SPOTTING talent is never easy an easy task. Coaches and scouts spend endless hours tracking youngsters most of whom fail to make the transition from youthful exuberance to star performer and it is the same in horseracing.
The yearling sales are a matter of hoping that pedigree and good looks will equate to winners but there is also Tattersalls Horses In Training sale, held each autumn. This offers no end of potential which has already been tried and tested on the racecourse, but everything comes with the inherent warning that someone else wants to sell the horse.
Last year Gunmetal was on offer and David Barron liked what he saw; enough to pay 47,000 guineas which is already looking a good deal - having won the Great St Wilfrid Handicap at Ripon four weeks ago - and might reach bargain category if he wins the William Hill Ayr Gold Cup on Saturday.
Gunmetal came to the sale having won only once in seven starts for Charlie Hills last season, but Barron reckoned he was worth taking a chance with.
“He was a horse who looked he could be potentially above average,” Barron said. “He’s a smashing horse to look at and we’ve been fairly lucky. We’ve bought horses before and they haven’t gone the right way. But this time we’ve got the right one.”
That became obvious when Gunmetal won at both Thirsk and Newmarket in the spring and even finishing third at the Curragh in the Scurry Handicap in July was not without its promise.
“When he ran him first time at Thirsk we thought he run well and he won very well,” Barron said. “He’s progressed with every run and, even when he was beaten in Ireland, he ran well from a bad draw.”
Things went a little downhill when Gunmetal ran in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood last month, mainly because the horse did not take to the sharp descent that is part of the six-furlong helter-skelter ride.
“He didn’t handle the track at all,” Barron said. “And it wasn’t until he met the rising ground that he started to run again. After that I wondered if Ripon, with it’s undulations, might’ve caught him out.”
Nothing could catch Gunmetal as he cruised home to win by two and three-quarter lengths.
“It’s very rare to see a race like the Great St Wilfrid where you’re watching a horse two [furlongs] out and know they’re not going to beat him.”
One horse who gave Barron that feeling was Coastal Bluff, the giant grey who won both the Stewards’ Cup and the Ayr Gold Cup in 1996 and the Nunthorpe Stakes the following year. Gunmetal is still some way off that level but Barron reckons he is going the right way.
“We’ve had quite a few sprinters over the years,” he said “and this fella’s up there with virtually everything we’ve had.”
If Gunmetal is up to the task, Barron might be the one who is spotted in the winner’s enclosure.
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