Fred Catling

Fred Catling

Fred Catling won the Mardy Selling Hurdle at the Usk & Llangibby Hunt race meeting on Monday, April 2, 1906 on Troglodyte but then lost the race in the stewards’ room owing to being unable to draw the correct weight on returning to weigh in.

Troglodyte won by eight lengths but the race was awarded to Nobbler, the mount of amateur rider Norman Cuthbertson, destined five years later to be warned off following a race at Cheltenham. 

Nor was the drama over regarding that lowly Usk two-mile selling hurdle, worth just £33 to the winner, for the owner of the promoted runner-up Sapphire, ridden by leading amateur Arthur ‘Stosher’ Wood, objected to Nobbler on grounds of crossing, but the objection was overruled.    

Furthermore, that turned out to be the last meeting ever held there. 

Usk had held its first meeting under National Hunt rules in 1895. Located at Mardy, a mile and a half from the railway station on the Great Western Line, it was a left-handed course, about a mile and a half round, with easy fences, made up of birch. Its annual one-day fixture continued into the 20th century without ever earning more than local recognition or interest. 

The Llangibby Hunt, which dated back to 1700, had formed an alliance with the Tredegar Hunt and combined to hold National Hunt meetings under the title ‘Llangibby and Tredegar’ at Caerleon in 1888. However, their association ended in 1901 and Llangibby joined forces with low-key Usk races in 1903. It did not produce any noticeable improvement either in level of prize money or number of runners. The Usk & Llangibby fixture lasted only three more years.  

As for Fred Catling, he kept the ride on the seven-year-old Troglodyte for the remainder of 1906 but thereafter placed efforts were all they achieved. He held a licence until 1909 but never did manage to ride a winner, having been denied his one and only success for carrying the wrong weight.