Monday Musings: Remembering the Aga Khan

The news that H H the Aga Khan, head of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim sect, had died last week thrust me back more than 30 years, writes Tony Stafford. At the time I was scrabbling around trying to buy cheap horses, usually those that didn’t reach their reserves at the conclusion of the Tattersalls’ Horses in Training sale.

In those days, my targets were Cheveley Park Stud, usually well-bred fillies that didn’t measure up to their demanding requirements and would go privately for £500, or the Aga Khan detritus that it would be too costly to send back to either France or Ireland with nobody other than me wanting them. To be fair, the Cheveley Park ones were rarely much good!

I say detritus, but M. Drion, the Aga Khan’s manager, called them “boucher” (butcher) horses, so if I didn’t step in, they would be destined for the dinner tables of continental Europe. Once or twice, both targeted operations even gave them away.

While not a freebie, one such was Karaylar, a son of the Aga Khan’s Derby winner Kahyasi out of a mare by brilliant broodmare sire Habitat. He had been with John Oxx in Ireland, but the trainer of Sinndar, another Derby winner for the owner, hadn’t managed to get him on the track.

I spoke to His Highness by telephone having got the number from M. Drion. He agreed £500 and the cash was duly handed over. He called him a “boucher” horse, too!

At the time, I was regularly passing on my “finds” to Northumberland owner David Batey. In a few years he had done so well that he had a video made up of his “first” 25 winners. Most had cost buttons whereas only the last, bought from Brian Meehan as a 2yo at Doncaster sales for £14,000, was not my discovery. The winners had all been trained by my friend Wilf Storey.

I can only imagine the rage building up in the mercurial owner as 3yo Karaylar ran last of 11 first time on the flat and then, in the always well-populated novice hurdles in the north at the time, 16th of 20, 15th of 20 and, to finish the job, 19th of 21.

That brought him an initial mark of 64. Wilf and I always in our deliberations used to reckon on one run to confirm the rating and then go to work. Fourth in his first handicap, he then won a John Wade-sponsored selling handicap hurdle, at Sedgefield. That was a qualifier for the final also at Sedgefield on a Friday night early in May.

I can remember exactly where I watched it but have no idea where I had been earlier for me to be in that place. It was a betting shop in Bishop’s Stortford town centre. Karaylar started the 9/4 favourite and in a field of 16 won as he liked by five lengths under Richie McGrath, who had also been on him for the previous win.

What marked that race as special was its prize - £7,000, for a seller! Just a four-year-old, we thought Karaylar was going places – he did, rapidly downhill, never winning another race.

Mr Batey was also the beneficiary of another Wilf winner ridden by McGrath in his 7lb claiming days. That was Cheltenham Festival long-distance hurdle scorer Great Easeby, bought unraced for 2k from the owner-breeder Robert Sangster. A son of Caerleon, he was acquired in a very comfortable negotiation, sent to Wilf and won seven races between the flat and jumps.

Our association (not with Wilf) suddenly ended allegedly because the owner found out I had made a small profit on one of the deals. His success rate dropped almost to nothing once he stopped sending horses to Grange Farm, Muggleswick.

*

The Aga Khan was the third member of his family to make a massive impact on thoroughbred racing and, equally, breeding. His grandfather, also the Aga Khan, owned the famous flying filly Mumtaz Mahal in the 1920s and was prominent in racing until his death in 1957.

His son Prince Aly Khan kept the family horse racing business going, while at the same living a film star lifestyle,  especially when he married the actress Rita Hayworth. He died in a car crash, having already been passed over for the title of Aga Khan by his father who thought his son Prince Karim, as he was, would be a more suitable leader. For almost seven decades, he fulfilled the role with great skill and was reckoned as long ago as 2014 to having a fortune of $13 billion by Vanity Fair.

For racing fans, his green and red colours have been a constant even though he had refused to have them trained in the UK for a long time, relying on Ireland and France. He had countless champions in his time; for me, though, it’s always been Karaylar!

*

How frustrating that a week after the Dublin Racing Festival, one of the two biggest stars of the UK team shaping up to see off the Irish challenge at Cheltenham was unable to run in his warm-up race.

Sir Gino, flawless over hurdles, the latest time when deputising for the country’s number one, Constitution Hill, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and then spectacularly proficient first time over fences at Kempton over Christmas was the absentee. Many had travelled expecting to see him at Newbury, but a cut leg ruled him out of the Game Spirit Chase.

The Nicky Henderson horse was forced to miss the Triumph Hurdle at last year’s Festival and now will be going into the Arkle Challenge Trophy – if he gets there, that is – with only one run over fences behind him, unless Nicky sends him either to Kempton or Bangor as has been mooted.

Of course, waiting to pounce is Willie Mullins with his smart 5yo Majborough, winner of that Triumph Hurdle and unbeaten since in his two runs over fences. He looked last week in winning the Irish Arkle Novice Chase at Leopardstown that he still had a bit to learn about jumping fences. When Sir Gino won at Kempton, you could have thought you were watching a horse that had won ten races over fences, let alone had never run over them before. After all, it was Ballyburn that he was putting back in his box, a horse who all through last season and again at the Dublin Festival, looked like a future Gold Cup winner.

Henderson did have something to smile about on the Newbury card, the mare Joyeuse cantering away with the William Hill Handicap Hurdle and its £87k first prize in the colours of J P McManus. Only a 9/2 shot, the success was therefore expected in some parts but a glance at her earlier career did not present her with the most obvious of chances.

She won her only race in France, a 1m4f AQPS maiden as a 3yo by three parts of a length. The venue? Another of those French tracks where they probably mark out the rails the night before. For the record it was at Paray-le-Mondial, a track and indeed town I’d never heard of; but, in fairness, even those venues that race only once a year are always immaculately presented. Paray-le-Mondial is in the east of France, for the record, about 80 miles northnorthwest of Lyon.

The run was enough to secure a price of €235,000 soon after from the all-seeing McManus talent-scouting operation. Henderson took his time before sending her out for the first run from Lambourn, at Taunton in January last year and she won by half a length.

Two placed efforts in just over three weeks in November and December earned her an initial handicap rating of 123. The way she accelerated away – once favourite Secret Squirrel fell when still right in the argument at the last flight, suggested she wouldn’t have been far away off 143!

The McManus team from Ireland and the UK will be feared as usual next month but a quirk of the altered regulations for Cheltenham’s handicaps means Joyeuse is ineligible for any of them, and she isn’t a novice either. Aintree here she comes, no doubt.

 - TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Of The Kid and DRF

Amid all the extravagantly impressive performances of Wilie Mullins’ three winners on the first day of the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown on Saturday, I must say I was transfixed by one less predictable show a little nearer to home, writes Tony Stafford. Anyway, that’s how I would describe Musselburgh for us down south.

I had spoken to Nicky Richards on Saturday morning about the chance of The Kalooki Kid in the bet365 Scottish Champion Handicap Chase over 2m4.5f, surprised that his seven-year-old was as short as 11/4 for this £100k, £51k to the winner prize.

Nicky was optimistic, saying he had jumped very well at Doncaster (only second time over fences) and he was hopeful as long as the jumping held up.

Let’s put it in perspective. After a debut for the season when second over two miles at Ayr (12 fences) and a win where a few of the potential dangers fell at crucial stages when admittedly he had already taken charge long before the 15th and final fence, he came to Musselburgh having jumped 27 fences in public.

Now, off a tough enough 131 having been raised 7lb for Doncaster, the son of marathon flat-racer Gentlewave, out of a Flemensfirth mare, faced 11 opponents on Saturday. You can add to his two chase runs, six with two wins over hurdles last season, but a starting price of 2/1? Never.

The said opponents had all won over fences and in terms of experience had The Kalooki Kid by his extremities. None had raced fewer than eight times previously over fences, with four of them having won five times each. Adding their hurdles tally to the chase totals, the least number of runs was 16 – in one case – and it was mostly around 20, compared with the Richards’ horse’s eight. More pertinently, the 11 had collected 38 wins in chases before Saturday.

As I said, Nicky was hopeful the jumping would hold up. Regular partner Danny McMenamin settled him on the inside from the start; initially in around fifth in the running and going past the stands was soon in third, the leaps uniformly accurate without being in any way flashy.

By the time they turned for home with four to go, The Kalooki Kid was in a close second place, poised to tackle the long-time leader Saint Segal. A superior jump four out soon had him in front and still going easily.

Saint Segal had bolted up the time before for the Jane Williams stable at Newbury in December, his third win over fences and fifth in all. He battled bravely as for the second time running, The Kalooki Kid reckoned he’d done enough once clear on the run-in, but he still had more than two lengths to spare at the line.

So here we have a horse, bought at the Landrover sale in Ireland by Richards for €40k in June 2021.  Allowed to mature just as his father, the late Gordon W, would have done in his years bossing Greystoke Stables, and now the rewards should be flowing in the yard’s time-honoured manner, granted the required good luck.

With a pedigree like his, three miles should not be a problem, so now it’s down to the trainer to plot the right path. At 68, it’s remarkable that Nicky was still riding out until last autumn when he had an awful fall, breaking his pelvis among other injuries. The rehabilitation has been going steadily, and it would be great to see him back on track in time to witness the future triumphs from his new stable star.

The 2024/25 season has been building up nicely with 21 wins (and almost £400k in prizes) so far and, as well as The Kalooki Kid, he can look forward to further success with the likes of recent impressive bumper scorer They’re Chancers.

**

It was to be expected that Galopin Des Champs buttoned up the first part of the unheard-of triple double when adding a third successive Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown to the two Cheltenham Gold Cups which he has collected in between.

He might have been beaten twice since Cheltenham at right-handed Punchestown by Martin Brassil’s Fastorslow and then stablemate Fact To File, but as Willie Mullins would say, it’s not what you lose that matters, it’s what you win.

The same Fact To File was in this three-miler on Saturday and like three or four others was poised just behind the champion as he as usual led the field into the short home straight with one to jump. Then, Paul Townend asked and Galopin Des Champs delivered. The finishing burst obliterated any challenge.

It was a similar situation with last year’s Triumph Hurdle winner Majborough as he made it two from two since Cheltenham. In a display of raw power rather than slick jumping he made the considerable opposition in the Irish Champion Chase look much less that it had appeared beforehand.

Now he is poised for yet another of those titanic Mullins/Nicky Henderson battles in ‘the’ Arkle at Cheltenham with Sir Gino. Two emerging giants – redolent almost of the Mill House/ Arkle jousts in the 1960’s which so enthralled racegoers for almost three years until Arkle proved his immortality.

The third Mullins winner came in the opening race. The fact that the horse to be called Final Demand was sold for €230k as long ago as June 2022 suggested somebody knew something. The buyer waited until last March before sending him to a point-to-point which he won with ease.

He was then persuaded to let him go and it would be interesting to know how much Brian Drew and Professor Caroline Tisdall needed to shell out for him.

Anyway, they won’t be crying after an easy win at Limerick between Christmas and the New Year and Saturday’s exceptional 12-length victory in the opening Nathaniel Lacy and Partners Solicitors €88k to the winner Novice Hurdle over 2m6f. Mullins had four back-up runners in this and far from creaming the place money, all he had to show was 4th, 5th and two pulled ups including the second favourite Supersundae.

Final Demand will be a banker to follow Ballyburn in the 2m5f novice hurdle at Cheltenham while Ballyburn showed he was back in business after finding Sir Gino too speedy over two miles at Kempton at Christmas time. Back to the distance of last year’s hurdle win at the Festival, Ballyburn slaughtered yesterday’s opposition in the Ladbrokes Grade 1 Novice Chase.

Briefly returning to Final Demand, a son of Walk In The Park, he has the same broodmare sire, Flemensfirth, as The Kalooki Kid. Walk In The Park has been a shining light among Coolmore’s main jumps station, Grange Stud, for the past ten seasons in which time fee has always been advertised as “private”.

His story is odd enough. Runner-up in Michael Tabor’s colours in the Derby, a son of Montjeu, also a Tabor horse and a dual Classic winner (French and Irish Derby), Walk In The Park won only once (as a juvenile) in 14 career starts. Initially standing at stud in France, the year before his transfer to Ireland, his last publicised fee was €1,500. How do they do it? Like Willie Mullins, no doubt, talent and dedication.

We were promised a thriller between two Mullins horses in the Irish Champion Hurdle. State Man had won the last two along with last year’s Champion Hurdle proper in the absence of Constitution Hill, but the market settled on the younger mare Lossiemouth who had put in a spirited show when second to Constitution Hill in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.

But the clash evaporated into a damp squib down the back straight as Lossiemouth fell, leaving State Man, who narrowly avoided being caught up in the tumble, to collect the €112k first prize. Daddy Long Legs, in the winner’s second colours of Mrs Donnelly, stayed on best to get the “measly” €38k second prize for what was almost a school round until he was asked to go faster in the last half mile and beat two other no-hopers. Was there no UK horse thought capable of nicking one of those lavish place prizes?

Well done then to Warren Greatrex for his enterprise in sending over Good And Clever for the novice hurdle won easily by Mullins’ Kopek Des Bordes. Kopek will be a strong favourite for the Supreme Novice at Cheltenham, but Good And Clever collected €13.5k for his owners Jim and Claire Bryce, as the sole UK runner on the day. That following an unplaced Henry Daly runner – 33/1 as top-weight in a three-mile handicap hurdle the previous afternoon.

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: The Trials of a Champion

They crammed into Cheltenham on Saturday, intent on watching possibly the best hurdler of all time go through a public work-out where the betting market suggested there was only a single chance in 13 that he might not retain his unbeaten record, writes Tony Stafford.

Constitution Hill, back from his year’s inactivity with a smart success in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, was getting paid £71k for his troubles and, as he and Nico de Boinville approached the final flight in a clear lead, even those who risk such odds as a matter of routine often “in-running” were counting their impending returns.

But then it almost ended in, if not tragedy – we’ve seen enough of thise in the UK and elsewhere in the world lately to know the difference – at least horse-racing turmoil, as the big horse crashed through that last obstacle.

 

 

He’s clever, though, is Constitution Hill, and landed efficiently enough while de Boinville wasn’t as complacent as his idling mount had been and stayed on board. Ignominy would have been his fate, but normal service was resumed up the hill, with Brentford Hope merely achieving best of the rest status and a very nice second prize of 26 grand.

Not bad for an afternoon’s work when the winner is rated 29lb his superior. Congratulations are due for Harry Derham to identify such a potential reward.

So now it is straight to the Festival, for which Constitution Hill is a 4/5 chance ahead of the Irish trio of Lossiemouth, Brighterdaysahead and last year’s stand-in winner State Man. Maybe next weekend’s Dublin Racing Festival will offer further clarification of where the potential dangers lie, but 4/5 with the guarantee of non-runner no bet seems value to this jaundiced eye. I said earlier, possibly the best we’ve ever seen. Sorry, he’s the best and you can’t get away from it.

Before Saturday’s other most interesting contest with the Festival in mind, there was general concern that East India Dock, the overnight 8/13 favourite for the JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle might be a trifle “skinny” in face of a strong back-up field for this juvenile contest. He started at 2/1 on and won as he pleased.

 

 

This was the race in 2024 where Sir Gino, Constitution Hill’s “shadow” in the Nicky Henderson yard, demolished Burdett Road’s hopes of Triumph Hurdle success when the James Owen gelding had been market leader after his bright start to jumping.

In the event, neither horse was there to try to stem the irresistible force that Willie Mullins was able to bring to the race which he has dominated for the past two seasons with Lossiemouth and then Majborough who won at Cheltenham last March from Kargese.

Sir Gino, having missed Cheltenham, took out Kargese at Aintree and then deputised for Constitution Hill to win the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle in November. With Constitution back in time to run over hurdles at Christmas, Sir Gino was allowed to switch smoothly to fences and impressed so much in beating Ballyburn at Kempton that he’s odds on for the Arkle Novice Chase even though Majborough has also made a winning switch to the larger obstacles. Again, Leopardstown might give us an inkling as to where the Mullins team is now.

Henderson’s skill at earmarking a lightly-raced French import as a Cheltenham Festival contender had, until Saturday, had a serious influence on the Triumph Hurdle market. Lulamba, the easy UK debut winner for Henderson of his juvenile hurdle at Ascot remains the 5/4 favourite despite East India Dock’s ten-length win on Saturday. The third horse home had been 18 lengths behind him when they met previously over the course, now it was 28 lengths back to that Nigel Hawke runner, Torrent.

In between them in the J P McManus colours was Stencil, a good winner two runs back in France for the George/Zetterholm team, but a well-beaten sixth last time out, both races at Compiegne.

Lulamba had raced only once before his smooth success, that was for previous trainer Arnaud Chaille-Chaille (so good they named him twice – still can’t resist it!) at Auteuil. He contested a 15-runner AQPS race and started almost 8/1 yet bolted home by five lengths from another George/Zetterholm juvenile.

Compare that history with East India Dock, who went off in front and made all on Saturday. That was his third unbeaten hurdle race following a busy campaign on the flat where he won twice with three places from ten, running at two miles and ending with an 89 rating. Two different ways of arriving at the same point.

Which do you choose, the battled-hardened ex-flat racer or the totally untested dual hurdle winner? I know which type Henderson would favour and with the immediately-preceding example of Sir Gino who came a similar route in 2023, it’s hard to pass over Lulamba, but I think it would be great for racing if James Owen did have a Festival win.

Incidentally, it seems he still intends having a shot at the Champion Hurdle with Burdett Road. The Greatwood Hurdle winner is up to 150 after his latest third to Constitution Hill and Lossiemouth in the Christmas Hurdle and you are entitled to believe he would have finished closer but for a very bad mistake at the last, which brought a tired effort to the finish thereafter.

Running for third or fourth at Cheltenham is still a worthwhile objective. Last year, the places behind State Man were around £100k, £50k and £25k. With the chance of a smallish field, where can you be getting such value for money? Also, the proud right in your later days to show your grandchildren the race card with your horse and the greatest hurdler of all time contesting the same race.

My grandchildren have had the odd day at the races, but it’s their parents who have the recollection of the day they came to Cheltenham late in January 1986 to see my horse (owned with Terry Ramsden after he bought half my share) win Sir Gino’s and East India Dock’s Triumph Hurdle Trial. The silver trophy was and is very nice, and I’ve promised it to my elder daughter. I just had a look and it needs a clean.

The race in those days was sponsored by the Tote and was worth ten grand to the winner. Tangognat started second favourite for the big race but finished tailed off on fast ground. Peter Scudamore, who had ridden him to that win and also on January 1 at the same course, was forced to ride for his boss David (The Duke) Nicholson despite protest, and won on 50/1 shot Solar Cloud, his and Nicholson’s first winner at the Festival.

When earlier I played a couple of times in football matches against David Nicholson – press versus trainers – I came away with heavily-bruised shins, he was such a tough bugger. But deep down there was a great degree of kindness, too.

A few years later and after the football, a horse I’d bought for two grand off Robert Sangster for an owner of Wilf Storey’s had proved a money-spinner. That horse, Great Easeby, was by Vincent O’Brien’s and Sangster’s French Derby winner and later champion stallion Caerleon and was adept both as a hurdler and a flat-race stayer.

He lined up for the 24-runner Hamlet Cigars Gold Card Handicap Hurdle (precursor to the Pertemps Final) and won all out from fast-finishing Gillan Cove, with Nicholson’s Pharanear a close third.  The stewards interviewed the jockeys to see if Great Easeby had caused interference to Pharanear and 7lb claimer Richie McGrath was entitled to be nervous.

Nicholson, however, instructed his jockey Richard Johnson not to object, which might otherwise had given the race to Gillan Cove. The Duke – more a King to my mind.

Incidentally, 29 years on, the same Richard Johnson signed the chit at Cheltenham’s Tattersalls sales on Saturday night at 230k for an Irish point-to-point winner. The not-so-young McGrath is also busy with a preparation yard in Middleham and remains a great friend and help to his old mate Graham Lee.

*

I note trainers are being recommended by their trade organisation the NTF to request payment for interviews and Dan Skelton is quoted in yesterday’s Racing Post as agreeing with the idea.

I wonder how much trainer Evan Williams would be expecting to price up his “inside information” after Saturday’s 4.20 race at Uttoxeter. Interviewed by Andrew Thornton and asked about his Owl Of Athens that had been backed from the overnight 66/1 to 85/40, he said, “you must be clutching at straws if you backed it”. Owl Of Athens won by eight lengths.

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: The Lunatics Prove Me Wrong!

A week ago, I sat down at this keyboard wondering who were the lunatics that thought staging the inaugural so-called Berkshire Winter Million over the following weekend was a viable project, writes Tony Stafford. The frost stood outside like snow on the whole of my car and temperatures had plunged to minus 5 degrees overnight.

Also, Ascot’s recent record with its mid-January Saturday fixture was hardly encouraging, the last two having been frozen off. The money on offer for the two days on the Riverside Royal racecourse and the sandwiched-in Ascot date was terrific, yet by and large the Irish left us to our own devices: they clearly thought the odds were against its going ahead.

But they, like most of the UK racing fanbase, starved of jumping for much of the previous week or so, were to be confounded.

Windsor has the luxury of wide swathes of turf that are relatively lightly worked all year, those Monday night cards giving the racecourse staff plenty of time between fixtures to repair the effect of pounding hooves.

The worry, having seen the first jumps fixture since Windsor briefly took over some Ascot cards when that racecourse was having its drastic and by now (if not at first) accepted to have been beneficial, not least to racegoers, transformation almost two decades ago, was the layout of the circuit.

Talking to Hughie Morrison on the Friday morning, he said he wasn’t convinced by it, but like trainers of the other 13 runners in the £110k - £57,000 to the winner Fitzdares-backed handicap hurdle - he was prepared to give it a go. He believed his family horse Secret Squirrel was “very well handicapped, but maybe not quite tough enough for a race of this nature”.

I was on a train, travelling back from four brilliant days with Victor Thompson at his superb Link House Holiday Cottages 100 yards from the beach in Northumberland, so didn’t see the race live, but I have since. That was the beach, maybe a mile away across the bay at Beadnell, where Gordon W Richards, father of Nicky, began his own training career in the 1960’s before transferring across country to Greystoke.

Back at Windsor, Hughie needn’t have worried. Indeed, far from being overawed by tackling much more experienced rivals, 11/4 favourite Secret Squirrel gained control over Knickerbocker Glory at the final hurdle and gradually pulled clear to the line, without Nico de Boinville needing to pick up his stick. You would imagine the William Hill Newbury Hurdle at Hughie’s home track in three weeks would be the next objective.

Secret Squirrel was bred by and runs in the colours of the Hon. Mary Morrison, Hughie’s wife, and is a son of Stimulation. Hughie trained Stimulation to win the Group 2 Challenge Stakes over 7f on the flat and supported him as a stallion throughout his time at Llety Farms, a 250-acre spread in Carmarthenshire, run by David Hodge.

On the flat, Stimulation’s best produce has been the staying mare Sweet Sensation, whom Hughie trained to win the Cesarewitch for Paul Brocklehurst. After Friday, Secret Squirrel will have become the sire’s outstanding jumper. Llety Farms have for now given up standing stallions and Stimulation has been sold and been based in Kuwait for the past two years.

Hughie and Mary had a day to remember as a few minutes later at Market Rasen, their recent acquisition Eyed added a second win on the course for the stable. In between he was unsighted going to the first fence at Lingfield where he unluckily came down. Eyed could also be on a steep upward curve as a three-mile chaser.

Back to last week, and I had suggested it was lunatics that framed the Berkshire Winter Million. On the same day as the two Morrison winners, one horse that was sold from the yard for 27,000gns last autumn almost made a winning debut for his new connections an hour or so earlier at Meydan. Lunatick – yes, that’s how they spelt it – got within a neck of bagging the £24k opener on the card, his strong finish thwarted only by Silvestre de Sousa on a 33/1 shot.

While with Victor the other day, preparing for what I believe (well, perhaps hope) will be a compelling book, we had a trip around the area near Newton-by-the-Sea and as far south as Lynmouth and Amble on the coast, seeing the sites where he was King of the Sea Coal industry for decades until the mines packed up. On the way, every few miles there were pockets of houses (amounting in total almost to one hundred): “we built those”, he said.

Then, on the way back for a late lunch at his beloved Purdy Lodge, where they serve the world’s biggest all-day breakfast – not that he or partner Gina Coulson partake – we took in the village of Felton, where in the 1980s he added farming to the strings of his very wide-ranging bow, acquiring four (three now sold) farms totalling 3,750 acres. He removed all the hedges and quickly became the leading corn grower in Northumberland.

As he mused at the time, “If farmers can farm, why not me?  It can’t be that difficult, if you are prepared to work; and all the Thompsons worked!” Until you drive along with Victor’s former farms on either side of the road seemingly on and on for miles – 3,750 acres is almost six square miles! – you realise what a massive undertaking that was. When you consider Llety Farms is 250 acres and many would regard that as a sizeable plot.

It all makes me feel tired! Luckily, I managed to upgrade to a First-Class seat on the way back from Alnmouth (319 miles to London), elected for sausage and mash over a lamb rogan josh and arrived home in okay shape. I didn’t feel it until Saturday evening when for once I slept right through!

The Irish challenge on Friday was restricted to a duo of Gavin Cromwell runners in lesser races and both finished in the money. Same again, two runners, on Saturday. This time it was Willie Mullins, chancing his arm, again, with one-time invincible Energumene, against Jonbon in the Clarence House Stakes; but the Nicky Henderson horse cantered home and will go to Cheltenham as a hotpot for the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Willie sent over a travel companion for his old champion, no doubt thinking 2/5 shot Kargese, last year’s Triumph Hurdle runner-up, would have a walk in the Royal park. That mare had to give best though to Dan Skelton’s improver Take No Chances who came out on top under Kielan Woods, by three-parts of a length.

Then to yesterday. Here we had to be a little more cautious as among five raiders, two from the more readable Henry de Bromhead in terms of expectation, there were three from less predictable sources.

We all know about back-with-the-licence Tony Martin. The form of his Zanndabad suggested he ought to be among the principals in the 2m4f novice handicap hurdle, but he faded in the home straight, proving correct his trainer’s fears about the soft ground.

Then it was the turn of Charles Byrnes, of whom you can never be sure until the money’s down. And maybe not even then.

Byrnes, like Martin, had a ban recently, but it doesn’t seem to have altered his way of going about his training. He had two runners, one a newcomer in the bumper for whom there was pre-race interest and another in the immediately preceding novice handicap hurdle.

That horse’s three runs this season had been 8th at 33/1, last of 17 at 33/1 and pulled up at 20/1. Despite this, serious money followed him in the 3m4f handicap chase into 9/1. He ran a respectable race in third behind 25/1 shot Planned Paradise, trained by long-distance expert Christian Williams. Watch out Eider Chase!

Byrnes was also on the premises in fourth in the closing bumper, won by winner-a-day over the weekend Harry Fry with Idaho Sun, who looks a very smart performer.

The Irish horses generally ran well, but none from nine was their winning tally over the weekend. So well done to the home trainers and to the organisers, Arena Racing. Even if Ascot is not in their ownership grouping, they do show its racing on their Sky Sports Racing channel. I think it’s fair to say you’ve proved so many of us wrong!

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: A Perambulation

At least we had South Africa’s biggest weight-for-age race to talk about last week, writes Tony Stafford. This time, it’s a perambulation taking in Exeter Stables near Newmarket, Manton in Wiltshire, and a couple of sports-themed restaurants and entertainment venues in London’s West End.

I’ve got to know Michael Solle, a senior executive of the wine/whisky company UKV International, and was delighted over the past two years to get an invitation to a couple of his company’s events. These were staged in part to reward and, more importantly, recommend to clients existing and prospective various potential future investments.

First in the deep winter – probably February of 2023 – it was to London’s Strand, between Fleet Stret and Trafalgar Square, that we all pitched up at Oche, where darts – obvious to anyone that watched Luke Littler and co a couple of weeks ago – is the gimmick.

The design was very clever, nine individual oches (if that’s the correct plural) with seating behind and alongside the thrower. Most of the 100 or so invitees had a go – your observer could not be persuaded to reveal his limitations.

Meanwhile copious amounts of finger foods arrived, and wine and whisky were later added after a senior sommelier from the top West End shop Hedonism Wines made a presentation, bringing a few exquisite examples of each for everyone to sample and hopefully add to their portfolios.

But I had another mission that day. I spoke regularly at that time with Sam Stronge, husband and assistant to trainer Ali, and he had mentioned to me a three-year-old they had where the original owners, who included a long-term pal Geoffrey Bishop, wanted to sell a half-share. That horse, Angel Of Antrim, originally a 37,000 Guineas yearling, was available for sensible money. He had run promisingly in his three runs at two, acquiring a handicap mark in the process, and was recently gelded.

Covid was just about finished and after I was introduced to the owner of Oche, I set about getting him interested. Unfortunately, Sam, who had intended to come along, was unable to be free at the last minute, so the sale wasn’t as easy as it might have been. Now it would be impossible as he has taken over much of the retired Dave Roberts’ team of jump jockeys including champion Harry Cobden.

I left that afternoon convinced we did have a sale, but a call the following morning soon ended that illusion. He stayed with his original owners, won a small race with Ali Stronge later that year, and another in 2023 for the same owners, but with Ed Dunlop.

In March 2024, he was sold for 6,000gns whereupon he joined Phil McEntee, again winning a single race for new owners Derek Lovatt and Colin Bacon. Lovatt has been around the racing game for a long time and, when Simon Lockyer had his brief spell of mega-multiple ownership with the late Shaun Keightley around 2020, Lovatt was a fellow owner there.

A real shrewdie, Derek always had a plan, but I doubt even he would have believed what an amazing transformation was in the offing. Now a five-year-old, Angel Of Antrim joined rookie trainer Jack Morland late last year in his new base at Exeter House Stables.

I had a happy connection with the yard as it is where Vince (later Victoria) Smith trained with a degree of success between 2004 and 2008. He deserved better than the five years and a total 54 wins he amassed during his spell there. Raymond Tooth did well with such as Majestical in the yard while, in the latter part of 2006, Vince gave William Buick rides when even his own boss Andrew Balding was hesitant. After several winners he was off, with Michal Tabor’s recommendation, to Todd Pletcher and thence a stellar career as multiple champion jockey with Godolphin and Charlie Appleby.

Probably a decade ago – time goes so fast – on my weekly Thursday trips to Brian Meehan’s Manton yard, where Raymond also had a serious involvement, I met Giles Morland, owner of some smart horses in the stable. Giles was also one of the early members of the Sam Sangster-arranged Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates.

Giles’s son Jack would often be around, and such is the passage of time that the young man, now 29, has fitted in a few years working in the top Australian stable of Ciaron Maher and David Eustace (now in Hong Kong), where he supervised a 20-horse barn, and subsequently five years as assistant to Ed Dunlop down the road from his present base. He took out his licence to train here on October 1st last year.

Now though, he has the gig at Exeter House Stables, owned by Charlie McBride, from where he, and Lovatt and Bacon’s Angel Of Antrim, after three wins in 23, has suddenly won four races in a row. The total prize money for the four wins is as paltry as it gets, around £15k, but this is the UK after all! I presume the shrewd owners have collected a few bob off the bookies, as long as their affordability checks panned out! The official purse money is not in truth much different two decades on than it was for Regional Racing.

I’ve often reckoned that the BHA, and especially their official handicappers, do not like small stables winning. Between wins one and four, Angel Of Antrim has been raised a whopping 34lb: up respectively 8lb, 5lb, 11lb and 10lb for his wins. I can think of a few trainers completing four-timers that would have got away with less than half that punitive imposition.

Jack Morland deserves great credit for the flying start (six wins so far) to his career and if he manages to win five in a row with Angel Of Antrim at Southwell on Wednesday, he will be looking at a mark in the 90’s and maybe even a run at one of the Royal Ascot handicaps.

On his site, there’s a picture of a smiling Jack, alongside his father and Brian Meehan, after a win from one of their horses at a Royal meeting. Maybe Angel Of Antrim or one of the other 11 horses in his care can get him to that trainer’s holy grail.

I had my last winner as an owner from Exeter House Stables, Vince and I finding a nice opportunity for Richie Boy in a claimer on one of the Saturday morning Regional (or banded) race meetings in October 2004. I had come to own Richie Boy as jockey Simon Whitworth – he rode my first solo winner at Beverley 22 years earlier - told me that his owner Andy Grinter had misread his colours watching the video of his final start and sent him mistakenly to Gary Moore. He wanted rid and quick!

I accepted the story, gullible as I am, and Richie Boy won on debut for us. I loved Regional Racing, with its succession of level-weights contests for low-grade horses. That day at Warwick the field sizes were 12, 17, 16, 13, 16 and 13. Again it was rubbish prizemoney, but it was 20 years ago. The best thing was the races were mostly 3/1 or more the field.

Paul Blockley, another sadly no longer with us, claimed him from us that bright morning. He offered to let me take a share, but I declined and watched two days later as he wasn’t off a yard but then was on him again two days further on. I was in a betting shop with Keith Sobey in Newcastle, the horse was at Nottingham and won at 50/1!

Blockley then had him in a seller at Redcar the following week (November 1) and he bolted up at 4/7. I went to the track and resolved to get him back, bidding all the way to 12k but gave up, leaving him bought in at 12,500gns.

So, I missed the boat, you would think. Not exactly, as Richie Boy was 11th of 12, last of 15 and 8th of 12 in three runs for Paul later in November.

Switched after that to Jennie Candlish, he graced the turf six more times, once in a hurdle race when as a 100/1 shot he was always behind and fell three from home. His flat placings were last of ten, ten, 12, 15 and 14 after which he passed into oblivion. Tough game that ownership.

When Noel Quinlan was based in what is now Darryl Holland’s Harraton Court stables, before Shaun Keightley, there was a small, neat, much more modern maybe 15-stall building close to the entrance. James Owen had his Arabian and point-to-point horses there, the first steps on the way much more recently to a brilliant start to his dual purpose Rules career, helped massively by the Gredley family.

I mentioned the handicapper’s treatment of Angel Of Antrim. One of the lesser lights (for now) in James Owen’s Green Ridge yard in the town is Carlton, acquired from the Gemma Tutty stable late last year. My friend Mick Godderidge is among the owners, the Think Big Partnership, and when he completed his four-timer at Chelmsford on Saturday (all over 1m6f at the Essex track) he was running off only 12lb higher than his starting point.

His style of racing hasn’t made for extravagant wins, generally coming late and fast, although Thursday’s more clear-cut verdict off 55 ought to result in more than the 5lb penalty he carried on Saturday. Each of the earlier wins was worth £4k. The team can add to that the ten grand they and Owen collected for Saturday’s win in a race only scheduled two days previously owing to the hit to jump racing by the weather. As I said, twice the money as Angel Of Antrim and considerably less of a handicap hike. Carlton was due to bid for his own five-timer in the opener at Wolverhampton this evening but is now a non-runner; it won't be long no doubt.

As to the other sports-featured experience in Central London, last summer we (me with my golf-playing son) went along to Pitch, one of two (soon to be three) golf hospitality venues. This one is close to Tottenham Court Road station, handily on the new and phenomenally-quick Elizabeth Line.

Another 100 or so adherents to the UKV International family now could smash a golf ball at one of nine screens depicting various holes on a golf course and have their distance assessed. The longest hitters got some very choice wines for their achievements.

Otherwise, it was a similar model to Oche and in the same ownership, although here brute force and ignorance held sway rather than the delicacy required to find treble 20. I wonder where Michael Solle has in mind for his clients (and me, I hope) this year. If we do return to either Oche or Pitch, I can’t wait to tell their owner how much he missed by not buying Angel Of Antrim. Like all the best bloodstock agents, I know which lines of form to highlight!

 - TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: G1 Fun in the Rainbow Republic Sun

The commentator summed it up as he went over the line, writes Tony Stafford. One Stripe was one of only two three-year-olds in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth on Saturday. “The Prince becomes a King”, he said, deserved praise indeed as the Vaughan Marshall colt by top local stallion One World weaved through from far back to win South Africa’s most prestigious weight-for-age contest in style.

In the history of a race that began in 1861 as the Queen’s Plate – a title restored when Queen Elizabeth II inherited the throne – there have been only ten three-year-old winners, and just two before One Stripe in the past 50 years.

If you needed testimony from someone near at hand, ask Oisin Murphy. Booked for rides in both the day’s Group 1 races, Murphy sat helpless on eventual fourth-placed Royal Aussie, more than four lengths behind, as One Stripe powered through late to emphasise his mastery over South Africa’s best older stars – admittedly most of them on the day running disappointingly.

 

 

The £75k winner’s prize is handsome enough when considered on its own. In the context of the 23 Rand to the £ official exchange rate, a prize of almost R1.74 million to the winner makes more eye-catching interest.

For many English winters, William Haggas has been a regular visitor, especially to Cape Town and, according to another UK-based handler Dylan Cunha, he was in attendance again for the big day.

Cunha, back on his old stamping ground, taking a pause from his exploits in only a second full season in the UK, was there even though he had had a couple of runners, both performing creditably, on the previous day’s action at the Dubai Carnival.

We all know about his smart handicapper Silver Sword, but a new name is likely to adorn the winner’s enclosures this year. Recent acquisition King’s Call only tired in the last furlong but still was beaten just more than a length. He was the sole 3yo in this field of experienced handicappers and will not be reaching his third birthday until March 22.

With such a wonderful exchange rate, anybody who visits South Africa seems to vow to return reporting that dinner for four in good restaurants can sometimes cost less than for one in London’s West End.

My reason for majoring this week on the Republic is not merely to record the exploits of One Stripe. The colt won the Cape Guineas only three weeks earlier, and that has been hitherto regarded as a double too difficult to attempt. This season has brought six wins and a place from eight starts and improving all the while. Well done, Vaughan.

I wanted to remind or perhaps more likely inform UK readers that something is stirring from what had been an almost moribund racing industry there a decade or even less ago.

I have the great good fortune to receive four times weekly a digest of South African racing and breeding from the online magazine, Turf Talk. You can subscribe from that link and I find it enjoyable and informative reading most weekdays. I’m sure you will enjoy it too, especially in the dull and dingy days of winter at home.

Without the South African interest this week, I would no doubt have gone on endlessly about the fiasco of the three Musselburgh inspections on Friday, the last of which was ten minutes before the first race were when the two runners were already in the paddock – seven others had already been withdrawn.

As I was writing on Sunday morning, Plumpton yesterday with a Premier Racecard and more than £100,000 in prizes available to the winners had declared at 8.30 a.m., “Racing goes ahead.”. Then, two hours later, “Sorry, it’s not.”

More rain than expected fell between the two events. No doubt Peter Savill, the course’s owner, will have been gutted as well as those arriving at the track encouraged by the earlier bulletin. An even later look revealed that Chepstow managed two races before calling it a day!

I digress. Since 2011, the exportation of South African horses to the European Union (and the UK) and elsewhere had been prohibited, because of a breakout in that year of African horse sickness. It took years of lobbying by the industry to get the ban removed. The much-publicised immediate outcome was the arrival in the US last summer of two high-class performers, each taken into the Graham Motion yard for their spell on the other side of the world.

The six-year-old gelding Isivunguvungu and the three-year-old filly Beach Bomb were the two trailblazers. Both competed at the Breeders’ Cup meeting in early November at Del Mar and neither could be said to have been out of place.

Beach Bomb, who almost a year earlier had won the Cartier Paddock Stakes, the Group 1 principal supporting race on the L’Ormarins King’s Plate card, had a couple of unlucky runs in defeat before turning out for the Filly and Mare Turf. Her chance was reflected in a starting price of 55/1, but she outperformed those odds finishing only three-and-a half lengths back in eighth. Two places and only half a length ahead of her was the Aidan O’Brien-trained filly Content, winner of the Yorkshire Oaks a couple of months earlier.

Isivunguvungu, a six-year-old gelding, warmed up for Del Mar with a nice win worth £70k in a black-type turf race at Colonial Downs. Although he finished only seventh in the Turf Sprint, he would have been much closer position-wise bar being snatched up in the scrimmage in the middle of the track as Ralph Beckett’s Starlust scraped along the inside rail to win.

This relaxation of exporting South African horses will no doubt be even more marked when the best-bred animals from such studs as Drakenstein come onto the market.

No doubt Dylan, with his knowledge of the land where he trained Group 1 winners before trying his luck in the UK, will be examining the possibility of picking up bargains from the best studs, given the exchange rate. Other leading UK trainers, exasperated by the tough buying conditions with such as Coolmore, Godolphin, Amo Racing and the rest from over here in competition at the top end, will also be testing the water.

Beach Bomb’s successor as winner of the Cartier Paddock Stakes on Saturday was Double Grand Slam, as with One Stripe an emphatic and well-backed favourite cheered home by the big crowd.

If information about South African racing seems to be limited to the odd big day such as the King’s Plate, with its 168-year history and the Durban July, I have been lucky enough to keep in touch via Turf Talk with its excellent mix of reports, previews and breeding news.

Gavin Lareda, who showed his excitement after passing the post in front on One Stripe, is one winer off the lead in the South African table behind 20-year-old Craig Zackie with 106 victories. Last year’s record-breaking champion Richard Fourie is third on a dangerous 99.

It’s not just in racing where enthusiasm is high in the rainbow Republic. The rugby union team is the current World Champion while its cricket side are in the middle of a test match with Pakistan, having made a first innings score of well over 600.

Cricket and racing have been closely allied there for many years. Craig Kieswetter, a wicketkeeper batsman with 71 white-ball appearances for England, is closely involved through his family’s Barnane Stud. With such icons over the years as Basil D’Oliviera, Allan Lamb, Kevin Pietersen and up to the latest, new fast bowler Brydon Carse, the England cricket team has owed much to South Africa.

Barnane are joint-owners of the Willie Mullins top-class chaser Il Etait Temps with the biggest South African ownership entity Hollywood Racing (formerly Hollywood Partnership). Il Etait Temps was third In the Arkle Chase for Willie Mullins’ yard last year but improved on that to win the two Grade 1 two-mile novice chases at Aintree and Punchestown. He has yet to appear this winter.

I didn’t have to look far though to spot the continuing influence on racing of a long-standing breeder and owner whose pre-eminence in his own sport extends back six decades. Gary Player, 89, won the first of his 12 Major golf championships, the 1965 US Open, at the age of 29. Since then, he has been a breeder and owner at a high level in his native land.

On Saturday at Kenilworth, Player was part-owner, with the country’s primary stud Drakenstein and Mr D D McClean, of Double Grand Slam, winner of the Group 1 Cartier Paddock Stakes. What a man!

Looking at what Gary is still achieving, maybe it’s not too late to go over there and get some of that invigorating sunshine, possibly next January. At least the pound will go a little further there than it seems to do here nowadays.

 - TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Nobody Else

Who else could have handled it? Never mind Willie Mullins for all his mastery at winning championship races, writes Tony Stafford. Add those other Irish behemoths of jumps training, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead. You could probably slip Joseph O’Brien onto that list now he has renewed his love of collecting Grade 1 jumping prizes, notably last week’s King George at Kempton with Banbridge.

As to the UK, after Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton it’s hard to imagine anyone having the resources or flexibility to attempt Nicky Henderson’s Christmas equine gymnastics. He’s a man apart.

Go back to last month. He took two horses for a gallop at Kempton Park. One, the former Champion Hurdler Constitution Hill, was aiming at a third consecutive Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle having been absent since the last one. The other, the unbeaten four-year-old Sir Gino, was being prepared for an early first race over fences.

It was a publicised workout, so the racing press were there expecting to see Constitution Hill come out on top. Then, assuredly, to resume at Newcastle that daunting sequence of eight successive wins since being bought from Warren Ewing and former Seven Barrows stable jockey Barry Geraghty for €120k.

That represented a fair profit on the €16k they paid for him before he had his one racecourse defeat, possibly unluckily, in a point-to-point. What could match him? But Henderson never minds testing his best horses – “no point” he probably says, “sending them away from home to look good against trees”.

Anyway, this tree spread his branches and took exception to his sacrificial object role and came out on top. I pondered a few weeks ago here whether the gallop was possibly a fair representation of where they are now and there were, and since, elements in the form lines of some of Mullins’ best horses that back up that theory.  More of that later.

But it brought an instant change of plan, Henderson with that nimbleness of thought that has kept him at the top of the tree – the fact he wins fewer trainer championships as the relentless Paul Nicholls to my mind has nothing to do with it.

“Constitution Hill isn’t ready” was the message followed soon after by a minor lameness issue, so Sir Gino, would-be chaser, would have to step in and continue his own unblemished Rules career record at Newcastle.

Although eight turned up at Gosforth Park, it was billed as a straight match between four-for-four Sir Gino and five-from-six Majestic Power from the Mullins stable. By Galileo out of Annie Power, Majestic Power has the most awesome pedigree and an equally redoubtable trio of owners, Mrs Ricchi, Mrs Magnier and J P McManus. It was widely held that the Mullins steamroller could not be thwarted.

In those top two-mile hurdle races, though, only a hint of inefficiency over the obstacles will leave any horse flailing in the wake of the rest and so it proved with Majestic Power. Ahead of him, Sir Gino, fluent from the outset, hit the front when Nico de Boinville wanted and drew away to an easy win.

The identity of the runner-up was almost immaterial, except that Sam Thomas’s Lump Sum picked up a more than useful £24k lump sum for his owners. It made everyone start looking at Sir Gino’s credentials for the Champion Hurdle, especially with Constitution Hill’s potential readiness in doubt at that stage.

Sir Gino hadn’t managed to get to the Triumph Hurdle last March so was unable to pick a fight with the septet of Mullins juveniles, the first two among them Majborough who beat filly Kargese by one and half lengths.

Majborough didn’t go on to Aintree for the Boodles Anniversary Hurdle, but Kargese did and Sir Gino beat her by almost four lengths.

Any suggestion that the Mullins filly was below par on the day has no credence as she easily won the Champion 4yo Hurdle at Punchestown in May. Meanwhile Majborough, with so much hurdles talent for Mullins to juggle, was sent straight over fences for his first run since Cheltenham and won easily at Fairyhouse last month.

It didn’t take long for any question whether Sir Gino would be aimed at the Champion Hurdle or taking the chasing path. Constitution Hill came right in the days leading up to Christmas when it was decided he would try for a third consecutive Christmas Hurdle. Waiting to destroy his unbeaten record was the 2023 Triumph Hurdle winner Lossiemouth, hard trained after a facile two-and-a-half-mile win over smart Teahupoo this month.

The French-bred mare came to Kempton with nine wins and a dreadfully unlucky 2nd in her first season on her card. Easy winner of both mares’ races at the Cheltenham and Punchestown Festivals, the latter at 2/11, she would be a stern test for the returning champion.

While Constitution Hill raced fluently close behind recent Greatwood Hurdle winner Burdett Road in the four-runner race, Paul Townend was content to allow Lossiemouth to sit a few lengths behind - perhaps he just couldn't go the speed of his rival. At no time did Constitution Hill look in danger.

De Boinville urged – no more - Constitution Hill to the front before the last flight at which Burdett Road made a horrible mistake and Lossiemouth wasn’t fluent either, but still the margin of two-and-a-half lengths didn’t reflect the winner’s superiority. At the same time, Lossiemouth’s own exceptional ability was not dimmed on a track where stamina, her main asset, wasn’t the prime requirement on the day.

But for me, the Christmas race of races was the Wayward Lad Novices' Chase on Friday. Here Sir Gino was unhesitatingly pitted against possibly the biggest talking-horse ever to come out of Ireland since Arkle - and “Himself” was racing more than 60 years ago!

As Ballyburn went through his season as a novice hurdler last winter, the publicity machine, in some degree initiated and fuelled by those closest to him and greedily latched on to by the media, earned him the status in some parts as “unbeatable”.

True he made mincemeat – appropriate for this time of year? - of the opposition at Cheltenham in the 2m5f Gallagher Novices' Hurdle, but two-thirds of the opposition, and handsome place prizemoney collectors, were from the Mullins stable. Two UK upstarts, one each for Ben Pauling, last of six to finish, and Nicky Henderson, pulled up, made this an open goal for the favourite.

An even easier victory came at Punchestown, and he returned to the same track for a debut win over fences last month.

So when they lined up on Friday at Kempton, it was a slight surprise to me that Sir Gino was comfortably preferred in the market in a race where again, as in the Christmas Hurdle, it featured two no-hopers in a field of four.

Ballyburn, with the experience and the need to make it a gallop over the two miles, was sent to the front by Paul Townend, but Sir Gino, all the way round, looked the more assured jumper and it was no surprise when he was allowed to take the lead going to three out. The last trio of Pendil-like leaps – look him up if you cannot remember the 1970’s – took him clear and the margin of seven and a half lengths again was no accurate reflection of their relative performances.

So once more Nicky Henderson has trumped everything that could possibly have been thrown at him. The noisy Ballyburn adherents will be wishing their trainer had kept him for one of the multitude of Grade 1 options that litter the four days of Leopardstown and even the odd one at Limerick over their joint Christmas programme.

The two Kempton defeats did signal more than a hiccup for Mullins. On Friday, in all he had 32 runners and, while it’s fair to say there were a few outsiders among them, it must have been a rare if not unprecedented experience for him to come home from Kempton in the knowledge that only one of the 32 had been victorious. That came in a chase at Limerick where two horses in front of his runner fell independently, allowing his to come through to win.

I think already we must regard Sir Gino as the next Altior. Altior won the Wayward Lad during 14 consecutive chase wins a decade ago. But Sir Gino’s achievement should be considered in the light that Altior’s win at 1/9 came on his third start over fences. Of course he won the Arkle. Of course, so will Sir Gino, unless Constitution Hill has any reason to miss the attempt at recapturing the Champion Hurdle from Mullins' State Man (and Elliott's Brighterdaysahead, who blitzed State Man yesterday), then no doubt he’ll go there and win that. See if you can back him for that, non-runner no bet!

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Reliving Past Lives

I don’t know if you have a story that you tell and retell where one of the two main participants (the hero) has disappeared from your life for at least half a century while the villain remains so visible that his comments round by round on the Usyk/Fury fight on Saturday night were there for all to see who look at the Daily Mail sport website, writes Tony Stafford.

I am about to abort that singular source of sports opinion not least because, over the past couple of months, its offering has been gradually going over to a fee-paying split with ever more of the output barred to the normal reader.

Also, its irritating policy of putting up potentially interesting headlines and forcing you to read three paragraphs before revealing just which (usually) Manchester United player is going out with which Love Island “beauty”, gets so annoying.

Back in the late 1960’s I was in my first stint with a newspaper, the Walthamstow Guardian. Its close rival for local coverage was the Express and Independent, more centred on Leytonstone. At the time, my friend Graham Phillips and I used to share coverage of the same now redundant football team, Walthamstow Avenue, travelling in the team coach to their away matches.

In those days, aside from the Football League with its four divisions, First, Second and, sensibly, Third, North and South – how the clubs in say National League South, such as my mate Steve Gilbey’s Aveley in Essex near the Dartford Tunnel, would love not to have to travel every other week to the likes of Torquay, etc.

The amateur game had its principal competition, the Amateur Cup, and Walthamstow Avenue had been one of the best teams in the 1950’s when the occasional amateur player even got in the full England team. Avenue’s star was Jim Lewis and he was still around to talk to us now and again as we watched the regular matches in the Isthmian League, as it was then.

Graham, my best man RTS (Dick) McGinn and I all played cricket together for Eton Manor. Dick’s father was the tenant in a great pub in Tottenham Court Road in London’s West End and that’s where we had the evening reception in 1969. Not long after, Dick’s irascible old man decided to hand in the tenancy without a word to his wife or two sons.

This tale though happened a few months before that shameful episode. I played every Sunday for Pressmen, a team largely of local paper journalists, with two “bosses” one of whom was Jeff Powell, at the time my sports editor at the Guardian.

If I say he was the worst footballer I’d ever seen it was an under-statement, especially considering what a high regard he had for his ability. The two things that I can still picture was his technique for trapping a ball, by jumping with both legs and blocking the ball with his shins.

Secondly, he was to display the same aggression as he has in his articles for the Daily Mail over more than 50 years. His favourite admonishment was to shout, “Stick it on him, son!” as one of his teammates went into a tackle.

Graham had played for England schoolboys and I’d asked him to come along to play for us. He agreed and after the first game, where his skill was largely wasted as balls were played behind rather than in front of him, our leader later declared back in the office, “Don’t rate him!”

So the man who was big mates with some of the Leyton Orient players he met while having that job with the only Football League team in our area, and later claimed to be pals with Bobby Moore, captain of the 1966 World Cup winning team, you could say, started out with questionable credentials.

Graham’s father, Charlie, was manager of the Eton Manor senior team which won its League title three years in a row. The coach during that period was one Alf Ramsey. They continued to converse for the rest of his and, as he became, Sir Alf’s lives. Charlie gave strict instructions to his sons never to make public the correspondence between them.

I’ve told the tale to literally hundreds of people over half a century and then suddenly on Friday a note came from the office saying a certain Graham Phillips had made contact and wondered if they could pass on a message to me. The last time we spoke was at least 50 years previously.

He was studying at Swansea University and he and his friend Pete Suddaby, later of Blackpool  FC where he played for almost ten years racking up 300 appearances, invited Dick and me down to go to the dogs at the flapping track at Forestfach, but known as Swansea Greyhound Stadium.

I remembered going there but recall very little of the occasion. I contacted Graham, relieved to find he was still up and about, and he said he has pretty much a photographic memory of everything that happened in that time of his life.

He recalled that I was doing my brains (nothing unusual there!) but for some reason I had recognised the name of a dog running in the last race from my days going to Clapton dogs in East London. Somehow, according to Graham, Daybreak Again had been injured but I’d known it was pretty good at Clapton. We got 8/1 and cleaned up and Graham remembers me as having tipped everyone and bought dinner for all the group afterwards. Do you think I can remember any of that!

He wanted to contact me as next April, there is going to be an event in Bishopsgate, London, covering the days of Eton Manor Cricket Club where we both played and the idea is to try to get anyone who did represent the club to come along. Can’t wait.

I stopped playing regularly when I got to Fleet Street, weekends being busy for me at work, but Graham played for another ten years. As to the football, a couple of weeks after the Forestfach weekend, he injured his ACL – as he says, he invented the injury - and never played again. Maybe Jeff Powell wasn’t wrong after all.

It was salutary to learn that Dick McGinn, at six feet tall, probably too tall ideally to be a wicket-keeper but very proficient for all that, died in Perth, Western Australia in 2009.

He had contacted me a year earlier and we sent emails back and forth, usually about Test Match cricket. He emigrated after getting disenchanted with the pub/hotel business in the UK. He got a nice job over there and played Grade cricket at a high level. I must say I was jealous at the time.

Suddenly, after a year, my emails went unanswered. He had told me he was ill and Graham said it was an aggressive form of cancer that he had been fighting. Even after knowing that was what must have happened, it still came as a shock.

The blows continued. People we knew that had died, some several decades ago. One teammate age 40 had early onset dementia and spent thirty years in care before finally passing. Then there was the joy of hearing of those that are still around. That call, which probably lasted an hour, brought home just how much life is a numbers game and when your number is up, off you go. The point was, mostly these were fit, active sportsmen and none you thought would have been singled out for such a fate.

I suppose you were wondering why I hadn’t said that I’d noticed yesterday how the days were seemingly (and actually) getting longer. Yes, we’ve passed the Winter Solstice, the shortest day and (so far) have survived to see another Christmas.

It was my dad that couldn’t wait to get me to join Eton Manor and the application went in on my 14th birthday. The grounds are now a part of the Olympic Park, while the clubhouse was demolished so that the A12 could be built to link Blackwall Tunnel with Redbridge and then on to the M11 and North Circular Road.

To have been able to experience all the facilities for all the sports you could wish to try, and the formative years where your own character developed – mine edging more into horses and dogs, betting and usually losing - was a privilege for someone in Hackney.

Even earlier, the horse racing gene developed over Christmas when, with my dad and two of his uncles and one cousin, we watched the King George every year on Uncle George’s ten-inch TV screen. Halloween (1952/4) and Galloway Braes, in between, were the names engraved on my brain. Then, between races it was back to playing Solo Whist, a fantastic game which I would love to have the chance to revisit.

Seventy years on, I can still smell the aroma of the massive turkey that was always provided coming through the passageway down to the living room in Clapham South. Dad always wanted to come to live in the equally massive upstairs flat, but the tenants refused ever to move. Still, it meant I could join Eton Manor. Thanks, Graham, for reminding me of all of it.

- TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Welcoming Back Windsor

Back in the 1970’s, one of the favourite trips for Home Counties racegoers was the New Year’s Day programme of jump racing at Windsor. The New Year’s Day Hurdle, a conditions race aimed at attracting potential Champion Hurdle winners, did so on its second running in 1975 with Comedy Of Errors, already winner of the 1973 edition at Cheltenham, soon to add a second a couple of months later.

The giant gelding, 17hh, won 23 of 48 career races, adding to his Cheltenham exploits for the great Fred Rimell, by taking both the Scottish and Welsh Champion Hurdles – in those days important weight-for-age races – as well as three consecutive Fighting Fifth Hurdles and a couple of Irish Sweeps Hurdles.

In his era, he supplanted Arkle as the horse that had won most National Hunt prizemoney in the UK and Ireland. He ended his days as Mercy Rimell’s (Fred’s widow) hack until his death aged 23 in 1990.

I was at Windsor for many of the New Year’s Day Hurdles and another notable winner was Royal Derbi in 1991. He was trained by the late Neville Callaghan and was an example of the difference in the racing structure in those days.

Originally trained by the highly talented David Wilson, the Scottish-born former Harrow schoolboy, who shares his alma mater like many other famous trainers, not least the two best-friend Williams, Haggas and Jarvis, and their Newmarket neighbour Sir Mark Prescott.

Wilson, who still advises the Gary/Josh Moore stable, waited until Royal Derbi’s first run in a handicap after three jogs round, to win a 17-runner three-year-old Windsor handicap by a couple of lengths with Brian Rouse in the saddle.

He was bought out of that seller by Callaghan and raced thereon for two seasons in the name of a Mr Lockhart. His first hurdles run – a successful one – came six weeks later, on August 12, when he won a match at Plumpton at 2/9, but only by a length.

Unlike now, when one NH season ends and the next begins 24 hours later at the end of April, the earliest start for jumping would be July 30 or 31, usually at Newton Abbot. So Neville was immediately on his bike with Royal Derbi who proved a very durable animal indeed.

Who would have imagined that by the middle of November, he had raced another eight times, all in novice hurdles, winning four of them? The last two of those victories were in a 25-runner field at Wetherby before beating 14 opponents at Chepstow. He wound up his year with a rare poor performance in Chepstow’s Finale Junior Hurdle, a big Triumph Hurdle guide then as now.

Early in 1989 he had another five hurdle races, winning three including a wide-margin defeat of subsequent Champion Hurdle runner-up Nomadic Way (Barry Hills). Only fourth in the Triumph Hurdle, he erased the memory of that with an easy victory in Punchestown’s Champion 4yo hurdle. Eight wins in 16 runs, all as a juvenile.

Nowadays a top candidate for the Triumph Hurdle will run twice or in rare circumstances four times, so sparse are the opportunities and so stringent the penalties for wins. Novices would have blanket penalties for multiple wins. Now seven previous victories could usually entail penalties of 42lb: they don’t like you winning races!

After that demanding campaign, Callaghan found a new owner, replacing Mr Lockhart, and Royal Derbi next appeared in the colours of the pre-Coolmore version of Michael Tabor. He was a great money-spinner for the owner and trainer, when his final career total for flat and jumps combined was 17 wins from 66 starts. His New Year’s Day Hurdle win was by six lengths from the smart Aldino in 1991.

While writing this piece I waited until I could watch the opening three races (two hurdles and one chase) on Windsor’s pioneering first jumps card back after a gap of 20 years. In truth, it was another six years longer, as it was only during the rebuilding of Ascot racecourse between 2004 and 2006 that Windsor was taken out of mothballs – the original closure coming in 1998.

I was wondering how the hurdles track would be different from the flat circuit where races longer than one mile imitate Fontwell’s chase course with a figure-of-eight. It looked at first sight yesterday that they are often travelling in a different direction to what they do on the level but that may be an optical illusion. I need to take a better look at the map. The bends looked sharp enough and like on the flat, they do turn left and right-handed at different stages.

[Editor’s note: here are the revised track configurations for hurdle and chase]

 

 

 

The ground at Windsor should be suitable for winter racing and yesterday’s surface of good to soft looked very appealing. The weather is undoubtedly warmer than was the case in the late 1990’s when frost caused the abandonment of three consecutive runnings of the New Year meeting.

Yesterday started with a couple of Henderson hotpots getting beaten early on, and favourite backers were not experiencing an initial punting panacea as another odds-on shot bit the dust later. Once it settles down, Windsor will be a good addition to the jumps fixture list, and I can’t wait to go. It might not be the same as midsummer Monday nights, but any racing is better than none to my mind.

Now all we need is for Jockey Club racecourses to free up Nottingham. The City Trial Hurdle in February fitted well in the Champion Hurdle build-up for suitable horses but Nottingham closed to jumping after 1994 and operates with two distinct tracks, one for spring and autumn – where the jumpers used to race - the other as their blurb goes, “for high summer”.

This year, Nottingham had the misfortune of losing four of its 23 planned fixtures, three of them on the inside course. Other tracks also suffered from the awful weather which came at the most inconvenient times for trainers. Despite this, I hope that if the Windsor project proves a success, then other flat-only tracks like Nottingham might reconsider.

It may be too much to ask Cheltenham, another Jockey Club course, to waive its New Year’s Day fixture, but after a New Year’s Eve skinful, Londoners would not need to get up quite so early to travel to the banks of the Thames rather than suffer the crowded M40 with hungover drivers as the trains are sure not to be running a proper service.  <I do realise other people live in different directions and distances from both tracks>.

****

I had a small theoretical bet when I met the Editor of this piece in the week and think I came out just on the wrong side. Matt Bisogno’s Geegeez syndicates have done amazingly well and last Sunday he travelled over to the Boulta point-to-point near Cork to watch Gee Force Flyer make his racecourse debut in the second division of the four-year-old maiden race.

Matt was offered the son of Jet Away by Olly Murphy whose plan was to send him across to Ireland to be broken and trained for exposure in what can be the goldmine offered to winners of Irish points. He didn’t have too much trouble syndicating him.

Ridden by John Barry, Gee Force Flyer mover up nicely in the last mile, disputed the lead over the last fence and drew away near the line for a two-length victory. We should be seeing him under the Murphy banner in the New Year. The bet arose as several of the principals from the Sunday card were in the Tattersalls Cheltenham auction after racing on Friday, but not Gee Force Flyer who is adamantly not for sale.

The runner-up was. I reckoned he would go for “at least 75k”, Matt was much more reticent, suggesting “around 25k”. On a day when the runner-up of the first division of the four-year-old maiden went for 160k, our boy was led out unsold at 48k. I make it a small win for Matt!

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Chinese Takeaway

So Oisin Murphy didn’t stay home this autumn/early winter for a full English, but instead filled his boots with the ultimate Chinese takeaway, writes Tony Stafford. Oisin didn’t follow my suggestion he might challenge for the 26-times champion Sir Gordon Richards’ best of 269 in a single year, and stands marooned on 215 in the year of his fourth championship. Put another way, Oisin, you have only 23 titles more to go!

I’m sure he and his agent will be content with the £150k or so he picked up in Hong Kong yesterday, courtesy of a win on Giavellotto and fourth on The Foxes in his two rides on the richly-endowed Longines-sponsored card at Sha Tin racecourse. I expect it took Sir Gordon a fair few of his 4,870 winners to match Oisin’s haul over the 2min 27.53 secs of the Vase.

The Marco Botti-trained Giavellotto picked up £1.3 million and change for winning the Vase over a mile and a half. He had the William Haggas world traveller Dubai Honour two and a half lengths behind in second under Tom Marquand with Luxembourg, second to the Hong Kong supreme champ Romantic Warrior in the ten-furlong Cup last year, only fifth for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore.

Giavellotto can lay claim to being one of the most publicly underrated and indeed under-noticed of performers, if not by the handicappers who have him on 119. This year, he won the Yorkshire Cup over 1m6f at York in May and the Princess Of Wales’s Stakes over yesterday’s trip at Newmarket in July. He warmed up for his trip to the Far East with a third over 1m6f, three lengths behind the peerless Kyprios in the Irish St Leger in September.

As an entire he could presumably have been trained for the King George at Ascot in July and/or the Arc early in October – that’s already nine weeks ago! – and maybe next year his realistic trainer might give those races a whirl.

Italian-born Botti quietly goes about his business in Newmarket from where his 93 horses to run picked up 49 wins, 87 places and earnings of £921,714. Yesterday’s victory easily more than doubled that sum on its own.

The big day for Hong Kong racing also provides a showcase for its own champions and the afore-mentioned Romantic Warrior made it 17 wins worth almost £18 million in 22 career starts following a third successive victory in the Cup race with its £2.25 million to the winner prize.

Andrew Balding was rewarded for his enterprise in sending The Foxes to Hong Kong, the four-year-old finishing just under five lengths back in a lavish (£240k) fourth place under Murphy. The Foxes had beaten Dubai Honour when they met in Newcastle’s Churchill Stakes, appropriately so as he’s a colt by Churchill.

Romantic Warrior was almost unbackable but, to the Sha Tin and World Pool adherents, also just about unbeatable at 10/1 on and won as he and his rider liked, the identical price as Sprint winner Ya King Rising, that one less far down the road but getting there. He stands with nine wins from 11 starts. Ya King Rising won a shade cosily under Zac Purton, one of the regular top Australians that have made Hong Kong their own along with that race’s runner-up Hugh Bowman.

But it’s the New Zealand-born James McDonald who really has the game sorted. One of the leading riders in Australia for many years, he manages to organise his trips to Hong Kong to coincide with Romantic Warrior’s runs and has been on him for his past eight races, the last seven wins in a row starting with the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in October last year.

They also won a Group 1 race together in Tokyo on June 2 this year, one of only four 2024 runs before yesterday. The son of Acclamation was sold as a yearling at Newmarket by his breeders Corduff Stud, fetching 300,000 Guineas to the bid of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Peter Lau Pak Fai, his owner, will be eternally grateful that it was his number that came up when the annual ballot for owners and horses was enacted.

James McDonald also picked up the winning rider’s share of a second £2 million to the winner race on the 8/5 favourite Voyage Bubble in the Mile. Bizarrely, he was in the television booth when last month’s Melbourne Cup was being run, having no ride in the race, after which he set straight off for his regular Hong Kong stint. Even when he won the Melbourne Cup three years ago on the mare Verry Elleegant, his pickup from the £2,584 million first prize would not have matched yesterday’s combined bounty.

Saturday’s racing at home was massively affected by the latest hurricane to trouble our shores, ending hopes of Aintree staging the Becher Chase over the Grand National obstacles, in which Kim Bailey was denied a run for his smart emerging talent Chianti Classico.  Kim woke up on Saturday morning with two fancied runners each at Aintree and Chepstow and instead none got a run. Usually in the winter, when potential winning opportunities are withheld in this way, they only rarely get a suitable race to make up for it.

Jumps trainers must be getting so frustrated. The wet summer when the big horses weren’t generally in action proved difficult for the fast-ground regulars. Then as the early autumn became very dry, many trainers waiting for a first run for their good horses were understandably worried about sending them into action on quick ground.

Then came another very wet spell, with meetings lost and good-ground high-class horses also being put at a disadvantage.

Sandown survived on Saturday but surely it’s a reflection on these problems that the Grade 1 Henry VIII Novice Chase at Sandown attracted a final field of four. These were the Dan Skelton-trained favourite L’Eau du Sud; two from Gordon Elliott, Touch Me Not and Down Memory Lane; and just one more from the UK, the Kieran Burke-trained Soul Icon, the 16/1 outsider.

L’Eau du Sud didn’t have as much to spare as when winning on comeback and chase debut by 11 lengths at Cheltenham, but this race has always been a decent guide to the Arkle Novice Chase at Cheltenham. He will be going there certainly as one of the best of the home team.

The money on offer for that race was 56k, 20k, 10k with more than five grand for the horse that brought up the rear. You wonder sometimes how owners that moan about prize money as I feel they are entitled to most of the time, explain a case like this when so few found their way to such a historic novice race. All the novice chasers in the UK cannot be rubbish, or can they?

An hour later it was the Grade 1 Tingle Creek Chase and Jonbon won this for the second year in succession for the McManus/Henderson/de Boinville team.

The Tingle Creek was worth almost twice as much as the Henry VIII, Jonbon picking up a few quid short of £100,000 for his eight-length defeat of Irish raider Quilixios. Two of the three remaining UK runners fell, including Edwardstone, so again each of those that did get round got a handy prize, around 40k, 20k with 10 grand for fourth.

It’s hard to believe with the recent flat season still so fresh in the memory that when my article appears in two weeks’ time, the days will be getting longer again. Some people are counting down to Christmas, but there may be many that will be sensing Cheltenham 2025 coming over the horizon. Three months? It’ll go in a flash!

- TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Superpowers

 

What a lovely Saturday afternoon, writes Tony Stafford. Sky Sports Racing – now on my Now TV sports package, if you please – had all three UK cards. Thus, there was a constant flow of high-class jumping from Newcastle, Doncaster and, above all, Newbury suggesting that all may not be quite so gloomy where our sport is concerned.

Alex Hammond, Mick Fitzgerald and Jamie Lynch provide a refreshing balance of experience, insight and regional accent and they were in their element, especially Mick, as his old boss Nicky Henderson was on one of his very good days. The former stable number one showed he keeps a keen, close acquaintanceship.

Basically, he knows where the Seven Barrows horses go to work at home or, at important times, away and even, no doubt, what they had for breakfast.

The Henderson highlight, of course, was super-sub Sir Gino, nimbly stepping in after his work with Constitution Hill at Newbury suggested he might have made up a chunk of the 23lb that officially separated them in the BHA handicap.

Lameness was the reason for the former (2023) Champion Hurdle winner’s absence from Saturday’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle. It could turn out in time that Henderson might not have needed to search so intently for a reason <lame excuse?> to explain the gallop’s outcome.

Saturday’s field seemed to contain only one horse capable of challenging the previously unbeaten Henderson four-year-old. That was Mullins’ superbly bred Mystical Power, result of a union between perennial (but deceased) champion flat-race stallion Galileo and close-to unbeatable hurdling mare Annie Power, one of the stars of Willie Mullins’ long career.

Mystical Power was never going in a race where a couple of outsiders made the pace. Nico de Boinville moved Sir Gino out to challenge entering the straight and when he asked him to extend, the gelding did so thrillingly, winning by an ever-widening eight lengths from five-time winner (from eight runs) Lump Sum. It was Nicky’s eighth victory in the race.

Sir Gino started out with an unexpected debut win in France and, once “lifted” from under Harold Kirk’s and Mullins’ noses, went unbeaten last season, missing the Triumph Hurdle, but sorting out the Triumph runner-up, Mullins’ Kargese, by almost four lengths at Aintree. Constitution Hill’s performances still stretch far into the distance where even the best of the rest is concerned, but Sir Gino could just be getting a good deal closer, and his stablemate clearly hasn’t been as easy to train of late.

Until I checked on Sunday morning, I had no idea of Willie Mullins’ age or when he started his training career. It was a shock to see he’s 68 years old and took out his first licence 36 years ago!

That still makes him a novice compared with the six-years-older Henderson, who began training ten years earlier. The pair have been at the top in their respective countries for decades and the most pugnacious of opponents at every Cheltenham Festival meeting since Mullins got into his stride.

Paul Nicholls began as a trainer three years after Mullins, but with the credibility from his time as a jockey when he won two consecutive runnings of the then Hennessy Gold Cup on Broadheath and Playschool in 1986/87 for David Barons. How he ever managed 10st 5lb to ride Broadheath I can’t fathom, but then, when Ned Sangster can ride in amateur riders’ races on the flat at under 10 stone, I suppose anything is possible! Don’t turn sideways Ned, I won’t be able to see you!

Nicholls didn’t take long showing he had gone through a thorough apprenticeship. Towards the end of the Martin Pipe superiority after the turn of the century, when Pipe won 15 titles, Nicholls got ever closer, finally ending that one-sided era with a first triumph on a memorable final day at Sandown in April 2006.

Over the next 17 years, he and Henderson dominated, albeit heavily in Nicholls’s favour, 14 to four, with legends like Kauto Star and Denman to fuel the lavish prizemoney that decides the title. Henderson had collected twice in the 1980’s, so he has six.

Then, last April, it became evident that Willie Mullins, not content with 17 consecutive championships at home, was intent on dislodging either Nicholls or Paul’s former assistant Dan Skelton, and he duly achieved it with something to spare.

The statistics around this top three – Henderson, Nicholls and Mullins – are collectively most impressive with only Skelton in the UK likely to beat the trio to the top spot. Skelton’s wonderful training complex near Alcester, was built and designed on father Nick’s business acumen and Olympic Gold medal riding skills over many years.

Both Dan and younger brother Harry, already a champion jump jockey and potentially going close to another title this season, had their initial racing experience in Nicholls yard, as did emerging trainer Harry Derham.

In Ireland, Gordon Elliott has withstood what many thought would be a career-ending faux-pas a few years ago to come back even bigger and stronger.

Elliott’s stats are remarkable. After Saturday’s racing, in the season from May, Gordon had run 232 individual horses in 633 races, winning 86 and accruing €1,822k. Mullins, with 78 fewer horses (154) and from under half the runs, has 65 wins for €1,326k.

Skelton meanwhile in the UK has gone off at a fast pace, returning to getting as many wins as possible at the “phoney” first half of the season (May to October) before the real stuff begins. His stats are not far short of Elliott’s. He has run 196 horses for 484 runs, 96 wins and £1,247k. Nicholls has 47 wins and £845k from 114 horses and 194 runs. Slow-starting Henderson has 29 wins and £496k from 84 horses and 128 runs.

Henderson was at Newbury on Saturday, saddling two winners, both making their seasonal comeback. Nicholls, too, was content to let his Coral (ex-Hennessy) Gold Cup contender Kandoo Kid go to Newbury without a previous run this autumn and his judgment and that of rider Harry Cobden proved correct as he won comfortably from the favourite, Nigel Twiston-Davies’ Broadway Boy. Here the inherent dangers of punditry came to the fore, one of the trio (Mr Lynch I believe) suggesting the Coral Gold Cup rarely goes to a horse first time out. It did this time.

This was a fourth training win in the race to go with those almost four decades ago riding successes. We all remember Denman’s duo – the only thing we might have forgotten was that they were respectively 17 and 15 years ago!

It’s not only Nicholls whose former assistants rise to a high level after taking their leave. Henderson saw Tom Symonds, a former joint assistant with Ben Pauling, enjoying a prestige win with Navajo Indy in the Gerry Feilden Hurdle. The runner-up there, the former Oliver Sherwood-trained mare Queens Gamble, now with Harry Derham along with her former handler, was a good second first time out for a year, and she is the one I would take from the entire Newbury card.

Talking of Pauling, while his Henrys Friend was only fifth in the big race, he would have been much closer I’m sure had he not punctuated his otherwise great jumping round with a shattering mistake halfway down the back straight second time around. He was also making his return to action and should not be missed next time.

The previous afternoon at Newbury, Pauling showed his hand with another young chaser who could be winning the Coral Gold Cup next year. Carrying Harry Redknapp’s colours, The Jukebox Man made an exhilarating first run over fences in the John Francome Novices Chase, sponsored by Corals. Ben brought him along carefully through his bumper and hurdles seasons and he is now ready to reveal his true potential as a chaser.

I mentioned above the numerical strength of Elliott and Mullins in Ireland. Gordon had 17 runners on the Saturday Fairyhouse card but it wasn’t until the day’s final race, the bumper, that he had a winner. Most punters would have been expecting Ma Jacks Hill, a €310k acquisition for Giggingstown House Stud to land 4/5 favouritism, but he was only third to Elliott’s other runner, William Butler, a 25/1 shot. I hope Sir Mark Prescott’s assistant noticed it running and had a fiver on it!

Talking of expensive buys, the Sir Alex Ferguson colours had their first airing on the Nicholls-trained €740k acquisition Coldwell Potter at Carlisle yesterday. He and Harry Cobden treated the crowd to an exhibition from the front and won easily. That Nicholls fellow keeps persuading the boys to fork out the money. He won’t get back on top otherwise.

- TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Ritual

Over the past year or so at Tattersalls sales, it has become a ritual, writes Tony Stafford. Bill Gredley, cap perched defiantly atop his head, eases his way between the tables in the Tattersalls Newmarket buffet room, stops and smiles. John Hancock, my long-term associate, as usual is in the perfect spot to meet and greet those we know (and in many cases John seems to remember he knew).

Bill stops and the ritual begins. "How old, are you Bill?", John asks politely. Bill’s answer – I can never remember this part – “92!” - or is it91? John says, “So am I!” <whichever>. “Which month?”. The saga continues and until the next time, neither of these august gentlemen of the turf will remember who indeed is the older. For the life of me I cannot! Maybe December sales later this month will give us the definitive answer and I’ll make a note. <As if! Ed>

John Hancock for many years has been the doyen of bloodstock insurers and still gets the request for cover from old clients after they buy their horses. Cowboys and far more honourable types have come and gone, but he’s still here and loves every minute, although £3 for a Coke and £2.50 for Maltesers would be excessive at the Ritz never mind the sales; but we endure it for the camaraderie.

Entrepreneur Gredley was already age 60 when his great filly User Friendly went on an extraordinary year in 1992 under the care of Clive Brittain. Unraced at two, User Friendly was a 25/1 shot in that Sandown late April fillies’ maiden over ten furlongs when opening the account on debut.

Next came the Lingfield Oaks Trial, followed by three Classics and one other Group 1 victory, in the Oaks, Irish Oaks, Yorkshire Oaks and St Leger. The filly and George Duffield, her regular partner, only gave best - and then by a neck as favourite - to French-trained Subotica in the Arc. Respective Irish and Epsom Derby winners from that year, St Jovite and Dr Devious, were fourth and sixth to emphasise her merit.

In the meantime, much of the Gredley (now officially listed as the Gredley family) race planning with his trainers comes down to son Tim, a more than effective point-to-point rider and international show jumper.

Increasingly, decent Gredley flat racers, usually home-breds and many with East End names to celebrate Bill’s (I’m proud of it, too) heritage, have switched to the winter game, no doubt with Tim’s approval, and are based with a future top-five trainer in James Owen.

Last year at Cheltenham, the family’s Burdett Road, switched from Michael Bell to the former Arabian and point-to-point trainer, exploded onto the hurdling scene. He recorded impressive wins at Huntingdon and in last weekend’s (a year ago) Triumph Hurdle Trial which he won by more than six lengths.

The embryonic favourite for the Festival, he lost that position when well beaten in a return to Cheltenham in January, by future Aintree G1 winner Sir Gino.  A setback ruled him out of running in the big race, but he returned to flat racing for James Owen this year and, two runs back, won a Listed race at Newmarket. Challenging Kyprios in the Champion Stayers’ race at Ascot last month proved beyond him, but he returned to jumping yesterday in the Greatwood Hurdle at Cheltenham and made all to collect the £60k prize.

They say lightning doesn’t strike twice in the same place, but racehorse breeding often lends the lie to that adage. Now the year-younger full-brother to Burdett Road, East India Dock, is following a similar path.

The initial difference was that he was in training with James Fanshawe. He easily won handicaps at 1m4f at Salisbury and 2m at Goodwood before turning to hurdling, again with Owen. The first race proved a comfortable success at Wincanton and then it was on to follow in big brother’s footsteps at Cheltenham on Saturday.

On ground officially described as good with good to soft places, he breezed up to the leader two from home; from that point it was a massacre, trebling his brother’s winning margin in a remarkable time. His 3 min 53.82 sec was more than 20 seconds faster than Burdett Road achieved, admittedly on soft ground, and considerably faster than the two previous renewals of this race.

The record time for the Old Course’s 2m1/2f is 3 min 44.35, set in March 2022 by the wonderful Constitution Hill in the Supreme Novice Hurdle. So, almost ten seconds faster, but when you consider the brilliant Jonbon was second that day, beaten 22 lengths, we are talking in superlatives. By that measure East India Dock looks right and the time is right too!

Will Willie Mullins be worried? Presumably the team he and Harold Kirk have been compiling from France and, given that mysterious ability enhancement over the months of summer and autumn, will again be to be feared. Last year, Mullins had the first two but not necessarily the ones most expected. He supplied seven of the twelve runners and all finished in the first ten. Sir Gino abstained on that day but came back to win at Aintree. He’s one to look forward to from Nicky Henderson.

When Burdett Road won last year, he was immediately put in at a short price for the Triumph Hurdle. The initial quote for East India Dock was 12/1 – really? In my punting days I would have been on the phone in a heartbeat. You could still get 10/1 in a couple of spots Sunday evening.

Yesterday’s performance in the Greatwood by Burdett Road was spectacular enough, seeing off the hot favourite Dysart Enos by the last hurdle and then comfortably holding the flying finish of the Skelton runner Be Aware. If you needed more evidence of how good the East India Dock run was, his big brother took more than five seconds longer over the same course and distance when most of that top-class field of experienced handicappers could never get near to challenge.

His win came with Cheltenham under a pall as the immediately preceding long-distance chase suffered two fatalities, neither involving a fence. Bangers And Cash, trained by Ben Pauling, collapsed halfway through the near 3m4f contest, and then the all-the-way impressive-jumping winner, Warren Greatrex-trained Abuffalosoldier also collapsed when circling on pulling up after the race.

Reverting to Saturday, based on what my eyes told me, I also cannot wait for the next appearance of Dan Skelton’s L’Eau Du Sud. As with East India Dock, he strolled up the final hill of his valuable two-miler with Harry Skelton, such a brilliant rider, never more so than now, enjoying the view from a top-class conveyance.

He hadn’t been the luckiest in his runs in valuable handicap hurdles last winter for the 'Sir Alex Ferguson and mates' - not including Jim Ratcliff - team and could be a future Champion Chaser.

Sir Alex also owns a bit of the Paul Nicholls-trained Il Ridoto, winner of the £84k to the winner Paddy Power Gold Cup, although if Jamie Snowden’s Ga Law could have eliminated his customary mid-race horror jump, it might have been close. So while his £1 million-plus job as a Manchester United ambassador has gone down the drain – obviously Mr Ratcliff was aware of the extra National Insurance cost if he had kept him on - the racehorses are playing their part.

On Friday, amazingly, Sir Alex and best racing pal Ged Mason were celebrating a second successive victory in the Bahrain International Trophy with the Richard Fahey-trained Spirit Dancer. Fred Done of Betfred also has a piece of this one. Oisin Orr came widest of all in the straight and, just as it appeared that the classy Gosden-trained Lead Artist would follow up last time’s Group 3 win at Newmarket, he was cut down and outpaced by Spirit Dancer, who had been well behind him in that Newmarket race. Even split three ways, £472k helps significantly towards paying the training fees. For Fahey to keep the horse in such tremendous shape at age seven and targeting the right race deserves immense praise.

 

**

 

I had intended having a right rant about the decision of the third bunch of adjudicators to allow the original result of the Cesarewitch to stand. The ten strikes rule has been brought in, rightly, to appease public opinion. It is not a question of how many blows land on the horse in the place stewards deem “useful”, it's much more what the public sees. Ten is ten and ever more shall be so.

If the apprentice rider was too incompetent, tired or merely unbalanced, he still tried to give his mount a tenth strike - the one that should have broken the proverbial camel’s back and brought disqualification. As he admitted on television straight afterwards.

The BHA rules are ridiculous. Stewards on the day decide one way or another. Why do they need a different team several days later to say whether it was ten hits or not? They found it was and disqualified the horse. Nobody bar connections disagreed.

The next month another team gathered, no doubt at considerable expense and the BHA team were out-lawyered by the connections of the Irish horse Alphonse Le Grand, trained (sic) by Cathy O’Leary, Tony Martin’s sister. It seems the last of the ten strikes landed prematurely and on the “wrong” part of the horse to be regarded as a proper strike, so sorry connections of Manxman, now £48 grand worse off and the same goes for other prize earners all the way down.

I think after this fiasco, the BHA should make up the deficit from what owners and trainers understandable believed was their rightful due following the disqualification. Simon Crisford, joint-trainer with son Ed of Manxman, understandably called it a fiasco and a sorry day for UK racing. It just made me sick to the stomach. Intent to commit a crime is a crime in law. Intent to hit a horse that misses its target ought to count just the same.

- TS



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: A Little Bit of Politics

I rarely delve into the murky world of politics and apologise for doing so now, writes Tony Stafford. But a conversation with a couple of senior and well-respected trainers over the weekend did at least offer an insight into how Rachel Reeves’ first Budget as Chancellor of the Exchequer will impinge upon the racing industry in general and trainers in particular.

The increase in employers’ contributions to National Insurance is a body blow, not least for employees. Trainer one said his increase in annual costs simply from that rise will be £40,000. The choice was to increase training fees, already dangerously expensive, or make one staff member redundant, saving £30K. A tough pick but one with an inevitable outcome.

Taken across all of racing, you might have thought this could have a beneficial effect as many trainers have been complaining since Brexit that the supply of qualified foreign staff has been significantly reduced. Yards in the big centres have been woefully short of fully qualified stable staff, but the new legion of redundant workers will hardly be the best in their respective places of work.

Staff reductions and smaller, if any, pay rises, will be the obvious result while in London tube drivers it seems will be able to work a four-day week on the same pay, courtesy of the Mayor of London.

The second trainer reckoned “a storm” is about to hit racing, after the Budget. Many country-based trainers also combine to a degree farming on their land. The change in inheritance tax rules will surely cause retaliation in some ways.

In France, by now tractors will have been lined up two by two on all the main thoroughfares, intent on bringing traffic if not to a halt, to a crawl. Coincidentally, last weekend, all racing in France was cancelled with many professionals joining a protest in Paris against the proposed increase in the tax on sports betting. €115 million was the intended haul from the new legislation. Jockeys, trainers, PMU workers and the rest were on show. Could it happen here? Doubtful.

Last weekend also featured the latest running of the November Handicap. At around the time I was getting most immersed in racing, I remember listening on the radio to a commentary on the 1962 November Handicap, in those days still run at Castle Irwell in Manchester.

It was a very big ante-post race and in the year of my favourite old-time flat horse Hethersett, the 1962 St Leger winner for Dick Hern, Towser Gosden (father of John) won the race with Damredub. It was a shock the other day when I noticed that this year’s race, although attracting a full field, carried a first prize of just over £36,000.

Inadequate records limited my research, but I was sure the race had been worth more in the past. A simple look back to 1993, one of my favourite renewals, as the Jason Weaver-ridden Quick Ransom’s victory at 6/1 was enough to win me the Sporting Life naps table that year, was enough to answer my question. Jason also won it the following year on Saxon Maid for Luca Cumani. Who’d have believed he won the race more than 30 years ago, watching him on TV working at the track on Saturday? Call him Peter Pan!

Quick Ransom picked up £24,000 for the Mark Johnston stable. The pound sterling in 1993 was worth £2.55 of today’s pounds, so the race’s real value had it kept pace with inflation should have been nearer 60 grand. Twelve years ago, when Brian Ellison won the race with Batswing it was £40k to the winner and the pound then represents £1.47 nowadays. Again, something close to £60k.

Brian Ellison has been around for a while too, so it was great that while his horse Onesmoothoperator could finish no better than 12th in last Tuesday’s Melbourne Cup, his owners still collected 85 grand. Had he been one place further back, it would have been nothing for unlucky 13th.

For Newcastle-born Ellison the Northumberland Plate win for Onesmoothoperator this June provided a kick-start to the six-year-old gelding’s explosion of earnings. Before collecting that £81,000, amusingly (or maybe not so?) less for a big-race UK win than his 12th the other day, he had run 33 times over four seasons.

David Simcock trained him at three, sent him to win his maiden first time out at Newcastle and gave him another two more placed runs there before switching less successfully to turf racing.

After six runs, he was sent to the sales and owners of Ellison’s bought him for 65,000gns. He won on December 22nd 2021 at Southwell but it wasn’t until almost two years (November 11th last year) and 18 runs later that he won another race - back at Newcastle.

It took another seven losing runs before his Plate victory, so in all just one win in 26 outings before the race that gave Ellison’s lengthy career what we thought was the fitting embellishment.

Sometimes, owners and their trainers can be over-cautious – Ellison has never been that, but to contemplate a winter trip to Australia where he easily won the £160k to the winner Geelong Cup proved his attacking policy so imaginative and rewarding. Just as St Leger winner Jan Breughel was ruled out by the exacting Racing Victoria veterinary team, so Onesmoothoperator also got an initial no, but survived a second vetting.

From Northumberland Plate to Melbourne Cup, five races earned the six-year-old gelding £326,000. His previous 33 races earned a total of £156k for three wins and 16 places.

It’s salutary to think what a significant part in his story the 57-rated Jimmy Moffatt-trained horse Yukon played. During his long losing run, Ellison sent him to Sedgefield for a maiden hurdle for which Onesmoothoperator started 2-1 on under Brian Hughes. Yukon, ridden by Charlotte Jones, was a 50/1 shot. Onesmoothoperator looked exactly that as he jumped the last hurdle level with Yukon, yet for all Hughes’ efforts, was beaten more than two lengths, seeming less than keen. He is rated 45lb Yukon’s superior.

Maybe if he had won that day, he would have been kept to hurdling and would never have seen the racecourses of Victoria.

What his history does tell us though is that many of the horses sold at the end of their three- or even two-year-old careers last month at Newmarket may have been disposed of prematurely. I know trainers who have been urged to sell horses by owners when often they believe their potential has not been anywhere near achieved.

So these horses – increasingly sold for export and the riches awaiting them elsewhere – are mostly never heard of again unless they crop up in one of those massively-endowed features over the winter.

There is still a market for jumps horses (where potential owners can get in a bid) and I’m sure that after the record amounts of rainfall in October, the big teams were getting ready for nice ground through the next couple of months.

But then two weeks ago, the taps went dry, and we had the prospect of a Premier Raceday card at Exeter on Friday when only 41 horses turned out – 12 absentees mostly citing unsuitable ground for their absence, and one race becoming a walkover. The Haldon Gold Cup with its £59k first prize, £23k more than the November Handicap, mustered five runners.

Two of Wincanton’s races on Saturday also outstripped the November Handicap prize. The Badger Beer did have ten runners and was worth £47k. The four-runner Elite Hurdle provided one of five wins for Paul Nicholls on the day and carried a £41k winner’s prize. Favourite Rubaud’s superior jumping saw off Brentford Hope, who should be winning again soon.

There was also more money on offer for the Grand Sefton Handicap Chase at Aintree, won by David Pipe’s lightly weighted King Turgeon. Fifth, staying on well up the run-in was Sure Touch, and he should be resuming normal service back on conventional tracks for the geegeez syndicate boys in red, dark blue and white.

- TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: It’s Coolmore’s Classic, but not as we thought…

How fitting. City of Troy does have an Achilles (Ancient Greek hero of the Trojan wars) heel, writes Tony Stafford. Not an arrow shot from a bow out of the packed stands at Del Mar on Saturday night, just a different surface and a slow exit that consigned him to being the latest non-winner for Ballydoyle of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

It had been in the expectation of watching City Of Troy win the 2000 Guineas – he didn’t, of course – that Michael Tabor stayed in Europe on the first Saturday in May when he previously insisted he would always go to Kentucky in preference to Newmarket if the boys had an authentic contender for the Run for the Roses.

He changed that life choice this year such was the confidence emanating from the Aidan O’Brien camp, just as he had a few weeks earlier. Then, he made a first-ever trip to Dubai for the Sheema Classic where the 2023 Derby winner Auguste Rodin had one of those off-days that sprinkle his card.

The Coolmore team had two big chances in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs – one in their name, Sierra Leone, carrying the dark  blue of John Magnier, and also Fierceness, the favourite, who although owned by Mike Repole’s stable, the Coolmore team had acquired some of the racing and more importantly breeding interests, just as they had their two Triple Crown-winning stallions American Pharoah and Justify towards the end of their racing careers.

The pair were fancied to complete the 1-2 in Kentucky and Sierra Leone surely should have won in front of Derrick Smith, one of the partners, had he kept at all straight rather than doing his imitation of a naughty schoolboy.

Three noses crossed the line in concert, and it was indeed by a nose that outsider Mystik Dan held on while Japan’s Forever Young was the same distance away in a regularly impeded third place. Most people thought the second and third places should have been reversed. Fierceness, the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, was a non-competitive 15th with no apparent excuse.

In between May and November, Sierra Leone had been beaten three times, albeit close up in the places in Grade 1 races at Saratoga: not his track, said trainer Chad Brown. Fierceness won two of those races, the Jim Dandy in July and the Travers in August, for Todd Pletcher to lay claim to being the best of the Classic crop.

On Saturday, half a dozen or so horses went off in a group at a suicidal pace in what was the fastest first half-mile ever for a Breeders’ Cup Classic. Fierceness sat just behind the front rank, while Sierra Leone was for a while almost dancing step by step with City Of Troy.

The Irish challenger in the first Magnier silks merely plodded along, but Sierra Leone in the vibrant pink second livery made rapid ground. Fierceness, with the utmost gallantry, led three furlongs from home as his fellow front-runners ran out of puff, and turned into the stretch in front; but his old adversary was full of running and won readily. Fierceness deserves the utmost respect for keeping on for second.

The Breeders’ Cup Classic has been something of a Holy Grail for O’Brien and his owners, and he and the team will have to brush themselves down and revert to winning the big races in Europe. Not that he’s a mug at this meeting, two winners on Friday propelling him to 20 and the equal of almost but not quite retired D Wayne Lukas whose Kentucky Derby win for Michael Tabor in 1995 with Thunder Gulch was the catalyst that helped forge the alliance with John Magnier.

Those two nice wins on Friday, with Lake Victoria in the Juvenile Fillies Turf over a mile and the Juvenile Turf for colts and geldings at the same trip with Henri Matisse, both owed plenty to Ryan Moore’s coolness under pressure. Lake Victoria could easily have been a victim of the inevitable first bend crowding around this tight turf course as she got knocked back a worrying few lengths.

Patient as ever, Moore bided his time and burst through to lead in the closing stages. The filly showed that the mile of the 1000 Guineas next year will not worry her. In between the seven-furlong Moyglare and Friday, she outclassed the opposition when dropping to six furlongs for the Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket. Probably the only thing to stop her will be another of the O’Brien fillies, like for instance Fairy Godmother, who hasn’t been seen since Royal Ascot.

That marvellous Friday was the filling between two less agreeable moments for Aidan. While preparing his Del Mar team, 19 hours further forward on the international time scale, over in Australia the veterinary panel adjudicating on which horses should pass fit to run in tomorrow’s Melbourne Cup, ruled that the unbeaten Jan Breughel could not.

Jan Breughel last raced in the St Leger, beating fellow O’Brien Galileo colt Illinois, when still looking to have a fair bit to learn about racing. As Hughie Morrison can testify when a similar pre-race fate befell his 2018 runner-up Marmelo in preparation for the 2019 renewal, it was a crushing setback.

As was the case last week, Hughie’s vets totally disagreed with the verdict, but there is no recourse. Aidan was visibly fuming and while the Coolmore coffers can withstand the odd reverse of this kind, it’s no less galling than for a team like Morrison’s with the cost of sending horse and staff and keeping them there for several weeks being so excessive.

The man wheeled out to explain the situation was none other than Jamie Stier, the head of the temporary Australianising of the BHA at the end of the last decade. Few mourned his departure from our shores, but beware, he’s still very much out there helping to run Racing Victoria. One horse happily that did pass the scanners and “gait-evaluators” is Brian Ellison’s Onesmoothoperator, winner of the Northumberland Plate and now the Geelong Cup last week which entails 2lb extra in the Melbourne Cup. I’d love him to win the £2.35 million and I’m sure Brian will still talk to everyone if he does!

The worst moment for me of the weekend was to hear than Brian Meehan’s Jayarebe had collapsed and died after sustaining a heart attack while finishing what must have been an ultra-brave seventh place in the Turf race that immediately preceded the Classic.

Brian had plotted a masterful programme for the three-year-old, winning three of his five races and looked to have an exceptional chance. He ran an usually sluggish race, starting slowly and never getting close to the front, which became wholly understandable in the awful circumstances.

In a year when his stock has gone a long way towards where it was at the time of his two previous Breeders’ Cup Turf wins with Red Rocks and Dangerous Midge, this will be a tough blow for Brian to overcome. Let’s hope the new intake Sam Sangster acquired for the various syndicates he manages will bring another star for Meehan to work his magic on.

Talking of magic, it’s hard to believe that it’s coming up to 30 years since Kim Bailey pulled off the Gold Cup (Master Oats) and Champion Hurdle (Alderbrook) double in 1995. Kim continues to show a sure touch especially with his training of staying chasers and at Ascot on Saturday, he brought out second-season chaser Chianti Classico to win his comeback race, the Sodexho Live! Gold Cup with a pillar-to-post victory off top weight,

It's strange not to see the bustling style of David Bass on the Bailey horses but Tom Bellamy seems to have the regular gig now. He's much more a "let the horse do the work"-type pilot and it's looking good and working well so far.

Once Chianti Classico settled in the lead it was almost like a flashback to a few years back in the same race when Vindication came back from a break to win this nice prize. At age seven, Chianti Classico is the perfect profile of a Coral Gold Cup (Hennessy etc) winner at Newbury next month.

-        TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Monday Musings: Sistina’s Aussie Fortunes

 

Who would have believed it? Three hundred and twenty-five days after buying the then five-year-old mare Via Sistina for 2,700,000 guineas at Tattersalls December sales, new owners Yu Long Investments were already in the black, writes Tony Stafford.

On Saturday at Moonee Valley racecourse, Via Sistina tackled the Ladbrokes Cox Plate over ten furlongs. She won, beating the Japanese-trained favourite, the six-year-old entire Prognosis by eight lengths in track record time, taking her earnings in Australia to £2.9 million.

It’s common knowledge that Australian trainers know how to prepare for the Melbourne Cup, Tuesday week’s (November 5) biggest prize and “the race that stops a nation”, but before we get too excited about Via Sistina’s chance in the big one, there is a small hurdle for her to overcome.

Moonee Valley and Flemington may only be 3.1 kilometres apart, so less than the Cup’s distance of two miles (3,200 metres), but the double in the same year of these two highly prestigious races has been only rarely achieved. Phar Lap, the greatest Australian horse of the Inter-War period, did it in 1930, while the dual Melbourne Cup heroine Makybe Diva did the Cups double 19 years ago. Time flies.

She was a six-year-old, and that second Melbourne Cup win proved to be her racing swansong before retiring to stud.

The Cox Plate is acknowledged to be Australia’s premier non-handicap Group 1 race and it carried just over £1.6 million to the winner on Saturday. It was Via Sistina’s fourth Group 1 victory in six starts since travelling down to Australia, to which can be added one second place in another £1.6 million to the winner extravaganza.

Chris Waller, best known for his training of Winx, never asked that great mare to go further than the 1m2f of the Cox Plate. She won the second of her consecutive quartet in the race by eight lengths, mirroring Via Sistina on Saturday, and won 37 of her 43 career starts.

Should Waller decide to go for the Cup. Via Sistina will clearly challenge for favouritism and while like Winx she has never won at beyond 1m2f, she is a staying rather than the speed type of Winx at the trip. If she runs it would add massive excitement and a completely different aspect to an already compelling race.

Two people at least that will be looking on wanly should she run, will be previous owner Becky Hillen, daughter of the late David Wintle, and her initial trainer Joseph Tuite, who handled the five grand yearling as an unraced two-year-old and progressive three/four-year-old.

George Boughey had her in his yard at the latter part of her four-year-old season and then at five, where she began the startling progression, that culminated (so far) in that Cox Plate tour-de-force. Some selling owners cannot bear watching their former horses win for the new connections. Until Saturday, Becky and husband, bloodstock agent Steve, were probably happy enough. After Saturday and maybe next week, it might be a different story.

But for Joe Tuite it can only have been two years of turmoil and what might-have-been after he relinquished his licence in late August 2022. Clearly, studying Via Sistina’s career from the comfort of my office, Tuite had a major part in developing a late-maturing filly into the colossus she now is.

Unraced at two, Via Sistina won second time out as a three-year-old, by five-and-a-half lengths in a Goodwood maiden fillies’ race. She added a Newmarket handicap off 89 by four lengths in October of that year. Such was her obvious potential at that stage, that when Tuite targeted a fillies’ Listed race at Doncaster the following month, she went off as the 11/4 favourite, but finished in the ruck, only 13th of 18.

Clearly at the start of her four-year-old season, her training hadn’t gone smoothly, and it wasn’t until August 27 that Via Sistina made her debut. She appeared in the Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor, a Group 3 race open to colts and geldings as well as fillies. She was a 33/1 shot and in finishing fourth she probably exceeded expectations.

By now though, the die was cast and Joe had already made up his mind to give up the unequal fight of trying to keep himself financially afloat. A report in the Racing Post the day after the filly’s promising return to action tells how it was almost with a measure of relief that he was finishing. The story went thus:-

Joe Tuite felt a mix of sadness and nerves as he saddled the final runner of his 11-year training career on Saturday, yet he stands by a decision to retire due to financial difficulties. Via Sistina outran her 33/1 odds to finish fourth in the Sytner Sunningdale & Maidenhead BMW Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor.

Tuite revealed he'd had a "few offers" for a future job in racing but no decision had been made.

Tuite said on Saturday morning: "It's a bit of a weird feeling – I can't really describe it. It's a bit of sadness I suppose.

"There are a lot of times where you go racing and there's not much of a worry but today I'm on tenterhooks about it all."

The trainer said a difficult season, with just two winners, and financial issues heightened by escalating costs were behind his reasons to retire.

He added: "It's definitely the right thing to do. I was down on numbers, and it was putting square pegs into round holes. I'd be worried looking down the road what the future would be like for the lower-tier of racing, that's for sure.

"It's tough but business is tough for everyone, not just racing, it's in all walks of life.

"I know my decision surprised a few people, but a few people that were closer to me weren't, as they could see the way things were going."

Within not much more than a month, Via Sistina was already showing Joe that maybe if he had held on for a short while, things might have sorted themselves out for him. Transferred to George Boughey, Via Sistina was quickly off the mark for him, running 2nd in the Group 3 Pride Stakes at Newmarket at the beginning of that October and then going across to Toulouse and picking up a provincial Group 3 in November.

She ran five times for Boughey last year as a five-year-old, starting off with a six-length win in the Group 3 Dahlia Stakes at Newmarket in May, before going across to the Curragh for the Group 1 Pretty Polly on July 1 where she beat Hughie Morrison’s slightly unlucky in running Stay Alert by two lengths.

She didn’t win again in this hemisphere, but third as the even-money favourite in the Group 1 Falmouth at Newmarket 13 days later when dropping back to a mile probably wasn’t her ideal task. Then it was 2nd, beaten a nose in the Prix Jean Romanet (ten furlongs) at Deauville before that sale-exploding run behind King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot a year ago.

The luck was certainly just as much with Becky Hillen in terms of the timing with the December sales and all that Aussie money, barely a month ahead. Just as the luck had been notoriously absent when Joe Tuite had to make the awful decision to cut his losses and hand in his licence even as the filly he nurtured so carefully was about to come into full bloom as a late-developing racehorse.

For each of her 121 seconds of action around Moonee Valley on Saturday, Via Sistina earned her new (ish) owners £13,000.

In 11 years as a trainer in the UK, Joe Tuite had a best tally of 30, but usually picked up between 15 and 20 or so wins each year. From 1,881 runs over those 11 seasons, on the flat he won 173 races and total earnings of £1,552,585. Put another way, it represented a return of £825 per runner.

It must be salutary to think that his former inmate, the one that he brought to a position where she was equipped to make the giant strides she later managed as she had not been rushed or abused, won more in those 121 track-record-breaking seconds than he did in all those 11 years.

We keep saying it. Something’s rotten about English racing that we can afford to lose people with the skills of a Joe Tuite because he can’t manage to make it pay. Our only point in world racing seems to be to provide the proven material that can then go back to countries with many times more prize money to spread around and clean up – like Via Sistina!

One footnote. Cheltenham’s winter season proper started on Friday and Saturday and, as usual, it proved a bonanza for the Irish. They had six winners over the two days, including the first four races on Saturday. Henry De Bromhead had the 1-2 in the £100,000 featured chase, his pair mopping up £75k as they careered well clear of the rest up the Cheltenham run-in. Here we go again!

- TS

 



Try Tix for Better Tote Returns

Your first 30 days for just £1