LUMP ON STORMIN' GORMAN

Graham Buddry looks back on twomile ace with no fear of handicapper

- Graham Buddry

Back in the day racing was a vastly different game. Horses ran more often, sometimes every week and the pattern was different too.

Now we have Graded races but back then, outside of the championship events, everything was a handicap or a limited handicap at best.

What this really meant was that the very best horses were forced to give enormous weights to all their opponents every time they ran. Few, however, could do that better than Rathgorman.

Under the care of the top Northern trainer, Tony Dickinson, Rathgorman faced fences for the first time, as a novice, in the 1978/79 season and won four races at Worcester, Stratford, Market Rasen and Hexham. He was a big, strong gelding who usually took a race to get him fit as he scaled the heights of his division.

In his first season in open company he blew off the cobwebs and just a week later Rathgorman made the trip back up to Hexham. His novice record saw him start as the 8/13 favourite despite having 12.7 to carry, going down by just half a length when giving two stone to the winner. Rathgorman then ran three races in quick succession in November on the 10th at Windsor, the 15th at Stratford and on the 23rd at Market Rasen. In the first of these Rathgorman sauntered into the lead two out and slammed his rivals by an easy eight lengths. At Stratford under 12.7 he again took it up two out and quickly opened another eight length advantage before easing right down before the line and his third race was just as easy as he jumped into the lead at the last and cruised home.