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Your support makes all the difference.When the reward could be more than half a million dollars, trainers are prepared to do some strange things. 'I've found myself in the unusual position of speaking to a handicapper and actually trying to talk one of my horses up,' Chris Wall says. 'I don't do that very often.'
Wall's problem is that he has a fit, high-class and improving colt, Missed Flight, whose target is the Breeders' Cup Mile, but the five places in the race open to European challengers may be oversubscribed. If so, the entries with the lowest handicap ratings will be eliminated, and Missed Flight's name could suddenly seem painfully appropriate.
The trainer will learn this morning whether his stable star has done enough to earn a place at Churchill Downs in Kentucky a week on Saturday. Wall recorded one of the season's most notable training achievements by saddling Missed Flight to win the Group Two Prix du Rond- Point at Longchamp on Arc day after a three-month absence.
Two weeks later, he lost out by just a short nose to Bigstone in the Group One Prix de la Foret, with the apparently jaded Ski Paradise, who is all but guaranteed a place in the Mile, among the also-rans.
It can take time, though, for a horse's handicap rating to catch up with its achievements, and Wall is prepared to be disappointed. 'When you've got a good horse in a small stable, people seem to think everything else isn't running quite as well,' he said. 'I thought we were 60-40 to get a run but I don't think we're any better than 50-50 now.
'We can go to Italy the same weekend for a Group Two, so we can prep the horse just the same, but obviously we would go to Kentucky with some sort of chance. The horse is running out of his skin at present, whereas a lot of the others are coming to the end of a long year.'
After recent British failures at the Breeders' Cup, a mid- season rest followed by a light autumn campaign has often been offered as a prescription for success. It is somewhat ironic, then, that Missed Flight might be left behind, though the French-style preparation was not originally expected to end in Kentucky.
'It was forced on us, it's not the trainer trying to be the second coming of Andre Fabre,' Wall said. 'The horse really doesn't like firm ground and there was no point running him through the summer and breaking him up.'
Missed Flight soon showed his gratitude. When he returned to serious training, an already useful horse had improved beyond all expectation. 'He'd been working with our good handicapper, Polish Admiral, who was at the top of his form. Missed Flight worked right away from him.'
With 25 horses at Induna Stables on the Fordham Road, Wall is a small trainer by Newmarket standards. He has held a licence for less than eight years, following spells as an assistant with Luca Cumani and Sir Mark Prescott, but has already landed two Group One events abroad, and the Stewards' Cup at Goodwood with Rotherfield Greys.
The latter triumph secured one of the biggest bets of recent years, the horse's owner having doubled him up with Severiano Ballesteros in the British Open. The payout was rumoured to be pounds 500,000.
Simply travelling to America with a fancied runner would be a priceless advertisement for his talents. Success could mean promotion from the first division, into the Premier League. There are 35 empty boxes at Induna Stables, and a 35-year- old trainer eager to fill them. Missed Flight's victory in the Prix du Rond-Point went almost unnoticed amid the furore surrounding Yutake Take's Arc ride on White Muzzle, but Wall is not engaging a local jockey in Kentucky.
George Duffield steered a difficult path with skill at Longchamp, and the partnership will be maintained if the trainer has his way. 'Longchamp is more difficult to ride than Churchill Downs, and for someone like George, 14 horses around Churchill Downs isn't a great deal different to 18 horses around Thirsk.'
Not for Duffield, perhaps, but for Chris Wall it would be the opportunity of a lifetime. Missed Flight was bought when Walter Grubmuller, his Austrian owner, was delayed on a trip to see a runner at Chepstow and found himself stranded in Newmarket. He decided to visit the sales instead and made a shrewd investment of 30,000gns in a bay colt by Dominion.
The good fortune will need to continue if Missed Flight is to join Barathea, Bigstone and the rest of Europe's best milers at Churchill Downs, but he, and Wall, surely deserve their chance.
(Photograph omitted)
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