely (13-8), Ecu De France (5-1) and Spender (2-1) took Dettori's total to 24, and the bookmakers may soon prefer to offer odds on just how many he will have to spare when the turf season opens in late March, and Pat Eddery sets off in pursuit.