Monday Musings: Bright Lights in Newmarket

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Irritatingly, I couldn’t make it to the two big races over the weekend, but watching from home didn’t diminish the experience of seeing three bright lights dominate the first Classic of the European season, writes Tony Stafford. Bow Echo, his young trainer George Boughey and barely-out-of-his-teens rider Billy Loughnane, treated Newmarket to its finest hour since Frankel slaughtered his opposition back in the 2000 Guineas of 2011.

Both Boughey and Loughnane have sprinted through the normal gestation period in their respective careers. Boughey went from a handful of horses and two wins in 2019, having left his role as assistant to Hugo Palmer in Newmarket, to the first of four successive centuries in 2022.

Loughnane’s rise has been even more meteoric. The son of trainer Mark had his first rides in 2022 on the all-weather yet by the end of that winter had 41 successes, winning the apprentices’ AW season award just beyond his 17th birthday.

Comparisons with Lester Piggott are inevitable, but Lester was able to start riding at age 12 whereas the earliest allowed nowadays is 16. At 20, Loughnane has what will prove the first of many Classic wins, I’m sure, and he will be a major threat to Oisin Murphy’s hold on the jockeys’ championship starting now.

Last year Loughnane rode 223 winners and was on 65 for this year after Saturday’s exploits. Of course, the jockeys’ championship, oddly, only includes racing between mid-April and October, but it isn’t far-fetched to suggest he might have a little more hunger than Murphy. The champion will need to keep his own well-publicised demons at bay in face of what will be the most serious human challenge yet to his pre-eminence.

Comparisons with horses of previous generations are often meaningless, but Bow Echo, who won by almost three lengths from Coolmore’s hastily re-entered Gstaad after a costly glitch from the Ballydoyle office computer, looks very much in the Frankel range of ability on their comparable Guineas runs.

 

 

Tom Queally allowed Frankel to run his rivals into submission a long way from home, winning by ten lengths on the way to a blemish-free lifetime tally of 14 from 14. Bow Echo is thus ten away from that after this exceptional performance. Had Gstaad not been included as the sole Aidan O’Brien runner, the margin theoretically could have been ten lengths, thus firmly in the Frankel range.

Had Bow Echo not been in the field or not lived fully up to Boughey’s expectations – a friend told me in the week that the trainer thought him a certainty – Gstaad would have won by eight, just the job to keep the Coolmore machine in full flow. Their PR department would have been Frankelising the performance.

Saturday’s winner, along with the third home, Distant Storm, the eventual joint-favourite with the runner-up, are both sons of the 2014 2000 Guineas winner Night Of Thunder. His Guineas success was notable in that he came right across the track in the closing stages yet still had enough under Kieren Fallon to catch market leaders Kingman and Australia as a 40/1 chance for Richard Hannon.

Night Of Thunder was hardly over-trumpeted in his first season as a stallion at Darley’s Kildangan Stud when his opening fee was €30k. Success breeds excess in terms of stud fees though and he is up to €200k as a result of his being champion stallion in the UK and Ireland last year.

In the 14-horse field on Saturday, he had four representatives – the others being Billecart in 12th and Needle Match in 13th. Three more 2000 Guineas winners were also represented. Apart from Frankel, they were Sea The Stars (2009), who went on to win the Derby and the Arc, and Saxon Warrior (2018).

The latter’s son Padraig Dawn is trained by 24-year-old Charlie Pike, who is in his first season with a licence. That horse gave him his first and, so far, sole winner at Southwell in February from 35 starters, although in finishing eighth only three lengths behind the third horse, he deserves a big mention.

So too, Coolmore-based and raced Saxon Warrior, result of a trip to Japan for his smart mother Maybe to be mated with Deep Impact. He won the Classic eight years ago and is still on Coolmore’s books but very much at the basement end. His 2026 fee is only €10k, as against £350k for Frankel and €300k for Sea The Stars. Two Coolmore stallions were doubly represented with Starspangledbanner and St Mark’s Basilica, so eight of the 14 were sired by only three stallions.

In yesterday’s 1,000 Guineas, looking from far away on the screen, as the fillies went into the stalls, you had to be impressed with how True Love looked: big, strong and also well found in the market. There had been doubts about whether Ryan Moore’s mount Precise would get to the race but as she shortened to 7/4 favouritism those had seemingly been dispelled.

Meanwhile, True Love, winner of the Cheveley Park last year and a returning winner this spring, had the time-honoured Classic profile and she won in fine style, making it an eighth 1000 for Aidan O’Brien, this time with Wayne Lordan in the saddle. She might not be an exact equivalent of Bow Echo, but she looks the type to progress through the year.

 

 

Most of the sires represented on Saturday are either at Coolmore or under Godolphin/Darley management. That is vastly at odds with the 18-strong line-up from Churchill Downs for the Kentucky Derby, first leg of the US Triple Crown, staged late on Saturday evening.

Only one stallion had more than a single runner and that was champion sire Into Mischief, whose fee is $250k. But only one stallion represented in the field had won the Kentucky Derby, the 2016 hero Nyquist, and as the line-up says, competitors in the Run For The Roses come from all directions.

Only Gun Runner of the other 16, at $250k matches Into Mischief’s covering fee, while the winner of the race Golden Tempo, was sired by Curlin, now a 22-year-old, most remembered for winning the 2008 Dubai World Cup. His fee is $225k.

 

 

Golden Tempo came from 'downtown', as they say, his jockey Jose Ortiz 18 lengths off the lead after half a mile, and deploying similarly exaggerated waiting tactics to brother Irad, on Renegade, who ran on for a close second. And this was a first Kentucky Derby win by a female trainer, Cherie DeVaux adding to her growing haul of records.

 

 

Gun Runner had a better day on Friday when he supplied the one-two with Always A Runner (Chad Brown) and Meaning (Michael McCarthy) as well as two of the backmarkers in a 13-strong field for the Kentucky Oaks. Brown was further cementing his reputation as a supreme trainer of fillies, on dirt as in the Oaks, but also on turf.

 

**

 

I would have made this my lead today had it not been for the excellence of Saturday’s big race winner and to a slightly lesser extent the runner-up. I remember when Sea The Stars was going along, Aidan used to have a pop at him with different horses trying to find chinks in his impregnable armour without ever managing to do so. The rest of the season among the milers will be fascinating.

What wasn’t fascinating was the treatment meted out to the three-year-old King’s Courtier, trained by Julia and Shelley Birkett at Exning, near Newmarket.

Three, I must say, talentless runs at two brought the son of Bated Breath an initial mark of 30. In the past, horses so far out of the handicap were allowed to run, but off what is the nominally bottom-weighted mark of 45. Now, the Rules state you cannot run and must find a maiden to try to improve the rating.

So, four months after his feeble 12th of 13 at Chelmsford, he was loaded into the horsebox for the 250-mile round trip to Wolverhampton. Mindful to get the best possible placing, unlike a few less in need of such an urgent situation, the three-year-old started 66/1 and got within eight lengths of the winner.

The misfortune was that the horse immediately ahead of him was rated 53, questionable in that only once in three had he run anything remotely worth that mark.

Result, the BHA handicapper raised him 27lb – that’s near enough two stone for finishing fourth in a modest at best race.

Now Julia, an experienced and well-respected trainer since 2000, who joined forces with daughter Shelley last year, was in a right pickle. Recently, the rule which enabled horses 1lb and 2lb above the ceiling mark in handicaps to run, was taken away in Class 5 and Class 6. That meant King’s Courtier could not run in a 0-55 and would have to go to 0-60. “There aren’t any for him,” says Julia, so she had to go up to 0-65 for his first handicap run. “There’s no way he’s that class,” she lamented.

So, it was a shorter road and a bit easier on the diesel, trip last Thursday that was undertaken for King’s Courtier for a seven-runner race at Yarmouth. Julia/Shelley’s horse started 50/1 and finished 18 lengths behind the penultimate runner in the race. We all know that handicappers do not like dropping horses – except for certain top trainers it sometimes seems! – so Julia is anxiously waiting on tomorrow’s revised mark.

Unless they drop him to 45 it will be a travesty of justice, but they won’t. Indeed, it wouldn’t be a surprise if the Civil Service types that seem to fill the job nowadays, say: “He couldn’t have run anything like to form, so let’s leave him where he is.”

Make no mistake this is a massive scandal, and I would suggest to Dominic Gardner-Hill (if he’s still the man?) that he has a serious look at the reasoning whereby life has been made so difficult for an honest, hard-working stable and the man who has been paying the bills for the past 20 months! Not no mention the ever-spiralling administration charges.

- TS

Monday Musings: Dan and dusted

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Careful. By the time you read next week’s words here the 2026/27 jumps season will already be four days old, we’ll be 40 per cent through the 2026 UK Classics, and only seven weeks short of the longest day of the year, writes Tony Stafford.

And what of the 2025/26 season? Well, that was pretty much Dan and dusted before Cheltenham, and Mr Skelton duly got over the £5million mark with his Sandown exploits – which were not without their difficulties.

Now he wants to beat Martin Pipe’s record number of 243 winners in a single season, while second-time champion jockey Sean Bowen reckons 300 wins will be within his reach – he finished off with 241, so 48 behind A P McCoy’s best of 289 in the 2001/02 campaign.

But let’s forget the jumping for a while – the boys will have had almost a full week off, bar a single Friday meeting at Warwick’s temporary hosting of Cheltenham’s hunter chase fixture. Last week’s meeting there, also replacing unfit Cheltenham, was pretty turgid apart from the money.

No, I’m not planning to relive my 1992 2000 Guineas Day when I waited until Lester returned to unsaddle on Rodrigo De Triano for Robert Sangster and trainer Peter Chapple-Hyam before setting off to keep an appointment with a potential client 266 miles away at Hexham racecourse. That fixture is joined by Uttoxeter, so the counting starts again then.

Meanwhile we have the small matter of five days at Punchestown starting tomorrow. As with Dan Skelton for the past two years – largely abandoned this time round as he had no chance of catching the new champion – Willie Mullins has now a target on the back of Gordon Elliott, something we’ve seen more than once in the past.

Elliott goes into Punchestown on €4,710,170, €160k ahead of his nemesis. He’s having a proper go, starting with 15 runners including his Aintree heroine Brighterdaysahead tomorrow, and a possible 61 in the following four days.

Mullins kicks off with 22 tomorrow and has at least 33 on each of the following days, with a preponderance as ever in the non-handicaps and championship events. It’s more than an uphill struggle for Elliott, even though he has had 323 individual horses to call on this season against Mullins’ modest team of just 290!

When talking numbers, you cannot get away from those two superstars from Hong Kong, Ka Ying Rising and Romantic Warrior. Both turned out at Sha Tin’s big day yesterday and thrilled their legion of followers in their respective races. I doubt there’s ever been a plus £1 million to the winner prize with eight runners, contested (and obviously won) by a horse starting at 100/1 on.

That was the price of Ka Ying Rising as he made it 20 wins in a row with only two narrow second places the blemishes on the six-year-old’s card. There was never a moment’s doubt that he would duly outclass the opposition in the Chairman’s Sprint Cup. How connections must wish that the year-younger Wunderbar hadn’t turned up for his second and third starts.

Each time it went to a close-run thing, first by a nose and then a short head. The two horses’ fortunes have veered apart since then, Ka Ying Rising cantering to a four and a bit length win from second-favourite Satano Reve (89/1!), a winner of a Group 1 sprint last time out at Chukyo racecourse, Japan. Wunderbar’s last run was in a handicap this year off a mark of 100. He was ridden by Richard Kingscote and finished eighth of twelve. Ka Ying Rising is rated 128.

Donnacha O’Brien’s useful Comanche Brave was fifth yesterday under Oisin Murphy, having started at 350/1. Connections copped a handy £80k against the £1.281 million collected by the Zac Purton-ridden winner. He had started at 1/20 for each of his previous eight wins around Sha Tin, a sequence only interrupted by a smooth success at Randwick racecourse in Sydney last year where he was an even-money shot.

I doubt many Hong Kong racegoers with winning tickets will have bothered cashing them in, basically to get their money back. As when Deep Impact came over to Longchamp from Japan, the legion of his supporters that forced his price down on the Pari-mutuel on that Arc would not have cashed them either.

Even if they had backed him for a place – he finished third over the line to Rail Link and Pride, ahead of Hurricane Run – they will have been found a spot on many a Tokyo trophy cabinet. I had forgotten – it was 20 years ago after all – that Deep Impact was subsequently disqualified for having a banned substance in his post-race test. That doesn’t alter the fact that he was one of the greatest in Japan and sired the 2023 Derby winner for Coolmore in Auguste Rodin from the mating with their top filly Rhododendron.

Hong Kong’s other great equine hero, the eight-year-old Romantic Warrior, did the business once more in the QE II Cup, his fourth win in the race, starting as a four-year-old in 2022. James McDonald’s mount missed out last year, I recall injured following his narrow defeat at Meydan the previous month, but has returned as good as ever, making his tally 22 wins from 29 starts.

His prizemoney tally now tops £25 million and he is ahead of Forever Young after that Japanese champion’s failure to secure as expected the Dubai World Cup at Meydan last month. The difference between second and first that day was more than £3 million, but you get the feeling that Romantic Warrior can only go on for so long and it’s merely a matter of time.

That said, he was the 30/100 favourite and had to beat three smart overseas performers to send the locals home happy that another of their heroes had seen off the visiting opposition. He had a length to spare over runner-up Masquerade Ball, last seen running the world’s highest-rated horse Calandagan close at Meydan; third was Sosie, in the same place as when he was behind Daryz in the Arc last October.

Next came another eight-year-old, Karl Burke’s Royal Champion, a close up fourth under Oisin adding £171k to his Middle East earnings at Bahrain and Riyadh at the beginning of the year. Burke is becoming adept at identifying winning targets overseas for his charges and that can only develop further as the returns continue to accumulate for his owners.

Talking of owners, so many older horses, some entire and more often geldings, are benefiting from staying in training for longer, especially at middle distances and above. While there are always plenty of new stallions every year, the fashion is for the precocious sprinting type that can get its progeny on the track early and maybe even have a shot at Royal Ascot.

Tony O’Callaghan, wife Anne and son Roger have been ultra-successful in that regard, and their Tally-Ho Stud had another day in the sun when a colt by their stallion Mehmas sold for £880,000 at the Doncaster breeze-up sale last week.

Mehmas never ran beyond age two but did plenty in those eight runs for Richard Hannon and Al Shaqab, winning four times including the Group 2 July Stakes, beating Blue Point. The only time Hannon stretched him beyond six furlongs he was second to Churchill in the National Stakes over seven at the Curragh.

The O’Callaghans bought him and he began his stud career with a fee of £12,500 at Tally-Ho. By the time the first runners appeared on the track it was down to £7,500 but his progeny soon showed speed, precocity and class and he was set. Now his fee is €70k.

Like Romantic Warrior, Mehmas is a son of Acclamation, and it isn’t hard to estimate that with say 150 mares visiting him each year at that fee, he will be rapidly approaching the sort of figures that his paternal relative has amassed on the track. That has been the Coolmore method for decades and one that other top stud operations like Godolphin, Shadwell, Juddmonte, and no doubt in their long-term planning, Amo Racing also aspire to.

One of Mehmas’s classiest sons, Minzaal, is now finding his feet as a stallion and my friend Maurice Manasseh was shrewd and maybe lucky enough to buy a lovely colt by him at Doncaster for £60k last week. Minzaal won the Gimcrack at two and the Haydock Sprint Cup on his final career start as a four-year-old.

Bred by Shadwell, from a Juddmonte family, I’m sure this very stylish-looking colt will give Maurice plenty of fun with the Crisfords.

If you feel I’ve been procrastinating a bit when talking about the Guineas this weekend, you may well be right. I’ve not missed either the 2000 or the 1000 since 2002 (and for at least another 25 years before that) but I’m ashamed to say I won’t be at Newmarket on either day owing to unforeseen domestic duties.

The last absence happened when I was off to Louisville for my one and only visit to the Kentucky Derby, in the entourage of Prince Ahmed Salman’s Thoroughbred Corporation. I watched mesmerised as the green and white stripes on War Emblem won the race in all-the-way fashion under Victor Espinoza for the Bob Baffert stable. We were in Paris by late that evening and saw the 1000 from there the following day at the George V Hotel.

Anyway, what’s going to win this time? With so little encouragement coming from the original ante-post fancies and with Bow Echo looking very short, I’ll take a chance with Roger Varian’s Avicenna, each-way at 16’s for the 2000 on Saturday.

As to the 1000, Aidan O’Brien could hardly have been more complimentary as Precise made her way through and out of the grades last year. I can picture Ryan Moore, convalescing from injury and denied a ride on any of her four wins, standing next to the paddock on his own admiring her in the middle distance as she went round before the Fillies’ Mile last September. He won’t relinquish that mount once he gets on her, so Christophe Soumillon, you can merely watch as she wins on Sunday.

- TS

Monday Musings: An Expensive Blunder

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One of the most upwardly mobile jump trainers in the country is undoubtedly Jamie Snowden, writes Tony Stafford. Over the 17 seasons since he first took out his licence in Lambourn, Snowden has consistently improved both number of wins and prizemoney, and this term is the first time he’s exceeded £1 million in earnings.

The 84 wins have come at a strike rate of 25 per cent, and while it’s churlish to say a horse has been unlucky to lose when a bad mistake is the reason for it, his Git Maker’s second in Saturday’s Coral Scottish Grand National was probably undeserved.

True, the winner Kap Vert, a six-year-old trained by the duo of Philip Hobbs and Johnson White was an entirely deserving recipient of the £112k first prize on only his fifth start in a chase. That said, Git Maker’s performance for all bar one monstrous error at the 21st of the 27 fences made things much more comfortable for the winning yard’s local ownership partnership of If The Kap Fits.

In his 13 chases before Saturday, Git Maker had been runner-up to the following year’s Cheltenham Gold Cup winner Inothewayurthinkin in the 2024 Kim Muir for amateurs at Cheltenham, and has places to his name in the 2024 Scottish and this year’s Midlands Nationals.

In those now 14 races Snowden’s ten-year-old has never fallen with only a single pulled up after 14 fences on one occasion and once completed the only eight fences remaining when another nine were lost to a low sun.

By my reckoning, he has safely negotiated 268 fences in around 48 miles of racing. So why then did he make the catastrophic error at the 21st fence on Saturday? Having raced among the last three for the first half of the race, Jonny Burke moved him up around the outside easily into third place down the back for the last time.

It seemed a matter of time before he contested the lead, but he stumbled badly on landing, losing impetus to the extent that he was back in ninth or tenth by the following fence. Then another ordinary leap two fences further on would, we assumed, have finished it for him.

But no, this valiant stayer battled back again, so that he shared second going to the last. Slower away from the fence than both the winner and the 4/1 favourite, Joseph O’Brien’s Kim Roque, he stayed on determinedly to the line and was a nose ahead of the third, that making the difference of £21k for connections, so not a total disaster.

As a side note on disaster, Kim Roque raced here in the Ronnie Bartlett silks, and that same owner sold the winner last spring. How’s your luck?

I haven’t spoken to Jamie, but I was wondering who made the decision whereby stable jockey Gavin Sheehan switched off the Ayr ride to go instead to partner four Snowden runners at Bangor – none of which won – and neither did Gavin’s two outside rides.

Sheehan had ridden Git Maker in ten of those previous 13 runs over fences and two of those he missed came in the Kim Muir where the top amateur Will Biddick took the ride. For my money, Sheehan excels in judging pace in long-distance chases on a par I believe with Harry Skelton and the champion Sean Bowen. Not that Burke did anything wrong, far from it – did he not after all survive that terrible blunder and retain the partnership?

Dan Skelton meanwhile went on his merry way with a Sunday double at Plumpton worth £40k bringing him to within just 126 grand of making the £5 million for the season. There was a brilliant interview with him by the Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead yesterday, revealing much about the 41-year-old’s planning and some of his admitted weaknesses as he approaches the massive achievement coupled with a first trainers’ title.

On an earthlier level, I was thrilled that Jack Quinlan has set a new personal best this season – one for each of his 33 years. Jack has resolutely stayed close to his Newmarket roots and while the Amy Murphy connection that brought him so much success with Kalashnikov earlier his career has ended with Amy’s moving full-time to France, a former Newmarket trainer, Neil King, has provided him several highlights.

Biggest of those was the Aintree Grade 1 win of Storming George this month. Jack, as you would expect, was well aware of the winners statistic but was surprised when I congratulated him for passing half a million in stakes. “I had no idea,” he said. A bit of a mini-Skelton really. Jack had never previously got to £400K, just as Dan had never until this season got to £4 million and goes straight to the £5m.

*

After seeing what happened at Newmarket and Newbury last week, I’m not sure the picture for the first two English Classics at Newmarket next month is any clearer. It seems that the best way of enhancing one’s horses’ chances was to keep them away from the trials. So, George Boughey’s unbeaten Bow Echo, a son of Night Of Thunder has hardened his position as others fell by the wayside.

It must have been the result of some exceptional work on the gallops for the 115-rated colt to be as short as 11/4 while Zavateri, second in Saturday’s Greenham at Newbury and rated 118 on last year’s Dewhurst fourth behind Gewan, is at 25/1 after a satisfactory second to Alparslan. Gewan was fatally injured in a gallop a couple of weeks ago, sadly, while Coolmore’s Dewhurst runner-up Gstaad will probably go straight to Newmarket after missing the trials.

The two best US dirt horses from the 2025 Classic generation were back in action after a break in the Oaklawn Handicap, a Grade 2 race at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas on Saturday evening. Godolphin’s Sovereignty, trained by Bill Mott, was seen off by the seven-year-old White Abarrio, who brought his career tally to ten wins from 25 starts and £6.7 million in prizes. All six runners in the race were still entire horses, three of them four-year-olds, two aged five and the winner two years their senior.

Last year Sovereignty won the Kentucky Derby from Journalism, and they again finished in that order in the third leg of the Triple Crown, run over the reduced trip of 10 furlongs at Saratoga while Belmont Park was closed for rebuilding.

Sovereignty did not run in the second leg of the Triple Crown, the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico, which left the way clear for Journalism to step up. American dirt fans are licking their lips in anticipation of another year’s competition from two great horses.

- TS

Monday Musings: BBC Shows National Apathy

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Have you ever needed to get somewhere but have found yourself stuck in traffic, writes Tony Stafford. Of course you have. At £1.90 a litre for diesel (if you’re lucky) you would imagine there would be fewer than usual cars out on the North Circular Road in London, early on a Saturday April afternoon, but no.

I needed to get home to watch the Grand National having undertaken an errand but realised it unlikely unless I wanted to collect a guaranteed speeding ticket. Brainwave! Didn’t BBC Radio Five Live cover every race of the Cheltenham Festival’s four days uninterrupted last month, with Gina Brice at the helm? Why wouldn’t they give some attention to the event their admirable chief commentator (and West Ham United fan) John Hunt rightly described as the “most famous race in the world”?

We had the vital matter beforehand of full commentary of Brentford versus Everton from 3pm but with the big race starting an hour later, Steve Crossman, hosting the day’s coverage from Aintree, assured racing fans that there would be the best build-up to the race, with the football switching to Radio Five Sports Extra while we were at Aintree.

Needless to say, there were five additional minutes to the first half at Brentford, so it wasn’t until 3.50 and 35 seconds that the half-time whistle blew.

Once more, this time by commentator Ian Dennis, we were promised all the build-up was on its way. If you want to stay with the football, retune to Sports Extra, otherwise here it’s all about the 178th Grand National.

Crossman by now had the microphone, announcing there’s ten minutes to go and that he had just “seen I Am Maximus in the golden dark brown colours” (sic). Then without a second breath he added, “half times in the football, Burnley/Brighton” and we got a brief report on that so important match.

Next Steve was “in the parade ring with the suits, dresses – all the colours of the rainbow. On the course, John Hunt”. “Can Willie Mullins win it again and make it three in a row to equal Vincent O’Brien’s feat of 70 years ago?”

John spotted Panic Attack and Gerri Colombe, one of five runners for Gordon Elliott, and noted JP McManus and his six runners.

Steve jumped in, “Half-time Oxford 1-0, St Mirren…, Southampton 0 Derby 1. Other half-times <without reports>”.

Seamlessly, he switched back to Aintree and Davy Russell, twice the winner on Tiger Roll. “When you go out to ride in the Grand National what do you feel?”

Davy says, “You have to keep calm, take your routine, think about which horses you want to be around, and those you don’t want to be near <in the race>.

Again Steve showed his nimbleness. “Half-time, Hearts… Could the door be creaking open for Celtic? The reporter said, “Celtic are dominating the ball…”

Steve again: “Other scores, League 2 Newport/ Harrogate. That reporter informed Grand National fans hanging on every word that Newport had achieved the great escape in avoiding relegation from the Football League nine years ago and now that fate seems destined for basement club Harrogate.

Back to John. “The last chance for punters to have a bet.” Over to Rob Nothman who has been at the BBC since the time they used to broadcast live sport on TV. “Betting movements. I Am Maximus is favourite at 13/2, Jagwar second favourite at 15/2 ahead of Panic Attack at 8/1.”

Time marches on, but it stands still if you want football info. Live scores… but even as the last dregs of the halftimes around the country were dribbled out, the sound of bugles could be heard in the background.

Steve again. “This sound tells us that it’s nearly time, the buglers of the King’s Guard in their red tunics and black caps. Davy is still with us.”

Davy: “So many bright colours, bays, greys, all the jockeys’ colours. Gerri Colombe is a good horse, Oscars Brother, trained by Connor King and ridden by his brother, Daniel. “

Steve: “The jockeys climb on board … and walk past Blackmore’s Bar named after Rachael, the first woman to ride the winner of the race. Then Red Rum’s Bar. Toby McCain-Mitchell, grandson of three-time winner Red Rum’s trainer Ginger McCain has the ride on Top Of The Bill.”

Back to John. “They are cantering down right in front of us” and then John introduces his three co-commentators, in order Darren Owen, Gary O’Brien and Gina Brice, the first woman, they say, to commentate on the race. Do I not remember though in the dim and distant past, Aintree’s then owner Mirabel Topham, an actress in her younger days, once making a very amateurish attempt at doing so when the normal commentator stayed away?

Back to Steve. “Davy, I bet the heart rate goes through the roof when the race starts.”

Davy: “Yes, but it’s eerily quiet all the way round.” Davy valiantly and generously tries to get Andrew Thornton, another former jockey and regular Sky Sports Racing man in the north, also one of the pillars of the Cheltenham radio coverage, into the discussion, but he’s shut down.

Steve now must bring in the script he presumably wrote that morning, thus. “You might love the manicured greens of Augusta, the clean white lines of the football but this is all about the torn-up turf, mud, sand and hammering hooves.”

John says: “And torn-up tickets! It’s the biggest betting race of the year, so Rob?”

“I Am Maximus is down to 11/2 clear favourite ahead of 7/1 Panic Attack and 8/1 Jagwar.”

By now they were standing at the start and at 4.02 23, 12 minutes and two seconds after the half-time whistle at Brentford, they were off. The money had continued to go on I Am Maximus, apparently principally a £100k winning bet, reputedly from none other than his owner JP McManus. A hundred grand bet from JP is like a tenner from most of the punters there on the day and in the betting shops of the UK. Not to mention a fiver for you and me!

I stopped off straight after the race to get a bar of chocolate in a petrol station and got back to the car at 4.15 on the dot. Radio Five Live happily had sorted all the post-race thoughts from its team by then and we were back at Brentford. No need to retune then!

Bang on 5pm, the strains of the introduction to the station’s long-running Sports Report programme, still with Steve in the saddle, as it were, from Aintree. He did have a quite lengthy and informative interview with Willie Mullins, keeping John Hunt nearby to help Steve avoid the obvious blunders that the once-a-year “expert” can make.

Willie said how he had wanted to concentrate on the Gold Cup for I Am Maximus and leave the Grand National alone as he’s already won it. “But thankfully, JP was firm wanting him to have another try.”

Mullins suggested there would still be time to win a Gold Cup. “Didn’t L’Escargot win a Gold Cup and then a Grand National?”

Quite right in some respect, but the amazing L’Escargot won two Gold Cups, age seven and eight, then at the age of 12, at the fourth Aintree attempt, overturned a previous defeat in the race by Red Rum, by 15 lengths all from the last fence! How good was he? That was one of two second places for the race’s greatest alongside the three wins. Even the very classy I Am Maximus would do well to match that!

Having backed L’Escargot for that first Gold Cup at 14/1 ante-post I watched him drift to 33’s on the day, but it remains one of the thrills of my racing life being there to see him win, as it was on my first ever visit to the meeting when he won a division of the Gloucestershire Hurdle.

To win a Grand National five years after a first Gold Cup was astonishing. His owner, Raymond Guest, also went down in history for a similarly amazing double. He was the winning owner of one of the great Derby winners, Sir Ivor, trained by Vincent O’Brien after the legendary handler had packed up the jumping game as he had nothing more to prove.

Last week I said I was bored with the Grand National as it had all become too predictable. Mullins did win it again, but he only had a fifth and an eighth among his other seven runners. There were again two UK horses in the first ten, McManus’ Iroko and Johnnywho (4th). The former followed I Am Maximus through late on to pip Joseph O’Brien’s Jordans for second after the Jordans had looked to have the race won under Ben Jones’ aggressive ride.

That meant last year’s second and fourth moved up one spot and two respectively, as the winner, Mullins’ Nick Rockett, was a late withdrawal. Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero reckon runner-up Iroko can make it third time lucky next year.

Although rated 150, so guaranteed to get in the race, Jordans had only one win from 11 runs over fences on his card, but fortunately that was over three miles, otherwise he wouldn’t have been qualified to run. Joseph O’Brien is sure to exploit him to great effect in the future.

There was a measure of unpredictability this year, as seven horses fell with another seven unseating their riders as 16 of the 34 finished the course. At the first fence Patrick Mullins, last year’s winning rider, was unseated from his father’s Grangeclare West, the third home last year. Two more casualties quickly followed: Quai De Bourbon, also Mullins, 33/1, fell at the second and Panic Attack, badly hampered by the latter there, departed at the big ditch that followed.

So Dan Skelton didn’t bring home the Grand National, but four winners on the day (184 on the season) brought him to £4,762,920 against Mullins’ Grand National-enhanced figure of £2,668,886. Dan could be in reach of that unprecedented £5 million seasonal haul with money aplenty on offer at Ayr and Sandown and loads of little fish in between (little fish are sweet, as Arthur Stephenson used to say). I think he can do it.

As to the BBC, I don’t want you to think that Steve Crossman made a bad job of things. It’s just that whoever produced that show ought to have switched the entire football coverage from 3pm onwards to Sports Extra, leaving a full hour to dissect the many interesting aspects of what they did repeatedly say was the world’s biggest race. Then another period of reflection bringing it up to 5pm and Sports Report.

In the end, it was 12 minutes and two seconds, with at least half of it given away to keep us racing fans abreast of events at St Mirren and the travails of Harrogate Town.

I wonder how the executives at the beleaguered Beeb can equate six minutes as the “best build-up to the biggest betting race in the world” – with the reputed (was it 70?) BBC staff being sent across to cover the Masters golf at the same time at licence-payers’ expense. That’s another major event you need to search for elsewhere to see it live.

The BBC has had more than its share of scandals in recent times. That they no longer televise the Grand National is shameful enough, leaving it to ITV and Racing TV. But to think that six minutes is regarded as the best build-up coverage shows just how warped the Corporation’s values have become.

- TS

Monday Musings: Bored of the National?

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Are you bored with the Grand National? I am and I would never have believed it could happen in the days when I used to make my selection in the Daily Telegraph for the race straight after going to the weights press conference, writes Tony Stafford.

That started, believe it or not, when Red Rum got up to beat Crisp in 1973 – he won it twice more, of course – and happened another eight times in my three decades of trying. Then there were 40 runners, stiff, unforgiving fences, many fallers, few completions and the race, if not stopping a nation, as the Melbourne Cup reputedly does, was the vehicle for office sweepstakes all around the country, mainly eagerly contested by people who never bet otherwise.

Last year, with the new limitation on runners, down to 34, easier obstacles and a slightly shorter trip, it has become almost another long-distance steeplechase on a park course to be mopped up by the big Irish brigades.

With no incentive not to run as the need for specialist jumping skills other than getting from one side to the other has become irrelevant, the same old names will be trotted out year on year.

The 2025 version had the full complement of 34 runners and 16 of them (41%) completed. The so-called “fearsome” Aintree fences, 30 of them, accounted for only five casualties. Three horses fell, one unseated the rider and a fifth was brought down, so just 14% actual casualties. Additionally, 13 were pulled up.

I could have landed anywhere over the past half Century, but I thought 20 years would be enough for most racing fans’ appetites. That year, 40 horses took their place in the line-up, just nine finished – Numbersixvalverde, trained by Martin Brassil in Ireland, beating the 2005 winner Hedgehunter, notable as the first Grand National winner for Willie Mullins.

Hedgehunter had another three attempts, during sparing campaigns between tries, while in 2006, the 2004 winner, Amberleigh House, ridden by Graham Lee with to my mind the outstanding ride in the race during my seven decades of watching, was pulled up as a 14-year-old behind Numbersixvalverde.

It took another 19 years before Ireland’s perennial champion trainer added to it with I Am Maximus, who tried valiantly to repeat history for the stable last April, failing but only in an honourable second place as Hedgehunter had done almost two decades earlier.

Here, Saturday’s top-weight had to give best to the almost unconsidered Nick Rockett, a 33/1 shot ridden by the trainer’s son and supreme amateur Patrick Mullins.  He too will be back again, second highest-rated after having an interrupted career since.

To complete the Mullins stranglehold in terms of recent Aintree form, we have Grangeclare West, third last year and now nicely into form having won the Bobbyjo Chase, often a good guide to the big one. There he beat another of the high-weighted horses in Saturday’s line-up in Gordon Elliott’s Gerri Colombe.

Gerri Colombe is one of five Elliott horses guaranteed to run, and with the riches on offer, £500,000 to the winner and a total of £1,000,000 to disperse, it’s hardly surprising that we’ll be lucky to get more than one or two absentees by race time.

Elliott trained Silver Birch, the 2007 winner, so early into his training career that he had yet to train a single winer in Ireland. He has proved throughout the subsequent two decades, with a blip or two along the way, that he knows how to prepare an Aintree horse, winning twice with Tiger Roll, who probably would have equalled Red Rum’s three wins if Covid hadn’t intervened to stop the 2020 edition of the race.

Belatedly back to 2006, I must say there was one element I hadn’t either been aware of or simply forgot. The winner’s owner, Mr Carroll, collected a few pennies short of £400,000. With the loss of value due to annual inflation over the intervening time, that equates to an equivalent of almost £700,000 today.

So, while we gasp at the big prize pool on offer, it still hasn’t kept pace with inflation, not that Mullins minded 12 months ago when he copped £885k of the million total on offer.

In 2006, in a field of 40, nine got round. Eleven fell, six unseated rider and two refused. As last year, there were plenty of pulled-up horses, 12 against 13 last year. Thus only 22% finished the course and another 46% were casualties.

If you thought Elliott had a strong hand as he aims for a fourth win in the race, Mullins with nine of the 34 guaranteed places, has 26% of the entire field. Add the other three top Irish jumps trainers, Gavin Cromwell, Henry de Bromhead and Joseph O’Brien, and you get 21 of the 34, almost two-thirds. Only nine UK-trained horses are guaranteed a run, two of them, Iroko and Jagwar, owned by JP McManus and trained by Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero, both with decent chances.

Others I would like to see win are Mr Vango, trained by my long-term Daily Telegraph colleague, the late John Oaksey’s daughter Sara Bradstock and Panic Attack, trained by Dan Skelton.

Panic Attack has been a star already this season, the ten-year-old mare impressively winning the Coral Gold Cup (formerly Hennessy) over 3m2f and after another easy win at Cheltenham In January, she then finished third to Mullins’ brilliant mare Dinoblue in the Grade 1 Mares Chase when dropping back to 2m4f at the Festival last time out.

Panic Attack has been a stand-out contributor to Dan Skelton’s season in which he has become the first trainer ever to break the £4 million barrier in a season. Last year Mullins earned £3,570k from his UK runners, but that had twice previously been exceeded by Paul Nicholls, Skelton’s mentor.

Nicholls set a mark of £3,646,511 in 2007/08 and then exceeded it by a paltry £75 another 15 seasons later. If Skelton could win with Panic Atack it would push his takings towards an almost unthinkable £5 million. To achieve that though he would need to pick up many of the valuable prizes this week at Aintree, next week at Ayr and on finals day at Sandown later in the month.

It would be a supreme achievement should Panic Attack win. She would be the first mare to do so since the Jack O’Donoghue-trained Nickel Coin in 1951, 75 years ago. Neville Crump, three years earlier, won with Sheila’s Cottage, the first of her sex to be successful in the race since 1902. It isn’t easy – only 13 mares have won in the near 200 year history of the race, most in the days when they were walked to the course! If she does win, it would rank as Dan’s most treasured career moment.

Meanwhile, with the UK turf flat campaign still in its “phoney war” phase, most interest this Easter is with the domestic Mullins/Elliott rivalry at Fairyhouse and Cork yesterday and today.

Numerically there isn’t much between them with Mullins running a total of 52 horses over the two days and Elliott 48, but as ever it is in the Graded races where Mullins holds the advantage. He needed to retrieve a little over £300k on his rival, having lodged €4,175,250 with 172 wins from 704 runs and 284 individual horses.

Elliott’s 171 wins have come from 1066 runs from 314 individual horses. They don’t race every day in Ireland by a long shot but that’s an average of two runs every day for Mullins and three for Elliott. Would you want to take them on? That makes it even more admirable that young Mr Skelton – maybe not so young now – has managed to see everyone off and in record-breaking fashion too!

The feature of yesterday’s racing was Harry Cobden’s continuing quest, eventually into the 30s, to ride a first winner in Ireland. JP McManus’ retained jockey for next season finally got the job done on the last of six Mullins runners, five of them favourites, and four, like the sole winner Funiculi Funicula, at odds-on.

As to my Grand National 1-2-3 it’s Panic Attack from Banbridge (Joseph O’Brien) and Mr Vango. Sorry Willie, but there’s always next year.

- TS

Monday Musings: Crisfords Cash in on DWC Night

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Few UK trainers have been as consistent over recent years as the Crisfords, father Simon and son Ed, writes Tony Stafford. Between 2022 and last year they maintained a strike rate not far off 20%, consecutively earning £1.3million, then £1.7million, and then £1.4 million the last twice. Those four campaigns brought a total of 294 wins from 1,542 runs and just short of £6 million in stakes.

With runners in six of the races on Saturday’s Dubai World Cup meeting on the Meydan racetrack, despite winning only one of them, their combined haul from three placed efforts in the night’s biggest events and a couple of relatively irrelevant minor prizes from the other two, they cleaned up a total of £2,946,000 for their owners – half of their entire total from four years’ exceptional success in Newmarket.

The Crisfords do not mess around unduly with the generally paltry sums available in domestic all-weather racing (next Friday being the great exception to that, of course) in the flat turf close season. Instead, Simon has made excellent use of the many decades of association with Sheikh Mohammed, for whom he was a long-term advisor before taking up training, to build a formidable satellite yard in Dubai every winter.

While horses running for the Crisfords in Godolphin blue are a rarity, the connection is still patently obvious. On Saturday, World Cup Day at Meydan, some were surprised that the meeting went ahead with the backdrop of the Iran war and its effects on several Middle East states, including the United Arab Emirates.

For those closest to the racing industry there, abandonment would have been, for want of a better word, a tragedy. Had the Crisfords been unable to run their six runners on the card, presumably most of them would have been on an Emirates flight back to the UK for the forthcoming turf season.

As I said earlier, all six earned a pot with £11k for eighth going to Cover Up and £7k more for Telemark’s seventh place at least helping towards the expenses for their owners. The tempo quickened, though, when in the 2m Group 2 race, chock-full of UK and Irish talent, their five-year-old mare Fairy Glen made it five wins in 11 career starts, defying odds of 20/1 to do so.

Having performed consistently last year in decent races at around 1m6f, it was a clever intuition by the training duo to drop back to 1m1f for a Group 2 fillies’ and mares’ race at Meydan last month. She came through that relative speed test with a snug win under Mickael Barzalona and the pair teamed up successfully once more on Saturday.

This time it was a 2m Group 2 against males and she got the better of recent Group 1 and Group 3 winners in a hotly contested affair. That win was worth £429k, but their three later runners, none of them winners, made even that sum, as the Americans might say it, “pocket change”.

First came Quddwah, tackling the world’s second-top-rated turf horse from 2025, Ombudsman, in the Dubai Turf over 1m1f. Ombudsman, trained by another Newmarket-based father-and-son team in John and Thady Gosden duly maintained his status with a workmanlike success.

Behind him, the Crisfords’ six-year-old entire horse, Quddwah, sneaked up the inside but Ombudsman, with William Buick revelling in riding in Godolphin blue, came wide and fast to win by a couple of lengths. The prize for the winner was £2,148,000, while Quddwah’s efforts under Christian Demuro earned £740k.

Then it was the turn of the seven-year-old gelding West Wind Blows, the outsider of five opponents for the number one turf horse of 2025, Calandagan, in the Sheema Classic. Despite being totally ignored at 33/1 Rossa Ryan took the Crisford runner to the front from the start, setting a strong pace.

Inevitably, we thought, Rossa must have got the fractions wrong, but his mount stuck on very gamely for all that he could not resist Calandagan, the 1-4 favourite, ridden with restraint by Barzalona. This three-quarter length winner picked up £2,577k with £888,888 going to owner Abdulla Al Mansoori for West Wind Blows. William Knight has had plenty of sport in Dubai in recent years with another of Mr Al Mansoori’s horses, the talented sprinting filly Frost At Dawn.

The Crisfords have not restricted themselves to turf racing at the Dubai Carnival and, in the five-year-old Frankel gelding Meydaan, they presented a serious opponent in the Dubai World Cup to the obvious favourite and top dirt horse in the world, Japan’s Forever Young.

On a night when form in the turf races stood up, the events run on the dirt were much less predictable. Had Forever Young justified odds of 8/11, he would have passed the prizemoney haul of Hong Kong’s Romantic Warrior, a horse he beat in Riyadh early last year.

Forever Young fell short though, running a sluggish race, and he never looked like catching front-running Magnitude, trained in the United States by Steve Asmussen and ridden by Jose Ortiz. Meydaan stayed on well to finish third, almost three lengths behind the runner-up, under Buick.

Magnitude goes back to the US with £5,155,000 to his name, with Forever Young hardly making it worth his while at £1,777,777! The second ‘all the eights’ of the night for the Crisford team, almost rounded it out at £3 million.

On a day of plenty for the haves, it was great that a lesser-known name on the international stage should share another Dubai evening in the limelight. North Of England-based jockey Connor Beasley has struck up a nice partnership with local trainer Ahmad Al Harmash. They first teamed up eight winters ago, and their partnership developed over time.

Last year Beasley won two races on the same card, one of them a race for Arabians. Now, owner and rider won successive Group 1 sprint races, the first of them on turf and the second on dirt, completing a 376/1 double (28/1 then 12/1) and collecting more than £1.5 million for the two winning prizes.

In 2022, Beasley’s best season in the UK brought 90 wins for £1.41million in total prizemoney from 737 rides. He eclipsed that tally on Saturday with two career-defining victories - in 35 minutes! He and Rossa Ryan were straight back into action at Doncaster yesterday, initially on big-priced animals in the second race, worth £5,400 to the winner.

While many eyes were focusing on Meydan on Saturday, the start of the turf flat season at Doncaster and a nice card at Kempton helped whet the appetite for the coming domestic season. It’s appropriate that the clocks will have gone forward by the time these notes are in the ether.

Star of the show domestically was Jack Channon, son of Mick, who won both the William Hill Lincoln and the Spring Mile, the latter race for horses that hadn’t made the main event. Urban Lion just dipped in time to win by a nose in a desperate finish to win the Lincoln under Ed Greatrex, denying James Owen’s Rogue Diplomat of what would have been a handicap five-timer.

If the Rogues Gallery group of owners had to feel a little disappointed to have been beaten by such a narrow margin, they might muse that their four-year-old had risen only 14lb since launching his winning sequence at Newmarket last August, the margins being in turn a neck, half a length, three-quarters of a length and finally a nose over 7f at Doncaster last October.

Channon’s other winner, Mazcala, won much more comfortably, sprinting clear for George Bass in the Spring Mile. Colin Keane, on his first day riding in the UK since winning the Cheltenham bumper a couple of weeks ago, was runner-up on the gambled-on joint-favourite Far From Dandy. We’ll be seeing much more of Keane over here from now on, as he’ll be riding for Juddmonte this campaign.

I mentioned Good Friday obliquely earlier on, but it will be my next date on the track, aiming at Chelmsford City where Rogue Diplomat’s trainer James Owen hopes to run another of his money-spinners, Carlton, in the £30k 1m6f handicap. Having lobbed in over hurdles at Huntingdon last time out, my friend Mick Godderidge and his pals will be anticipating win number nine on the course to go with a couple of wins over jumps, all since December 2024. Mick says, “We don’t mind waiting a bit before getting the run going over hurdles!”

Owen amazingly has already won 37 flat races this year at a strike rate of 18 percent. That goes with a five percent better ratio of victories to runs from his 80 winners over jumps this campaign. There’s upwardly mobile and then there’s James Owen!

- TS

Monday Musings: Breeding Hope

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The first weekend after the Cheltenham Festival, also a fortnight before the Aintree Grand National meeting, has evolved into a special opportunity for mares (and sometimes four-year-old fillies) at either end of the country, writes Tony Stafford.

Kelso, two, and Newbury, one, offer valuable races exclusively for females, but the biggest individual prize is the £65,000 to the winner Goffs Hundred Grand Bumper, also open to geldings at Newbury. Five females were among 19 runners, all of which were previously offered at auction by Goffs. The outcome was a thrilling finish between two four-year-old fillies, debutant Lady Hope (33/1), trained by Hughie Morrison, and Nicky Henderson’s once-raced and well fancied Madam Speaker.

Both youngsters finished strongly past Irish Goodbye, who seemed to have the race won coming to the closing stages; but close home Lady Hope was drawing away under Jonny Burke, and Sean Bowen on the runner-up could do nothing about it. Irish Goodbye’s effort, conceding 7lb to the first two, suggests there will be much more to come from the Twiston-Davies gelding in the future.

Understandably, Morrison was elated afterwards, regarding the daughter of Nathaniel as a potential staying star over jumps. “Her mother is by Midnight Legend and is out of the great mare Lady Rebecca. She’s only four, so we’ll take our time with her.”

She wasn’t cheap at £55k as a three-year-old, bought for Martin Hughes and Michael Kerr-Dineen. Former trainer Paul Webber was part of the selection panel with Morrison and the would-be owners. Hughes sent Eyed to Morrison when Webber retired from training in the summer of 2024 and he has won three races over fences with him.

It was a great day for Nathaniel as in the previous race at Newbury the BetVictor mares’ limited handicap hurdle, his daughter Charisma Cat came through strongly under Tom Bellamy to win for Alan King and Annabel Waley-Cohen, family and friends.

Grand National time of year always resonates with the Waley-Cohen name, through the exploits over a decade or more of amateur rider son Sam, whose record for completions and wins over the big fences has never been matched by any professional. Winning the big race on his last ride in 2022 on father Robert’s Noble Yeats was an emphatic and fitting final gesture from this modest young man.

Hughie told me there was also a GBB bonus attached to Lady Hope’s race. He wasn’t sure whether it would be 20k or half that amount. “Let’s be positive and say it’s 20k,” he said. “When can you run first time and win 85 grand? My trainer’s share of that will probably pay the staff wages for four days!”

In the spring sunshine, Hughie and wife Mary were heading off to Fonthill Stud where they have a couple of siblings to Secret Squirrel and one to Mary’s home-bred Filanderer, winner of five of his last seven races. One of the Secret Squirrel relatives is by Marmelo, his Melbourne Cup runner-up.

Now 13, Marmelo “has had six days out drag hunting and had his first team chase the other day, when he led the team throughout his round,” said Morrison. Marmelo covers the odd mare and one of his clients with a young horse is Mr Perriss, owner of Cheltenham Festival winner White Noise.

Hughie reckons it costs upwards of 30 grand to keep a horse from birth to their three-year-old days. “Then there’s the stud fee to consider. It makes no sense really. How many prizes like Saturday’s are there to spread around?”

Newsells Park Stud has stood Nathaniel ever since he retired from racing as a dual Group 1 winner of the Eclipse and King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes. His fee for this year is £17,500 and Gary Coffey, the stud’s racing manager, reckons he will have a similar number of mares to last year’s 115. When all the accounting is sorted, it could be around 120.

Despite the excellent achievements of his progeny over jumps, the vast proportion of mares sent to Nathaniel are for flat racing. That’s hardly surprising as he is the sire of once-in-a-lifetime filly Enable and Derby hero Desert Crown.

Newsells has three other stallions: A’Ali, Without Parole and Isaac Shelby. That last-named horse’s first foals are now on the ground and Sam Sangster has had excellent reports of them. Sam initially bought Isaac Shelby with his trainer Brian Meehan for one of his Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates and they all had a commercial dividend when he was bought in mid-career by Wathnan Racing.

Isaac Shelby was the easy winner of the Group 3 Greenham Stakes which he followed with a close second in the French 2,000 Guineas. Coffey says Isaac Shelby, who stands for £7,000, is the only son of top 2025 UK/Ireland money-earner Night Of Thunder to stand at stud in the UK.

In overall European earnings, Night Of Thunder fell behind the recently deceased Wootton Bassett and Sea The Stars, whose overall tally of more than £10 million was boosted by the £2.36 million earned when Daryz won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe for Francis Graffard last October.

Sam Sangster, trainer Ollie’s near-contemporary and uncle, can point to such as Rashabar and Kathmandu as yearling purchases that went within a whisker of Group 1/Classic success, both with Meehan. Brian’s stable should be more powerful this season as Sam reckons there’s around ten horses rated at 100 or more, reporting that multiple Group 1-placed Rashabar, now four, will be brought back to a mile this year.

The filly Esna, owned by Martin Hughes and partners, is rated 107 after her fourth in the Marcel Boussac at the Arc meeting. She will be aimed at the 1,000 Guineas, while the progressive Bourbon Blues, rated 105, is another Hughes horse. He was just edged out at Group 2 level in France in mid-November and will also have an attacking programme early in the season. Both were Sam Sangster buys as yearlings.

A new arrival is the former Gosden-trained Miss Justice. This five-year-old by Triple Crown winner Justify, won at Listed level at Salisbury and ended her time with the Gosdens with a close second at Group 2 level at Newmarket. She cost 750,000gns at the December sale and has been pleasing her new trainer since then.

Until Sam pounced in midsummer to buy the Aidan O’Brien-trained Diego Velazquez, he had never been able to say: “I bought a Group 1 winner.” Days after the purchase though, Diego Velazquez did just that, and not any old Group 1, but France’s Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville where subsequent Breeders’ Cup winner Notable Speech was the runner-up.

At £17,500 a pop at the National Stud, where he is owned by a consortium, he has been hot property indeed, and Sam says that a total figure north of 120 covers is likely. Also, he is to have a shuttle season to Australia.

“He was a no-brainer really”, says Sam. “By Frankel, even without the Group 1 which was a great bonus for the owners, he was a multiple Group 2 winner and is a fantastic stamp of a horse. He has attracted a smart bunch of mares, notably Lucida, winner of the Rockfel at two for Jim Bolger and then second in the 1,000 Guineas. It gives him a great chance of a fast start.”

Diego Velazquez is a half-brother to Broome and Point Lonsdale, but as that Deauville win shows, he is much the quickest of the trio, with his best performances being at seven furlongs and a mile. Exciting days all round.

- TS

Monday Musings: Talk is Cheap!

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They say talk is cheap, writes Tony Stafford. Well, there was plenty of it going around at Cheltenham on Thursday with Willie Mullins and JP McManus both being highly critical of the state of the going. It was the basis of their late decision to withdraw last year’s winner and red-hot favourite Fact To File from the Ryanair Chase.

In his absence, the nine-length 2025 runner-up Heart Wood got the better of McManus and Nicky Henderson’s brave former two-mile paragon Jonbon by ten comfortable lengths. No wonder they were irritated by Fact To File’s absence, not that Henry de Bromhead would have minded.

In a week where Mullins did run 74 horses – his only other non-runner being Leader d’Allier through lameness in Tuesday’s opener - his carping about the ground, saying that he would consider not running horses at future Festivals if that were not addressed, seems a little illogical at best.

Across the four days, his uber-classy horses picked up around £1.6 million, comfortably ahead of last year’s haul. He’s now halfway towards Dan Skelton’s seasonal tally, but surely it’s still too much cash to make up. Skelton responded with two right old jobs in a couple of the hardest-to-win handicaps. Recent form wasn’t a clue to either, just Dan’s predilection for laying one out as he has been doing at the Festival for several years.

Over in the Willie corner, Mullins had eight wins, including both the Champion Hurdle and Gold Cup for the Riccis, six second places, three thirds, five fourths and a solitary fifth place. With seven pulled ups and a trio of fallers, the only spot he didn’t fill in the first 20 was 19th. That’s something he might address next year – if he sends over any horses that is!

The times both on the Old Course, used on Tuesday and Wednesday, and the New Course for the final two days, seemed to suggest fairly similar underfoot conditions, usually close to standard. So probably good ground all round.

If the Mullins/McManus complaints had been in any way justified other than that the Thursday going would not suit one particular horse, albeit a very good one, then surely there would have been appreciably more than the nine horses withdrawn from the 489 slated to run. There were five absentees through lameness over the week so 475 took part, thus fewer than 3% in overall withdrawals.

Just as an example, Newcastle, one of the four Saturday jumps fixtures in the UK, had a total of 69 declared runners of which nine came out because of unsuitable ground on the day with the meeting raced on good to soft ground, soft in places going. Thus, seven times as many in proportion to the overall number of runners compared with Cheltenham.

It’s always a balancing act for Jon Pullin and his team. Often, as this year, until a fortnight before the fixture even heavy ground would be a possibility. Thanks to the effective drainage system on the track, a few dry, warmer days brings into play the need sometimes even for some selective watering, which I understand was applied to the hitherto unused New Course on Wednesday evening. Not enough for some (three on the day) but connections of another hundred plus were happy enough to run.

Although his banker of bankers didn’t run, JP had four nice wins and seven second and third places combined from the 32 of his horses that did compete. He had some disappointments among his most fancied runners, notably The New Lion, no match for Lossiemouth and just edged out by Brighterdaysahead for second in the Champion Hurdle. Another was his 7/2 favourite Proactif, one of nine for Mullins in the JCB Triumph Hurdle.

I would love to know which of the stable’s well-heeled owners gets first dibs when Mullins and Harold Kirk go on their shopping trips to France, mostly away from the sales ring. There are a number of juvenile hurdles, either in the late spring of the horses’ three-year-old season or later in the autumn, that get their attention, as was the case when Proactif made a winning six-length debut at Auteuil last September.

18 runners started that day and the easy winner Proactif had six lengths to spare over another debutant Apolon De Charnie. That horse was allowed to start 50/1 on Friday, half the price of the previous year’s winner Poniros, and he completely turned around the French form, winning comfortably with Proactif only ninth.

Ed Ware, founder and former owner the gaming site 32Red, has plenty of horses around the place, mainly with the Crisfords on the flat, and apart from Harold Kirk for recruiting jumpers, he uses the skills of former trainer and Godolphin stalwart David Loder in the sales ring for flat-race prospects.

What it cost to assemble such a squadron can only be a matter of speculation, but it is common knowledge that the HOS Syndicate paid €370k for Cork debut winner Minella Academy, who finished tenth of the 19 runners on Friday. It might not be fanciful to suggest that possibly the nine might have cost somewhere near (or even more than) the handsome seven-figure plunder the 74 Mullins horses earned over the four days.

It was probably a roll of the dice that led to Ed’s owning the right one of Mullins’ nine contenders on Friday. Mullins has now won the race five times in a row and seven in all, and the quirk is that all of the previous successful quartet ran last week.

JP’s Majborough, the 2024 winner, disappointed, probably having gone to too fast in the Queen Mother Champion for which he was the hot favourite. Last year’s hero Poniros, the one-time Ralph Beckett trainee, was a well-beaten sixth behind Lossiemouth, herself successful in the race three years ago, and now after two wins in the Mares’ race, graduated at age seven to the prime spot with a scintillating performance.

And you couldn’t keep the first of the Mullins quintet out of the picture, albeit away down in Sydney at the Rosehill track. Vauban, winning for the second time since departing for the stable of Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott, repeated last year’s success in a near £100k Group 3 race over ten furlongs. It was a fine performance considering he last raced in the Melbourne Cup over 2m when a creditable sixth last November.

Very smart over jumps, he also won a Group 2 race over two miles at York in the last season before his exportation. No doubt another go at the Melbourne Cup will be on the agenda as an eight-year-old.

The running tally of Irish against UK winners took a turn for the better for the hosts, only going down by 15 wins to 13, decided in the final Martin Pipe conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle by Henry de Bromhead’s Air Of Entitlement. She beat 25/1 Hot Fuss (Tom Dascombe) following on from last year’s success in the Grade 2 mares’ novice hurdle when she was one of 20 Irish against the meagre tally of eight for the UK.

This time around that race – the Dawn Run – found a 40/1 winner but a very popular one in White Noise, trained by Kim Bailey and his long-time assistant, now joint licence holder Mat Nichols. It’s been 31 years since Bailey won both the Champion Hurdle (Alderbrook) and Gold Cup (Master Oats) in the same year. The skill’s still there!

Another big price came in Friday’s opener, the three-mile Albert Bartlett Novices’ Hurdle, won at 20/1 by the still unbeaten over hurdles Johnny’s Jury for Jamie Snowden and Gavin Sheehan.

There were various names put forward for ride of the week, among them Paul Townend on Gaelic Warrior in the Gold Cup. That made it a record five times in the race for Townend, but I prefer the claims of Sheehan. In a week of ragged, irritating false and then second and third-time unsatisfactory starts, Johnny’s Jury was left at the back of the pack.

Few riders do better when intentionally coming from a long way back. This was never the plan, but Sheehan took his time for the first couple of miles and, steering wide, came past the lot to win tidily.

Snowden had one career as a soldier before going as a pupil assistant to Nicky Henderson, at the same time collecting a hatful of victories for several years as a rider in the Military races at Sandown. This was his third Festival win and he’s now very much in the top echelon of UK trainers.

The Henderson grounding is rarely lost and it was equally enjoyable to see the Lambourn master collecting three more nice prizes on the week in addition to Jango Baie’s terrific effort when second as the youngest horse in the Gold Cup line-up.

Both Gaelic Warrior and Jango Baie are previous winners of the Arkle Challenge Cup over two miles for novice chasers at the meeting showing, if ever it was needed, that speed is the best attribute for winning races, even over staying trips. What a week, pity Willie won’t be back next year!

- TS

Monday Musings: We’re Ready

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The days are getting appreciably longer, writes Tony Stafford. We’ve already snatched back three and a half hours of daylight from the miserly spans of midwinter, and Cheltenham starts tomorrow. In other words, 2026 begins now.

Two septuagenarians, Messrs Henderson and Mullins, have for decades been the major forces at the meeting, and neither is ready to lie down as the opening day entries show, but such as Dan Skelton, Ben Pauling and Olly Murphy on this side of the Irish Sea, and grittily determined Gordon Elliott, Willie’s Irish shadow for the past decade and more, as well as Gavin Cromwell and Henry de Bromhead, will be poised if either drops off from their usual lofty excellence.

Not everything will be the same. For the first time since 2011, Henderson will not be represented in the Champion Hurdle, a race he has won nine times. In the competitive absence of Group-seeking flat-minded nine-year-old Constitution Hill and injured Sir Gino, he can instead watch with pride the former’s gracing of the paddock before the race we thought he might win three or even four times before injury and a strange later aversion to jumping at racing speed took over.

Mullins has three chances, principally with the mare Lossiemouth, backed over the past few days into favouritism. Less obvious are Poniros, last year’s shock Triumph Hurdle winner, and Anzadam, runner-up in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle to Golden Ace late last year.

Two more from Ireland, the drifting third-favourite and Lossiemouth last-time humbler Brighterdaysahead (Gordon), and Workahead (Henry). Maybe this 66/1 shot isn’t a feasible contender but surely Henry De Bromhead is entitled to have another crack having won the race both in 2021 and the following year with Honeysuckle.

That great course specialist, along with now-retired Rachael Blackmore, came back to win the Mares’ race as a career finale in 2023, wisely side-stepping Constitution Hill when Nicky’s phenomenon was at his peak.

It wasn’t feasible either we thought before Jeremy Scott’s Golden Ace pounced last year following Constitution Hill’s early exit and most crucially State Man’s last flight fall when Mullins’ 2024 hero looked certain to follow up. He too is missing this year through injury.

We’ve been waiting for something to emerge from where I knew not, so with all the trials and tribulations out of the way, we’re left with The New Lion, worthy, dependable, much in the way of his trainer Dan Skelton, set for a final tally of more than £4 million for the season.

The New Lion, winner of the Turners novice hurdle over 2m5f last year, could have been returning with a faultless career record, but it’s now five from six following his being the second fall guy (along with Constitution Hill) in Golden Ace’s Newcastle success, secured at another massive price.

Skelton’s big hope appeared to have the race won on his first start since last March when falling late on, leaving Golden Ace to hold off Mullins’ Anzadam. The New Lion took his time to assert in what ended up a penalty kick on Trials Day at Cheltenham, but he comes here with the right profile. Brighterdaysahead’s dominant display against Lossiemouth at the Dublin Racing Festival, it seems, hasn’t been taken seriously by the market, presumably because of her capitulation last March.

So, the three most powerful stables in the two countries this season take centre stage. Their records for the campaign domestically are remarkably similar, numerically and in money terms. Skelton’s inexorable rise to a first trainer’s championship cannot be cheated this time, even if Mullins takes all the races he contests this week, has a clean sweep of the ten paying positions in the Grand National, and nicks all the other big prizes there and at Ayr and Sandown next month.

Skelton is on £3,462k, a full £3,160k more than Mullins. Even if Willie matches last year’s four Cheltenham daily takeaways of respectively £267k, £245k, £243k and a finishing £475k – which didn’t include the Gold Cup – that would ‘only’ amount to £1,230k. I doubt Dan will be heading off on holiday over the last seven weeks of the season either.

I love looking at stats in my customary now and again mode. Which of Mullins and Elliott do you think leads the prizemoney table in Ireland? As has often been the case at this stage, and sometimes even later, it’s Elliott. It’s taken 305 individual horses and 1,002 runs, 164 of them winners, to earn €4,340k. Mullins, much more sparing with runs from his 274 individual horses, has won 161 of 661, so 500 losers for €3,963K. I wonder how many of them were odds-on [55 odds-on losers from 127 - Ed.]

Over the last fortnight Mullins has won with 13 of 35 runners, supplying in that time the same number of odds-on shots. Tomorrow, between them, Mullins and Elliott have almost half the 45 Irish-trained runners on the opening day card. The home team has 67, with Henderson striking off early with favourite Old Park Star (Supreme) against Mullins’ Mighty Park (JP McManus), then Lulamba close in the market against Willie’s favourite and last year’s Supreme winner Kopek Des Bordes in the Arkle, with another mare Kargese as the Irishman’s back-up in a terrific seven-horse line-up.

Gary and Josh Moore were the stars of Saturday’s Sandown card, and their Hansard is worthy of his place against better-publicised opponents. Add Sam Thomas’s Steel Ally, who saw off Ben Pauling’s candidate and reopposing Mambonumberfive when they met at Kempton, and it’s a heady mix.

Lulamba won the Game Spirit Chase at Newbury despite showing obvious signs of inexperience and that was never the case with Steel Ally at Kempton. In three runs over fences, he has won with increasing facility each time and has the sexiest of French jumping pedigrees being by Doctor Dino out of a mare by Martaline. At 12/1, he’s worth a second look.

When I peeped at the Racing Post last Wednesday to check I was still alive, I was described as Tony Stafford – former Daily Telegraph tipster, or was it journalist? My memory! Anyway, I am still here, and reckon that in the first race, reviving my old tipster role, I’m looking for Elliott to disappoint both Henderson and Mullins with El Cairos.

With Gary and Josh Moore last season, he did very well when amateur-ridden by then owner David Maxwell and was sold at the owner’s dispersal for £410k. The Moores will not have been surprised by the talent he is showing over hurdles, stumbling and falling unluckily on the run-in when in the lead on debut and then an easy winner from a Mullins horse last time. No doubt Gary wishes he still had him to train.

For a value bet number three, let’s go with Faye Bramley’s Winston Junior – no not named after Sir Keir – winner of his latest of three runs at Ascot in scintillating front-running style. His owners might give a clue as to why he’s 8/1 in a massive field for what deserves forever to be known as just the Fred Winter, despite whoever adds their name to it.

The trio of connections – Ronnie Bartlett, Justin Carthy (JP’s mate) and Mrs Paul Shanahan (and her husband of course) – know how to line up a winner from whichever yard their horses happen to run.

Just as I’d stopped looking, a name from a year or so ago jumped out at me. Walking On Air began life in the Nicky Henderson stable, running very well in bumpers in the colours of Mrs Doreen Tabor. He didn’t always live up to the promise of those early days and, since late in 2024, various owner combinations including Justin Carthy and Mrs Shanahan have been alongside his name.

Now it’s the Cheeky Pups and again trainer Faye Bramley, a protégé of AP McCoy’s, who trains him. The nine-year-old’s last run was a good third to Geegeez’ Dartmoor Pirate in the Great Yorkshire Chase at Doncaster last month.

I mentioned top French breeding earlier. Walking On Air’s pedigree takes some beating. He’s by Michael Tabor’s Derby runner-up, the wonderful jumps sire Walk in The Park, out of his smart long-distance mare Refinement. It’s 18 years since I was alongside Harry Taylor in the Cheltenham paddock watching on the big screen as Refinement came to the line just in front in the David Nicholson Mares’ Hurdle.

Just before the line, I turned to Harry and said, “She’s won!”.

Eyes still on the screen, Harry said, “She hasn’t!” and she hadn’t, letting Whiteoak get back by a short head. She had one more run, another second place for Jonjo O’Neill and AP McCoy in Ireland, and then retired.

I asked Michael if she would go to stud. “Me send a jump mare to stud? How f…ing old would I be before she got a runner?” Well, Michael did relent and Refinement has bred four nice jumps winners including Walking On Air. A 12/1 shot for tomorrow and also from the Bramley yard, he can make it a memorable afternoon for his young trainer.

- TS

Monday Musings: Windfall

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You may have got the idea on reading these ramblings over the past ten years or so that I must have comfortably exceeded my historically allotted three score years and ten lifespan, writes Tony Stafford. A letter through the post last week confirmed it.

It was from the Pensions Service and informed me that as I was approaching (this week in fact) my 80th birthday I was entitled to an additional payment on my state pension. In these stringent times, anything extra is welcome.

Then I read the detail. I was going to be paid an extra 25p per week - £13 in the year. Imagine how much it costs in organisation in the office and the charge for postage to set in motion such a letter - multiplied by how many other great survivors have earned that handsome sum.

Governments are always taken to task about wastage of their incomings. I would gladly give up my increase if everyone else did. In my dad’s day, five bob (25p) as it was, would have bought a slap-up meal for four. Now maybe half a dozen Maltesers! As my son says, everything these days costs a grand…

I’ve mentioned a few times the book I helped trainer Victor Thompson to write, along with his partner Gina Coulson. It covers all that period and he’s even a few years further along the road. Despite excellent reviews from people that did manage to secure a copy of Fifty Years In The Fast Lane, Weatherbys have felt obliged to discontinue selling it owing to some legal issues that Victor believes to be totally spurious – but that’s how it is. He’s been exploring other avenues and one of them came to mind when I met up with my children and grandchildren yesterday in a birthday gathering.

As soon as I arrived, my eldest granddaughter told me about a new job she recently started close to where her parents have just moved house. I’m not sure how it came up, but she says that her female boss, once an amateur jockey, was a regular reader of my columns in the Daily Telegraph and that she also reads these weekly jottings around a quarter of a century since I left the paper.

This is probably the time to mention Marcus Armytage’s daughter Molly’s 50/1 win in a Leicester hunter chase early last week on her first ride under Rules, having only just before got off the mark in a point-to-point. Marcus of course won the Grand National before he joined the Daily Telegraph racing team and he cannot be far off my final figure of 30 years at the paper, or maybe even past it.

Marcus was in his teens when I had a brief connection with his father Roddy, who trained near Newbury. In 1984 I was amazed to see that David Elsworth was running a particular horse in a seller at a Monday night Windsor meeting.

I wanted to claim it, but being less than keen to suffer the often-irascible Mr Elsworth’s ire should I manage to do so in the event of its not winning the race, I left it to my colleague Adrian Hunt to go to Windsor and do the deed.

The horse didn’t win that night, and Adrian duly put in the successful claim. I managed to form a syndicate of very nice people, among them the late Nigel Clark, and sent him to Roddy.

Within months he had won three times over hurdles and I’m not sure what happened to him after that. Why the interest you might say? In the spring of 1982, Duke Of Dollis – the horse in question – had finished third in a Classic trial behind Golden Fleece (Vincent O’Brien), winner of the Derby that year, and Assert (Vincent’s son David O’Brien), who went on to win the French and Irish Derbys!

If you think 1984 is a long time ago, another ex-Telegraph man George Hill told me last week that one of his first jobs, two decades before Duke Of Dollis, was to ring around trainers on a Sunday for their future plans to be put in The Racehorse, a well-respected trade paper that I was to edit for a few years in the 1970’s, and Roddy was one of his regulars. George says he was always a lovely man to deal with. It clearly runs in the family.

But back to my early birthday party. When my son and his family arrived, they had a printout from Amazon – the preferred outlet suggested by Victor Thompson to market his book and make it available to what he thinks is a wider potential audience.

In September 1994 the Little Black Racing Book, commissioned by Harper Collins, was published, with a foreword by Lester Piggott. The description says, “Champion tipster Tony Stafford takes an informed look at the world of horse racing. He distils a lifetime <there’s been another one since that!> of experience and observation into practical advice as to how to get the most from the sport… contains many anecdotes about the colourful characters who people racing – from owners, trainers and jockeys to punters, stewards and bookmakers”.

Then, at the foot of the same page detailing the hardback publication, Amazon helpfully tells, “About the Author”. Underneath it suggests potential buyers “follow authors to get more release updates plus improved recommendations.”

Underneath again is a tolerable and contemporary smiling picture of me with Tony Stafford alongside underlined. And then it goes slightly off message as they say these days.

It begins “Tony Jason Stafford” – hang on, I seem to think it’s Anthony John although I am getting on a bit! - “was born in a small cotton textile-mill town on the outskirts of Charlotte. He came from a long line of uneducated <steady on!> poor dirt farmers <possible, I’ve never looked at Ancestry!> “while his immediate family were fanatical, church-going Southern Baptist fundamentalists and he spent a great part of his early life in church meetings of one kind or another.”

I did indeed go regularly to Sunday School until the age of around 12 and to Cubs at the Lower Clapton Congregational Church only finishing up that weekly pastime when old enough to go to Eton Manor Boys Club at the age of 14 on March 4, 1960. Anyway, let’s hear some more of “my” alternate story as told by Amazon.

At an early age Amazon’s “Tony was persuaded to believe that he had been ‘saved’ <many years later, deliverance from a fate almost worse than death was provided enabling me to “cover up” some ill-directed investments> “and a little later he was told that God had called him to be a preacher. He played high school football and did all the things that high school teenage boys do in a small, provincial town.”

There’s much more of its mentioning Tony Jason’s journey through a spiritual crisis when invited to be the student minister of a small Baptist mission. More interestingly, I (or rather TJ) in that summer “was surrounded by lots of female flesh as a lifeguard at a swimming pool.”

Lifesaver no way, but in those sixth-form days at Central Foundation Grammar School in Central London in the summer holidays we often used to frequent the outdoor lidos that were always then a target for boys of our age. Finchley, the Oasis and London Fields were among the favourites. Whether I approve of the term “female flesh” mentioned alongside my 32-year-old offering in the febrile days of the Epstein papers is quite another matter.

So there it is Victor. Don’t believe everything you read on Amazon or anywhere else. Do you think I have a case for suing them?

**

Back to racing. I’m glad Constitution Hill will not be going to Cheltenham a week tomorrow. The word from owner Michael Buckley was Newbury and the John Porter Stakes. If he wins against classy grass performers, the high hopes engendered by Southwell might become a possibility, but he won’t be facing trees from now on.

The latest Hong Kong update. Last week it was the sprinter Ka Ying Rising at 1/20 making it a record 18 in a row. Yesterday it was ten-furlong colossus Romantic Warrior also going off at that price as he made it 22 wins from 29 starts, edging career earnings close to £26 million under New Zealander James McDonald.

Joseph O’Brien’s jockey Dylan Browne McMonagle finished runner-up on an 87/1 shot in the six-horse affair and will be counting his blessings for stopping off there over the winter. He is in for the rider’s share of £260k. Nice work if you can get it.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Strong Constitution

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Almost exactly a year ago, I was invited by my friend Malcolm Cain to attend a Cheltenham preview meeting on a Saturday evening in Central London, writes Tony Stafford. It was a great do, very close to the event itself, and much debate focused on whether Constitution Hill would be able to regain the Champion Hurdle he had ceded to State Man and injury the previous year.

Lydia Hislop was one of the panellists and she was wary about the present state of his jumping whereas I managed to get in a word suggesting he was the best hurdler I’d ever seen. As we all know, he fell in the Champion Hurdle a few days later when a 4/7 shot; tumbled over again at Aintree the following month, and stopped as if shot at Punchestown.

In the five-horse Fighting Fifth Hurdle on his comeback run last November he got only as far as the second hurdle when making it three falls and a submission in his four latest runs following an unblemished ten victories in a row and a total of 103 lengths to the good.

While the behind-the-scenes machinations that produced last Friday’s £40k 4yo and up novice race at Southwell over one and a half miles might well have had ulterior motives, the desired effect – a win for the nine-year-old – was achieved and spectacularly so.

What nobody expected – unless Oisin Murphy might have had an inkling, judged on his post-race comments about when he rode the horse a couple of weeks earlier – was the sort of performance that you rarely see in any flat race.

While there weren’t any superstars among the opposition, more than a few of them were anything but the proverbial trees. Nine and a half lengths was the verdict, so 11 career wins – 112 lengths in total, at ten lengths a time and no doubt we hope, much more to follow.

We’ll have to wait until midweek’s crucial schooling session for a decision. Nico de Boinville will be hoping that Nicky Henderson and owner Michael Buckley will agree with him to allow their extraordinary nine-year-old to return to his day job, before embarking on what could be a lucrative second career on the flat.

As a jumps trainer – not merely any jumps trainer but one who has won nine Champion Hurdle races and pretty much everything else – Henderson would no doubt love to make it a round ten. He’s 75 now, yet there’s no diminution in the ambition nor the uncanny knack of getting his horse right on the big day.

In some ways Southwell on Friday was a big day.  The Arena publicity machine (and Simon Mapletoft on Sky Sports Racing – I didn’t watch ITV) was in full volume afterwards, talking up the “tremendous crowd”. I suppose 3,800 is a lot for a Friday night at Southwell. I’ve been there when you’d struggle to find 300 – including staff and jockeys!

There was no disguising the excitement though as Oisin and the wonderful gelding returned to weigh in. He had overcome so many new experiences. First time in starting stalls, a first time on a Tapeta surface, and, of course, the first time he didn’t need to jump an obstacle.

I know Oisin has experience over jumps. He was fulfilling an ambition when he rode the six-year-old Ike Sport for Neil Mulholland on Boxing Day 2024 at Wincanton. The pair never got involved and Oisin eventually pulled up his mount. No doubt he’ll be at Cheltenham as a guest of Michael Buckley and probably hoping Nico forgets to set his alarm and a substitute rider is needed.

Incidentally, my host at the Cheltenham preview last year was involved with Buckley in a Cheltenham Festival winner trained by Nicky Henderson. They were among the members of the Men In Our Position Syndicate that also included Victor Chandler.

We talk of the correlation between hurdles and flat race abilities in handicap terms as being between 45 and 50lb. Constitution Hill is a 170-rated jumper, so there’s no reason why that couldn’t translate as a 120ish flat horse. Initial estimates of the worth of the single romp at Southwell has him already well into the low 100s and if he’d have had another furlong, say, to travel, he’d have won by at least 15 lengths, so you can add a few pounds to that!

What would you do if you were Michael Buckley? He has already stated that he wouldn’t mind having a crack at the Melbourne Cup. Two miles on fast ground? Maybe.

If he did go to Melbourne and won, he would eclipse the record age of a winner. Joseph O’Brien sent the eight-year-old Twilight Payment to win the 2020 race and he thereby joined Toryboy in 1865 and the 1938 victor Catalogue as the joint-oldest winner.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong yesterday, local history was made as Ka Ying Rising made it 18 wins in a row in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup, taking the £693k Group 1 race by an easy three and a half lengths under Zac Purton, smashing the track record in the process.

The David Hayes-trained five-year-old beat the previous record of 17 in succession set by another great local hero, Silent Witness. He started at 1/20 and Hong Kong racegoers who like to back a favourite would never have had much doubt that he would triumph yet again. The question now is, how far can he stretch the elastic?

Reverting to what could await Constitution Hill when he does turn to a flat-race programme, there is no bar on older horses being successful on the level. Hughie Morrison’s Alcazar was at his best as a ten-year-old when his crowning glory was victory in the Prix Royal Oak (Group 1) at Longchamp under Micky Fenton.

My memory is not always accurate, but I do believe that a 12-year-old hurdler called Beau Caprice won a division of the Gloucestershire Hurdle, forerunner of the Supreme and run in the old days in two divisions, in 1966. I think he was trained by Fulke Walwyn. [He was – Ed.]

But I cannot remember any nine-year-old winning a flat race first time out, certainly not one of this quality and by such a wide margin. Even if de Boinville gets his way and Constitution Hill does run at Cheltenham in a couple of weeks’ time, that surely will be the finale to his stellar jumping career, but one which with luck might have already equalled the feat of such as Istabraq with his three in succession.

- TS

Monday Musings: Saudi Riches

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You might wonder whether the dream of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to dominate the world’s most watched sports at the highest level is wearing a little thin, writes Tony Stafford. Golfers and soccer players have been enticed by unfathomably large sums to join the Liv Tour and Saudi Pro League respectively, but even after no more than a year or two in some cases disillusionment is setting in.

In the Kingdom, horse racing’s attention is largely on one day and specifically one race. Last Saturday was the seventh instalment of the Saudi Cup, run on dirt over a mile and a furlong of the Riyadh racecourse at Janadriyah. A field of 13 included three Japanese competitors, six horses from the US and was filled out with a quartet of generally outclassed locals.

The race had a prize fund totalling £15 million, but despite facing decent opposition, the favourite and defending champion Forever Young started as short as 1/3 and duly did the business for owner Susumu Fujita, trainer Yoshito Yahagi and jockey Ryusei Sakai. The trainer also won the race in 2023 with Panthalassa.

Forever Young shared top spot in the dirt-race section of the 2025 International Classification with the US-trained three-year-old Sovereignty. Their mark of 128 was 2lb inferior to the overall champion, the French-trained turf specialist Calandagan, who was boosted to that mark when winning the Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse in late November.

Saturday’s opposition to Forever Young was headed by the Bob Baffert-trained Nysos, a far from negligible performer who had won six of his seven previous starts. One of those was at Grade 1 level and his sole defeat until the Saudi Cup was also at that level and then by only a neck.

His rating going into the race was 119, 9lb inferior to Forever Young’s, but after the one-length defeat, he is certain to have his mark adjusted upwards. The pair were almost four lengths in advance of the best of the rest, the Wathnan Racing-owned but US-trained Tumbarumba, partnered by Wathnan’s retained rider James Doyle.

Here’s the time to mention the lavish prizes. The winner collected £7,407,407; Nysos earned £2,592,592; Tumbarumba pocketed £1,481,481; fourth-home Bishops Bay (US) takes home £1,111,111. £740,740 was the prize for Japan’s fifth-placed Luxor Café, while Sunrise Zipangu, the next-home under Oisin Murphy, lifted £444,444. Murphy has often been associated with Japanese runners in international events over the years.

The money went all the way down to 10th place. That position was held by one of the home contingent, Ameerat Alzamaan. It was well worth Ryan Moore’s time to travel over to Saudi Arabia, his mount earning £148,148.

Those massive figures explain what happens when the best part of £30 million in overall stakes is available. Do the authorities at the top in the Kingdon continue to feel that the £30 million for one day is value for money? As long as they do, the “have saddle will travel” community will be happy to join the party.

Moore, Murphy and Doyle are among that small group of UK-based riders (also including the absent Willliam Buick) at the forefront of the world’s jockeys and all three will return home with nicely enhanced bank balances. I’m not sure whether they cop the imagined ten per cent of total prizemoney in Saudi but even if it is a mere five per cent, it would represent a great way to divest the costs of family Christmases.

Overall, Murphy held sway, his £2 million and a bit total bolstered by two wins, in a Listed race (£370k) and more spectacularly in the £1,333k Turf Cup over ten and a half furlongs on the Karl Burke-trained Royal Champion.

Moore was third here on George Boughey’s Survie, carrying the Doreen Tabor colours, and the resulting £222k contributed to Ryan’s £700k haul on the afternoon. Later he teamed up with Tom Clover’s Tabletalk in the 1m7f Turf Handicap, bettered only here by Joseph O’Brien’s Sons And Lovers ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle. The Irish team’s reward? A cool £1.1 million.

Doyle’s nearest to a win came on the French-trained, Wathnan-owned speed merchant Lazzat, but he couldn’t match the US performer Reef Runner, trained in Florida by David Fawkes.

Another septet of UK jockeys was recruited mostly for a single mount and again normally without making an impact. David Loughnane and Danny Tudhope got lucratively among the place prizes once each, while the other five, namely Pat Dobbs, moving across from his winter base in Dubai, Jason Watson, Pat Cosgrave, Callum Shepherd and P J McDonald all went without a prize, but could well have been paid a guaranteed fee to attend.

Many years ago, when Saudi Arabia was just getting acquainted with organising top-class international sports events, a golf tournament’s first prize was exceeded many times over by the appearance money paid to Justin Rose.

**

We’re in that period of the season when most trainers will be holding their breath with Cheltenham in mind. One who will be going there with optimism is Ben Pauling after Saturday’s wonderful hat-trick in the first three races on the Ascot card. Novice hurdler Mondoui’boy; The Jukebox Kid, comfortably in the Reynoldstown Chase; and Fiercely Proud in the day’s featured handicap hurdle all won well to show his team is right at the top of its form.

Pauling is involved at the six-day stage in one of the most compelling events of the winter – and it’s a flat race at Southwell on Friday. With £40k added, it’s the “Let’s do Nicky Henderson and Michael Buckley a Favour novice stakes”, a race for four-year-olds and upwards over 1m4f.

Hughie Morrison was speaking to me about it the other day and mentioned that with that amount of money, it cannot be divided, and 32 horses were entered, with a maximum field of only 14 able to run. For a day Nicky must have been nervous that Constitution Hill could have a low ballot number and miss the gig.

I know loads of trainers who routinely get what they describe as “crap draws”, but the boffins (or AI maybe nowadays) that programme the machine that spews out the ballot order the day after entries, thus yesterday, gave Constitution Hill number 16 so only two of the 32 need to come out.

One bookmaker’s odds I saw had the former Champion Hurdler as the 4/6 favourite. Kevin Phillipart De Foy’s Amo Racing-owned Square Necker, a winner at Dundalk in December, is next best at 7/4 with Willie Mullins’ Daddy Long Legs, a 152-rated hurdler, next best at 7/2.

If you think I begrudge the Seven Barrows team being helped to find a non-jumps race for Constitution Hill’s quest to regain his Champion Hurdle crown, far from it.

Sixteen years ago, the season after his 2009 Champion Hurdle success, Nicky was struggling to find a suitable prep for Punjabi. Kempton was persuaded to stage an £8k to the winner hurdle race with advantageous terms, also at the end of February. Punjabi started 1/6 and won by 12 lengths, but his wind gave out in the big race a few days later and stablemate Binocular gained his revenge.

Ray Tooth’s star performer was never the same again. The year after Binocular’s Champion Hurdle win, Sandown provided another “gift” for him. It was gladly accepted at 1/10 but again a second title victory proved beyond the J P McManus star.

- TS

Monday Musings: Make A Stand

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Come on Paul, make a stand, writes Tony Stafford. Persuade owner Colm Donlon to pay the £18,000 supplementary fee and put Tutti Quanti in next month’s Champion Hurdle! In some ways the parallels are obvious. On February 8th 1997, Make A Stand, ridden by A P McCoy made all to win the Tote Gold Trophy in a one-two for the Martin Pipe stable, beating stablemate Hamilton Silk by nine lengths, dominating his 17 opponents with ease.

He carried 11st7lb off a mark of 140, which included a 4lb penalty for his previous success at Kempton in the Lanzarote Handicap Hurdle, then a two-mile race rather than its five furlongs longer identity these days. The following month he won the Champion Hurdle in similar fashion.

Tutti Quanti on Saturday, like Make A Stand 29 years earlier, was immediately taken to the front by Harry Cobden, accompanied by a couple of over-optimistic opponents. The trio was quickly clear of the rest of the 15-runner field. Then by the turn into the straight, the die was already cast. Moving smoothly, Tutti Quanti, despite 12st top weight for his mark of 138, was the only horse not already struggling in the very testing ground.

His advantage began inexorably to extend from Wellington Arch, who had taken second place by that point. Then up the long home straight, seemingly after little effort from the horse and certainly minimal energy from his rider, he had that gallant pursuer 15 lengths adrift by the line. I reckon it could have been nearer 25 lengths had Harry wished.

Astonishingly, the second was another 18 lengths clear of a trio that fought a slow-motion tussle for the honour of third (and not inconsiderable prize of £18k). It went to 7lb claiming amateur Miss Heidi Palin on 33/1 shot Faivoir, trained by Dan Skelton. Skelton also provided the race favourite, heavily backed Let It Rain, but she pulled up.

We were still finding difficulty at the time of Make A Stand’s success in calling the race anything other than the “Schweppes”, even though the Tote had taken over its sponsorship a decade earlier in 1986. Some, including me, hark back to the old days far too frequently. Sir Rupert Mackeson, the veteran bookseller, even referred to “Schweppes weekend” in his email on Saturday morning, 40 years after the soft drinks firm had abandoned ship!

The race was instigated in 1963 as one of the earlier lucrative commercial race sponsorships in UK racing and was staged once at Aintree before moving to its subsequent home of Newbury. It was quickly made famous and as much notorious through the exploits of the Findon, Sussex-based master trainer and former wartime Commando, Captain Ryan Price.

Ho won the first two with Rosyth, whose second success resulted in a six-week ban for his trainer following a dodgy prep run for his horse. Le Vermontois’ triumph involved no such scandal.

On that February Saturday in 1967, I was walking up (or was it down?) a hill in Northumberland with a transistor radio glued to my ear. I was there to cover the FA Amateur Cup quarter final between Whitley Bay and Walthamstow Avenue - the event and the Avenue both long sadly confined to the dustbin of history. We won, by the way, but were knocked out in the semi-final.

A couple of the local press guys – I worked that year at the Walthamstow Guardian, my first job on a newspaper - travelled in the team coach to their away matches. Following home games at Gander Green Lane, we routinely got to join the players for dinner in Jim Gill’s restaurant at the bottom of Walthamstow High Street.

I listened as Hill House easily made it four wins from the first five runnings of the race for Price. Even with the questionable acoustics, the boos that rained down from the stands could be clearly heard even above Peter Bromley’s spirited commentary.

Hill House had refused to race at Kempton two weeks before the big day and then was only fourth at Sandown the previous weekend, most professionals reckoning he had a typical “easy”. In the Schweppes, Hill House duly strode clear to win by 12 lengths, returning to a crescendo of booing. Price’s wife Dorothy vowed never to go racing again – and never did.

A subsequent inquiry found that Hill House had tested positive for cortisone, a banned substance but then further tests found evidence he manufactured his own cortisone. The matter ended there, but not the stigma to Captain Price.

Normal service resumed the following year when Persian War, a five-year-old trained in Wales by Colin Davies, ridden by Jimmy Uttley and owned by bookmaker Henry Alper, set a weight-carrying record of 11st13lb. The historians had not immediately realised that near 60-year record had finally been expunged from the books by Tutti Quanti’s winning under 12st on Saturday.

Persian War went on to win the Champion Hurdle that March and twice more before being relegated to second place behind Bula, another outstanding champion of that vintage era. Bula was trained by Fred Winter.

Persian War had been a slowcoach on the flat but was transformed by jumping when his stamina was a major contributor to his success. Make A Stand, like Persian War, started on the flat. He was a son of Master Willie and was in training with Henry Candy.

Make A Stand won a 23-runner nursery at Newmarket off 74, but by the time he turned up for a claiming race at Leicester in August the following summer, his mark had declined to 52 – the handicappers were a little more understanding in those days. You’d need to run 30 times now rather than Make A Stand’s six to drop that far! He did win that 1m4f race with ease, and the next time he ran was for Pipe, two unsuccessful flat-race outings finishing his three-year-old activity. I wanted to check the Racing Post’s analysis for the Leicester claimer, but 32 years on, we’re still waiting!

Make A Stand was fast away the following year when initially put to hurdles, winning three in a row, before Martin also exploited his still modest flat mark. By the time he got to the Tote Gold Trophy, he was the veteran of 27 races and came to Newbury fresh from three consecutive handicap hurdles victories at Sandown, Ascot and Kempton. There was never much doubt that number four would be in the bag. It wasn’t!

In the Champion Hurdle he beat a field that included the previous year’s winner Collier Bay, and in a hint of what was to come, a youthful Aidan O’Brien sent out the 33/1 runner-up Theatreworld. Aidan was to win the next three championships with the peerless Istabraq.

Tutti Quanti was hardly coming out from left field on Saturday. He had comfortably won the Gerry Feilden Hurdle over the same course and distance in November and on the morning of the race, Nicholls told Cobden he was extremely confident. He was the 100/30 second-favourite.

Why then, after such an overwhelming success in one of the most competitive (usually) handicap hurdles of the season, shouldn’t he go down the Persian War and Make A Stand route?

For an investment of £18k, the potential win prize of £252,315 represents around 14/1 for his money – albeit the owner’s portion is more like 70 per cent. Still, you’d be making a lot of people, including trainer, jockey and stable staff, happy if it happened; and Donlon picked up a healthy £87k on Saturday, so he starts from a position of strength.

They have until March 4, six days before the race to decide and the weather in the meantime will be a major factor in the decision. I remember in 1986 desperately wanting rain for a horse of mine that was fancied for the Triumph Hurdle, and the whole previous six weeks were cold and dry. Could be the same over the next three weeks, though unlikely if recent weather is to go by, but as I say, Colm doesn’t need to decide yet.

The most significant performance of the week, apart from Tutti Quanti, was the win of Lulamba in the Game Spirit Chase. Having effectively had only one and a half previous runs over fences (low sun ruled out six fences on debut), Nicky Henderson’s novice was far too good for more experienced chasers at Newbury. I think he can emulate Sprinter Sacre and Altior and go on to win the Arkle at Cheltenham next month.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Short Delay

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Normally we would have had both days of the Dublin Racing Festival to reflect upon this not so bright Monday morning, but it’s rather like the 1997 Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Then, at the height of the IRA’s bombing campaign in the UK, a bomb threat led to 60,000 racegoers (including me) being evacuated from Aintree.

The race was delayed for 49 hours to the following Monday and those that could – unfortunately I couldn’t – reconvened for a single race off at 5.00 p.m. in the afternoon.

Naturally, my original tip for the race, Lord Gyllene, owned by Sir Stanley Clarke, also owner of Uttoxeter racecourse, trained by Steve Brookshaw and ridden by Tony Dobbin won the 36-runner race and its £178k prize by 25 lengths from Charlie Brooks’ Suny Bay. He started 14/1 and I don’t think I backed it!

This weekend the only villain of the piece was the ground on Saturday morning for the opening instalment of what is best known as the Willie Mullins Benefit Weekend. That card was rescheduled for today and in view of the lead up to yesterday’s programme, the ground didn’t look too bad.

The great man did win two of the Grade 1 races on the card, impressive scorers for the JP McManus/Mark Walsh team that will soon be dissolved when Harry Cobden takes over the job as his stable rider in the two countries.

First, in the Ladbrokes Novice Chase over 2m5 1/2f, Kaid d’Authie (5/1) rather than Mullins’ hotpot Final Demand (100/30 on) took the spoils. Willie had supplied three of the four runners. Then in the Ladbrokes Dublin Chase (2m1f) Majborough dispelled any fears about his technique over fences. He made all to beat favourite and last year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Marine Nationale by 19 lengths with an exhilarating display of front-running and fast jumping.

Majborough is now the deserved favourite for this year’s Queen Mother Champion Chase and there isn’t much that can happen in the six weeks that remain before the Festival to remove him from that position.

Mullins then had a later, and possibly even more unexpected reverse, with 10/11 shot Lossiemouth, regarded in many places as the likely Champion Hurdle winner next month following the departure from calculations of Sir Gino last weekend. In what looked beforehand a virtual match race for the Timeless Sash Windows Irish Champion Hurdle – great sponsorship that! - Lossiemouth was never going as well and was unable to match the finishing verve of Gordon Elliott’s Brighterdaysahead. That market rival was thus emphatically reversing the one-length Christmas defeat by Lossiemouth over the same course and distance.

Brighterdaysahead has now won ten of her 14 career starts. One reverse was when she failed to live up to second favouritism in last year’s Champion Hurdle, finishing a long way behind Golden Ace in fourth, a placing that even flattered her on the day.

It was won with a fair portion of good fortune by that seven-year-old mare, trained by Jeremy Scott. If anything, Golden Ace has improved her profile since. First, she ran a fine second at Punchestown last spring behind State Man, who had been denied a second Champion Hurdle victory when falling in a clear lead at the final hurdle last March. The margin of just over four lengths at Punchestown suggested Golden Ace was progressing. A gritty win in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle and second to Sir Gino in the Christmas Hurdle show her continuing improvement.

State Man is another absentee this time around. We could still be seeing the 2023 champion Constitution Hill if he comes through that tantalising hurdle-avoiding gallop round Southwell on Friday evening the 20th of this month. It’s strategically placed timing-wise before the big race, Southwell having grafted Hendo’s star’s target onto an original seven-race Friday night card.

Including that new race, there’s a total of £245k on offer during the evening, and Constitution Hill’s event could hardly have been more sensitively framed. It’s a 4yos and upwards novice over 1m4f. I hope there are some nice animals to make Constitution Hill work for the £21k first prize. Make a note in your diary, 5.00 p.m. off time, first leg of that Friday night bonanza.

He is down to a 6/1 chance, despite that litany of falls in his latest appearances. Brighterdaysahead and Dan Skelton’s The New Lion, workmanlike at Cheltenham the previous weekend, vie for favouritism, with Constitution Hill coming next. Such is the paucity of serious contenders at this stage, Lossiemouth is still fourth favourite with Golden Ace just behind her.

Brighterdaysahead and Lossiemouth are age seven. I remember when Ruby Walsh was talking on ITV the other day, he pointed out that Lossiemouth also has the mares’ race as a Cheltenham option – and that was before yesterday’s disappointment. I wouldn’t be too surprised if Willie decides on that course of action.

Now you know I love a statistic, even if as the Editor will be the first to point out, my interpretation is not always flawless. Mullins was matched for winners yesterday by Gordon Elliott who also picked up a valuable handicap hurdle with Bowensonfire (10/1). The UK champion jockey of that name, Sean Bowen, making his first visit to Leopardstown, is indeed “on fire” and he didn’t waste any time getting a winner. He was on Backmersackme who took another nice €88k’s worth for the Emmet Mullins’ (Willie’s nephew) stable.

Sorry Sean, you slipped in there before I could illustrate again what an unbalanced affair top Irish jumps racing is – as if it wasn’t already obvious. Yesterday Wilie Mullins had 32 runners on the card while Gordon Elliott had just the meagre ten, so 42 between them from a total of 96 on the day.

Today, Willie has 19 declared to Gordon’s 23, so between them 42 of 77, and over the two days 84 from 173, slightly more than 48 per cent. I think that’s ridiculous.

Willie’s UK raids continue to be hit-and-miss. On Saturday, impressive Kempton Christmas winner Kitzbuhel was widely expected to dominate Sandown’s Scilly Isles Novices Chase. Perhaps it was being denied an early lead that unsettled him, with the Fergal O’Brien-trained Sixmilebridge setting a fast pace in front. He never looked in danger of defeat once the favourite and a re-routed Paul Townend checked out at the sixth fence, where the rider was unseated after some poor right-handed leaps.

As I’ve already awarded the trainers’ championship to Dan Skelton, who sensibly kept away from Leopardstown, I must report over the past two weeks he’s had 20 winners from 54 runners, barely half Mullins and Elliott will have jointly sent out over two days in Dublin. Now past £3 million, it’s time to toast a great young force in the training ranks.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Bit of a Joke…

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Windsor’s Fitzdares Fleur de Lys Chase on Sunday carried £165,000 in total prizemoney, writes Tony Stafford. As such it was on a par with the previous day’s Clarence House Chase at Ascot, the two events providing the top two features on three days of Berkshire’s Winter Millions, began on Friday at the Thames-side course.

I say on a par, but as only two completed the course at Ascot, it meant between them they collected £165k. In the old days, prizes for non-completions or short fields used to be shared out with the ones that did complete. There’s no such largesse nowadays.

The even-money favourite Protektorat, trained by Dan Skelton, won the race 12 months ago in a common canter, despite being penalised 8lb for his Grade 1 success in the 2024 Ryanair Chase at Cheltenham where Envoi Allen was the runner-up.

He followed that Windsor victory with a good second to Jonbon, four lengths behind Nicky Henderson’s horse at Aintree. If anyone doubted Jonbon’s worth, his repeat win in the Clarence House a day earlier would have reminded them of his honourable never-out-of-the-first-two career.

I know that steeplechases over two miles, six furlongs take plenty of jumping, but the fact that Protektorat started at even money and was available at odds against for a while in pre-race betting, must rank as the value bet, certainly of the meeting, and probably this season.

Why? Well, while winning the Fleur de Lys carrying the maximum penalty last year, he weirdly escaped one for the second running on the race. Top marks to the Skelton team for noticing the rules aberration.

Protektorat faced four opponents and while he now had bottom weight, Ben Pauling’s Handstands, the Twiston-Davies’ Matata and Olly Murphy’s Resplendent Grey all carried a penalty. I suggest the race conditions are a joke!

The key date, for what obscure reason, was September 30, 2024. A winner of a Grade 1 or Grade 2 chase after that date gets 8lb; one winning a Premier Handicap (as in the case of Resplendent Grey in the bet 365 Chase at Sandown last year, and Matata at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day this month), a Grade 3 or Listed gets 4lb.

Handstands was a star novice for Ben Pauling last season, winning a Grade 1 and a Grade 2. On official ratings on these terms he had a monstrous 19lb to find with the Skelton horse, so when Ben Jones sent him past the front-running favourite going to the fourth-last fence at the head of the straight, he looked to be putting himself right in the top flight of steeplechasers.

I love the Windsor chase course with its long run-in and, for once over a golden weekend for Jones, he probably made his move a little early. That gave Harry Skelton time to gather his willing horse and conjure a rally from that 11-year-old partner, such that he had regained the lead between the last two fences.

It was hard work all the way to the line, especially with Resplendent Grey bringing out the stamina that won him the Sandown three-and-a-half miler in the spring, but Protektorat kept going for a near four-length win with the Murphy horse a couple to the good over Handstands.

I don’t know who framed the Fleu de Lys conditions: it carries the official designation of a Class 2 contest, with no Graded status. The quality of this field (and last year’s) and the lavish prize money surely demand its promotion next time round.

I referred to Ben Jones’ superb week. He won on both his rides at Windsor on Friday, including on the Emma Lavelle-trained Bluey in the featured mares’ chase, before clicking on his first two rides at Ascot on Saturday when The Jukebox Kid showed he was on an upward curve, if not quite as steep as stablemate The Jukebox Man’s!

Then half an hour after the Fleur de Lys, Jones did it the other way around, pulling back several lengths from the last fence to win the 3m4f handicap chase on Neo King for the Evan Williams yard.

Not to be outdone, Harry Skelton responded in kind in the finale, a high-grade bumper, coming from off the pace to swamp his rivals for speed and win at 12/1. That made it a 67/1 treble on the day for the Skelton team and, more significantly, added another £125k to their spectacular tally.

I mentioned that Jonbon won the Clarence House Chase. But it needed a superequine effort from the horse to claw back the lead that the Skelton runner Thistle Ask had initiated from the start. Winner before Saturday of four in a row, all handicaps and the last three since being acquired for only £11k when he came up for sale last year upon the retirement from training of James Ewart, his mark had gone from 108 to 158 in that time.

Now he faces another upgrade as he was within three lengths of Jonbon at the line and as Nicky Henderson admitted afterwards, it was stamina that won him the day over this probably now insufficient trip of two miles.

Jonbon, extraordinarily in a four-horse race was allowed to start at 6/1. True, he had been easily beaten last time out in the Tingle Creek at Sandown by Saturday’s favourite, Willie Mullins’ Il Etait Temps, but that was the biggest price Jonbon has ever started, Il Etait Temps no doubt being regarded as invincible at 2/5 in the market.

Maybe it was Thistle Act’s bold jumping and sustained pace that troubled him, but Il Etait Temps never looked like getting to the leader and he came down heavily two from home. Happily, it seemed it was merely tiredness and nothing worse, but from 5/2 for the Queen Mother Champion Chase he is now out to 8/1. Willie has others to fill in for him, no doubt.

The £51k that Thistle Art earned his connections, added to yesterday’s haul, has Skelton rapidly approaching the £3 million mark for the season. It was after the last-day turnaround when the Mullins team swamped Dan at Sandown that either Willie or son Patrick stated they would be targeting many more ordinary UK race meetings in the upcoming season. With that in mind, Patrick was dispatched from Co Carlow to the far east of the country yesterday, to Fakenham, to ride a couple of “steering jobs”.

In a 2m4f maiden hurdle, Clay Pigeons, who had already come across to Catterick to win a bumper, started 4/11 but was no match for Olly Murphy’s King Jon Oliver, the 5/2 second favourite. Then 2/1 on shot Lultimatom, was rolled over by – you guessed it – the Skeltons’ 13/2 chance Eastern Fire, ridden by Tristan Durrell.

As at Windsor, the Skelton team bagged another treble, all ridden by Tristan. If you got all six of the Skelton winers in an accumulator, it works out (or so my computer says), at 21,114/1; but if you did have it you were lucky as 13/2  shot Miss Cynthia was a long way behind Princess Keri at the final flight of the day’s feature when that mare’s rider Ned Fox got unbalanced after the obstacle and came off.

Mullins senior did collect the two Grade 2 races at Thurles yesterday, Jade De Grugy (1/7) picked up €29k for a school round under Paul Townend, who added a second success on Appreciate It, the even-money favourite, in a race where his trainer had four of the five runners and took the first three places.

The fates of his two UK runners over the weekend coincided with, if not a seriously worrying period for the trainer, certainly one with more reverses than expected. Over the past two weeks, Mullins has sent out 18 winners, but an astonishing nine odds-on chances in that time have bit the dust.

Maybe Cheltenham 2026 might be less of a one-sided battle between the Irish and the home team. Everyone was vastly impressed by Nicky Henderson’s Haydock winner Old Park Star in the Rossington Main Novices’ Hurdle. He made all to win the Grade 2 by 18 lengths under Nico de Boinville in the style of, dare we suggest it, Constitution Hill. How does the old boy continue to find them?

- TS

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