Fantastic racing on cards this weekend

My penultimate column before I go into hibernation for the winter and leave you in the safe hands of the 'long lad'! Noel Meade"s horses seem to be flying and no doubt he will be able to point you in the right direction over the coming months. It"s Breeders Cup week and we will no doubt have some fantastic racing over the next weekend out in California at Santa Anita where it is all kicking-off. Closer to home first and at Doncaster on Saturday, the big race is The Racing Post Trophy, a race that can be a good indication to some of next year"s classics. Previous winners include Authorized, Motivator, Brian Boru and High Chaparral to name but a few. Newmarket last Saturday staged their big Champions day and although, on paper, the big race looked to lack quality, there can be no doubt that we witnessed one of the performances of the year when the exceptional colt New Approach smashed the track record and added a fifth Group 1 victory to his resumé. I really enjoyed watching this and I think all the members of 'Team Bolger" should take great satisfaction from this final top class effort. Adrian Taylor is one of Jim Bolger"s headmen and his job on Saturday was to pony the superstar to the start. He sat astride his mount and hacked away always only a stride in front of Kevin Manning who had to restrain the big colt without upsetting him. Watching this as a professional, I was so impressed by Adrian"s ability in the saddle as he let New Approach bounce off him and sometimes nearly head butted him out of the saddle. Between Kevin and Adrian they got him to the start in good order and ready for the next stage of the plan. Once the gates opened, Robert Havlin (not a usual member of the Bolger team) was given the job of riding the pacemaker Upton Gray and made it a proper seven-furlong pace. This he achieved to perfection and I felt that New Approach, (in my opinion he has been below par on recent runs), would have to be back to his best to sustain this gallop and win. Not only did he sustain the gallop, he increased it as only a top horse can and duly destroyed the field by six lengths breaking a 20-year-old course record in the process. That left me awestruck and in no doubt that Jim Bolger is one of the very best trainers in the world. He runs his horses hard which I agree with, but he can keep them going from the start of the season to the very end and in the best of company. That is a real test of his ability and on Saturday with the help of a top class team he made the day at Newmarket a real Champions Day. Even watching him returning to the winners enclosure, they had two lads behind him to make sure the sometimes wayward colt entered the hallowed circle for his final bow. This was professional to the very end and typical of the high standards that Jim Bolger sets for his staff - all eventualities were covered - top class. As if that was not enough they won the Dewhurst with Intense Focus which typifies the Bolger string, he was running his ninth race of the campaign and what a time to win his Group 1. It might not have been a vintage Dewhurst as the winner has been given a mark of 118, but it certainly left me with the thought that 'if your not in you cant win' and I will certainly bear that in mind in the future with any horse I think a bit of! Back to the Breeders Cup at the weekend. This is being run on a synthetic surface for the first time as opposed to the traditional dirt surface that we normally associate with America. A lot is being written and made of these new surfaces and only time will tell whether or not they are accepted. Our synthetic surface at Dundalk is polytrack. I believe it is the future and that its consistency is its selling point. In this day and age with tracks insisting on watering I can guarantee you that the only way fast ground horses will get their ground consistently will be on the polytrack. In my experience so far, horses that want fast ground on the turf handle the polytrack well so I can"t see many problems with the European turf horses adapting to this surface next weekend. The surface being used at Santa Anita is called 'pro-ride"and is very similar to our polytrack. Curlin is reputed to be the best horse in the world just now and his participation in Saturday"s Breeders Cup Classic against the likes of Raven"s Pass, Duke of Marmalade and Henrythenavigator on the pro-ride surface is a mouthwatering prospect and we will see who is the best in the world. With plenty of European horses travelling over to Santa Anita it will make for an exciting night"s television viewing and I am looking forward to it. I was watching racing last Saturday from Cheltenham and in one of the races, a three-runner novice chase, one of the jockeys Roddi Greene was unseated at the final fence when he was left in second place. I watched in the hope that he would catch his mount get back on it and trot home for a very well earned £5,000 for his owners. Now I was very aware of the rule on remounting, but this horse did not have to jump again in order to collect the prizemoney and Roddi duly remounted and trotted home. Grand I thought, there is a jockey thinking of his connections and doing the right thing, but ALAS no! The authorities slapped him with a 10-day ban for remounting! Paul Struthers the BHA spokesman said, 'The rules are clear' and proceeded to drone out the said rule. Pathetic! PC gone mad! But I"m afraid typical of the over-zealous police-style stewarding that is in place in our game today. They will tell you that you can appeal if your not happy, but that is more time and money wasted. Where is the commonsense? In this incident there was £5,000 up for grabs and the horse was in no danger. How come we never see the Clerk of the Course fined for giving us the wrong ground descriptions? Or starters fined for making a hash of the start? Or managers fined for over-watering? The list goes on, but it will always be the trainer or the jockey who will be fined and / or suspended. It starts at the top and if these organisations are poorly led, then this type of thing will continue to happen and the industry will stay in the dark ages. If this happened in Ireland on our TV screens I can just imagine what Ted Walsh would have to say! We will be up at Dundalk again next Friday. We had another good night last week with a double and we will be hoping for at least one more winner. Elletelle could run in the big listed race, the Mercury Stakes, while I hope to win with Leandros before he heads to next week"s horses-in-training sales at Newmarket. I am sending some nice horses to that sale in the hope of selling them, but I am very apprehensive about the market in the current climate. Either way, if they are not sold they will be very welcome on my team for next season. The season has been brilliant for us and we are only four winners short of achieving a total of 50. Quietly, I had hoped to reach that figure and break the magic million threshold in prizemoney. At the moment both look to be attainable, but, as they say, 'it"s never over till the fat lady sings.' Visit the Ger Lyons website: www.gerlyons.ie