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All is well in the sport and the action can now start properly: David Kemp saddled his first runners of the season on Sunday.
This article first appeared in the Racing Post on Friday 26th January.
Kemp (above left, with rider Dale Peters) shows no interest in pre-Christmas racing or the plotting of four-year-olds with plans to run and then sell – he is a Norfolk arable farmer who puts his trade first, but when his point-to-pointers emerge it is time to pay attention. Take a look at his statistics.
Since 2005 he has saddled 588 runners in point-to-points, trained 159 winners (27 per cent) and 189 placed horses. Sixty per cent have finished in the first three, while his hunter chase strike rate is 22 per cent with 25 winners from 110 runners. Sixty have made the first three at a rate of 55 per cent. Last season was his best ever, and 15 of his last 17 point-to-point runners won.
Remarkably in an age when most point-to-point trainers handling more than a handful of horses own or have easy access to all-weather gallops, Kemp gets his horses fit on a two-furlong sand circle and, for faster work, by harrowing strips of farmland. They might have been under coriander one year and a cover crop the next, while a favourite gallop on a nearby farm only becomes available in February when the shooting season ends.
He says of his training methods: “I think it’s just common sense – that and having some nice horses. It’s about getting all the little bits right, and keeping things simple. I do my own thing because I’ve never been taught by anyone else.
“The sand circle, which is in its third season, has made things easier – before that I had to take them for a trot around the forest.”
Listen to Kemp talking about farmland, crop growth and root structure and the farming implements he needs to create his work space, makes me think he should write a treatise on the subject, but then landscapes are different across the British Isles.
Kemp, who has nine pointers in training, had three runners at Horseheath, including the Dale Peters-ridden Law Of Gold, who won last season’s four-miler at Cheltenham’s evening hunter chase meeting, and who on Sunday was second to the Tom Ellis-trained Tigerbythetail in the mixed open race. All The Ammunition (second in the restricted race and How To Get Away (fourth in the conditions race) completed Kemp’s trio.
Law of Gold (no. 12 with Dale Peters) in action last season
