The Arqana Arc sale, staged every eve of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at the company’s Saint-Cloud base, used to be a major source of excitement with several candidates due to run the next day, sometimes even in the big race itself, going through in a real boutique auction, writes Tony Stafford. It was […]
Joy O Joy! Tuesday morning, almost two months later than usual when the social-distancing postman left my little package on the doorstep having already scooted ten yards away before I answered the doorbell, it was here, writes Tony Stafford. A helpful bookseller used his influence to get a pal to send me my copy of […]
Where once there was meaningful rivalry, now there is renewed omnipotence. A picture spread through social media early this year of a grinning trainer talking on a mobile phone atop a dead horse has had even more effect than its horrified recipients throughout the horse world could have imagined, writes Tony Stafford. Up until Cheltenham, […]
The jumps season 2020/21 ended with controversy when the heavily-backed favourite Enrilo finished first past the post in the Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park, but was disqualified and placed third after hanging left and hampering the challenging Kitty’s Light up the run-in, writes Tony Stafford. Meanwhile, as newly-crowned champion Harry Skelton struggled to keep […]
On February 6th 1954, two years to the day after her accession to the throne, Her Majesty the Queen, on a Royal visit to Australia, was present at Randwick racecourse, Sydney, to witness the first running of the Queen Elizabeth Stakes, writes Tony Stafford. Inaugurated by the Australian Jockey Club in 1851 in honour of […]
They say disasters come in threes, writes Tony Stafford. The same is true where things we thought would never happen do actually occur. In four short days early in April, Prince Philip was no longer with us; a woman rode the winner of the Grand National, and a Japanese golfer became the first to win […]
So we will be seeing Tiger Roll at Aintree after all, writes Tony Stafford. Not of course in Saturday’s Randox Health Grand National but in the Betfair Bowl on the first of the three days of the meeting. Judged on the way he won the Cross-Country race to give him a fifth Cheltenham Festival success, […]
Five a.m. on the second day of BST and I was still uncertain what to write about. It was tempting to go along with the thought that John Gosden, 70, on his own was never as potent a trainer as he has become with the addition of son Thady, 25, as joint-licence-holder, writes Tony Stafford. […]
As one trainer told me on Saturday morning: “It’s just a question of money”, as he explained his view of the Irish domination of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, writes Tony Stafford. They’ve dominated a few but never like this. Just a quick look at the last two years reveals that the home team had ten […]
In previous years – the last 50 of them anyway – I would have been spending the last couple of weeks building up for Cheltenham, not always to attend every day as for the first half of that time anyway I was required in the Telegraph office in Fleet Street, writes Tony Stafford. This time […]
Sometime between Monday and Friday last week they got together and decided “Gordon’s not really a bad fella, so let’s not be too hard on him”, writes Tony Stafford. You could discern it in the columns of the Racing Post by his day-to-day journalist pals on the racecourse in Ireland as the original abhorrence to […]
I was speaking to Micky Hammond a couple of weeks ago and he declared: “Winter has finished!”. I thought maybe he was rather precipitous as there were still great drifts of snow around much of the North of England and points further on, but he must have had divine inspiration from somewhere, writes Tony Stafford. […]
In the latter half of last week’s missive I took you back to June 1989, writes Tony Stafford. Today I’m going another year, all but two days, and the eve of day one of Royal Ascot. The feature and only Group 1 event of the day, and in those days carrying more than double the […]
The Hollie Doyle/ Tom Marquand bubble will be stretched by a few thousand miles for the next two months, writes Tony Stafford. While Hollie contemplates a trip to Saudi Arabia for that kingdom’s big race, the multi-million-dollar Saudi Cup at the end of the month, fiancé Tom is bound for a return trip to Australia […]
The Dublin Racing Festival, two days of the best jump racing in Ireland and perfectly placed five weeks before Cheltenham to offer definitive clues about the likely destination of many of its major prizes, did its job this weekend, writes Tony Stafford. It also made the more than considerable likelihood that Willie Mullins will see […]
