Middleton View: Patience, Promise, and Progress by Cornelius Lysaght

Opulence’s Clive Cox-trained Middleton View is providing something of a master-class in racehorse ownership.

With a nice pedigree, by top-notch sprinter Bated Breath out of a Group Three and Listed race-winning mare, he caught quite a few eyes at Book 2 of Tattersalls Yearling Sales in the autumn of 2023.

Opulence was pleased to make the purchase and the buzz soon began as he was named by Tony and Lena Munn – after Lena’s late dad who used to enjoy a flutter, put on at the bookies by his wife Bridget, the inspiration for Bridget’s View – and assigned to the powerful Cox string in Lambourn.

Word soon emerged that everyone was very happy with the new acquisition, so naturally the excitement rose a notch or two more, and the colt certainly looked promising during one of the exclusive pre-season stable tours that Opulence regularly hosts.

Onto the racecourse…

Well, it’s always said that patience offers more rewards to racehorse owners than to anyone else in sport, and all involved hoped that was to prove true as the horse’s first two appearances resulted in a seventeenth of twenty, followed by a fourteenth of fifteen.

Actually, as an aside, even if we didn’t quite realise it at the time, they were two good efforts: first time out, at Newbury, he finished only three-lengths behind the colt with which Cox was to win the big sales race at York’s Ebor meeting, while after that, at Haydock, he showed up well for a long way in a solid-looking novices’ race.

However, it needed a few months more of that precious patience – plus a gelding operation – before Middleton View’s run number three came, at an evening fixture on the polytrack at Kempton.

And that night, under the floodlights, he produced just the kind of performance which more than hinted that the wait was going to be worth it.

Despite still showing signs of inexperience, the penny gradually dropped as the six furlongs went by, and the response to Rossa Ryan’s urgings late on was highly commendable; in another stride or two our friends at Kingsclere might have had one (odds-on) winner less on the board.

Handicap races now beckoned.

Though there are exceptions, horses must run three times to qualify for a British Horseracing Authority (BHA) handicap rating, the number that decides which races they can contest and the weight they’ll be required to carry in them.

I have to say that along with ill-judged rides by jockeys, eccentric decisions by stewards or irritating analysis by media pundits and commentators, nothing gets up racing’s nose more than the ‘mark’ allotted by the BHA handicapping team, even if the officials are very often ultimately proved correct.

Although once established in handicaps, horses go up and down dependent on results (often “raised too far” or “not dropped enough”), it’s clearly a little bit different with newcomers which are starting from scratch.

Nine times out of ten, first races are like a child’s early weeks at school, and they are only beginning to learn, so although some initial results may seem disappointing at first glance they’re actually better for the longer-term.

In an ideal world, of course, those baby steps cover all of the first three outings, but certain horses don’t quite read the script – like Middleton View.

With that in mind, you could say that while delighting his owners at Kempton he ran slightly ‘too well’ there, so his first handicap mark (77) is a touch higher than it would have been had the third run been more like the first two.

The good news however is that being a good trainer is about the all-round process of getting the best out of horses: caring for them, naturally; ensuring their fitness, of course; and, most

crucially of all, finding the right races in which they can excel – and, in Clive Cox, Opulence has one of the very best.