Racing needs its Best Mate

The headlong rush to provide more lucrative fodder for the betting shops via new all-weather Flat venues shows no sign of abating, while those who feel jumping extracts too high a price from its participants were given further fuel for their fire by the deaths of Poliantas and Brother Joe at Cheltenham's Paddy Power Gold Cup meeting last weekend.

No wonder the leading racetrack group, Racecourse Holdings Trust, have announced a blueprint for jumping's future designed to ensure the sport can prosper rather than hold its own in the next few years.

And no wonder Best Mate's seasonal reappearance in the flatlands of Cambridgeshire on Saturday is viewed as a vital springboard for the sport he has dominated over the last two years.

Trainer Henrietta Knight, who has penned her own highly readable account of the Best Mate story in Chasing Gold, is still treading a fine line between the joy of having "the perfect horse" in her care and the pain of ensuring that he stays out of harms way.

The former teacher, once locked in a cupboard for almost an hour by unruly children at an Oxford school, now has around 80 equine pupils of varied ability and one outstanding student who needs to be guided with skill and care towards his place in history next spring.

"It's an honour to have a horse of Best Mate's calibre in the yard, but it is also a huge responsibility," she said. "Some people have criticised us for not running him more often. They are entitled to their opinion but we owe it to Best Mate to give him the chance to win three Gold Cups, and a light campaign before Cheltenham is the best way to do that."

Almost two years have elapsed since Best Mate last tasted defeat, and the best price you can find about him landing a third Gold Cup next March is a miserly 5-4.

Defeat in what looks bound to be a small field on Saturday would come as a shock, though the Peterborough is shaping up into a hot contest. French raider Jair du Cochet has a loping stride and a flowing leap which promise big things this season, while Valley Henry was the only horse capable of going with Best Mate once the heat intensified in last season's Gold Cup and looked in wonderful shape prior to his early tumble at Wetherby on his recent reappearance.

Both will be going flat out to take the most prized scalp in steeplechasing, but Knight is happy that the horse who drew a crowd of over 5,000 when his idyllic yard in the Oxfordshire village of West Lockinge was thrown open to the public in September is ready for the challenge.

"Best Mate is much better with a hill to climb at the end of his races and Huntingdon may not be his ideal track, but the Peterborough Chase is a good place to start him off if the ground isn't too fast," she said.

"He's been in tremendous form at home. He's certainly a stronger horse now, particularly in his neck, and he's in better condition than he was at this stage last season."

Ground permitting, then, everything is in place for another chapter in the remarkable Best Mate story.

Let's just hope no one has told him he will also be carrying the hopes of an entire sport on his broad shoulders on Saturday.