After an autumn of no shows and poor attendances that was more like it. A decent crowd at Sandown Park on Betfair Tingle Creek Day had plenty to cheer about including a definitive victory in the feature race by Alan King’s Edwardstone, which stamped him as the best two-miler around, and a dazzling round of jumping from Jonbon in the Henry VIII Chase which saw him cut to 7-4 for the Arkle at Cheltenham next March. ‘I’m absolutely stealing a living when I go out on him,’ said Jonbon’s jockey Aidan Coleman. ‘He’s push-button.’ But there was a special character to the cheers around the winner’s enclosure after a tight three-horse finish to the Pertemps Network Handicap Hurdle in which David Maxwell on Dolphin Square triumphed over Call Me Lord and Wilde About Oscar by a nose and a short head.

They don’t make too many like David Maxwell any more. He is successful enough as a property developer to buy and maintain a posse of decent horses and have them trained by the best so that he can enjoy the thrill of riding them himself, competing on equal terms as a balding middle-aged amateur of 44 against the twentysomething professionals who are the sport’s household names.

I am not on familiar terms with many property developers but I would guess that most of them don’t make the sort of money he must do by spending all their time helping old ladies across pedestrian crossings. For all I know, in private life David might be a climate change denier, a guy who gets his kicks by listening to Meghan Markle podcasts or a collector of tarantulas. But on the racecourse the pros respect him as a safe and sensible if determined competitor. Racecourse crowds can sniff a Good Egg when they come across one and they cheer his good days, like Dolphin Square’s victory at Cheltenham in the Paddy Power hurdle, with a special fervour. They know he’s had the tough ones too, scraped up off the floor and dumped in A&E, and they applaud the ultimate trier.

Typically, after his Sandown victory Maxwell was trying, Bryony Frost-style, to give all the credit to his mount: ‘He’s the toughest little horse ever to look through a bridle. With a proper racehorse it’s in their head. They’re tough, brave and genuine and he’s every inch that. The only reason we got there was because another horse came up on his outside and he picked up again.’ As I watched the replay with him over a glass of Sandown’s excellent champagne in the hospitality suite after the race, he noted: ‘You need to be on the coat-tails of the leaders. If you can just be in touch at the last with him  you’ve always got a chance,’ and there he was, perfectly positioned. Champion trainer Paul Nicholls, not one to deal in false praise, called out jokingly after the race: ‘We’d better talk about a contract.’ But when one racecourse interviewer gushed: ‘You’re a masterful rider,’ a grinning Maxwell put him right: ‘And you’re an awful liar.’

The only thing that slightly marred his victory was that Ben Bromley, the talented young conditional riding the second Call Me Lord, had stopped riding as he passed the chase track winning post some ten metres short of the hurdle track jamstick, which mattered. It was an error for which he apologised but which earned him a 28-day suspension. He wasn’t the first to make that mistake and won’t be the last. David, unaware of his rival’s problem, recalled how the French rider Christophe Soumillon once had a whip-waving celebration at the wrong winning post, an occurrence that produced a memorable Racing Post headline: ‘Premature E-jock-ulation.’

For trainer Alan King, Edwardstone’s emphatic victory in the Tingle Creek Chase was a true vindication after he had been trolled on social media for pulling the horse out of the Shloer Chase at Cheltenham and the Hurst Park Handicap at Ascot because of unsuitable ground. He had saddled Tingle Creek winners when assistant trainer to the late David Nicholson but this was the first such victory in his own right. Behind Edwardstone in third place was Nicky Henderson’s Shishkin and only after the race did it emerge that Nicky had let Alan King use his facilities at his Seven Barrows in Lambourn to get a key gallop into Edwardstone. A case of wine had already been dispatched as thanks by Edwardstone’s grateful handler and after his victory another was to follow.

It wasn’t the happiest day for Henderson: Shishkin failed to show his brilliant best, Chantry House fell at Aintree and Nicky also trained the unfortunate Call Me Lord. But Jonbon’s victory had him purring, ‘He’s doing everything right.’ He is always interesting to listen to about his horses’ ways and Jonbon, it seems, is ‘a busy sort of horse who puts a lot into life’. He also likes predictability. ‘Change his routine and you’ll fluster him.’ My flatcoat retriever is just the same.

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