Jef­frey Ross

Berlios has a 'spe­cial' look for a 3–y–o Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs at South­well this af­ter­noon, trained by David Bar­ron, undis­put­ed 'King of the fi­bre­sand' since it's in­tro­duc­tion back in 1989.

On sev­er­al oc­ca­sions I've men­tioned Bar­ron as good as it gets in the world of train­ing; he's a hard–head­ed, no non­sense, busi­ness­man whose ruth­less ap­proach is pre­cise­ly what is need­ed in the tough­est game on this plan­et. He trained one for me, Princess Singh, way back in the 19980's!

Princess Singh was pur­chased for a grand (pri­vate­ly!) af­ter run­ning well in a fast–time Not­ting­ham sell­er and al­lowed to stay in Bar­ron's yard.

If I'd claimed her of­fi­cial­ly Princess Singh would have need­ed to be trans­ferred else­where, that's still the rule.

A few days went by and David en­tered her for a sell­er at Bev­er­ley; we agreed that it looked ide­al and Ray Cochrane was booked, we were work­ing the Ep­som Der­by meet­ing.

Over the phone Bar­ron asked me whether to buy Princess Singh back at the sub­se­quent auc­tion or let her go and for how much; win­ning was a for­mal­i­ty, not even at is­sue.

�3500 was my re­ply!

Walked in­to a lo­cal Ep­som bet­ting of­fice, told the staff just be­fore the off Princess Singh was a 'cert' and lis­tened to a com­men­tary, no pic­tures those days!

'Princess Singh smart­ly away, clear at halfway and made all com­fort­ably' was the gist, gam­ble land­ed; next day The Sport­ing Life in­clud­ed the words, 'sold to C Tin­kler for �3600 guineas!'

That was be­fore all–weath­er rac­ing start­ed, why didn't we have any­more with Bar­ron? why in­deed?

Ex–Irish–trained Berlios has con­sis­tent, hith­er­to luck­less, Phan­tom Flip­per to beat, trained by Dandy Nicholls, for­mer jock­ey for Bar­ron.

Nicholls sub­se­quent­ly court­ed Bar­ron's ap­pren­tice fe­male jock­ey, Alex Greaves, and mar­ried her!

It was an in­ter­est­ing time, be­lieve me!

69–rat­ed Berlios hasn't en­coun­tered this sur­face, will he act on it?

Giv­en the fas­tid­i­ous­ness of Bar­ron you can bet Berlios will have been 'on the track' for an out­ing; it's not an is­sue!

Bas­ma could well be Owen Bur­rows' first win­ner as a pri­vate train­er for Ham­dan al Mak­toum in the Maid­en Fil­lies' Stakes over six fur­longs of Chelms­ford poly­track tonight, but could be a 'bit short' ac­cord­ing to Bar­ry Hills, now as­sis­tant!

There­fore I'll give La­dy Lloyd an­oth­er chance, con­sis­ten­cy usu­al­ly brings re­ward.