Season in the sun
The National Hunt season ends with Jump Finale Day at Sandown Park on a Saturday towards the end of April. Sometimes it’s with a ‘Kaboom!’, such as in 2016, when respective English and Irish champion trainers Paul Nicholls and Willie Mullins went down to the wire, until Nicholls took an unassailable lead after the day’s big handicap and Mullins was hauled in front of the stewards for withdrawing runners now that he knew his flush was busted.
However, jumps racing doesn’t just lie down and disappear into the swelling clover and ripening blossoms, only to return with ochreing Chepstow at the end of October. Rather, it oversummers down a curious, leafy rabbit hole of its own, a sort of Racing in Wonderland, a nether world of bright colours, festival vibrations, barbecue smokes and garish funfairs. Summer jumping is gorgeous. And quite trippy.
To join in is akin to having an affair with a new mistress, one whose tousled hair teases her off-the-shoulder, Bardot blouse as she
