Monday Musings: Chasing Records

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I chased after the young man at York, definitely arousing his interest, but with no definitive response, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday morning, on a 22-minute call to his agent in Cambodia, I think I’d got a fair way along the road, but again, no reply from Gavin Horne.

It’s all so different now. Could you imagine 25 years ago being able to live 6,221 miles away and six time zones ahead of the UK and still sort the rides with such certainty for the now guaranteed four times champion Oisin Murphy? “He’s been with me for ten years and is the only jockey on my books, but it’s still a tough existence,” he says.

“I owe a lot to WhatsApp”, says Gavin, “I have everything ready for the trainers when they get to their offices at 6 a.m.” So far, the formula has brought a career-best 22% wins of his mounts, with 168 victories, 52 short of his best of 220 in 2019.

Four championships will be something to be proud of, but a shade insignificant in numerical terms compared with the 11 each by Lester Piggott and Pat Eddery. But one name – in flat racing terms anyway – stands above all others: Sir Gordon Richards, 26 titles and a peak of 269 in 1947.

It took the force of nature that was Tony McCoy to exceed the single-season tally with 289 jumps wins in 2002/3, one of 20 consecutive titles the dominant jumps rider amassed.

Returning to my first point. My initial question to Oisin was to ask whether he was likely to be away for large parts of the winter. He said not, so the prospect of lucrative stints in either Hong Kong or Japan was unlikely. Gavin Horne confirmed that supposition.

So we sit, with barely seven weeks of the Flat Race Jockeys’ Championship remaining to divvy up the honours and, after Champions Day at Ascot, that’s it.

What I was trying to emphasise to young Mr Murphy was that at the present rate of progress he would comfortably exceed the necessary 102 wins to beat Sir Gordon’s 77-year record and have a fighting chance to topple the McCoy tally.

This was the idea I floated, seemingly getting a positive response. The idea first came to mind based on the recent example of the 2023/4 jockeys’ championship in South Africa when Richard Fourie beat the existing record by more than 40 victories.

Turf Talk, my weekday daily read of all things South African racing, latched on to the Fourie phenomenon early, and issued a daily Barometer, as they called it, of his likely finishing figure.

It brought tremendous interest over there, unsurprisingly as he ended on 378 wins, despite putting the handbrake on with some more leisurely weeks as the conclusion came nearer.

My contention to Murphy and Horne was that the last weeks of the UK season on the flat, solely all-weather for seven weeks after the conclusion of the final meeting at Doncaster, needs a little enlivening.

Jump racing is of course the main diet of those times, but if we got a severely cold or excessively wet period, all-weather steps forward into the role for which it was first intended more than three decades ago (October 1985, when Conrad Allen won the first race and is still going strong!)

Other major jockeys will be elsewhere, but with their massive strings, Andrew Balding, Murphy’s boss, and many others have to keep going with their later developing juveniles and horses that need to get a win on the board, something that can be easier as the season draws on.

Gavin described Oisin’s last few days as “like a snowball going downhill and getting bigger and accelerating all the time.”

On one of our brief encounters at York, I asked if he’d given it any thought. “I need a winner here first,” he said. Naturally, he won the next race and four in all, one a day at the meeting.

Since then, though, it has indeed been the accelerating snowball. He rode two winners each day at Goodwood on Sunday, Epsom on Monday, Lingfield on Tuesday, Kempton on Wednesday and Sandown on Friday, topping it up with three at the Esher track on Saturday. Eleven different trainers contributed to the tally.

I’m pretty sure that if he did declare that he would be going all out, the rides would come in exponentially, requiring Mr Horne’s knowledge of the form book to sort the multiple chances in various races.

That 17-winner spell from York to Sandown came in 11 days. To beat Richards, he needs 25 wins a month and a couple more. To beat McCoy it’s another five a month, so virtually a winner a day in all. But I’m sure trainers would be falling over themselves to get his services, knowing that it would guarantee a committed ride by one of the best three jockeys in the weighing room.

Referring to this year’s action, Gavin said that Oisin had hardly over-exerted himself in collecting 46 wins up to early May when the championship took over; “He was pretty much messing around in the US,” he says. “If he’d have been at full throttle from January 1, he could have had a lot more winners by now,” he added.

Naturally, there would need to be an incentive and I’m pretty sure that one of the big bookmaking firms might like to get involved. The Oisin Betfred Barometer has a ring to it and I know from a quiet word with Ed Chamberlin that ITV would certainly like the extra excitement. With AP a regular on ITV for the jumping season, it would be interesting to see if his score was exceeded, whether he would be as gracious as Alastair Cook was when Joe Root beat his record number of Test match centuries at Lord’s on Saturday.

In the final analysis though, Murphy might not fancy the cold, winter days, up early to drive (or be driven) across to the all-weather tracks that are within comfortable reach of his base in Lambourn. You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t fancy it, but how I’d love to see someone beat a great racing historical record that Piggott, Eddery, Dettori, not to forget Jason Weaver, never managed. And, of course, for Oisin to make his own little piece of history.

**

Talking of champion jockeys and agents, I was at a party yesterday hosted by Graham Smith-Bernal at his Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire. I sat at the same table as Tony Hind, agent to Ryan Moore, William Buick and many others. Tony is the flat-race equivalent of Dave Roberts, who looked after McCoy for all his career, but so many other top-notchers.

‘Bony Tony’, as he loves to be called, and his wife, along with friend Charlie Pigram and his better half, were all fully in step with the Tottenham Hotspur vibe, (as an Arsenal fan I wasn’t too upset when yesterday’s result came through), with former player Davd Howells also on our table.

Across the way were Ossie Ardiles, Steve Perryman (Bony’s idol whom he had never met before) and John Pratt, who played cricket with me at Lord’s I think in 1964. Hard to believe it was so long ago.

Buick was on family duty, often happily carrying his younger child outside the tent on a rare free day in the summer. To think I knew William, introduced by dad Walter in the press box at Newbury racecourse, when he was ten years old.

The party was arranged to thank members of various syndicates. The one involving Charlie and Bony includes Smith-Bernal, who retains 25%, and the Stud name includes club legends Ardiles, Brazil (Alan) and Hoddle (Glenn). The boys all made a £30k investment in several horses in which they have a share and Miss Fascinator, a daughter of Mehmas trained by Roger Varian, is likely to bring a big return.

Already a winner at Ascot and Newmarket, the two-year-old, bought for Newsells by Jamie Piggott for 72,000 Guineas, is rated an official 95 and, if she went to the sales, would probably be worth at least four times the purchase price.

Incidentally, Jamie Piggott was at the table alongside older sister Maureen Haggas and husband William who reported the “promising” Economics <as he called him> will be taking on the cream (minus City of Troy) of Aidan O’Brien in the Irish Champion Stakes next weekend.

His last run, when he got to and drew away from Brian Meehan’s smart colt Jayarebe at Deauville recently, got a big boost from the other side of the Atlantic this weekend. Jayarebe had won the Group 3 Hampton Court Stakes at Ascot before taking on Economics in France.

The third home at Ascot was Andrew Balding’s Bellum Justum, ridden by Murphy, and he went on to be a closing second to Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood.

Balding might have a massive string nowadays, but he is certainly aware of opportunities around the globe. On Saturday at Kentucky Downs, Bellum Justum went for the DK Horse Nashville Derby Invitational and won easily under Frankie Dettori. The prize? £830k to the winner! Nice to see Frankie’s still earning a crust!

- TS

 



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Monday Musings: Of Lazarus, and the Rogues

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York is my idea of a holiday, writes Tony Stafford. Four days of wonderful racing, dinner in excellent restaurants peopled by friends from the racing world, and accommodation – or rather – home from home, at the elegant town house of Mary and Jim Cannon, midway between the station and the racecourse – not bad eh!

From City Of Troy on the opening day – dry coat after the Juddmonte, unlike sweaty at Sandown, his hardest race by my inexact barometer – to the facile Ebor win of Magical Zoe on Saturday, events flowed into each other. The four days provided a melange of thoughts as I drove home down the A1. The reverie was soon expunged when the diversion took us across to the M1 – in all an extra 48 miles on the journey and around an hour on the time.

But back home, checking the later results, after leaving before the last, I was thrilled that having wished William Knight luck as he arrived with one of his owners just after midday, I saw that he had provided the last-race exacta. His old-timer Sir Busker (12/1), a Group 2 winner on the track two years ago and the stable star for longer than that, beat Dual Identity.

There were two winners on the day, the other being Tom Clover’s Melrose Stakes hero Tabletalk, also at 12/1, that nicely rounded up a great spell for both trainers, and a situation that earlier in the year you would never have thought possible.

William Knight endured a horrific 2023. He’d kicked off with three UK wins by February 8, and went off to Dubai with stable star Sir Busker hoping to get some of the big money on offer. You could predict that maybe the kickback on the dirt track there might prove troublesome. In the case of Sir Busker, it was a piece of turf propelled in his direction that went into an eye, causing serious injury.

He needed an operation straight after and then to convalesce for several months before he could be brought back. William did well to get him ready to run in the autumn and in an upside-down season kept him going through the winter, picking up some place money at Newcastle around the turn of the year.

Then came his “winter break” – April to August – when he returned to Glorious Goodwood three weeks ago, a lovely day out for the Kennet Valley Syndicate that had already collected more than half a million pounds for his career exertions.

But to return to 2023 and the aftermath of Dubai. Knight had three early all-weather wins on the board, but from February 8 to September 12 last year, 171 days, he won just three further races – two in June and one in July.

“I did nothing different to always, but we just couldn’t get going. Thank God we had that little flurry at the end of the year,” he said.

A further ten wins came from September 6 to December 18, a Lazarus-type return from the dead as far as the racing community was concerned, and just in time to have a little confidence going into the yearling sales season.

One of the late winners was the filly Frost At Dawn and after her easy win at Chelmsford in early November, William took the calculated risk of sending her to Dubai – not least with the memory of Sir Busker still fresh in his mind.

But owner Abdulla Al Mansoori’s acceptance of the plan paid handsome dividends. On the fifth of her six runs at Meydan, she out-sprinted the Godolphin odds-on shot Star Of Mystery in the Nad Al Sheba Sprint. Dreams of a win in the £600k-plus championship on Dubai World Cup night did not materialise, but the grey filly had done everyone proud.

Project forward to the 2024 season. As we’ve indicated above, Knight had won only three races in the more than five months of last summer, the seventh win of the year coming on September2.

This year, following Frost At Dawn in March, Knight has won 28 races; one in April, four in May, ten in June, eight in July and with Sir Busker on Saturday, another five in August.

Almost all have come from handicaps – “At least when they run as badly as ours did last year, the handicap marks have to drop.” True enough, but horses like Atlantic Gamble, off a mark of 79 at Kempton winning for the fifth time this season having started the run on 56; and Blenheim Star, three wins starting from 51, is rated 69 with the prospect of more to come.

Always approachable, he can also point with satisfaction to Saturday’s opening race third with the recently gelded Checkandchallenge. A 33/1 shot, he looked the likely winner until a little ring-rustiness allowed a couple of horses to pass him.

If William Knight’s good form has been heartening for me, I’m also chuffed that the Tom Clover stable seems to have ridden out the unexpected (at least to me) of the Rogues Gallery horses.

Tom and wife Jackie brought that syndicate’s Rogue Millennium, a daughter of Dubawi, from a 35k 2yo buy to a £1.6 million guineas sale, in the meantime collecting a couple of stakes races and running well at the top level. Rogue Lightning won valuable handicap sprints, turning an 80k breeze-up acquisition into a £1 million sale to Wathnan Racing, who have kept him with Clover.

Then in the spring came news of a parting of the ways, The Rogue apparently becoming uneasy about another syndicate muscling in on their territory, or that’s how it read at the time.

No sooner had the 2024 Horses in Training book come out in March/April than the 16 horses listed under the Rogues Gallery had been dispersed far and wide – well all around Newmarket anyway. Talk about gratitude. I’ve no idea if Tony Elliott bought the two stars on his own judgment or that of Tom Clover, but I immediately got the dead needle to their horses.

The Thursday before York, I went to Chelmsford and the flashy red vehicle emblazoned with Rogues stuff was parked next to me. If I had been a little more mobile or less conspicuous, I might even have let the tyres down!

Mr Elliott might well be a great bloke and his syndicates do well and are endorsed by a couple of influential figures, but I was delighted when their Rogue Invader finished a place and two lengths behind Fire Flame, albeit himself a beaten favourite, the horse I was there to watch.

On Friday at York, the Clovers ran recent arrival Al Nayyir in the Lonsdale Cup and if he had had another ten yards to travel he would have beaten Vauban rather than lose by a short head. The six-year-old will be one to watch out for in any long-distance race from now on.

They had a winner elsewhere that day and another at Goodwood on Saturday, but the main event came in the Melrose Handicap, now much stronger as the three-year-olds are excluded from the Ebor, which follows later in the card.

Their lightly-raced Tabletalk came through strongly to win comfortably, beating Coolmore’s The Equator, in a faster time than Magical Zoe took to win the Ebor. He can go a long way as can Tom and Jackie, who have matched last year’s tally of 22, even without the rogue element.

Tabletalk was an appropriate winner that I suggested in response to a request for “a winner” from the three lovely Scottish ladies on my table on Saturday. Once something like that wins, you become fair game for the rest of the day. Nice though.

On Wednesday evening in the inevitable Italian restaurant Del Rio, Irish photographer Pat Healy posed the question “Vincent or Aidan?” a conundrum that could never be adequately resolved. That brought the conversation around to the late Gerry Gallagher, Vincent’s long-term traveling head lad.

One year, Vincent, to Pat’s recollection, had five winners at Goodwood and a couple more on his way back home from there and Gerry backed them all.

When he returned to Ballydoyle, he told Vincent that he’d made a nice pot of money and wondered whether he could buy a bit of land there on which to construct a house.

Vincent asked where he had in mind. Gerry said: “There’s a rough patch of land just to the right of the entrance.” Vincent said to leave it with him and after a couple of days called Gerry in and said yes, he could buy it.

Gerry realised it might not have been the greatest idea to tell the trainer how much he’d won, but anyway asked what he wanted. Vincent took a breath and said: “One pound.” The house was duly built and Gerry and his family lived there for the rest of his life.

Two days later, I was sitting down to lunch when Polly Murphy, the lady who always comes to greet visitors to Ballydoyle and takes them to wherever they need to go, sat down next to me.

I told her the story and asked her if it was true, as it was such a heart-warming incident. Polly said: “Do you see the lady sitting at the table behind us, ask her, she’s Gerry’s daughter Trish.” “It is, and while I’m married now, my brother still lives there,” said Trish.  Small world.

-        TS



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Monday Musings: Small Steps

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After Simmering won the Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot on King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes day late last month, Ben Sangster urged caution concerning his son Ollie’s burgeoning training career, writes Tony Stafford.

"Small steps," he maintained, after the filly in which, until just before that day, wife Lucy had been a partner with Justin Casse and Dr J Berk, came from a fair way back to get up close home.

Ryan Moore was on board the filly as she cemented the promise of her second spot behind the Moore-ridden Fairy Godmother in the Albany Stakes at the Royal meeting.

Ryan was otherwise engaged on his day job at the Curragh on Saturday, so Dylan Browne McMonagle sat in and Simmering, up a furlong as her run style had suggested it would, suited her to the extent of a three-length victory in the Group 2 Prix de Calvados at Deauville.

While the French are not always fast out of the blocks with two-year-old racing, perennial leading trainer (if M. Fabre doesn’t intervene) Jean-Claude Rouget isn’t quite so reticent. On the weekend of the big August sale at Arqana in Deauville, Rouget supplied an unbeaten-in-four filly, Fraise Des Bois, running in the colours of Prince Faisal bin Salman’s Denford Stud.

A triple winner at the provincial course at Tarbes in Southwestern France, an entire region where Rouget dominates affairs, the €75k daughter of Zelzal went on to a wide-margin win when stepped up to Listed class at Marseille Borely.

Inevitably on Saturday she shared the market with the UK challenger who, coincidentally, also cost 75k as a yearling, but in real money as we used to call it!

Both fillies were moving up to seven furlongs for the first time and Simmering duly took the race apart after going ahead before the last 200 metres. McMonagle said afterwards he thought he probably went too soon, but there was no sign of weakness as Simmering strode up to and across the line.

You’d think the Moyglare – where she might renew rivalry with Fairy Godmother - would be an obvious target, but further down the line Ollie has the Breeders’ Cup in mind for this fast-improving filly.

Small steps – from Group 3 to Group 2 – seems to follow dad’s coda, but this win could hardly have been timed better. It came between the first two select evenings of the big August Arqana sale on the track’s doorstep.

Running in the colours of Al Shaqab, Ollie had already pulled one rabbit out of the hat by winning the Ascot race for them - they are closely involved in Qipco, a main sponsor of the Royal track – and now showed his worth again at the perfect moment.

Five horses were knocked down to Al Shaqab at the smallish Saturday night portion of the sale, so who would be the first to enter their thoughts having seen off a highly regarded home runner than the short-stepping Ollie?

Sorry Ben, this is a young man with a long, languid stride who is going all the way to the top. As George Boughey has shown, this sort of momentum can be hard to stop if the clients and the talent are there.

The history does stack up. Grandson of Robert, the man who, with John Magnier and Vincent O’Brien, rewrote racing history in the last quarter of the 20th Century. Since Robert’s death, sons Ben, backed by Guy, and in Australia another brother, Adam who ran the southern hemisphere end of Swettenham Stud, provided the ideal introduction to the family business.

Of course, Ollie’s uncle Sam, another of Robert's sons but not much older than Ollie, has been flourishing with his syndicates with Brian Meehan who, like Ollie, trains at Manton.

Stints working with Wesley Ward, both for a time in the US, but for years as his rep on this side of the Atlantic, could not have been a hindrance to his handling of juveniles. Also, his riding career was not to be discounted either. He won four races just over a decade ago for the late Alan Swinbank.

On Lothair at Carlisle in August 2013, he scored with a very professional ride – it was a race for inexperienced amateurs – but 50 yards after passing the post, he came off his mount. Refusing to drop the rein, he held on for at least another 100 yards, until the horse agreed to stop. While the unwritten rule is to let go, Ollie’s guts, horsemanship, strength and a determination not to give up already characterised him from that early point. No wonder Wesley trusted him to pony his horses to the start at Ascot.

It helped before starting his training career last year that a filly he shared (ten per cent) with mum Lucy and James Wigan, bought as a foal four years earlier for 55k, sold at the 2022 December sale for 3.6million gns. The filly was Saffron Beach, a multiple Group 1 winner trained by his aunt Jane Chapple-Hyam. “I was in her from the start,” Ollie avers.

When speaking to Ben after the Princess Margaret, I referred to what he’d mentioned earlier in the year, his dream that Ollie might one day transfer from the Red Post yard into the historic original main yard around Manton House itself where he grew up. “I’d love that”, said Ben. This could be a case of the irresistible force happening sooner than either of them anticipated.

**

When you reach my time of life, you can expect sad news coming around every corner. On Friday, unfortunately, I had a double helping. First my friend Malcolm Caine asked if I’d heard that David Myers had died. I hadn’t. A very clever owner/punter in the 1980’s with the equally clever if rather grumpy Epsom handler Mick Haynes, he’d developed kidney problems at a relatively young age and was on dialysis for many years.

He recently went into hospital for a leg operation and never regained consciousness. Such was his standing within the world of charities that he and his wife were invited to King Charles III’s coronation.

Then later that day an even more awful moment came when I heard from Sir Rupert Mackeson that Howard Wright had died, aged 79. Howard had a deserved tall reputation as a journalist with the Racing Post for many years as the many commendations about him have shown over the past few days.

I must add my own involvement in his story. When I took on a part-time job as Editor of The Racehorse weekly publication in the autumn of 1974, my first headline (unaccredited) was to tip the 25/1 Cesarewitch winner Ocean King, ridden by Tommy Carter and trained by Arthur Pitt, Alan Spence’s first trainer in Epsom.

Peter O’Sullevan was moved to send a letter of congratulation – to Roger Jackson, the greyhound man whose byline was prominently displayed! We did have a laugh about it a few times later as Peter and I knew each other rather better.

Tne Racehorse job involved working early Monday and Tuesday mornings, then off to the Daily Telegraph for late shifts. The need arose as I was paying back a debt to a Mr Lippman and needed the extra. Wednesday was print day, so I had to take my Telegraph day off and also worked Saturdays subbing the sports results for the Sunday Telegraph – thus a full seven-day week, but more like eight days a week really!

The Racehorse had a great team of writers, such as Roger Mortimer, T E Watson (Diary of a private handicapper) and, from the younger generation, Walter Glynn, Alan Amies and Howard Wright, who was assistant sports editor at the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, where I’m pretty sure as Fortunatus he won the Sporting Life naps table.

I never needed to speak to him. His copy came down each week, perfectly presented and never needing any correction. Then, when in 1979 I was appointed Racing Editor at the DT, I requested as my deputy someone from outside – Howard.

The bosses agreed, and happily, so did he. Some people in authority like to have yes men behind them and Howard was anything but that. When you had a day or a week off, you knew the job would be done properly – in all honesty with less of the flying by the shirttails of his boss.

It was no surprise (if rather annoying) when Howard was offered the chance to join the newly-instituted Racing Post in a senior role – one which he held for many years, specialising on the administration end of racing. His death after a short illness was so unexpected.

Will Lefebve, who started at the Press Association in 1969 one week before I did and remains a regular on the course on the big days, said he was with Howard negotiating the sale of some (by Will) historic racecards to Howard when he said he didn’t feel great.

We weren’t ever close, apart from the period of working together, but another friend Jeffrey Curry remembered a day at Kempton earlier this year when the three of us talked for some time in the owners’ room. Jeffrey (or Curly as he’s better known), said: “You’d have thought you were best mates!”

He took the steadfast accuracy of his working life to his family, with wife Anne and their two daughters. When someone dies, you can express your regrets, sympathise and move on. This one keeps coming back, even as I finish this totally inadequate memoire.

- TS



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Monday Musings: Fours, and All Sorts

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With more than a week to go before the next big thing, York’s Ebor meeting, It may be a suitable time for a little quantity over quality, writes Tony Stafford. For Iain Jardine, whose week had brought a tragic note with the passing of his barn manager John McPherson, 54, found on Thursday morning after dying in his sleep, it ended on a much happier note.

Runners from the Jardine yard took the 70 miles or so ride up the west coast of Scotland from the Borders to Ayr and clocked up four consecutive winners. Not the least surprising were the prices and that there were three tight photo-finishes.

Jardine kicked off with 7/2 shot Parisiac by a head; followed with the only clear scorer, 16/1 outsider Can’t Stop Now; with Giselles Issy (12/1) completing the hat-trick by a neck. The four-timer, amounting to 5,468/1, was completed with another head finish by 9/2 Jonny Concrete. This is one achievement that will indeed be set in stone.

That brought Jardine to 40 wins for the season, more than two-thirds of the way to his career-best of 58 in an always upwardly mobile career which began only in 2011.

Jardine’s was not the only Saturday four-timer, but in the case of championship-leading Oisin Murphy, his quartet at Newmarket illustrated why he is unbackable to win a fourth career title.

Winners count towards the jockeys’ title only from May 4, the start of the Guineas meeting at Newmarket. In 98 days therefore, Oisin has already passed 100 (101) and can add (but nobody bothers about that) 46 clocked up in the first four months of the campaign.

That puts him a mere 122 behind the record of Gordon Richards (later Sir) set in 1947 when the sport was just getting going after the Second World War and Richards had the benefit of compliant starters under the old gate start. They always made sure Gordon was ready!

Unlike in Gordon’s day, getting to the races has been eased by motorway travel and, for the top boys, small planes or helicopters to get the likes of Ryan Moore, William Buick and no doubt Murphy home safe and quickly.

At the same time, the ruling that stopped double meetings might have reduced the potential for racking up the wins in the summer when the fields tend to thin out.

That’s all well and good, but rather than stick around to mop up the all-weather opportunities after November 4 when the flat season ends at Doncaster, the named trio will be off far and wide in search of the riches available in those countries. That's in contrast to the UK, racing here held in thrall by the bookmakers and racecourses whose strangling effect has been evident by yet another Levy shortfall and the missing millions from media rights payments that never find their way to a race purse.

But I wonder. Those riches will still be available after the turn of the year to Murphy, who is already virtually assured of a fourth title to go with the three he collected from 2019 to 2021 before his ban. He’s 36 clear of Rossa Ryan who also continues to thrive despite last year’s break up from the poisoned chalice that is retained rider for Amo Racing. Maybe David Egan and his calm personality can outlive the previous incumbents in that position.

No, I would like to see Oisin stay for the winter. There hasn’t been a Triple Crown winner in the UK since Nijinsky in 1970. How sweet would it be for Oisin to exceed Sir Gordon's 269 and break a record set the year after I was born. Blimey, when you think of it like that!

So, say he stays, just taking four days off for the Breeders’ Cup and one or two more for overseas spectaculars like Irish Champions' Weekend. Then he would only need to maintain the present rate of progress to collect the 123 wins he needs.

Somebody should step in to sponsor it – no doubt a bookie like Fred Done (Betfred) or Bet Victor – and publicise it with a daily update on his progress towards this record which has seemed an impossibility for much of the time since Lester Piggott was the successor to Richards.

*

Racing In South Africa might have been regarded as a backwater for a long time but efforts to redevelop it and the removal of the ban on importing horses from South Africa to Europe has given it a massive shot in the arm in the season which ended last month.

I keep in touch via a regular look at the well-regarded five times weekly Turf Talk newsletter and was able to tell William Knight before his horse Holkham Bay won at Ascot on Saturday that his South African lady jockey Rachel Venniker was very talented.

The last few months, until season's end, Turf Talk had a daily Richard Fourie barometer as the leading jockey approached and then galloped past the previous record of 335 wins in a season on June 8. He eased off a shade but still stretched to 377 by the end of last month.

Looking at his stats on the At the Races site, Oisin Murphy’s strike-rate looks almost pedestrian. Fourie over the past 12 months has won 276 races on turf and another 106 on all-weather surfaces, so in all 382 – 115 better than Gordon’s best.

Just why nobody has thought to recruit rampant Richard for a spell riding over here, I don’t know. He wouldn’t be the first South African rider to do well, Michael (Muis) Roberts won our title in 1992 and is now a successful trainer back home. I’ve told the tale before, but Roberts and I shared flights travelling to, I think, three tracks in one day.

Getting off the small plane to go to Leicester, he nimbly stepped out. By the time I’d followed him, Neil, the pilot was already on the move, and the rear fin knocked me over with a right bang. The bruise was there as evidence for a good few days!

Returning to Fourie, it's probably more likely that he could become another South African to test his skills in Hong Kong.

*

The phrase plus ca change, plus la meme chose [roughly, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'] doesn’t seem to apply to life in the mid-2020s. Long-held ideas on behaviour and respect seem to have gone out the window in the UK and last week's riots came as a shock to everyone that had been expecting something much more likely to ruin Paris’s Olympic Games.

They, though, have gone along famously well and the home crowds have shown that there is a place for patriotic support without its boiling over into violence.

For the regulars in the Newmarket owners’ room, last Saturday was a very sad occasion and one where change will certainly not be la meme chose, but very different. We (I’ve plenty of friends who get me owner’s badges) who regularly attend have marvelled at the ultra-professional Lynda Burton as she runs the lunchroom with welcoming efficiency, never seeming to get slower than a fast canter as she attends to the inevitable issues that crop up.

In times when catering staff can be at either end of the acceptable spectrum, she has gathered some excellent colleagues, so it was a shock to hear that owing to an “unpleasantness”, as she described it, Lynda had decided to resign forthwith.

I’ve known her for 15 years from when she was running the Goodwood owners’ room, before she transferred to Newmarket. It has been very demanding, travelling so often from her home in the West Country and now, with a grandchild and as her husband has retired, Lynda is reserving her considerable energies for closer to home.

Judging by the bouquets of flowers and other examples of gratitude for the past years’ efforts, I’m clearly not the only one to rue her departure. Her shoes will not be easy to fill. Good luck Newmarket!

At Goodwood I had a great reunion with a friend who around two decades ago asked me if I would introduce him to Sir Henry Cecil. Gerhard Schoeningh, a German based in London where he worked in finance, wished to ask Henry whether he would be prepared to train his home-bred horses, mostly stayers.

Among the best he sent to the master trainer were Brisk Breeze and Templestern, but he says that when Henry died, he failed to find another trainer to suit him. Instead, he bought a racecourse, Hoppegarten in Berlin, and over time he has lovingly improved and restored it.

I asked how it’s gone. He said: “It’s getting better and better every year. This year, I hope we can break even!”

Yesterday, he staged his most valuable and important race, the €100k to the winner 134th running of the Grosser Preis von Berlin (Group 1). He was still trying to recruit supplementary entries for the race at the time and his negotiations with Joseph O’Brien bore fruit with Al Riffa, the excellent runner-up to City Of Troy in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park last month, lining up.

Ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle, Al Riffa started the 3/5 favourite and won by five lengths. Gerhart has asked me to try to come over either in October or next spring. I’ve never been to Germany, but you know, I might take him up on it.

- TS



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Monday Musings: Mick’s the Man

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The Appleby “brothers” were at it at Goodwood last week, with Charlie first to the fore, winning the Sussex Stakes with the revived 2000 Guineas winner Notable Speech and  the Group 2 Vintage Stakes with improving juvenile Aomori City, writes Tony Stafford.

You can always identify a Charlie Appleby runner, the Royal blue silks only ever modified by different-coloured caps when there are multiple entries. At Goodwood he ran only four horses over the five days, when hot sunshine and the avoidance of any of the promised thunderstorms [I found one on Thursday going home around the almost-flooded southern portion of the M25] were the theme of the meeting.

Charlie has one owner, Godolphin, and, according to Horses in Training 2024, 233 horses to pick from. The same publication at the time of the snapshot before the season started listed 102 for Michael Appleby, a journeyman who made his way out of the Andrew Balding stable into his own business around 20 years ago. At the end of last week, it was Mick, rather than Charlie, or indeed Aidan O’Brien, that was declared Champion Trainer at the meeting.

That 102, bolstered since by additional juveniles, is the result of hard graft, ever-improving results and continually punching above his weight. Local businesses, clubs and syndicates with shrewdies like the Dixon brothers through their Horse Watchers horses [and geegeez.co.uk! - Ed.], have hastened the upward trajectory. The weaving together of these strands has provided the cocktail of horses that benefit from the “Mick” treatment, with sprinters the foundation of it all. And, of course, he isn’t Charlie’s brother!

If ever there was a moment to evidence the culmination and flowering of the effort of those two decades, it was Big Evs’ winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint at Santa Anita last autumn in a battle of three Europeans. He and Tom Marquand held off runners from the Adrian Murray and Ralph Beckett yards.

That was a fourth win in six starts, Big Evs having collected previously the Flying Childers at Doncaster, after sinking in the Nunthorpe at York the previous month.

One obvious observation in the aftermath of his finishing 14th of 16 against the top older sprinters is just how insensitive and crass it was of the stewards at the meeting to ask Appleby for an explanation for his “poor performance”. He’s a two-year-old for pity’s sake! Do you know nothing about horses?

Back home and with the US win on his scabbard, Big Evs made a winning return in a Listed race at the York May meeting. Royal Ascot the following month was a lottery for the most part in the week’s sprints so while ‘only’ 3rd to the Australian speedster Asfoora in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes, he ‘won’ his race on the unfavoured far side.

The ultra-valuable King George Stakes last week was his first run since Ascot, and it gave him the chance to avenge the defeat. He duly gained that revenge - though only by a short-head - as the Australian mare was hunting him down in the final yards.

Big Evs was the sixth Mick Appleby runner at Goodwood last week and the fourth winner. The only two losers at that point were Billyjoh, second in a seven-furlong handicap – the longest trip any of the team attempted all week – and Mr Lightside in the Molecomb Stakes.

Mr Lightside went into that race as the better fancied (11/1) of the stable duo, but 25/1 shot Big Mojo, having dwelt at the start and raced in rear early, had the pace to come through and win under Silvestre de Sousa. Mr Lightside was a close third and will have plenty of wins to come given that sharp speed he showed.

Going into the Molecomb as a maiden – Big Mojo had, like Big Evs prior to his Listed Windsor Castle win at Royal Ascot last year, been runner-up on debut at one of the Yorkshire tracks, Beverley in his case – he was an expensive buy for the yard, and owners Paul and Rachael Teasdale, at his 175,000gns yearling price. Bought from Derek Veitch of Ringfort Stud, he clearly holds a high place in Appleby’s estimation. “He could be as good as Big Evs,” he said. Praise indeed.

Handicappers Kitai over seven furlongs and Shagraan, at the minimum trip, completed the winners’ roll for the stable, but there was still to be one last hurrah, planned for the earlier second finisher Billyjoh.

If Appleby could have moaned about the draw for Big Evs at Ascot, he would have been entitled to have regretted the one that got away after the also very well-endowed Stewards’ Cup on Saturday. Twenty-five of the 28 declared kept the engagement and Billyjoh, drawn four, led into the final furlong on his side of the race – they did edge across - finishing best of the 16 that kept up the middle.

Meanwhile George Baker’s six-year-old Get It had grabbed the near rail from the outset, leading clearly, and held on all the way, with major sprint handicap regular Apollo One getting closest for a staying-on half-length second.

Peter Charalambous earned a not insignificant £60k for his troubles with Apollo One but he must be despairing of the big win his wonderful servant at age six deserves. He couldn’t complain of the luck of the draw though – the first six came from 28, 27, 4 (Billyjoh), 24, 26 and 20! Peter pretty much is training just the single horse under the Charalambous/ Clutterbuck ticket, and the gelding is now up to £350k in earnings, 80% of it for places.

Get It was a notable local success for genial George Baker, once a wet-behind-the-ears writer for the long-defunct Sportsman newspaper, but ever the mine host over Goodwood’s entire week. He is entering a new phase of his career with a stable to be based in Bahrain over the coming winter.

I still remember pulling up at one of my 2009 trips down to the west of France, availing myself of the late Roger Hales’ driving skills. We were there at Le Lion d’Angers to watch the second of French Fifteen’s three consecutive wins down there and who should we bump into before racing but George, who had a runner in another race. Ever the ground breaker is George!

As usual, Ryan Moore’s skills were in evidence all week. Kyprios in the Goodwood Cup proved easy enough and was a testimony to Aidan O’Brien and the team’s skills to rehabilitate him from the severe injury problems of 2022 into 2023 to be the revived master stayer of his time.

Ryan had predicted he would be too good for what he described as horses that were “much of a muchness”, but in truth were decent 110-plus rated stayers all. Moore needed to be much closer to the peak of his powers though when completing a big-race double on Thursday aboard Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes and last year’s champion juvenile filly Opera Singer in the Nassau Stakes.

Each time it looked as if his nearest challenger might be about to pass him but Ryan seems to mesmerise his fellow jockeys in such situations. Opera Singer was the sixth winner of the Nassau Stakes – but only the fourth for Aidan O’Brien - for the Coolmore owners, starting in 2007 with the remarkable Peeping Fawn. Minding and Winter were the other two of Aidan’s within that 17-year period.

Like City Of Troy, her male counterpart as juvenile champion last year, Opera Singer is by Triple Crown hero Justify; and it seems the plan is to go for the Arc with this highly-talented filly. City Of Troy, of course, is pencilled in for the Juddmonte International at York this month.

Later, the juvenile newcomer Dreamy, by the Coolmore team’s other Triple Crown winning stallion American Pharoah, overcame greenness to win the fillies’ maiden under the same jockey to make it a Ballydoyle/Coolmore hat-trick, though each wearing different silks such are the extending tentacles of the co-ownership edges of the operation these days.

Eight years ago, the same maiden race was won by Rhododendron, but she had the benefit of a run in Ireland beforehand. A multiple Group 1 winner, she is, of course, the dam of Auguste Rodin. If Horses In Training is correct, Dreamy is the only American Pharoah two-year-old among the one hundred-plus juveniles at Ballydoyle. Someone knows how to pick which goes where!

Finally, as if three wins on the day for the team weren’t enough, Mrs Doreen Tabor had a winner in her colours that same afternoon at Nottingham, trained by Ralph Beckett!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Beaten by Sepsis

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It’s funny when you speak regularly with people in racing, especially in my case primarily those I’d known in my previous incarnation, that memories come flooding back, writes Tony Stafford.

For example, before the first at Ascot on Saturday, a two-year-old contest, representing part-owner Jonathan Barnett and his Fire Flame, I stood at the end of the paddock to view it on the big screen. While there, I ran (or rather stumbled) into David Loder and John Garnsey. Many years ago, when Loder started training at Sefton Lodge in Newmarket, he had terrific success, notably with his juveniles, which were always well-schooled and ready to run.

Ricky Bowman was an “enthusiastic” work rider at a time when whip use was less frowned upon and indeed “when whips were whips”.

So, the Loder horses went into action with the equivalent of a race behind them and it was pretty easy to find winning opportunities. Many of the best prospects found their way into my Daily Telegraph tips as I was in contact with David every day.

So much so that when I bumped into legendary punter Harry Findlay at Doncaster sales maybe 15 years later, he said that when I napped one, he had his maximum on. “No commission, Harry?”

David has stopped training for some time. When he left Newmarket for the first time to look after the Sheikh Mohammed horses in Evry, France, on the site of the former racecourse, after Jeremy Noseda declined the offer, the contact finished.

Before he left, we regularly used to suggest that John Gosden didn’t seem to be doing much of a job with the Sheikh Mohammed home-breds in his yard. The first year he returned, I bumped into him as he was about to run his juvenile City On A Hill in the July Stakes. Of course it won, as did Noverre the following year.

As we were about to pass, he stopped me and said:” You know we used to laugh at John Gosden about what a crap job he did with the Sheikh Mo home-breds?” "Of course", I laughed. “Well, I’ve got them now and I think he was a f…… genius to do what he did with them!”, he said.

Now the wheel has turned full circle, David and Anthony Stroud are back buying the sales horses for Godolphin in close concert with the boss and Charlie Appleby, who was with Loder in the yard back in those Evry days.

I was chatting to Charlie a bit later along with Jono Mills, who was the young manager for the Rabbah (Godolphin-lite as I used to call them) horses at the time. Quite a few were in the revised Loder team after the Sheikh ended the Evry project and David took out a licence to train publicly from Egerton stud, next to the National Stud in the town, and the base for David Elsworth until his retirement a couple of seasons ago. Johnny Murtagh, before his Classic-winning time at Coolmore and post-John Oxx, rode the horses and unlike in David’s first go at the job, they tended to finish 2nd. Murtagh couldn’t ride a winner and Dave soon ended the experiment - Jono still remembers the frustration of it all.

Now, tall and lean and looking like some distinguished film producer, Loder can lay claim to Thursday’s wide-margin Sandown debut winner Ruling Court, a €2.3 million buy from Arqana. “Maybe he beat trees, but he looked good,” he said. A son of Justify so maybe another City Of Troy would be the hope

John Garnsey was and is an almost exact (but slightly younger) contemporary of mine, him at the Daily Express. Quiet and amusingly laconic whenever we meet, he usually says something like: “Well at least we’re still here!”

We had all agreed as the horses milled around behind the stalls that one of the runners, Letsbeatsepsis, had a most unfortunate name. Trained by Gary and Josh Moore, obviously there was a story behind it. Loder was there to watch another of his discoveries, the 1.5million gns Al Misbah, the 11/10 favourite.

A slow start didn’t help the favourite and he could only keep on for fourth, just ahead of a tubby-looking Fire Flame, with both beaten for third by Letsbeatsepsis, an 80/1 shot.

I thought I’d better investigate and indeed there is a story. I called Jayne Moore, wife of Gary, mum to joint-trainer Josh, recently-retired jump jockey Jamie and TV star Hayley. Oh, there’s also Ryan, who won that race on Richard Hannon’s Our Terms and went on to take the next, the Princess Margaret Stakes (Group 3) for Ollie Sangster.

Jayne explained that Letsbeatsepsis’ owner-breeder Patrick Moorhead had fallen ill with sepsis a few years back and hadn’t heard of it until he caught the disease. He was in ITU for months, but when he recovered, thought it would be an appropriate name to make people aware of it.

Saturday’s runner, a first foal, shows enough talent to do just that. I did some research and discovered that sepsis in the UK claims 48,000 deaths annually. The much more publicised breast cancer (11,500) and prostate cancer (12,000) claim together less than a half as many victims. To illustrate the full horror of sepsis, it is estimated that 11 million, one-fifth the world’s annual death toll, succumb to it.

Gary had only half a dozen two-two-year old wins in the past five years but now with Josh on the licence you can expect the younger end of the team to press for more flat horses and if possible of a precocious nature.

One young man on the fast track to success is Ollie Sangster, and not the least of his skill in only his second season as a trainer has been to judge the time when allowing big-name owners to buy out the existing owners.

Judging by the smiles of parents Ben and Lucy before the Princess Margaret, the price paid for the twice-raced maiden Simmering by Al Shaqab Racing was substantial enough for original partner Lucy to enjoy the day whatever happened.

Just as at Royal Ascot where Simmering flew home in the shadow of highly rated Fairy Godmother, showing similar finishing speed in the Albany Stakes to the winner, Simmering again got a fair way behind. Then Ryan, switched from her Royal meeting nemesis, found himself a fair way back but came through the middle of the field and was well on top at the finish. A 70,000gns daughter of Too Darn Hot, Simmering will have enhanced her value still further, but that sure touch Ollie showed when lining up a Group 3 to break a maiden will have impressed the international set.

Later, Ben Sangster, still with a full-on smile, was anxious not to put too much expectation on the young man’s shoulders. Ollie, obviously grandson to Robert Sangster, should according to Ben, “take small steps. The dream is still there though that one day he can move into the main yard at Manton House.”

One final point about King George day and the main event. Before the race Aidan O’Brien, having walked the course earlier, and Ryan Moore told Michael Tabor of their misgivings after 3mm of water were added overnight. Also, near the inside they had put down a fair amount of sand. Michael, realistic as ever, said: “It’s what it is!” almost resigned to another down to the 2023 Derby winner’s in-out career.

One thing I’m pretty sure of: the winner, the Francis-Henri Graffard-trained gelding Goliath will have been the first winner of the race with such a pronounced case of stringhalt. As he went past us in the pre-parade, I was dying to ask him: “Can you do it as well with your right hind leg?" Bet he can’t! Decent performance though.

**

Yesterday featured the last day’s UK jump racing for around three weeks. While the top jockeys will be able to afford to go on exotic trips, their lesser-earning counterparts will be ruing the fact of reduced earning possibilities. Nicky Richards told me that he thought the stop was an opportunity missed. In Ireland they have races for jockeys that have won fewer than 20 races in the previous season and he reckons that should have been copied here.

Meanwhile, on another contentious issue, Dylan Cunha, who won a Racing League contest at Yarmouth last Thursday, goes further, believing that the top 20 trainers could be excluded to no harm for themselves, leaving the better prize money in these races to the remainder. Hughie Morrison, one of the Team Scotland trainers in the Racing League, believes that the bigger than usual for the grade money available has merely been “stolen” from the rest of the UK’s races in their respective grade. Three men with plenty to say and all with feasible opinions.

- TS



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Monday Musings: Of Cups and Plates

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The joys of shared ownership were never better exemplified than on Saturday, with big wins on both the flat and in the most valuable race of the summer jumping season, writes Tony Stafford.

Suppose you owned a highly respected stud farm and stood three stallions, one of which, Nathaniel, is long-standing and good enough to have produced a mare of the calibre of world champion Enable, you would always be on the lookout for anything you thought capable of coming some way towards that sort of racecourse brilliance.

Step forward Graham Smith-Bernal, boss since May 2021 of former German-owned Newsells Park Stud. Nathaniel, a son of Galileo, has over the past couple of years been joined by smart mile performer Without Parole and top sprinter (five times Group winner) A’Ali.

Trained by John Gosden, Nathaniel began life in that famed juvenile maiden at an evening meeting at Newmarket, finishing a gallant runner-up to Sir Henry Cecil’s career-saving Frankel, also making his debut. Frankel’s famed 14-race unbeaten record entitles him to be regarding as maybe the best-ever flat racer.

Nathaniel was no slouch either, winning the King George at Ascot as a three-year-old, the Coral-Eclipse the following year, and edged out by a nose by Danedream in his follow-up King George attempt. He bowed out with a third to old adversary Frankel in the 2012 Champion Stakes, finishing their careers in the same race, too.

Four lengths was the margin this time, the brilliant French gelding Cirrus Des Aigles intervening. Frankel has lived up to his racecourse form at stud and stands for the Juddmonte operation for £350k. You might say that Nathaniel, if he can produce another Enable, is outstanding value at one-twentieth the Frankel figure at £17,500.

So here goes. There was a first-time Nathaniel filly in a Kempton 2yo maiden at the tail end of last year, running for the emerging Valmont operation and trained by Ralph Beckett. A £200k Tattersalls Book 1 yearling, You Got To Me started her debut race slowly, but soon made smooth headway to track the leaders on the outside. That effortless speed was what most impressed the Newsells team.

Then, having got to the lead inside the last furlong and a half, she showed resolution to win quite nicely at the finish, coming out best of four in a line 100 yards out, staying on well as you would expect a Nathaniel to do. Graham made contact as to whether she might be for sale. “Luckily, Valmont are traders. I offered £200,000, for a half-share. They replied “£300k.” We settled on £250k.” Some deal I think.”, he said.

The partnership began with a win in the Lingfield Oaks Trial (or rather the Ralph Beckett benefit), followed by fourth in the Oaks and again fourth in the Ribblesdale, where she was very free, going into a near ten-length lead at Swinley Bottom. Once headed, she battled on more resolutely than could have been expected in the circumstances, for a close fourth.

Beckett decided to fit a first-time tongue-tie on Saturday in the Irish Oaks, to curb that enthusiasm, and it worked perfectly. The result? A measured performance where Hector Crouch managed to keep in Ryan Moore on the Coolmore favourite Concede just behind him in the home straight, and You Got To Me went on to win by a comfortable one and a half lengths, again showing that strong finish.

It probably helped the team that Moore didn’t get as smooth a passage as the winner and it will be interesting to see whether the result will be replicated on a further meeting.

Another Enable? Who knows, but You Got To Me is going the right way, stays well as do all the Nathaniels, but with that extra instant speed ingredient that most horses don’t possess. Instead of the boss being there to enjoy the win first-hand, it was deputed that racing and nominations manager Gary Coffey should represent the Newsells half of the team at the Curragh, a proud moment for the Irishman. “It was a great day for us, almost up there with when another partnership horse, Waldgeist, won the Arc the year after Enable’s second win in the race.”

Smith-Bernal, kept on home soil worrying about the health of the family dog, instead hosted 16 members and friends of a (sadly unplaced) Charlie Johnston-trained runner at Newmarket’s oddly-timed fixture. They had no luck, but a beaming Smith-Bernal made sure the champagne kept flowing. It was almost better to be celebrating in the owners’ dining room at Newmarket, able to whoop with delight as she passed the post. We happened to leave the course at the same time, he and wife Marcella holding hands, he with that massive grin still on his face.

The Newsells model is different from many others. They have around fifty mares of their own and another fifty or so for clients as well as a similar number of boarders. Their own colts and fillies are all available for sale. Newsells fixes a value and if they are unsold at the sale, often partnerships are negotiated with the stud retaining an interest for racing.

It wasn’t all gloom for Coolmore and especially Ryan Moore. He rode the most audaciously patient ride on the much-improved four-year-old Tower Of London in the one mile, six furlong Group 1 Curragh Cup.

The three-year-old and fellow Galileo horse Grosvenor Square set the pace in a race where top-class dual-purpose performer Vauban and Tower Of London dominated the market. Also, in the O’Brien stable, he set up a 20-length lead and was still at least eight ahead coming to the final furlong. Meanwhile, a long way behind Grosvenor Square, Tower Of London was easing past Valmont and swiftly made up the ground. He won with his head in his chest. Wow, such mastery of his trade!

There was a future potential opponent for You Got To Me and Concede in the Hughie Morrison-trained four-year-old Mistral Star, on show later on the Newmarket card. Mistral Star took on a sizeable field in a ten-furlong Listed race and smoothly raced away from them. The homebred will be pushed quite close to a 110 rating after this and Morrison knows just how to bring the Helena Springfield fillies to their optimum potential. She looks sure to stay further on this evidence.

Now to, for me, the happiest Saturday result of all. On Thursday I sat in a Gaucho restaurant in London’s West End, while this publication’s editor showed us three a recent video of the Geegeez.co.uk chaser Sure Touch in a schooling session before taking up his Saturday target in the centenary Summer Plate Chase at Market Rasen.

I had to agree with Matt that it was “sensational”, especially for a horse with only five previous chases on his card for Olly Murphy. As he was winning the big race, attended by my York races landlord Jim Cannon and a couple of my fellow guests, all of whom are in this syndicate, I’d forgotten all about it.

Contacting Matt later in the afternoon, the drinks had already been flowing. I don’t suppose any of the numerous errors that no doubt will be sprinkled within this offering will be picked up, so I better check again. [They have been 😉  - Ed.]

Then yesterday, the team were on the mark at Newton Abbot with the 4/1 favourite Konigin Isabella, trained by Anthony Honeyball. Rumours that Jim paid for the helicopter to take the team from Lincolnshire to Devon are apparently untrue.

The moral of this epistle is clear. If you have a couple of hundred grand or so, scour the autumn maiden juvenile races for potential. If you want to join a syndicate, have a look at Geegeez.co.uk. Other syndicates and agents – some of whom we often mention here – are available.

- TS

 



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Monday Musings: A Desperate Week

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On Tuesday evening I left Brighton racecourse at around 7 p.m. after a frustrating day brought on by the closure of the A23, diversions from which cost me at least one and a half hours’ irritation, worrying that I’d get there in time, writes Tony Stafford.

At about the same time, John Hunt was arriving home in Hertfordshire having commentated at Lingfield Park’s afternoon meeting. He found a horrific scene which in one ruinous moment wiped out 75 per cent of the life he and wife Carol had built together for their three daughters.

The fact that three female members of one family, Carol and younger daughters Hannah and Louise, had become a target of a single malevolent individual is bad enough: the ordeal he subjected them to before administering the final sanction simply multiplied the horror.

My own view while waiting for news of the outcome of the search for the suspect – do we still today have to go through that charade when it’s all too certain who the triple killer was? - is anger. That’s right, anger that while being so gifted in sending the three blameless women to their deaths, this Army-trained killer didn’t have sufficient skill or guts to end his own life.

So now he has precipitated a farcical process that will mean an entirely futile murder trial sometime in the months to come that will make even harder the mourning process for John and eldest daughter Amy.

Everyone commenting on John Hunt, an exemplary commentator on numerous sports, is unified in describing him as a wonderful individual.

My recollection of him every time we’ve spoken over the last couple of decades is that infectious smile and a love for West Ham United. No doubt he was coming home ready to sit down with the family to watch the Spain-France Euros semi-final.

There must have been a moment, when the BBC’s coverage of racing was already confined to radio, that brought him to a crossroads as to whether to stay with them. At the time Cornelius Lysaght was the correspondent and John just did the commentaries.

These were often restricted to the last few furlongs of a major flat race or the final obstacles over jumps as the Saturday afternoon programme producers deigned to leave a Premier League game for one precious minute. John never cribbed about it even though it must have been utterly frustrating.

After Lysaght was moved on, Huntie’s status increased and then came the swimming commentaries at the Olympics and other major events. His eagle eye, developed from watching high-speed horse racing finishes, made him outstandingly better than the Olympic gold medallists that were previously the Beeb’s imprecise eyes on the pool.

Even soccer and other equestrian activities at the Olympics have since come within his range, at the same time never interfering with his initial job as a race commentator or increasingly in the Sky Sports racing studios as a genial and impressively fluent, knowledgeable presenter.

I hope John will feel able to resume that Olympic Games role this month. It might be a little easier than having to bump into all the regulars he would see if his first resumption was to be at the races.

We all, of course, wish him well, and wonder how such wickedness has come into our world: bodies in suitcases killed by someone from Colombia allowed to be living here, left on a bridge in Bristol, and an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.

 

*

 

The world and racing go on and on Saturday we were back to the bizarre fixture clash of Newmarket’s July Cup, York’s John Smith’s Cup, both Premier Racing fixtures, and Ascot’s non-Premier card which carried the Group 2 Summer Mile. It must have seemed a bit of a joke at Ascot that they could put on a programme with £200k in winners’ prize money and be the least important of three meetings on the day.

There was additionally in previous years Chester, but they were forced by the authorities to revert to a teatime start and apparently didn’t like that too much. Salisbury and Hamilton made up the numbers at more conventional evening start times.

Then yesterday, when Chester, Hamilton or Salisbury might have been able to stage a nice Sunday afternoon card, instead it was jumps only at Perth in Scotland where the weather was rubbish and Stratford, at least under sunshine in front of a decent attendance.

Newmarket on Saturday featured the latest example of Jane Chapple-Hyam’s expertise (as if it were needed), the Australian-born step-daughter of the late Robert Sangster, landing the £340k first prize for the Group 1 July Cup with the progressive Mill Stream.

The four-year-old son of Gleneagles is still a colt and, boasting also a Group 2 win at York earlier this year in his locker, he could be a potential stud prospect when his racing career is deemed to have finished. It was a major triumph for Peter Harris, once famed for top-class jumpers and a former trainer, but now happy to have Jane do the work while he supplies the raw material (and the cash that is needed to acquire it).

Earlier, the Chapple-Hyam stable was also on the mark in a £25k to the winner fillies’ handicap at HQ. Asian Daze had been bought out of Johnny Murtagh’s stable at the Goff’s London Sale on the eve of Royal Ascot for £200k on behalf of Australian Gai Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott.

She ran well in the Sandringham Stakes, when her 9th of 30 would have been improved considerably with a clear run. Transferred after Ascot to Jane, this was her first run since, and her fellow Aussies will be looking forward to Asian Daze clocking up some serious money when she gets Down Under.

Talking of money, I made only one visit to the July HIT sale at Newmarket, the Brighton escapade draining my physical resources, and I thought three days at Newmarket races would be enough to cover Thursday onwards.

That just left me with Thursday evening. As I arrived half an hour before the action started, in time to find my old sparring partner John Hancock in his customary seat in the buffet, I bumped into Dylan Cunha. The South African trainer has made a great impact over the past two years, and he has been particularly sharp at spotting bargains at the yearling and HIT sales.

I asked him, “Have you anything in mind? I’ll keep an eye on whether you get something.” He turned to his left at the same time pointing out three bench seats backing onto the pre-parade walking area. He said, “Do you see those gentlemen? They are all from various parts of the Middle East” – so nine in all. “They’ve been there for ages and when one stands up, someone else comes across and takes his place.”

Buyers from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar and increasingly Bahrain all want to buy horses from the UK, Dylan said. “It works both ways. I sold a horse yesterday <Wednesday> that I valued at 4k and he went for 18 grand. Unbelievable!”

The common view was that if a horse was worth ten thousand it would fetch 25k, if 20, treble it. So it proved.

Some of it is down to the system where three horses are needed to fill a crate for export – one, two or three on the crate costs the same. Buyers may have bought two to bring home and will be desperate to secure a third. It seems that they will always be able to find someone back home to believe it’s worth the money.

Tonight, I’ll be off to Windsor hoping for a repeat Monday night win there for the Jonathan Barnett/ Newsells Park stud-owned and Michael Bell-trained Wootton’s Jewel.

To give you an idea of horse prices these days, especially for those aged three as he is: at Windsor last time on his first start of the year, Wootton’s Jewel was a short-head winner over the Andrew Balding-trained Star Runner and Oisin Murphy didn’t look too chuffed that Hector Crouch had got the better of him. Last week, Star Runner, rated identically on 77 with his Windsor conqueror, was sold to William Durkan for 105,000gns, presumably to go jumping, rather than for export to the Middle East. When Wootton’s Jewel wins again tonight, what will he be worth, 150 grand?!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Sue And The City

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You say it quickly and it does seem a little unusual, writes Tony Stafford. But it’s only when you put it in perspective - that it was Mrs Susan Magnier’s first visit to a UK racecourse for twelve years on Saturday at Sandown - you appreciate how remarkable it was.

Then you begin to understand how City Of Troy is regarded among the Ballydoyle owners, his trainer and jockey Ryan Moore He’s not merely another star racehorse. He’s something apart, everyone involved in his development believing from very early days on the home gallops that he is unique.

I can’t remember whether Vincent O’Brien’s daughter attended any of the 2012 Classic races. That was a memorable year with victories in the first four. Indeed, the clean sweep was only denied them when Enke – he of the failed dope test the following year which found steroids in his system when under the shamed Mahmood Al Zarooni’s care – denied Camelot the Triple Crown.

No doubt the very young Susan O’Brien/Magnier would have lived every minute of the last Triple Crown, her father’s horse Nijinsky coming over in 1970 to achieve the extraordinary feat - the first for 35 years since Bahram in 1935.

A named co-owner (rather than husband John) in almost all the earlier and subsequent triumphs for the non-related Aidan O’Brien team of Coolmore partners, it’s amazing to appreciate just how many major wins she had absented herself from before Saturday.

If we start with the Classic wins. From 2013 onwards, she, with Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith mostly, has won the 2000 Guineas three times, the 1000 Guineas five times, the Derby seven times, the Oaks six times and the St Leger four times; that’s 25 in all, never mind that 2012 quartet.

If we descend into all races, Aidan has sent over since 2013 around 1500 runners for a little more than 200 wins and prize money of £60 million The poverty of UK prizemoney in relation to that of other leading racing authorities is best shown by the last figure.

There’s no question that City Of Troy is the one horse racing today that would command the sort of money that football clubs pay for the best players. His value, like them, potentially soars above £120 million to my mind. Unlike footballers, though, stallion owners can get their money’s worth.

Some racehorses of recent times, especially Galileo, the principal equine power base behind the consistently astonishing Coolmore/O’Brien success of the past 20 years, have commanded stud fees reputedly close to £500k. When Coolmore list one of their stallions as “private”, just being able to inveigle a mare into his breeding shed has needed something of that dimension and the promise not to reveal how much has been paid for the privilege.

Multiply that by a conservative 125 or so mares covered each year; factor in a two or three-year span to retrieve all the money and you get the Coolmore formula – one pursued, usually in vain, by their imitators.

City Of Troy, while not a son of Galileo, does have Galileo on the dam side, through his mother Together Forever, a Group 1 winner at age two, and one of the many mares by their champion looking for worthy mates to keep the pot boiling at the highest level.

Step up (and he already has) Justify, one of two recent Triple Crown winners, both now operating from Coolmore’s Ashford stud in Kentucky.

City Of Troy has done enough to deserve to stand where Galileo did for so many illustrious years. Unbeaten and the European champion at two, he won the Derby impressively after that Guineas aberration, then on Saturday he beat his elders in the Coral-Eclipse, the first meaningful Group 1 battle between the generations of the 2024 season.

As in the UK, to illustrate how difficult that achievement has been, Justify, and American Pharoah a few years earlier, were also pathfinders after a 37-year gap since Affirmed won the 1978 Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in the tough five-week schedule that series entails.

For a UK horse to win our Triple Crown, I suggest an even more difficult trifecta: he has to be quick and ready enough to land the 2000 Guineas at a mile in early May; stay 14 and a bit furlongs on the daunting Doncaster circuit in September; and in between have the adaptability to come home first around the difficult Epsom 12 furlongs with its gradients and cambers in the first week of June.

I think time will tell us that Sheikh Mohammed’s remarkable mare Oh So Sharp, the last filly to complete the female Triple Crown in 1985, with 1000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger, deserves much more attention than is generally afforded her.

The first element inexplicably eluded the team, Ryan Moore coming back visibly shocked at the unexpected reverse on Newmarket’s Rowley Mile. Yet so quickly does the racing year evolve that within two months we’ve already seen his rehabilitation – back almost to the sublime domination of his generation as a two-year-old – in the Derby and then the victory in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.

Justify’s win over 12 furlongs on the US’s biggest oval, Belmont Park, where he completed the set in the Belmont Stakes, offered promise that his progeny would stay at least middle distances, without compromising the speed which won the two shorter distance Triple Crown races.

Had City Of Troy won the 2000 Guineas, he may well have missed Sandown, and gone instead to the Irish Derby and would now be gearing up for the St Leger. The combative John Magnier and friends, though, are always out to stretch the boundaries. After Sandown, presumably it’s the Juddmonte at York and if the Irish Champion Stakes is not then on his agenda, it seems that even the Breeders’ Cup Classic on dirt could be. Then again, maybe both.

There was no sign of weakening – quite the reverse – from City Of Troy in the Derby, and then when all looked potentially to be going wrong in the Eclipse, the will to win from horse and rider Ryan Moore, kept the opposition at bay.

A couple of incidents stayed in my mind from before the race. One of the closest inside the group said that after all the rain that had fallen on Sandown, had it been his decision to make, he would have pulled City Of Troy from the race. Two trainers, Brian Meehan and Hughie Morrison, did withdraw their runners on concerns about the going.

Next, standing quite close in the pre-parade paddock,while Aidan was, as he prefers, saddling his horse in the open in the middle of the paddock rather than in a saddling box, I remarked to a friend, “see how calm and placid he is,” at which exact moment his left hind leg flashed back and only Aidan’s nimbleness enabled him to evade it. Three or four further attempts to clean out his trainer were also unsuccessful and then it was on to the main paddock and a host of people anxious to see the superstar.

In the race, Wayne Lordan made the running on stable pacemaker Hans Andersen and, while Ryan was happy enough to follow him, Ghostwriter eased up on his inside as they reached the end of the back straight. Then around the home bend, any idea of serenity for the rider was eroding as City Of Troy seemed momentarily to lose his footing and he had a length quickly to retrieve on his opponent.

Up the straight, though, he gradually mastered Jeff Smith/ Clive Cox’s smart performer, but then had a more serious rival to deal with. The Joseph O’Brien four-year-old Al Riffa had sat last of all but came with the final challenge and one that from the stands looked likely to prove decisive.

I wondered afterwards whether Sue Magnier might have been looking on momentarily in horror, reliving the day when brother David with Secreto beat her father’s hot favourite El Gran Senor in the Derby of 1984. Here, though, City Of Troy’s battling qualities eliminated such horrors, kicking in and he had the race won by a full length.

When asked what had he expected beforehand, Ryan Moore answered, “I thought he’d win by ten lengths.” I’m sure Sue Magnier did too, but now everyone knows that for all the brilliance, there’s also a dogged will not to be beaten in that remarkable DNA. Roll on York!

In case you wondered, yes, I did get another chance to press the flesh. His lad kindly waited a few seconds as I got into position and this time, unlike at Epsom, his coat was a little wet to the touch. Maybe the Eclipse got to him rather more than the Derby did - and no wonder!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Suspension

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When is a suspension not a suspension?, writes Tony Stafford. When it is handed down to an Irish trainer, even when at the second attempt the authorities do try to add a little sting to what was originally deemed insufficient punishment. It seems effectively it’s little more than a rap on the knuckles.

We had the Gordon Elliott episode a few years back when Ireland’s second most successful jumps trainer had to give up his licence. With her stable conveniently close by, Mrs Denise Foster, the chosen one to carry on business at Cullentra Stables, had her transfer rubber-stamped and approved by the authorities. She recorded 17 and 32 wins in the seasons 2020/21 and 2021/22 which spanned Elliott’s 12-month ban.

A licence-holder since 1997/98, Denise must have shown something to Gordon that the stats did not reveal. Her seasonal tallies since that opening date had been 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 0, 1 and 1. Since the Elliott days it’s been back to normal with 2, 2, and 0 so far in the early phase of the 2024/25 campaign.

Therefore, Mrs Foster recorded a total 38 wins in 26 seasons in her own right, against 49 in the segments of seasons that Gordon left her.

I remember thinking at the time, maybe there should be a “cooling-off” period when – say another season – when while the returning trainer can seek out new owners - and horses to train for them - those animals left with a substitute, and clearly not a “serious” trainer in terms of an Elliott or Willie Mullins, would need to find elsewhere for their horses to be trained for that period. Maybe even to stay with the “convenient other” that had them before that period.

Elliott, at least, was fully remorseful for his actions and vowed never to repeat anything like that again and has certainly come back keeping to that promise. He is now firing again and if not managing, as had seemed possible in the past, to wrest the champion title accolade away from Willie Mullins, he continues to make a decent show of it. That was something that had seemed most unlikely at the height of his “dead horse on the gallops” picture infamy.

If the Elliott ban had its irritating elements through the Foster months, even more so was the brief suspension of Charles Byrnes, king of the unsighted gambles. He lost his mandate but was still able to lead horses around the paddock while one of his sons held the licence and another rode it to victory. What part of that was “not training” the horse.

But now, Tony Martin has eclipsed all of that with Saturday’s victory of Alphonse Le Grande in the Northumberland Vase, consolation race for the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle.

Initially given only a suspended six-month ban for a third drug-related breach of regulations within four years, the Irish racing powers relented in face of criticism of the leniency of the judgment and imposed three of the six-month ban to start on May 15.

Martin had time therefore to bring Alphonse Le Grande over to Chester a week or so earlier to mop up the valuable consolation race to the Chester Cup and after his performance there, few at Newcastle on Saturday expected anything other than another success and almost £40k more of UK prizemoney for the Hollie Doyle-partnered stayer.

It was almost laughable how easy it was, and additionally it was notable for the fact that trainer Cathy O’Leary was having her first flat-race winner for 15 years and only the fourth in 20 seasons with a licence. And who is Mrs O’Leary? Tony Martin’s sister of course!

By contrast with Ms O’Leary, Denise Foster’s career had been almost prolific.

The sight of Martin standing alongside a couple of the winning owners and Hollie Doyle on the rostrum, evoked a “Sod you lot” attitude. I’m not sure whether it was before or after the presentation that one of the owners, asked what the plan was, said: “We’ll give it a couple of weeks and then sit down with Tony”. Martin’s ban still would have a month to go at that stage – no mention of the official trainer.

Martin, no doubt, would love to target next month’s Ebor at York, with its massive prizemoney. He won it eight years ago with Heartbreak City, half-brother to the Geegeez.co.uk money-spinner Coquelicot, but having won here off 81, he would need at least a stone’s hike to get into the York race and even then, it would be a stretch.

Maybe Goodwood’s valuable 1m6f Coral Handicap could be an obvious target with another potential £51k on offer to the winner. That would entail a 4lb penalty for York, but unless the first hike is more extravagant than is likely, even with a win at Goodwood he would still likely be left on the sidelines. Never mind Tone, the richly-endowed Irish Cesarewitch, worth £324,000 to the winner last year and a race he would probably squeeze into off a mark in the low 90’s, might be the way to go.

After his ban, in an interview recalling how his career had developed, Gordon Elliott said: “When I first sat on a horse at Tony Martin’s 30 years ago, I could never have dreamt what was in store”. Maybe neither could his then youthful first employer.

Sanity resumed in Ireland’s premier Classic yesterday when Los Angeles battled to turn around Epsom form with Ambiente Friendly to give Aidan O’Brien and part-owner Michael Tabor each their 16th triumph in the race.

There was a battle between the pair up the home straight and it was not until the last half-furlong that Los Angeles and Ryan Moore got the better of his brave rival, ridden by Rab Havlin, to clinch the €712k first prize. Late on, fast-finishing Sunway, partnered by Oisin Murphy for David Menuisier, edged out Ambiente Friendly. Fourth home Matsuri, for Roger Varian/James Doyle, was also staying on well. That late run increased Sunway’s prize from €112k to €237k.

Initially, the result gives a major boost to the Derby form when City of Troy had the placed pair well covered, and that will have added confidence to his chance of beating his elders in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.

But Sunway’s performance, following his 7th last time in the Prix du Jockey Club, is also an advertisement for the unbeaten winner of that race, Look De Vega. In traditional Gallic fashion, this potential champion can do the favoured French thing over the summer – waiting for the Arc while the other main contenders beat their brains out at Sandown, Ascot and York. Intriguing.

- TS



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Moday Musings: For Age

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It’s so difficult if you aren’t sure where to look, writes Tony Stafford. I’ve got a 2002 Directory Of the Turf and a few Horses In Training to help me and also the BHA web pages, but can I find a copy of the latest Weight For Age scale? No, I can’t. At which point, dozens of people – if that many read this, of course - will be jumping up and down and saying, here it is you idiot. [Here it is, you absolute gent - Ed.]

The nearest I got was to project forward two months to a race I know allows two-year-olds to compete with their elders. Of course, it’s the Coolmore Wootton Bassett Nunthorpe Stakes over five furlongs at York’s Ebor meeting.

Two-year-olds carry 8st 3lb and three-year-old have 9st 11lb. You’d think that would be more than enough for a juvenile to take advantage and beat his/her elders. The last two to do so were Lyric Fantasy (7st 8lb for Michael Roberts) in 1992 for the Richard Hannon senior stable, Lord Carnarvon’s filly beating stable-companion Mr Brooks and Lester Piggott by half a length.

The last male winner of the race was the John Best-trained and John Mayne-owned Kingsgate Native 19 years ago and I remember thinking him a good thing. He and Jimmy Quinn did the business that day and these are the only two since Ennis in 1956!

The WFA allusion is significant. If the scale requires a concession of 22lb by older horses to their juniors over five furlongs in August, then extending that to seven furlongs and going back even earlier into the season, to mid-June, surely must take the number past 30lb [it's 38lb from the start of July - Ed.].

On Saturday at Royal Ascot, the very high-class Haatem was shrewdly directed from the Group 1 company he had been keeping down to Group 3 for the Jersey Stakes for three-year-olds. The 2000 Guineas third, behind Notable Speech and Rosallion, his stable-mate and the only horse to beat him in the Irish 2000, left the St James’s Palace to that horse and dropped back a furlong.

He won, but was all out in a race where there were three in a line as they passed the post and the first ten were all at it hammer and tongs in the last 100 yards. Haatem recorded a time of 1 minute 26.85 seconds.

Two hours earlier, the opening race on day five, the Chesham Stakes, a seven-furlong Listed race for juveniles, threw up the most spectacular performance of the week. Here, Bedtime Story, a daughter of Frankel out of dual Nunthorpe winner (at age four and five) Mecca’s Angel, making her second start, was simply sensational.

Ryan Moore waited until just before the two-furlong pole before sending her into the lead and she sauntered further and further clear right to the line. The winning margin was nine and a half lengths, despite Ryan’s having no need to do more than keep time with her action.

Neither did he bother to correct the slight coming off a straight line in the last furlong, moving maybe three or four horse widths to the left. Her winning time? 1 minute 27.01 seconds, just one-sixth of a second slower than Haatem, carrying 6lb less. The fillies in the Jersey Stakes carried 5lb less than Haatem.

In form terms, Bedtime Story’s run was far in excess of Haatem’s once the scale is considered and was a reminder of the day last summer when the same Hannon horse saw the backside of City Of Troy in the Superlative Stakes.

He did get his revenge at Newmarket on City Of Troy’s baffling - even to Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore - run in the 2000 Guineas but it was back to normal as City Of Troy romped home in the Derby and also for much of last week for the Ballydoyle team.

Before the week started, Ryan had confided to a friend that Auguste Rodin, Opera Singer and Kyprios were his top three. Opera Singer hardly let the side down with second place in the Ribblesdale, but Auguste Rodin and Kyprios were both right back at their best. Judging how the former’s stylish success was celebrated by some of the visiting Australian contingent, his future, either on the track or in the breeding shed, might well be interesting.

My meeting began with one of those omissions that could easily have spoilt the whole five days. I stood in the paddock chatting to Sam Sangster and Brian Meehan as the juveniles for race two, the Coventry Stakes, waited to go into the stalls.

Brian had told me in the morning how he expected a big run from Rashabar, who was drawn on the far side, running in Sam’s Manton Thoroughbreds colours. Before the race it would have been guesswork as to which side would be favoured. As Rashabar detached himself from his group coming to the last furlong, you could see there were challengers aplenty on the near side.

They flashed over the line together but wide apart and it was by a nose that Rashabar prevailed with the next nine home all on the other flank. Eleventh home but second on his side was the Coolmore favourite Camille Pissarro, four lengths behind.

Brian Meehan has begun to specialise in 80/1 winners; he also had one, Monkey Island, at Newbury during York’s Dante meeting. The 80/1 here stretched to 129/1 on the Tote, of which I foolishly forgot to accommodate myself on the way down from the stands. Billy Loughnane, only 18, deserved all his glowing comments for an excellent ride.

Meehan also was successful later in the meeting in a Group 3 with the lightly-raced three-year-old Jayarebe, owned by Iraj Parvizi, back with the trainer after a longish gap. Brian won the Breeders’ Cup Turf for the owner with Dangerous Midge in 2010 at Churchill Downs.

It’s always nice to record successes by friends, but in the case of Wilf Storey it’s almost becoming an embarrassment. Probably last week or maybe the one before, I recounted the tale of Edgewater Drive and his win at Carlisle.

Last Monday, now faced by older horses and from a 7lb higher mark, the Dandy Man three-year-old gelding bolted up again under the much-underrated Paula Muir. I had mentioned the absurd disqualification of a recent winner of Paula’s at Wolverhampton, one which carried the added injustice of a two-day ban.

Paula learnt before Edgewater Drive’s race that the Wolverhampton disqualification had been overturned as had her ban. A double bubble for her.

On Saturday evening at Ayr, nicely sandwiching the entire Royal meeting, she and Wilf Storey were reunited with the seven-year-old Going Underground. Winner of just one of his 32 previous races and off through injury for a year until a recent comeback run, he came from miles back to win on the line. You rarely see that type of finishing speed in 0-50 Classifieds. If his old wheels can handle it – Going Underground not Wilf - he should win again.

Earlier this year, Paula was considering giving up and had been training for a future career as a dog groomer, but five wins in short time for Storey have no doubt helped change her mind. Much of the credit for the team withstanding owners wishing to replace her at several stages in the past have been met firmly by Wilf and granddaughter Siobhan Doolan, the assistant trainer.

As to the Storey story. My friend of almost exactly 40 years has run four individual horses on the flat this year – all picked up for a total of less than 20k at various Newmarket sales. Between them they have had ten runs in 2024 and won five of them. There can’t be many trainers, let alone this veteran, well into his 80’s, with a 50% strike-rate!

- TS



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Monday Musings: One that slipped through the net

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Over the best part of twenty years, colts by Galileo have been the mainstay of the incredible Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore operation, winning Derbys and other Group 1 races, it seemed almost to order, writes Tony Stafford.

In truth, though, it took a lot of equine firepower and financial clout to retain the biggest proportion of those coveted animals. Even last year, two years after his death, the 2001 Derby (and plenty more else) winner still had 17 three-year-old colts to represent him at Ballydoyle.

The sort of hundred-plus generations of new intake, mostly animals by the Coolmore partners’ own stallions, have required ruthless cutting back of the fringe animals every year. From last year’s 17, just two, smart stayer Tower of London and the so far yet to reappear Espionage, winner of two of his five races last year, remain.

The better performers among the surplus animals have often been privately sold, like Victoria Road, the 2022 Breeders’ Cup 2yo winner, but never able to repeat that level after sustaining a winter injury when he had the 2000 Guineas as his target. He is now racing in Australia. The lesser lights, though, often rated in the 100’s, generally go to the sales.

The powers that be at Coolmore pretty much get it right most times, but nothing is certain where horses are concerned. It now seems obvious that Prague, by Galileo out of a Group 3 winning mare, simply slipped through the cracks.

Racing for the first time on Saturday in a 20k to the winner GBB maiden race against 3yo’s to whom he was conceding under the weight for age scale either 13lb (colts) or 18lb to the fillies, including the favourite Chorus. Always nicely placed, Prague led halfway up the straight and drew away to win easily by four lengths, a margin that could have been extended if jockey Jack Gilligan had wished.

Jack was probably too amazed to do anything other than wait for the winning line. As to his trainer, Dylan Cunha, and owner Mr Amadao Dal Pas, they would have been shell-shocked. They were probably watching on in disbelief however well their colt – yes, he is still a colt! – had been working at home. His starting price of 40/1 suggests whatever he had been doing, he managed to keep it from prying eyes on the Newmarket gallops.

Prague was one of the unwanted Ballydoyle nine that had entries for last October’s Tattersalls Autumn HIT sale, although they didn’t all turn up in the end. His presence coincided with Dylan Cunha’s concerted effort to enlarge his string. The South African, a successful trainer including at Group 1 level as far back as 2007 in his homeland, had transferred to the UK the previous year.
Aiming at a new challenge, Cunha realised that starting from scratch in a training centre like Newmarket would take a lot of hard work. He took a small yard in the town and had his first runners in the latter half of the season, winning one race from his 28 starters.

Last year, he accelerated to 16 wins from 111 runs and £205k, largely thanks to the efforts of his smart grey Silver Sword. We ought to have taken the hint. Silver Sword, a son of Charm Spirit, had been one of his initial intake. He refused to race in his first two juvenile starts, but after a 60-day break and some intensive schooling, recovered well enough to be placed in his next two before the end of that year.

He won first time at three In April and, in all, from a seven-race programme, won three times, including the final race at the York Ebor meeting, worth £52k to the winner.
Silver Sword has yet to find his form as a four-year-old, but Cunha certainly has. The promising score of 16 encouraged lots of new investors to the yard and persuaded Dylan to be extremely active mainly at the lower end of the sales markets, both for yearlings and second-hand horses. One of those, the ex-Michael Bell-trained Mart has won five times since late October.

The necessary expansion had to be done. He had taken out a lease on the historic Phantom House stables, made available upon last year’s retirement of the highly-respected William Jarvis. In some ways it was a sad day when William retired as it ended an unbroken line of training Jarvises in Newmarket.

But William will be delighted that the winners are still flowing from his former base. Now Dylan, armed with almost 20 juveniles (unless he’s added to that more recently), has a nicely balanced team of 50 or so. Already in 2024, he is on 15 wins with prizemoney within 30k of last year’s entire tally.

As to Prague, if he can keep sound, he could have a big future still as a racehorse. Further down the line, he also has the possibility of making a stallion somewhere one day. There are still plenty of people who would love to have a Galileo stallion of their own especially one with Prague’s obvious talent. How about the Czech Republic?

Meanwhile, this week Tower Of London, one of the retained two, has two Royal Ascot entries. He is, with Point Lonsdale, backup to the six-year-old Kyprios, the 4/5 favourite for Thursday’s Gold Cup. Winner of the race two years ago, he’s yet another Galileo entire, and like several before him, he will have the Coolmore NH sires team leave a space for him when he eventually retires. Tower Of London also has the option of the Hardwicke Stakes.

Coolmore will be eagerly anticipating a form revival from last year’s Derby winner Auguste Rodin in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes. He didn’t run too badly on his return to home racing when second in the Tattersalls Gold Cup three weeks ago. Certainly, it took away a degree of the hurt from his abject run in Dubai in March.

From one emerging stable via the world’s most powerful operation, I would now like to refer to a horse that keeps turning up at the big meetings. If he did manage to win Saturday’s Wokingham Handicap, Apollo One would probably be the only horse ever to have won at the fixture effectively from a one-horse stable.

Peter Charalambous has been in the racing owning/breeding/training game for many years. In recent seasons he has joined forces with James Clutterbuck on a shared licence but as his own interest in and enthusiasm for the sport has dwindled, his section of the yard has become solely centred on Apollo One.

Every time he has a run – and it’s always in important handicaps like at the Guineas meeting and on Derby Day – this six-furlong specialist is consistency personified.

Peter has kindly invited some people to join him as co-owners of the horse on Saturday: my friend Steve Howard and three of his Dutch mates, two of whom are filmmakers, will be going in full-on Royal Enclosure garb. Spoilsport Steve will be wearing a normal suit, but the boys from Holland are going totally Moss Bros. No doubt, Apollo One will run his usual race getting in the money. If he happens to win though, I’m sure Pete will be suggesting the story of Apollo One as one that is eminently suitable for the cinema goers of Amsterdam!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Nothing To Say

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There’s just over a week to Royal Ascot, therefore we’ve an extra few days to fill this year because of the vagaries of Easter, writes Tony Stafford. Not much happened in the last week, and I doubt too much more of any great moment will occur in the coming one, so we can concentrate of some of the more obvious ills (or rather frustrations, to me) of the sport.

Without too much investigation I’ve got a gripe about a few things. Sunday racing, Race Planning, handicap marks and unfathomable stewards’ decisions are all fertile places to start. Then maybe after examining an example of each over recent days, we can see whether that constitutes an article. I hope so because otherwise I’ve Nothing To Say.

Let’s start with Sunday racing. The experiment with Sunday evening cards was abruptly dropped over the past couple of weeks. High summer is here – at least the sun shone yesterday where I am – and Saturday proved an attraction around the country.

The stands were, as one Racing TV presenter in the north, so either Catterick or Beverley, “heaving”, and the gogglebox pictures confirmed the same at both tracks and at Goodwood.

Mick Fitzgerald reminded Sky Racing viewers on Saturday, that there are no stands at Bangor to be “heaving”, but the bank was extremely well populated. That brought to me a time when Bangor, as the last UK track I had still to visit two decades ago, was the scene of a runner in which I had an interest.

Noted stud owner and youngstock producer Richard Kent kindly told me he had saved me two badges “for my box in the main stand. I can’t get there, but I’ll make sure they look after you royally.”

They do that anyway there, in a ground-floor building next to the paddock. Richard was there actually, to bask in my embarrassment. Anyway, with the first sight of sun around the country, the punters, for all the extravagant cost of going racing, were out in force.

As I mentioned when I started, the BHA promise had been for enhanced Sundays. Goodwood yesterday lived up to that with a card that should have ensured another good attendance, but anyone else other than in the south of the country who wanted to watch live racing would have been stymied.

According to Google maps, Perth, the nearest and only other horse racing – point-to-points apart – being staged, is 511 miles away. Even from Scotland’s two biggest cities, Edinburgh (47 miles away) and Glasgow (62 miles) the one-way drive takes around an hour and a half. Better than nothing I suppose, that is unless you don’t like summer jumping.

Goodwood offered just over a quarter of a million pounds on a strong card, designated a Premium Raceday and I was gratified to see a selling race for juveniles offering a £10k first prize. The disappearance of so many selling races down the years has been a major negative.

What was the problem of owners having a win and getting a nice few quid on then having the option of getting rid of an unwanted horse or trying to buy him back in the auction? My dad – I was stuck in the DT office - once got bid up to a record 14 grand to buy back my horse Bachagha after he easily won a selling hurdle by a distance at Fontwell. Isidore Kerman, then owner of Fontwell and the Kybo horses – as a boy he was always advised “Keep Your Bowels Open” – didn’t flinch from telling Dad, about the record not his ablutions, so afterwards.

My first ever winner was at Beverley, one of my favourite tracks. Charlie Kilgour was a moderate animal I’d bought via a friend of a friend from Alan Spence, probably then still at primary school it was so long ago. I always wondered who Charlie was, but Alan told me years later he didn’t have a clue: “He was already named when I got him,” he said.

Ridden by 7lb claimer Simon Whitworth and trained by Rod Simpson, Charlie won. I backed him, got the prize money and the selling price. A day of days. Not being one to wish ill of anyone I was delighted when, for the new connections, a very truncated career ended without a win. I’d like to think I’d be more charitable nowadays. What I do believe, though, is that often the action in the ring after a seller enlivens proceedings and I’d love to see a lot more tracks including sellers in their cards.

Goodwood have made a big effort and there’s nothing better than a day on the downs close to the Solent which can be seen on a bright day high up from the back of the stands – albeit away from the action.

I mentioned Race Planning. I’m involved with a so-far maiden three-year-old rated 74 after three runs at two but, for one reason or another, he hasn’t managed to get back on the track in 2024.

His trainer seems happy that at last we’re enjoying a clear run towards a race, and he has been looking for one for three-year-olds only at around 1m2f. On the Monday after Royal Ascot – Eureka, there’s a 0-75 three-year-olds only over ten furlongs at Windsor. Wait a minute, there’s also a 0-75 three-year-olds only half an hour later over 1m3f and a few yards! Take Your Pick. At a time when it’s very difficult to find any race that suits, here’s two within half an hour with the same conditions.

Depending on field size, couldn’t they bring the two fields together, move the stalls to a position midway between and run for double the money?

A senior trainer said recently in a conversation with me that the RCA holds all the cards and the BHA is helpless to argue with them. Maybe that’s the problem.

Now to handicapping. It’s always been a subjective thing and some trainers seem to be more skilled at keeping their horses’ true and potential ability under wraps as they move them through the grades.

Sir Mark Prescott was always the master at getting favourable initial marks for his younger horses, then when putting them up in distance. Sometimes, he would win four or five in midsummer when the fields started to thin out, before challenging for important handicaps or even Pattern races in the autumn.

One trainer has recently been enjoying Prescott-like spectacular achievements but with an animal of a markedly different profile. Phil McEntee’s five-year-old mare Jacquelina had already raced 26 times (two wins) before her sequence started, that after amazingly having run 14 times for one win between late October and early March.

Jacquelina’s mark had been largely unchanged throughout the period, remaining in the mid-50’s, and two narrow wins in her first two runs back on turf early in May gave little indication of the explosion that was to follow. Also, the implications for at least one horse that had never raced within 150 miles of her would prove irritating at least.

In the second of her recent wins, she beat Anglesey Lad, who was receiving 10lb (8lb of that weight for age), by a neck. Her mark went up by 2lb, his by 1lb. Then Jacquelina took off. Thirteen days ago at Brighton, she carried a 5lb penalty to an easy two-length success. Three days later, this time under a double penalty, her weight of 10st 6lb (less daughter Grace’s 3lb allowance) made no difference, the mare winning this time by more than three lengths.

Now running off another new mark of 70, three days ago at Thirsk, she probably would have made it five in a row but for Grace’s dropping the reins at a crucial stage and she was caught close home. Not to be deflected by her latest rating of 75 coming into play, McEntee took her on to Chepstow. There, Jacquelina had no trouble in easily winning an apprentice race, Grace’s claim keeping her weight below 10st 10lb!

Her progress makes Phil McEntee an early challenger for some kind of trainer’s award and no doubt owner Trevor Johnson and breeder Nicola Kent, Richard’s sister, know where their votes would go if they had one!

I had to look to see how many more races Phil had in mind for this amazing mare who no doubt will go up a further 10lb tomorrow. With no penalty to be incurred for the latest apprentice success, surprisingly, McEntee hasn’t made any. Slipping there, Phil.

But if you like the look of Jacquelina’s form, you can instead wait until Thursday at Yarmouth and Anglesey Lad. As I said earlier, just 1lb higher than when beaten by the mare at Brighton on May 21, he runs in a modest handicap. Anglesey Lad has appeared once since, when beaten by 1.75 lengths by Edgewater Drive at Carlisle. That margin should equate to 5lb at the time-honoured equation of 3lb to a length in sprints.

Edgewater Drive was instead raised 7lb without any action deemed necessary for Anglesey Lad. When Wilf Storey questioned the handicapper, she cited the Jacquelina element, even though she hadn’t done anything with Anglesey Lad’s mark, while the mare he had got so close to kept winning.

My last gripe is on behalf of Laura Muir, Edgewater Drive’s jockey. She came home a nose in front after a straight-long duel with the runner up in a race last week at Wolverhampton.

Even though her mount Prince Hector never touched the runner-up High Court Judge (maybe an omen?) and only deviated marginally in the closing stages, the result was overturned, much to the amazement of all the media and television pundits on the day. To add to what seems an unfair verdict, Paula also got a two-day ban, an appeal about which is being funded by the Professional Jockeys’ Association.

How many times have you seen big race finishes where one horse carries the other across the track and the verdict is left alone. Having watched it a few times, and all the other matters I’ve touched upon, I wonder why this great sport wants to shoot itself in the foot in so many ways. Apart from that I’ve Nothing To Say!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Of God and the Alchemist!

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Who is Celia? What is she? Or rather where is she? The one-time lady amateur rider and walk-on or pub-customer extra in Eastenders (and other TV series) played a massive part in my life, writes Tony Stafford. I’m sure she had/has no idea and even the Internet didn’t help me track her down. But Saturday relegated her to the second half of this two-in-one article. You’ll see why shortly.

Having made almost fanatically-extravagant judgment based on his two-year-old performances – the best two-year-old I’ve ever seen, I suggested – the abject failure of City Of Troy in the 2000 Guineas five weeks ago could surely only bring an early hasty rush off to stud. That would have been the normal obvious course of action.

But then his trainer is Aidan O’Brien. Never did he – outwardly, at least – question his horse, just himself for not putting in the required amount of tough work into a potential Classic winner in the weeks leading up to Newmarket.

So, they gathered at Epsom, for some reason suggesting the draw in stall one was a big disadvantage. Why? Didn’t Oath win from there in 1999, causing your correspondent and the Henry Cecil/ Thoroughbred Corporation horse’s groom to dance around in delight. We’d watched his win on the tiny TV screen on the jockeys’ room glass wall just behind the unsaddling circle that has been home to the greats: Nijinsky, Shergar and Galileo himself in 2001, the first of ten winners for Aidan and the Coolmore partners.

Only two of those came before Camelot in 2012, a ten-year gap for O’Brien from High Chaparral in the year after Galileo, but eight of the next 13 giving testimony, if any was needed, of the trainer’s uniqueness.

Two of the Coolmore ownership group also had a bonus win with Pour Moi in 2011, trained by Andre Fabre, putting Sue Magnier (the great Vincent’s daughter) and Michael Tabor ahead of the trainer as the winning-most pair in the race’s 240-year history.

By the time Aidan has finished, he will have set records never to be broken - of that I am sure - as by the time it could be possible, racing will be staged on AI tracks with AI horses - with no trainer or jockey in sight.

First the race. Ryan Moore on the only lightly-backed favourite (3/1 about a horse that was odds-on for the Guineas, “unbelievable”) as Jonno Mills of the Rabbah (Godolphin-lite) operation reflected afterwards, though not before – was allowed to start slowly.

In all his races – the three as a juvenile and the Guineas, he raced towards or at the front. Now, tackling another half-mile, he had to learn on the job, coming from behind as his stablemates Euphoric and the previously unbeaten Los Angeles set a strong pace.

He came down the hill nicely, switched inside early in the straight and had the speed to stride through gaps where an ordinary staying horse might have been less malleable.

Passing Los Angeles between the two and one-furlong poles, he was quickly clear and just needed to be kept going by Ryan (Derby number four for him) to remain almost three lengths ahead of the Bill Gredley/James Fanshawe Lingfield Derby Trial winner Ambiente Friendly.

Third was Los Angeles, six lengths in the end behind his stable-mate and then the two Ahmad Al Sheikh horses, one each for Andrew Balding and Owen Burrows. Sixth, having come from miles back but then looking like he didn't quite get home, was Roger Teal’s Dancing Gemini who must be a banker for a big prize in a Group 1 over ten furlongs.

Bill Gredley, at 91, had to have been hopeful as his colt came there cantering, but Ryan on his inside was always finding that little more speed. Still, it was great that Rab Havlin, parachuted in to replace his Lingfield rider Callum Shepherd, enjoyed such a wonderful ride in a Derby.

Havlin, so often the back-up to Frankie Dettori – did we miss him as he won a couple of races across the Atlantic? I think not - gave his mount an impeccable ride through. Rider was as flawless as his always flamboyant owner had looked resplendent in the paddock in the only bright red trousers on view. You’d probably have had to scour the well-patronised funfair areas on the inside of the track to find a pair to match them!

As I’ve mentioned before, Bill Gredley started life in Poplar, East London, not far from Michael Tabor’s birthplace in Forest Gate – Stratford coming in between. Joining Michael as ever, were his racecourse pals, all of whom he has known since the 1980’s at least, including Maurice Manasseh, even with him for the Florida Derby that Thunder Gulch achieved under 'Money' Mike Smith for D. Wayne Lukas in 1995, before adding the Kentucky Derby, Belmont and Travers later in the year.

Just two years later, having been (as ever, shrewdly as it turns out) identified by John Magnier as a potential partner as the old Robert Sangster/ Vincent O’Brien era at Ballydoyle/Coolmore was starting to unravel, the two-man ownership team won successive 2000 Guineas with Entrepreneur and King Of Kings. I’ll never forget the former as my eldest grandson was born at 3 a.m. the next morning less than an hour’s drive away.

The succession at Coolmore seems firmly in place. MV Magnier does most of the recruiting and brother JP also has plenty to say behind the scenes. John and Sue’s son-in-law David Wachman, a highly successful trainer before retiring as a younger man, is also in the back-up team. David’s young family are all outstanding in the field of equestrianism, so much so that Grandpa John prefers watching their exploits than some of even the biggest race days his horses contest.

Derrick Smith, delighted to be in attendance on Saturday, as he had been in Louisville when Sierra Leone gave the partners a close second on the same evening as the Guineas debacle, has son Paul and enthusiastic grandsons – all there on Saturday - to pass on the baton when the time comes, as it inevitably will.

Meanwhile, also on Saturday, I detected a new element to the possible Tabor succession.

Over the many years I’ve known him, I hasten to say, no more than to chat for the few minutes our paths would have crossed in various winner’s enclosures, Ashley Tabor-King has been almost distracted, enjoying his father’s success but more involved in developing his interest in the music industry. His mother Doreen is a noted supporter of emerging classical musicians, and while Ashley has been largely into pop music, the influence is clear.

Having successfully turned the Global Group, of which he is boss, into the biggest in commercial radio in the UK he has also overseen its many charitable contributions especially to younger disadvantaged people. Now, though, he seems to be taking rather more interest in the sport.

On Saturday, before the Dash, he was looking over the balcony through binoculars aiming to get the focus right, asking where was the start? I pointed back up the track and said: “You’re looking the true professional, can you give me a commentary?”

Then, around an hour later, when the owners were called to the podium to accept the most-desired trophy in UK - some may say, world  - racing, for all its modest value compared with many races elsewhere, Ashley and husband George took their places to the left of the group.

It’s been a joke between us that he might have considered himself a Jonah on the rare times he went to the big events. “You’re not a jinx, you’re a lucky mascot,” to which he replied, “I always thought I was a lucky omen. It was just MV and JP who joked otherwise!”

As he is such a great friend with all the people in the next generation, I’m predicting that this truly engaging man will find that learning about the game his father knows inside out might well appeal as a new challenge for him.

Now the form from last year with Haatem - City Of Troy twice beat him easily - is looking better after the places by Haatem in the 2000 and Irish 2000 Guineas. Rosellion, second at Newmarket, first in Ireland, and Notable Speech, unraced since his win in Newmarket for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin, will be contesting the big mile races. Neither Appleby nor Hannon stopped smiling as they called in on the Coolmore box after the big race – as with almost everyone around the winer’s circle as he came back in.

City of Troy in the Winners' Enclosure at Epsom after winning the 2024 Derby, attended by Ryan Moore and Tony Stafford (right)

City of Troy in the Winners' Enclosure at Epsom after winning the 2024 Derby, attended by Ryan Moore and Tony Stafford (right)

I watched the race just by the winning line – my friend and former Daily Telegraph colleague George Hill reminded me that was where we saw Reference Point’s big win for Henry Cecil – and it gave me plenty of time to get first into that famed circle.

Eventually, everyone crowded in, but somehow, I managed to get close to City Of Troy. Remembering when I went to Coolmore and met Galileo with Harry Taylor and Alan Newman a few years back, I’d stood with my hand on his near-side flank. Here I was able to do a similar thing with City of Troy. While Ryan was cuddling his neck, I pressed my hand gently on the other side. After the horse’s exertions, you might have expected an agitated animal - he was anything but. Whenever I’ve touched one of the horses I’d been involved with as a racing manager or owner in the past straight after a race I’d always come away with a wet hand.

Not on Saturday – it was bone dry, his body warm, but he stayed motionless as the photographers assailed him from the front. Racing finally is back page and television news for the right reasons. As for me, I will never forget that full minute when I touched greatness!

*

Back in the mid-80’s I somehow inveigled a horse for a cup of tea – and an equine replacement of him. He had been designed to be a riding horse, but thankfully, the intervention freed him from that dull fate, allowing him to resume his proper job as a racehorse.

Sent to Rod Simpson, he won a couple of races in the same week, at Folkestone and then Lingfield on a Saturday evening, before finishing fourth in the Lady Riders’ race at Ascot on King George Day. He hadn’t a prayer against some smart, developing three-year-olds from the likes of Barry Hills and Michael Stoute. Fourth then and a spot on the edge of the old Ascot winner’s enclosure was an achievement in the days the race wasn’t a handicap.

I’d been willing to sell before the winning spell started, and the fact that he might still be for sale persuaded Celia Radband to tell a couple of her lady rider friends – in those days quite a small community - about him

I was in the DT office one day when a call came in. "Mr Stafford?", asked Wilf Storey, "I understand you might want to sell Fiefdom", by now a five-year-old, who had been talented enough to finish fifth in the Cambridgeshire for Bruce Hobbs two years before.

He was just about the most polite person I’d ever heard, certainly in the hubbub of a sports room of a national newspaper in those days. He told me his daughters Fiona and Stella had been told by Ms Radband that he would make a lovely jumper. I hadn’t thought of that – his form when he initially started jumping was awful, but anyway.

I had to say, sorry no, adding if I changed my mind he would be my first call. Fiefdom ran well again at Ascot that autumn, after which I decided to call Wilf, offering him at 5k rather than the original 6k.

In the meantime, he’d taken another two of Rodney’s horses after one morning when they played up. I should have them shot, said a furious Rodney. I thought maybe Wilf, primarily a sheep farmer, would take them and the arrangement was duly done.

Within a couple of days, one of the two had indeed been moved on, having almost killed Chris Grant first day on the gallops; but the other one, Santopadre, was fine. These were two of a ten-horse deal I’d done with Malcolm Parrish, whom I first met at the Cashel Palace Hotel, close to Ballydoyle where he was with David O’Brien, who I’d arranged to visit.

David had recently won the Derby with Secreto, beating his father’s El Gran Senor in a massive upset which briefly threatened the stud deal that Sangster/O’Brien had already negotiated. Secreto missed the Irish Derby, El Gran Senor duly won, and the world moved on as imagined.

Also in that Parrish bunch was Brunico, later 2nd in that season’s Triumph Hurdle having been sent to Rod. Two runs later he won the Group 3 Ormonde Stakes at Chester for Terry Ramsden, beating top-class Shahrastani. Santopadre was offered around. I asked Wilf if he had anyone with two grand to buy him. Answer: “no!”

Oliver Grey rode him first time on his last day’s riding in the UK at Musselburgh before going to India. We thought him moderate, but Oliver gave him a tap around the home bend. “He flew,” he said, “so I put the stick down.”

So, the plan had to be three runs, achieved so his rating was a lowly 26 or so – they went down a lot further in those days!

Then, having told me, “Never mind the flat, I’ve never had a novice jump so well", I said there’s a weak race at Hexham coming up. He replied, “I’ve done nothing with him – you told me not to.” Despite his misgivings he won.

He won again in a fair claimer at Newcastle soon afterwards. Now, going from that company into an open juvenile novice with a 10lb penalty might have seemed a step too far, but he gave 15lb and a 15-length beating to Buck Up, a Peter Easterby filly that eventually finished runner-up in the Schweppes Gold Trophy.

Santopadre was fifth in the Triumph for Wilf, three places behind Brunico. His reward? To have him taken away to Simpson. Not by me, but Ramsden had paid many times the initial fee for him and did as he wished.

So to Fiefdom, with Santopadre already in the team. He arrived off the wagon and Wilf’s fears were unfounded. "He’s a great big beauty." He bolted up – well backed – first time at Sedgefield, running off a much lower jumps mark than his 71 on turf. In all he won three Ekbalco Hurdles at Newcastle for Wilf and ended his working days as a rider.

They were the start. In between, with younger daughter Stella doing most of the riding on the Muggleswick gallops, the winners kept flowing, the most important Great Easeby, a £2k purchase unraced from Robert Sangster. He won races all over the place, including the Pertemps Final at Cheltenham.

Another to come from Manton more recently was Card High. I’d watched him being completely outpaced as a juvenile in all his gallops for Brian Meehan and the decision was made between Ben and Guy Sangster, Robert’s sons, to get rid. I made sure I was standing nearby and when I heard the magic words, I was there. “I know someone!” – he won six and only retired last year.
Stella had to withdraw a year or so ago from the action after suffering many bad falls, but fortunately her sister Fiona’s daughter, Siobhan Doolan, was able to step in. I was watching the HIT sale last year and noticed that an Ollie Sangster two-year-old was unsold at 1,000 gns.

I checked with Ollie whether he had left the sale – he hadn’t, “but be quick!”

I was nowhere near, but old sales pal Richard Frisby came to the rescue and did the deal. The horse was called Edgewater Drive, a son of of Dandy Man. At first, the gelding, who had injured a foot before the sale, "could hardly walk up the gallop, never mind run", says Siobhan. Gradually, after several weeks’ careful handling, he was able to break out of a trot.

All that part was unknown to me as I tried to get ten shares sold at £100 each. With good friend Keven Howard trawling the pubs of mid-Essex, between us we must have asked 30 people and managed to sell not one share.

Siobhan got going. She had managed to syndicate the mare Shifter to the same people that had owned Card High – oil rig workers offshore in Scotland - and that mare won twice last year. Many of them eventually joined up as Edgewater Drive gradually came right.

Eighth in a decent mile race at Wetherby on his first run where not quite getting home, everyone was enthused when Shifter won another twice recently as Edgewater Drive had worked nicely behind her up the late Denys Smith’s gallop.

Expectations were bright, then, on Friday at Carlisle and, under a lovely ride from the underrated Paula Muir, Edgewater Drive sailed through a gap and won by almost two lengths. No City Of Troy, but at £100 a pop, pretty good value. If Aidan O’Brien can turn water into wine, Wilf Storey might not be able to do that, but the old alchemist almost turns base metal into gold! And none of it would have happened without Celia Radband.

Come on in Celia and watch Edgewater Drive win again next time out at Redcar of June 21, unless of course you are at Royal Ascot!

- TS



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Monday Musings: Galloping Through The Classics

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Four weeks after the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket and seven days after the Irish 2000 Guineas, with all the recognised trials sorted in between, we come on Saturday to Derby Day, writes Tony Stafford.

It’s as early as it can be, and for those stables yet to strike form, it’s always a frightening thought that within 46 days of what most professionals believe is the true starting point of the 2024 turf season – day one of Newmarket’s Craven meeting – we will have knocked off four-fifths of the UK Classic complement.

We’ve had Chester, Lingfield, the French 2000 and 1000 Guineas, York and the two Irish Guineas this past weekend. Sometimes we get the odd one coming on to Epsom for the Derby or Oaks from the two Irish Guineas races. Realistically, though, with the races only one week apart, it seems an abrupt tactic to switch from one mile up the Curragh to the 12 furlongs with its twists, gradients, and cambers of the Derby course.

In times gone by there was also Goodwood, a three-day midweek fixture, following on from York’s Dante meeting.  In 1979 Major Dick Hern had two fancied runners at Epsom, the Queen’s Milford, and Sir Michael Sobell’s Troy, with stable jockey Willie Carson staying loyal to the latter – seen as traitorous in some parts.

Troy had begun his three-year-old season with a narrow win in the Classic Trial at Sandown, a performance that Hern thought needed another race to bring him to the boil. To wait for the Predominate Stakes, Goodwood’s colts’ trial, was reckoned in most quarters to be a risky policy, with so short a time between that race and the Derby.

Nowadays, Goodwood’s two Listed races for three-year-olds, one for colts/geldings and the other for fillies, are both staged on the same day as they were on Saturday. At first glance, the narrow win of Meydaan, third behind Ambiente Friendly in the Lingfield Derby Trial, might have been regarded as a boost for the form. I didn’t see the race live so took that as evidence backing my recent excessive praise for the Lingfield success of the James Fanshawe colt.

However, a review of the race replay told me otherwise. At least two in the seven-horse field could have finished much nearer. Space Legend, the William Haggas-trained favourite after two promising runs, was a fast-closing second after extricating himself from crowding and could almost certainly have won had he been able to start his challenge a little earlier. More worryingly for the form, fourth home Lavender Hill Mob also might have finished much closer.

This Michael Bell horse is rated a modest 79 having won a handicap last time. It’s hard to see how Meydaan, always in the clear on Saturday, deserves to go higher than his present 97. There’s no realistic scope for an Ambiente Friendly upward rating adjustment in tomorrow’s listings. I thought he ran a brilliant race at Lingfield, but yesterday morning, Rab Havlin, who will be replacing his Lingfield winning jockey Callum Shepherd this week, was worrying about the chance of soft ground at Epsom. “He has such a daisy-cutting action”, said Havlin, after working on Newmarket’s Limekilns yesterday.

Nowadays, the Predominate, downgraded some time ago to a Listed race, is known as the Cocked Hat Stakes and I think yesterday’s form could be put in a cocked hat! In 1979, Troy won that race by seven lengths and followed up by an identical margin in a devastating performance at Epsom. He ended as Racehorse of the Year, despite not matching his best form when third in the Arc having won the Juddmonte at York in August.

The old timers always used to say, fourth in the Guineas, first in the Derby, and as Paul Cole would be quick to remind us, that was the route taking by his and Faad Salman’s Generous in 1991. This year’s fourth, the Clive Cox-trained, Jeff-Smith-owned Ghostwriter does have a Derby entry – the Irish version at the end of next month.

He, along with the first three home at Newmarket, headed up by Godolphin’s impressive winner Notable Speech, has the one-mile St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot as the next step on the agenda.

There is already some serious Classic solidity to the Newmarket form with Rosallion and Haatem, respectively second and third for Richard Hannon behind Notable Speech, making it a stable one-two in the Irish Classic on Saturday.

The only defeated horse in the 2000 Guineas expected to be running at Epsom – we can still have a surprise supplementary today - is the present favourite City Of Troy. He was a humbled ninth of eleven at Newmarket, 17 lengths behind the winner.

Since last week’s words here, Economics, the runaway Dante winner at York for William Haggas, has not been supplemented for the Derby, his wishes, probably reluctantly, acceded to by his owners.

With River Tiber finishing just behind the Hannon pair in third on Saturday, at least there is a semblance of hope for anyone with long-standing vouchers on City Of Troy for the Derby. There’s no doubt that he has always stood far above his stable-mates at Ballydoye. Interestingly, the one reason I’ve heard Aidan O’Brien giving for the flop last time is: “I treated him too much like a god over the winter.” Even God will have had to do some proper work, maybe even on Sundays, since!

O’Brien of course also had the top juvenile filly of 2023 in Opera Singer, a status guaranteed by her victory in the Prix Marcel Boussac on Arc Day at Longchamp last autumn. Like City Of Troy, she is by unbeaten US Triple Crown winner Justify, and all the assumptions as to her and her stablemate’s stamina possibilities are presumably based on Justify’s 12-furlong win in the Belmont Stakes, third leg of the US Triple Crown.

If City Of Troy comes back as Auguste Rodin did in last year’s Derby, it would still be no guarantee of champion racehorse status at the end of the season. Economics has the imminent target of the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot, a race that has projected its winner to stardom in the past. Shareef Dancer, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, had a quick follow-up in the Irish Derby back in the 1980’s.

There are four of the six horses outclassed by Economics still entered before today’s five-day stage. Ancient Wisdom and War Rooms were second and third at York, and victory for either would propel Economics into the “unbeatable” firmament – just as last year’s Dewhurst romp did for City Of Troy. I will leave the predictions and the talking to the horses on Saturday – I’ve had more than enough to say already. I’m just hoping for a clean race and a worthy winner.

To show that unpredictability in racing at Classic level is not exclusively for these shores, yesterday’s Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yushun) carried a winner’s prize of more than £1.8 million. Hot favourite at 6/5 was the previously unbeaten Japanese 2000 Guineas winner Justin Milano, but he had to give best in the straight to two-length winner Danon Decile, who started at 46/1!

- TS



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