Racing: Pablo brings Hills full circle

The Lincoln: Trainer enjoys sweet smell of big handicap success, 35 years on from betting coup that started his career

After 35 years, one of racing's turning wheels has come to rest. In 1968, a young Barry Hills, travelling head lad to the Newmarket-based trainer John Oxley, set himself up in his own right after backing his stable's Frankincense to win the Lincoln Handicap.

Here yesterday, Hills won the race that made him for the first time as a trainer when Pablo scored rather easily by a length and a half. The colt, a well-supported 5-1 second favourite, landed a sizeable touch for punters, but this time Hills, who had plunged on Frankincense at all rates down to 100-8, did not benefit.

"I never backed him," he said, "as I wasn't even certain I'd run him until the last couple of days, after I'd made sure the ground had enough cut for him." Pablo's owner-breeder, Guy Reed, though, added to his £50,290 first prize with an investment on his pride and joy at 33-1 last autumn.

Although all of yesterday's 24-strong field bar two, Albuhera and Broadway Score, tried to negate the effect of the draw by grouping on the favoured far side of the track, the low-number bias was still evident. Pablo was drawn six; the runner-up, Selective, seven; the short-head third, Norton, one; and the fourth-placed, Colisay, 12. They were followed in by Bourgainville (four), Dumaran (two), the 7-2 favourite, Adiemus (10), Pulau Tioman (eight) and Rafferty (three).

If ever a straight-mile cavalry charge can be won straightforwardly, this one was. Norton made a bold bid from the front to become the first horse for 107 years to add a Lincoln to a Royal Hunt Cup victory, and still headed proceedings inside the final furlong until Pablo swept smoothly by.

"I wish all races worked out this way," said rider Michael Hills, son of the trainer. "I was always travelling, always had a position and then enough horse under me when it mattered."

Barry Hills, 67, and the octogenarian Reed, one of the stalwarts of the Yorkshire bloodstock scene, started their winning in the same year, 1969. Reed's tally is nearing 500, and there are hopes that Pablo, by Efisio, may rank with some of the classiest of them – horses such as Dakota, Apache and Shotgun – in time.

"I didn't really force him for this race," said Hills, "I just let him tell me he was ready. He should get further than the mile and I am sure he is still improving."

Red Carpet, who gave Kieren Fallon his 1,500th domestic winner in the Cammidge Trophy, landed the on-course punt of the day as he repelled Orientor after being backed from 6-1 to 7-2. The Michael Bell-trained five-year-old, who finished fifth to Golan in the 2001 2,000 Guineas, looks set to fulfil his potential now that he has had a painful trapped testicle removed. In short, he is a sprinter with half a lunchbox.

The first Classic stirrings of the spring were in the air after Tacitus's gritty half-length defeat of the maiden Zariano under Richard Hughes in the mile conditions stakes but, although the colt's trainer, Richard Hannon, has a fine record in the 2,000 Guineas, it may be the Italian version, the Premio Parioli, that ultimately proves the target.

"He did well to hang on today," said Hannon, "as Richard said he blew up a furlong out. Now we've got him on the racecourse we'll carry on in another of the preps, the Craven or the Easter Stakes, and see where we stand. The Guineas is just one option; there are plenty of others."

The trials scene does not really kick-start in Britain until the Craven meeting at Newmarket next month, but in Ireland the best come out to play right from the off. The season there opens at the Curragh this afternoon, where Aidan O'Brien begins his assault on the year's top prizes by deploying a trio of three-year-olds with all the right entries, headed by Tomahawk.

The Seattle Slew colt, though tough and talented, was not regarded by his nearest and dearest as the best of those housed in the Co Tipperary fastness last year and languishes many points behind his stablemate, Hold That Tiger, in the 2,000 Guineas market. But he was still judged the best of his age trained in Ireland by the official handicappers.

Tomahawk faces six rivals in the seven-furlong Loughbrown Stakes, a race which O'Brien has won once in the past four years (with Monashee Mountain) and in which he has sent out three runners-up.

In the fillies' Listed contest over a furlong further O'Brien relies on In The Limelight, who won a Navan maiden last year. The other Classic entry is the colt Septimus Severus in the seven-furlong maiden.

Selene (Sue Montgomery) gave 10 winners from 15 selections last weekend.