Monday Musings: Troy Worth Weight in Gold

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There was a space next to me for Aidan O’Brien to slide into as we had a late lunch on Saturday, delayed by the excitements we’d just seen on the track, writes Tony Stafford. To my observation that I’d written that City Of Troy was the best two-year-old I’d ever seen, performance-wise, after the Superlative Stakes back in July, Aidan simply said: “He is”, adding, “I know you did, I read that in your column again last week”.

Ever generous with his comments, I’m sure ITV viewers would have heard the same sentiment a little earlier, but like many other people I was at the time too carried up in the euphoria of seeing a performance so rare in a championship race. Even some of the great horses have made hard work of winning the Dewhurst Stakes on their way to 2000 Guineas or Derby triumph the following year.

Frankel comes immediately to mind as one that didn’t struggle, having comfortably beaten O’Brien’s Roderic O’Connor (Irish 2000 Guineas winner the following May) in his Dewhurst on his fourth start of a 14-race unbeaten career. Two other Group 1 winners were his victims in his first three two-year-old appearances.

Nathaniel (two King Georges) gave him a tussle on debut on Newmarket’s July Course while O’Brien’s Treasure Beach (Irish Derby) was only third when they met in the Royal Lodge immediately before the Dewhurst. These were notable early scalps for the colt that brought such lustre to the end of Sir Henry Cecil’s epic career, and to Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Juddmonte Farms.

That Frankel is the yardstick to which City Of Troy has aspiration to be measured was immediately and inevitably emphasised as Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith called Saturday’s winner “our Frankel”. If Aidan and Ryan Moore are to be believed, he is.

They waited for Ryan to report back after finishing second in the opener behind one of two smart Charlie Appleby winning juveniles on the day before taking the final fateful step to run. Ryan said, confounding the relatively quick time, which he explained was due to the strong following wind, that the ground was deep and holding.

A quick consultation between trainer and Messrs Tabor and Smith resulted in the decision to let him take his chance. As Michael said: “He can only lose”, a throwback to the 2000 Guineas debacle for subsequent dual Derby and Irish Champion Stakes winner Auguste Rodin. It isn’t the races you lose that count, but those you win. Now they know he can handle deep ground.

Of course, I wasn’t by any means the only media observer of the July humbling of subsequent Vintage Stakes winner Haatem to express extravagant comments. On Racing TV, Nick Luck’s first words as Ryan pulled up the son of US Triple Crown winner and Coolmore stallion Justify were: “Find me a better two-year-old and I don’t think you will. Not this year anyway.”

On his programme on the channel yesterday morning, he had Hughie Morrison, Racing Post’s Lee Mottershead, and recently retired jockey Louis Steward, and all three agreed with the presenter that here was a horse out of the ordinary.

Luck confessed that as the year went on and various other options rather than the conventional UK Classic format were being mentioned, with the Middle Park and Kentucky Derby as tentative plans, and I quote, “I cashed in my Guineas and Derby bets”. Silly Nick!

Back to Aidan, and when you think that he and the Coolmore partners have won a joint-record eight Dewhurst Stakes, six of them since 2013, for him to consider City Of Troy unquestionably the best, that is some recommendation indeed.

As we munched away, he explained, “We’ve never been able to get him tired and that hasn’t ever been the case with any of our horses before him”. To go back and watch the last furlong of his three runs – on debut at the Curragh challenged in the form the furlong pole but pushed out before going away for a comfortable victory; on the July Course exploding clear of decent opposition; and now, when asked, again surging away going up to the line, without ever seeing a hint of interruption in his perfect stride pattern in any of them.

 

Sectional times by furlong for the Dewhurst Stakes field, the winner accelerating impressively away on soft ground

 

It’s one thing to do it on fast summer going, quite another to replicate it on deep ground, but as he sailed along happily in front, initially at a steady gallop and then one marginally increased by Ryan before a quickening between the penultimate and final furlongs, the gulf in class was starkly evident.

As with Frankel in his 2000 Guineas, when the fringe performers were catching him to a minor degree at the line after the verdict was long decided, so it was on Saturday. Willie Ryan, a Derby winning jockey in his younger days and long-time observer of all the greats with a close up of Frankel’s career and more recently all the best Godolphin horses in Charlie Appleby’s yard, was adamant. “I know the Rowley Mile is a great front-runner’s track, so Ryan was right to dictate, but to do it like that in any championship race, and especially the Dewhurst, was very special.”

Justify may have won the 2018 Triple Crown in the US, as had another Coolmore America stallion, American Pharoah, two years earlier, but the equivalent feat has yet to have been achieved here since Nijinsky and Vincent O’Brien from the same yard in 1970. Camelot went close for the team in 2012, winning the 2000 Guineas and Derby before finishing runner-up in the St Leger, but if ever a pedigree suggested they can finally end the long wait for another, City Of Troy surely has it.

Galileo’s final crop of two-year-olds this year signals an imminent end of a golden era for Coolmore and the partners’ trainer, but he leaves Frankel as his top successor. Inevitably, Galileo appears prominently in City Of Troy’s pedigree and increasingly we will see the Justify on Galileo mares cross as it becomes obvious how effective it is, with so many high-class racemares the great champion has bequeathed the operation. Like his ill-fated but still highly influential sire Scat Daddy before him, Justify, who was bred by John Gunther, produces top-class turf horses.

With eight three-year-olds and a dozen juveniles to represent him in 2023 from Ballydoyle, the results have been spectacular already. City Of Troy’s exploits against the boys have been almost mirrored by Opera Singer, five-length winner of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac at the Arc meeting two weekends ago. She is by Justify out of a mare by Sadler’s Wells, of course the sire of Galileo.

City Of Troy’s dam, Together Forever, had already produced four classy winners before City Of Troy. She is by Galileo and if that wasn’t evidence enough, her mother was by Theatrical, another noted stamina influence.

The year of 2024 promises to be tremendously exciting with potential dreams of the first Triple Crown for 54 years. Whereas Frankel did not get the opportunity to show that he would have been just as superior to all-comers at a mile and a half – the ten furlongs and 56 yards of the fast York track in an easy demolition of his Juddmonte International Stakes rivals on penultimate start was the furthest he attempted - I’m sure City Of Troy will tackle that longer trip. Hopefully that will happen at Epsom on the first Saturday of June.

As media director Richard Henry observed to fellow Coolmore executive Christy Grassick as they walked towards the winner’s circle straight after witnessing the sublime performance of their stable star, “Now we know what we’ll be thinking about through the winter”. Clearly, he cannot wait for the first Saturday in May.

Neither can I!

- TS

Monday Musings: An Expensive Game

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Last week’s Tattersalls October Yearling Sale Book 1 in Newmarket highlighted the extravagant cost of owning a high-class racehorse, writes Tony Stafford. Top price was two million guineas – yes, Tatts are still in the Dark Ages financially speaking – which actually pales in comparison with some double digit million-dollar sales in Keeneland, Lexington, Kentucky in the1980’s.

It’s still steamy enough, though, even when the Frankel colt in question is shared out between the Coolmore partners and Peter Brant, of whom I spoke last week.

Of course, they didn’t buy only one, but the thought’s just the same. Add up to £100 a day (or more) to that initial investment for their young horse after initially breaking and pre-training, to inhabit one of the premier yards in the business and you begin to understand the extent of the investment.

Then, when this routinely “beautifully bred” individual eventually arrives in his yard, the top trainer is liable to say, “He [or she] will need time. If he/she runs as a two-year-old, it will be in September or October, or we may even have to wait for the all-weather in mid-winter.”

I watched on Thursday in the buffet dining room – no, if you were wondering, I’ve only ever in all my 55 years at this sale been invited once into the posh dining room. Thus, it’s dish of the day (at 18 quid!) for me and John Hancock, bloodstock insurance man extraordinaire, but he couldn’t be there last week due to dog minding duties. He’ll be in his usual spot today onwards though for Book 2 when the prices will have cooled more than somewhat, but not for Dish of the Day!

So, we gathered by the screen, watching the second run of my friend’s horse (he was invited to lunch) at Salisbury. We thought he would win but a combination of soft ground, a longer trip and different and, as it proved, less judicious riding tactics, brought disappointment.

That’s an aside. My point is that this race was worth £5,400 to the winner – the owner gets around 70% of that - second prize was £2,535, third £1,268 and fourth £634. That works out as around two months’ keep being retrieved for the winning owner, without of course the additional fees for the extras needed during his training at home and the now excessive diesel costs of getting the horse there.

Luckily for the winner, another successful project for the Goodwood Owners Group, he was trained nearby at Guy Harwood’s Pulborough stables by David Menuisier. Gail Brown has headed up the now 30 years of the group and this representative of the 2023 intake, Goodwood Odyssey, has 140 members to defray the cost. He was a £50k buy.

Runner-up Sea The Thunder was also trained relatively close at hand, by Ralph Beckett near Andover, Hampshire. This horse was bred and is owned by John and daughter Tanya Gunther, who bought back their son of Kingman for 200,000 guineas last October.

I met the Gunthers later on Thursday at Newsells Park Stud’s cosy entertaining facility adjacent to the boxes where the yearlings from the farm that topped Book 1’s aggregate of sales were housed. I must thank Gary Coffey of Newsells for that invite.

The Hertfordshire nursery recruited the Gunthers’ Without Parole to join their stalwart sire Nathaniel (Enable and Desert Crown, no less) three years ago, and the couple were marking time waiting for the last of three of his yearlings to go through the ring.

In realising 120k, their colt out of Midnight Hush, who looked the part beforehand, was an excellent result for a first-season yearling whose sire stands for only £7,000, so this was a cause for celebration. Six more Without Paroles will be offered this week in Book 2.

Before the Gunther colt’s sale, as I munched a second piece of carrot cake and sipped a follow-up cup of Newsells’ excellent coffee, Tanya kindly gave me a Without Parole keyring, a substantial metallic piece that will help me avoid further losses of my keys. I said to John, “Without Parole probably describes life in any sphere of racing, breeding, training and even writing about it”. He agreed, saying he’d been involved since his mid-20’s. I’m up to more than 55 years now and there’s no sign of it ending and rarely ever a day off.

Back to that Salisbury race. The horses following the runner-up went through the ring for 60, 150, 150 again, 13k (bought as a foal as usual by the shrewd Julie Wood), 170, 78 and 70 while the last horse home never went through a sale ring. That’s an average of a little over 100k – not looking the most equitable of investments all round, so far, you might think. Then again, those that do well, can expect big bids, usually from overseas. That’s the crock of gold at the end of the UK racing rainbow.

The average sale price on the three days of Book 1 was almost 250k. I expect this week’s numerically bigger three days of Book 2 might come close to a six-figure average. In that context it might not be too churlish to suggest owners deserve to be treated generously by racecourses when they do go to the races.

Gail Brown, who also entertains the winning owners in her room within the owners’ bar at Goodwood meetings, will no doubt ensure a good number of “her” syndicate members can get in to see their horses run. Some tracks nowadays have syndicate rooms as well as the normal owner entertainment areas.

Newmarket on Saturday staged a meeting which featured the £165k to the winner Group 1 Sun Chariot Stakes for fillies and mares and was won in brilliant style by the favourite Inspiral, trained by John and Thady Gosden for the Cheveley Park Stud, and ridden by a delighted Frankie Dettori.

Earlier on the card, the Tattersalls October Auction Stakes offered a guaranteed £150,000 total prizemoney. Entry in this was restricted to horses that had not been bought in either Books 1 or 2 last year, but for those recruited from the two lesser sales, Books 3 and 4, which will occupy Thursday to Saturday in Park Paddocks and some other lesser Tatts sales through the year.

As ever, it attracted a big field, so it was surprising that more of the owners and their friends did not take the opportunity to enjoy the excellent facilities and greatly improved food offered in the Al Basti Equiworld Owners Lounge, situated in the grandstand on the corner of the track where the horses come out. From there you can watch the races on several screens and even see the finish by looking through the large rear window.

Over the years, Al Basti Equiworld, from Dubai, has been instrumental in doubling the area of the facilities both on the Rowley Mile and during the summer on the July Course. It has been thanks to Michael O’Hagan, Al Basti’s representative in the UK, and Lynda Burton, the energetic, efficient, and very popular manager, that standards (and staff proficiency) have risen sharply over the past couple of years.

Now they compare with those on most major tracks, although they do not have the scope of, say, Chester or Ascot. On Saturday, some friends of a friend were looking for a day’s racing close to Cambridge where the three brothers were meeting for a rare weekend get-together.

When one, the eldest, turned up in shorts, I was horrified, probably still traumatised a dozen years on after my wife and a friend were excluded from the Members’ enclosure (they had the correct badges) for a Friday night meeting on the July Course because they were wearing designer jeans. We left in a huff and went to Cambridge for dinner.

It seems though that anything goes nowadays at the HQ of horse racing and he and his identical younger twin brothers were warmly welcomed, both into the track and the Al Basti room.  The brothers (one medical doctor, the other a scientist in Cambridge) were less acquainted than Mr Shorts, otherwise known as Rowan, with racing but, having enjoyed the day, they promised a repeat should not be long delayed.

They all backed the last winner – always the best one - about half an hour after they got a family picture taken with none other than Frankie, now in relaxed mood in the room after his big win. The photographer? No, not ham-fisted me, but another Derby-winning jockey in Willie Ryan. Frankie and Willie, like me, will both have enjoyed yesterday’s result from the Emirates, as did my son and grandson, the latter having a rare treat on his birthday weekend.

Space will be more at a premium in the Al Basti Equiworld room next Saturday when hopefully City Of Troy, the colt I believe is the best two-year-old I’ve ever seen, will cement his reputation in the Dewhurst Stakes. He’s a 4/7 shot. The day before, Ollie Sangster will be hoping that Shuwari, slowly away when runner-up in the Al Basti Equiworld Rockfel Stakes on the Friday of the Cambridgeshire meeting, when Al Basti sponsored the whole day’s racing, will make amends in the Fillies’ Mile.

As to the Cesarewitch, Hughie Morrison runs two strong candidates in last year’s runner-up Vino Victrix and the three-times placed in the race 10-year-old Not So Sleepy. I would love the latter to win but it will be tough under his penalty.

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Kubler’s King, and Double Impact

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I know I should be dedicating much of today’s article to celebrating France’s successful conclusion to their horseracing Holy Grail – finding an unbeaten three-year-old colt who can win the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, preferably as the favourite for Europe’s greatest race, writes Tony Stafford.

As I watched on a nice big screen at a much more leisurely Epsom racecourse yesterday, I picked out the motionless Christian Demuro near the back of the 15-horse field and not for one moment did I think Ace Impact wouldn’t win.

The sprint, when it finally came, was prototype “Arc”, Ace Impact sailing past them all down the outside with any doubts about stamina, class, or anything else you care to mention, made totally irrelevant by the manner of the win.

France has a true champion, one going by an appropriate name that is sure to adorn many colts and fillies down the road. Sir Philip Oppenheimer can be proud of the sire, Cracksman, bred by him from Frankel out of a Pivotal mare and now standing at Darley Stud.

Unlike Golden Horn, which he also bred, Cracksman didn’t win the Derby, finishing third to one of the least remembered winners, Wings Of Eagles and Padraig Beggy - although one that John Gosden, Cracksman’s trainer, thought a talented performer who might have gone further had he not finished lame in the Irish Derby in which he was a close third to stablemate Capri.

Ace Impact’s owners, who shelled out €75k for him as a yearling at the Deauville August sale of 2021 can sit back and wait for the offers to come flying in. The previous Jean-Claude Rouget winner of the race was Sotssass, who is now standing at stud at Coolmore at a fee of €25k. His racing owner Peter Brant was at Newmarket on Saturday.

We had a chat as the juvenile Group races were adding lustre to the first part of the card but, in the manner of racing at the top end, I’m not sure Peter had much of a second glance at the Cambridgeshire. I said here last week how it’s one of my favourite races and having made the 20/1 winner Astro King my best bet of the day in Trainers Quotes, a line I manage every day, I like the race even more.

I did mention that had Silver Sword been left in by Dylan Cunha, he would have been my confident choice, but the South African, who will be moving into the soon-to-retire William Jarvis’ Phantom House Stables, thought it would be coming too soon after his run in a Listed race at Sandown.

He knows best and that at least eased up the chance to stay with a horse I’d latched onto before the John Smith’s Cup at York in July when he started the astonishingly big price of 50/1 considering what an eye-catcher the ex-Sir Michael Stoute horse had been two races previously on first start for his new stable at Yarmouth.

Daniel and Claire Kubler train the six-year-old Astro King, who had been coming to win his race at York, going narrowly past the leader with a thrilling late run only to be caught in mid-stride, not by the winner so much as the camera which just happened to be situated at the only spot that would have counted against him.

Victory in the John Smith’s would have been a feather in the double Kubler cap. Instead, they had to wait for the Ebor meeting to make amends, the gelding having been raised 3lb, but still having plenty left to continue his upward trend in the Clipper Logistics handicap earning £51k in the process.

Astro King had been a buy from the Sir Mchael Stoute stable at the 2022 Horses in Training sales at Newmarket, for £36k having been originally bought as a yearling for 375,000gns from Book 1 of the October Yearling sales there four years earlier.

Sir Michael had nudged him into the low hundreds by his four-year-old days but after a less successful than expected five-year-old season, Desert Crown’s owner decided to draw stumps.

He had finished second (2021) and fourth in successive Royal Hunt Cup challenges, so understandably that was the first major handicap targeted by the Kublers. That race came between the Yarmouth eye-opener and the John Smith’s so when he trailed home only 21st of 30 at the Royal meeting, it would have been understandable if they had lost faith.

Instead, they embarked on a path mirroring and far out-performing what Sir Michael had achieved two years earlier, the Hunt Cup excepted.

As a four-year old he was 12th of 20 in the John Smith’s as the 7/1 joint-favourite and a close third in the Clipper, again as joint market-leader. He was off 102 when beating only one home in that year’s Cambridgeshire on his final start.

On Saturday, having been raised to 107 after the Ebor meeting win, he topped the weights with a massive 9st12lb. I’ve been limited in my research, lists of pre-1977 winners appearing without the weights carried, but certainly over the past 100 years this has been the biggest weight carried to victory.

It came with quite a comfortable course along the favoured stands side from his draw right on the rail in 35. Richard Kingscote was unhurried and once his determined mount hit the front in the last furlong, he was always holding the excessively gambled-on favourite Greek Order by half a length. Winner and second are both by Kingman but the runner-up, who was receiving 17lb, is a Juddmonte home-bred.

Dan Kubler began training in 2012 and in his first nine campaigns never won more than eleven races in a season. Those numbers have moved up markedly since adding wife Claire’s name to the licence. Claire is the daughter of their principal owners, breeders Gary and Lesley Middlebrook.

A feature of their training pattern has been the willingness to target the valuable prizes on offer in such as the Racing League and Sunday series, so that already this year, from 18 wins at 15% they have amassed £462k, far exceeding 2022’s whole year tally of £326k.

Claire, a qualified accountant, grew up around horses at her parents’ stud. Dan didn’t waste his time either, working for Roger Charlton and Jeremy Noseda in the UK and having spells with Ben Cecil in the US, Francois Doumen in France and Gai Waterhouse in Australia.

Saturday’s great win will give their upwardly mobile career a big boost, not only because of winning a major, prestigious race, but also with a weight-carrying record to boot. I expect a lot of prospective owners will be looking up their Google maps to find their way to Sarsen Farm, Upper Lambourn.

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I enjoyed a first yesterday. I’ve often tagged onto the end of the scrum inside the Epsom winner’s circle after the Derby or Oaks and watched from near but at the same time oh so far away as the Queen, attended by Bernard Kantor in the days his bank Investec were the Classics’ sponsors, presented the winner’s trophy.

Yesterday, with neither of Strong Impact’s owners in attendance, I represented Ed Babington and my friend Jonathan Barnett as their promising maiden filly gained a facile first win after three good second places this year.

She was long odds-on to do so, but what was a surprise was when Anthony Kemp told me that Clare Balding was there to deliver the very nice glass bowl that went to the winner.

I understand the plan is to keep the 81-rated Roger Varian filly, a daughter of Saxon Warrior, in training as a four-year-old and she has the temperament and physique to develop into a high-class handicapper. The Gary Moore-trained runner-up Soigneux Bell should be watched out for, as he is about to make a start in juvenile hurdles after his second to Strong Impact, trying to concede 12lb. He won his sole race in France over two miles back in May, considering which he showed decent speed over this ten furlongs.

As we waited for the winner’s parcel to be made up, we reminisced that I had actually given Clare her first paid journalistic assignment in the racing pages of the Daily Telegraph. Everything is so long ago, and she revealed that the lovely regular walks she does for Radio Four have been going for 24 years. She has an idea for a special guest for the Silver Anniversary edition next year but I dare not reveal who she hopes willl join her.

- TS

Monday Musings: Still Not Sleepy

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They raced for a lot of money in Ireland yesterday, the Friends of Curragh Irish Cesarewitch carrying a £292k first prize, for which 30 horses turned up, writes Tony Stafford. You would have won a lot of money, too, if you had found the Joseph O’Brien-trained winner, the potential heir to the Ballydoyle job one might suggest, sending out 150/1 shot Magellan Strait for a victory which prompted a quiz from the stewards.

The magical Joseph might well have been a little more confident of his shortest-priced horse of four, third home Dawn Rising, who had won Ascot’s Queen Alexandra Stakes as the 2/1 favourite under Ryan Moore at Royal Ascot back in June.

The two O’Brien stayers were split by another veteran of big-race success in the UK, Dermot Weld’s Falcon Eight, successful in the 2021 Chester Cup under Frankie Dettori.

The winner and second do not have the much less well-endowed but still probably more prestigious Newmarket version in three weekends time on their agenda, but 13 from yesterday’s race do, and I’ve managed to find another 11 from various races over the past couple of days even including an unplaced runner in the Preis von Europa in Cologne, Germany, yesterday.

That was the Saeed bin Suroor-trained Live Your Dream, who is very high up in the weights. This 14 was bolstered by Saturday’s Turners Cesarewitch Trial at Newmarket, won nicely by Andrew Balding’s Grand Providence, clearly enjoying the extended trip. Eight of the nine that followed him over the line have the big-race entry.

Ryan Moore, amazingly, was back after riding in Sydney the day before, but his mount, Aidan’s Tower Of London, understandably favourite after his creditable fourth behind stablemate Continuous in the St Leger only eight days earlier at Doncaster, could not make his lenient mark tell.

In all, Willie Mullins had six runners in the big race. The ease with which Ireland’s champion jumps trainer knocks off our big flat long-distance races, matched only really by his main Cheltenham protagonist Nicky Henderson, is well chronicled, but here he was well and truly on the back foot.

Of course, all his sextet, plus one in a consolation race for those missing out on the big one, have Newmarket entries, where he will be aiming to add to his hat-trick from 2018-20. One of those, Stratum, was in the field but Brighton and Hove Albion FC’s chairman Tony Bloom was probably far too engaged watching his team beat Bournemouth (boo! – Ed.) than to take more than a passing notice of his veteran’s 25th place.

Expect an upgrade if he turns up at HQ, and the same probably goes for Jackfinbar (8th), Lot Of Joy (11th), Echoes In Rain (13th), Mt Leinster (22nd) and M C Muldoon (27th after making the running for David Manasseh and partners).

Echoes in Rain had finished second in the inaugural big-money Irish Ces last year, behind the then Aidan -trained Mr Waterville, who is now with Chris Waller in Australia. Ryan rode him into fourth place at Rosehill on Saturday and no doubt he has the Melbourne Cup as his main objective as had Tower Of London. Maybe the latter raid may be under review.

But the one trial that caught most of us out – yet it shouldn’t have if we had examined the very extensive history of his career – was the all-the-way gutsy win of 11-year-old Not So Sleepy in a quite valuable (by UK standards) 1m5½f handicap at Newbury.

Since making a winning debut over a mile as a juvenile at Nottingham almost nine years ago, the home-bred Not So Sleepy has now won ten races for Hughie Morrison, five each on the flat and over jumps. Not So Sleepy has raced 63 times (46 on the flat) with six second and five third places along with ten fourth’s, including in the Cesarewitch’s of 2019 and 2020. Under both codes he has won around a quarter of a million and nudged over a combined £500k on Saturday.

When he won his third-ever race in the Group 3 Dee Stakes his rating jumped up to 107 after that Derby trial. It has never dropped below 94 despite two long losing sequences – 13 in succession after Chester over the next 18 months, then another 15 following his Epsom Derby Day handicap win as a five-year-old.

Running well enough with places in tough races not to get much respite from the BHA officials, Not So Sleepy got a late and in many circles highly questionable switch to hurdling as a seven-year-old. The cynics were preening themselves after he was far too free on debut at Kempton, but he then bolted up at Wincanton which earned a 125 rating. One more pulled up run ended that mixed campaign.

So now it was back to the flat, for another six winless runs, but a portent of what might be in the future was a fourth in his first try at the Cesarewitch behind Stratum. Now it was back to hurdling, winning two Ascot handicaps by making all in devastating fashion, his mark already up to 144 by the time he turned out for the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury the following February.

That year, the big field produced two false starts and after being in a great position to jump first time round, Not So Sleepy found himself hampered at the eventual departure and the then eight-year-old was never in contention. Hughie and his owners Lord and Lady Blyth still had the ambition to run in the Champion Hurdle, but he was pulled up.

A break followed until the autumn, when under Graham Lee he won a Pontefract handicap off that career lowest 94 before his fourth place to Mullins’ Great White Shark at Newmarket in Cesarewitch number two. He then resumed over hurdles, jinking and unseating at the first flight in the 2020 Fighting Fifth won by Epatante, before gaining a second win in the Betfair Exchange Hurdle at Ascot.

This gave Morrison great satisfaction as he beat a former stable-companion, Buzz, whom the owners had moved to Henderson after Morrison had successfully managed physical issues in his early days on the flat.

He then ran a much improved race, fifth in Honeysuckle’s first Champion Hurdle, before taking in the Chester Cup, finishing a close seventh. He still got his lengthy summer break, but instead of a third run at Newmarket, a close second in a Doncaster handicap was the prelude to a dead-heat with Epatante in the 20201 Fighting Fifth before a fifth place behind the same J P McManus mare in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton and the same position, a little closer than the previous year, behind Honeysuckle in her repeat championship.

He continued with two relatively disappointing runs in summer 2022 but was back in top form with a third after taking up the running a mile out in last year’s Cesarewitch.

Three hurdles runs, two behind the new star Constitution Hill, including once more in his fourth Champion Hurdle, preceded the usual summer break. And you can guess the rest.

He returned at Newbury on Saturday, his trainer joking before the race, having heard the news that Constitution Hill was to continue hurdling, with a wry: “Whatever happens today, I can categorically state that Not So Sleepy will NOT be going chasing this winter.”

So next month, he will be trying to match another of his rival Henderson’s achievements. Nicky won the 2008 Cesarewitch with the 11-year-old Caracciola who proceeded to win the Queen Alexandra at age 12. Morrison has a Group 1 win on his record with 10-year-old Alcazar, but if Not So Sleepy does the deed at the fourth time of asking, that would be a bigger achievement to my mind.

Both the Cesarewitch and Cambridgeshire began life in 1839 and they are two of my favourite races. I was hoping to write a piece today outlining why I thought Dylan Cunha’s Silver Sword was a good thing to win the race next Saturday, but the trainer is unwilling to run him back so soon after his eye-catching run last week in Listed company at Sandown. He prefers to wait for a race he has in mind at Santa Anita in November. If only!

In his absence, I would love to see William Knight make up for last year’s unlucky defeat of Dual Identity, who won most impressively recently at Sandown. All we can hope is that Knight, who has had no luck this year, might have it turn his way this weekend for a change.

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Champions and Challengers

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Whatever happened to Trials Day? For many years, three weeks before the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe the French conveniently staged a trio of perfectly-framed races principally for the home defence to flex their muscles in preparation for their upcoming day of destiny at (Paris)Longchamp on the first Sunday in October, writes Tony Stafford. It also attracted some of our best candidates to reveal their talents.

One, the Prix Niel, was for three-year-olds; another, for four and upwards was the Prix Foy, these two both at Group 2 level. The third, the Group 1 Prix Vermeille, was and remains for three and up fillies and mares. All three are run over the full Arc distance of 2400 metres (1m4f).

They staged it yesterday as usual, but it was totally over-shadowed by the second day of Irish Champions Weekend, run at the Curragh – no longer it seems with the requirement of the definite article, viz “The” to go before the track name. I find it as incongruous as I do to precede Longchamp with the name of the country’s capital making it most unnecessarily unwieldy.

Why not LondonEpsom? I shouldn’t be irritated but I just can’t help it. In one other regular piece of work I do every day, I even referred to the Matron Stakes as being run at The Curragh. Silly me.

While the two Group 2 races have £65k to the winner, this was seemingly not enough inducement for a challenger from the UK. There were just a couple of Aidan O’Brien pages to accompany his Vermeille contender Warm Heart, winner last time of the Yorkshire Oaks. There, with a mixture of speed and determination under James Doyle, she held off the Frankie Dettori-ridden Free Wind, with Coolmore first string Savethelastdance third.

Warm Heart recovered well enough from her York exertions to join William Haggas’ Sea Silk Road and Joseph O’Brien’s Above The Curve in challenging for the French Group 1 and she came out on top again in another tight finish.

She had a neck in hand of home runner Melo Melo with Sea Silk Road an excellent third at 31/1. This race carried £303k to the winner and brought Aidan O’Brien a 4,000th career victory.  He had a few also at the two days at Leopardstown and Curragh, although racegoers (and me) hoping to see the colt I think could be the best juvenile we’ve seen in recent years, City Of Troy, were disappointed as he was withdrawn from the National Stakes owing to the unsuitably slow ground.

Of course, you don’t get to 4,000 winners without making provision for such frustrations, and in what was left as a four-runner race, his colt Henry Longfellow got the Ryan Moore touch as a narrow favourite in the market.

Henry Longfellow, by Dubawi out of Minding, if you please, had won quite impressively on debut, but it was only just enough to convince the bookmakers who considered Bucanero Fuerte, easy winner of the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes last time and an Amo Racing colt trained by Adrian Murray, to be his near equal on the boards.

The team evidently formulated a plan to try to thwart City Of Troy had he been there – and stayed with it to handle the substitute. The trouble was, both pacemaker Cuban Thunder and Bucanero Fuerte went off fast, leaving Ryan to sit behind them as though going out for a Sunday ride on his hack in the park. When he asked for an effort, either the effect was instantaneous, or the other pair were already knackered, but a five length win from the fourth runner Islandsinthestream, a two-length runner-up to Henry last time, and running on for second again, gives the form a solid look.

Elsewhere yesterday, Kyprios’ return to action in the Irish St Leger provided a disappointment. Last year’s champion stayer, held up in rear in another four-runner affair, never quite managed to challenge Roger Varian’s 2022 Doncaster St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov, who was always travelling best. You can expect a major improvement from Kyprios next time and it will be interesting to see the outcome if they reconvene at Ascot next month on our Champions Day.

I went to Ian Williams’ Owners’ Day yesterday and enjoyed some delicious food – yes, the neuralgia has been behaving itself as long as I do likewise. While queueing, I met a man who works for Arena Racing and he was looking forward to Wednesday’s final day of the Racing League, moved from Thursday so the jockeys that have been assigned to the various teams, would not be excluded by having to ride on the normal opening day of this year’s St Leger meeting at Doncaster.

The big race on Saturday is sure to benefit from the non-clash with the Leopardstown segment of last weekend’s Irish spectacular and, with pots of money to be doled out to owners, teams and jockeys, that can only be a good thing.

Some trainers who had been very much against the idea have been virtually forced to go along with it, as quite a few of the regular races in the Calendar have been lost to accommodate the 50-odd heats in the competition.

It’s easy to see why 39 have been entered for the final race on Wednesday as this open-ended affair (top-rated 107) over 1m4f carries a £51k first prize, which compares very well with the two French Group 2 races yesterday. The slight snag is that to get a run, you must convince your team’s manager – in the case of Williams, it’s Jamie Osborne for Wales and the West – that your horse merits inclusion. Late decisions have inevitably caused trainers to miss other equally suitable if less remunerative alternatives.

For those left on the shelf – and it has happened more lately after some less than inspiring early entry figures – there’s always the option of running instead for instance at Bath. The seven races on the same day carry a total win money of £31,000. The Arc/Sky led series was a small step in the right direction, and as my fellow buffet-queuer said, “At least it might bring some younger people in to enjoy racing. There are not many youngsters here, are there?”

Thereby the conundrum. To own a horse takes a lot of money and the profile of owners with Williams is generally of people who either now have or have had their own businesses, made their money, and can afford the expense and can put up with the poor prizemoney.

True, they deserve to be looked after when they go racing, but the younger people that are so eagerly sought to become enthusiasts and regular racegoers are confronted by high entrance fees, even with some junior concessions, and very expensive catering. There are many countries which stage high-class horse racing where costs for the pubic are nowhere near as forbidding.

It was good to see Auguste Rodin add the Irish Champion Stakes to his Derby and Irish Derby wins, never mind his two lapses in the 2,000 Guineas and King George. If he had won the first Classic, instead of running at Leopardstwn on Saturday, he could have been trying to go one better than Camelot, aiming to be the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky in 1970, the stated aim for him at the start of the year.

For a short time yesterday, seeing that Doncaster doesn’t begin until Thursday, I wondered why it was only going to be a three-day meeting instead as the usual four.

Checking with the BHA site, though, I saw that, as with the first meeting every year on Town Moor, it will now extend to Sunday, a welcome injection of high-class racing on that day after some pitifully drab two-meeting Sundays in the UK in recent weeks.

The Group 3 Sceptre Stakes for fillies and mares and the Listed Scarbrough Stakes are joined by some lesser quality but competitive handicaps. But what represents a master stroke by the race planners (just a one-week reprieve for you I’m afraid, BHA) is that the Legends’ race for former great jockeys can have a fabulous weekend television and on-the-spot audience. Well done! Credit where it’s due.

- TS

Monday Musings: Classic Modesty

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There’s modesty and then there’s Dubaian owner Ahmad Al Shaikh, writes Tony Stafford. We’ve known each other for more than 30 years, since he used to be the media specialist attached to the Sheikh Mohammed entourage when our main topic, apart from the racing, was our mutual lack of success in keeping off the kilos.

Ever genial, and now pleasingly if not excessively trimmed, Ahmad worked for his country’s first official newspaper Al Ittihad and he remains an advisor. He was employed by the Dubai Government but always loved his trips to Europe for the major race meetings when the Sheikh Mohammed support team was much more in evidence than now.

Why modest? I think this covers it. We bumped into each other in the paddock at Epsom before last year’s Derby. Introducing me to his colleague, he said: “I’m here to support my friend – he has the favourite for the big race.” The friend was Saeed Suhail and his horse Desert Crown, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, duly won the Classic as the 5/2 market leader.

What Ahmad declined to say as we spoke was that he also had a runner in the race, and his horse Hoo Ya Mal, a 150/1 chance trained by Andrew Balding and ridden by David Probert, finished a creditable runner-up. That was Al Shaikh’s second Derby, and third Classic, runner-up, all at big prices.

Khalifa Sat, also trained by Balding, was second at 50/1 in the Covid Derby of 2020 won by shock Aidan O’Brien outsider Serpentine, and Glory Awaits was another 150/1 no-hoper when runner-up to Jim Bolger’s Dawn Approach in the 2013 2000 Guineas when trained by Kevin Ryan.

All three Classic placed runners were cheaply-bought and that is the normal strategy of this sensible man, whose latest big-race winner, Dubai Mile, has just left Charlie Johnston, Ahmad having sold a half share to Martyn Meade.

A £20k purchase by Mark Johnston at the 2021 Goffs Orby sale, he is a son of the ill-fated Roaring Lion, who covered only for one season at a fee of £40k. The Johnston pattern is always to buy and then issue a list to existing and prospective owners. Ahmad had the speed off the mark to secure him.

Dubai Mile’s appeal as a potential stallion is obvious, having won twice as a juvenile before finishing a close second to The Foxes in the Royal Lodge at Newmarket and then winning the Group1 Criterium De Saint-Cloud over one mile, two furlongs.

Fifth in the Guineas, he couldn’t match the exploits of his two predecessors in the Derby, but having switched from Charlie Johnston, he will race for the rest of this season for Freddie and Martyn Meade before hopefully joining Aclaim and co in their stallion team.

“It’s always been my ambition to own a stallion, so I rejected many offers to sell him. But when Martyn Meade came along with an offer to buy a half with a view to standing him as a stallion, I was delighted. I can’t wait to see his progeny running on the track.”

Al Shaikh does have a smaller interest with another stallion, Khalifa Sat, who was the result of a foal share between the Irish National Stud, who own Free Will, and Lacken Stud, owners of the mare Thermopylae. Twenty years old at the time of her covering by the then first-season stallion Free Will, she has produced ten previous foals, and Khalifa Sat was the last of hers to race. Seven in all were winners.

Khalifa Sat had cost £40k, also at Goffs Orby, and won more than three times that for his Derby second place alone. He had one more, unsuccessful, run and was then retired owing to lameness. He stands at a fee of €2,000 at Lacken Stud.

The post-Epsom story of the two horses that finished one-two last year is interesting, and it’s a matter of opinion, which of the two friends has fared better in the aftermath of that epic day in June last year.

Desert Crown did not race again in 2022 despite having several possible targets and stayed in training as a four-year-old. He made a very promising reappearance after more than eleven months off with a close second to subsequent King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner Hukum in the Brigadier Gerard Stakes at Sandown.

He of course also had the King George on his agenda but had to miss it and then last month came the unkindest cut of all, a fractured fetlock when undergoing his final piece of work preparing for the Juddmonte International at York. He has had screws fitted and Bruce Raymond, racing manager to Mr Suhail, says, “The operation went well but he isn’t out of the woods yet.” Obviously there will be no question of his running again in 2023 and the issue of whether the son of Nathaniel will race on as a five-year-old will need to be addressed.

Ahmad didn’t allow himself too long to dwell on his colt’s exploits at Epsom. In the days between Epsom and Royal Ascot, the Goffs London sale at Kensington Palace Gardens offers owners wishing to sell prospective Royal meeting runners the chance of securing a top price. Mr Al Shaikh needed no second bidding.

Hoo Ya Mal was an obvious target for the stamina-loving Australian market and appealed as a potential Melbourne Cup candidate.

George Boughey was the immediate beneficiary as Hoo Ya Mal was sold for £1.2 million to the bid of Gai Waterhouse. He had three runs for Boughey while awaiting the journey Down Under, winning the Group 3 March Stakes (1m6f) at the late August meeting at Goodwood, then took in the St Leger (8th of 9).

He ran his first race for Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott in the Melbourne Cup, without having a prep race. The Australian pattern usually involves at least one and probably two settling-in runs before Flemington for European imports in the race that stops a nation on the first Tuesday in November. Without any prep, 12th of 22 reads well.

Ms Waterhouse and Bott waited a full ten months before getting the now four-year-old gelding back on a racecourse. They chose a Group 3 contest over a wholly insufficient mile – that is the manner of Australian training! – last Saturday at Randwick and he was beaten just over a length in fifth of 11. I can smell a Melbourne Cup with the more normal training pattern of one of Australia’s great handlers already in motion.

With the £344K for last year’s Derby second – worth almost three times the figure of the Covid year – and the £1.2 million for the sale, you’d think Ahmed would be stretching the purse strings a little, but emphatically no.

He says, “A horse has a nice pedigree and looks nice; he can cost a fortune. But nearly all the horses, for example in Tattersalls Book 1, are nicely bred and any of them can be potentially good. I’ve bought plenty of slow horses, but so have the people who pay millions, I prefer to be sensible and able to afford and enjoy my racing.”

He has a couple of promising youngsters on the track this year. Sayedaty Sadaty (€30k from Germany) won at the fourth time of asking for the Balding stable the other day, making up for a roguish display on his previous outing when inexplicably taking himself out of a race by running through the running rail at the intersection at Windsor.

Erratic steering was also in evidence in the Kempton score, but despite hanging badly left across to the stand rail, he still had lengths to spare (and plenty more in his locker by the look of it) in hand of his rivals. It will be interesting to see his first handicap mark tomorrow.

The other youngster he was keen to mention in our chat was Deira Mile. Ahmad splashed out a bit (for him) at 47,000 Guineas but the signs from his first run for Charlie Johnston were bright indeed. You rarely got a Johnston two-year-old runner in Mark’s days going to one of the top southern tracks for its debut so you guess that the team had a decent enough regard for the son of Camelot.

Starting 25/1 for a competitive maiden, he lost ground from the stalls and ran green throughout yet still got within a short head and a neck of another Camelot colt, Defiance, trained by Roger Varian, in third place. Defiance had cost 150 grand as a yearling and you couldn’t be sure if they lined up again that the result would be the same. Knowing Ahmad’s sure touch with buying and trading horses and not to put too fine a word for it, amazing good fortune so far, big things can be expected from this very promising colt.

It’s not just where horses are concerned that this one-time journalist is sharp. Last week he signed up Richard Kingscote as his retained jockey. Kingscote, the man who won the Derby on Desert Crown, has a prior commitment with Sir Michael Stoute but will be available for most of the time his new employer needs him.

I told Ahmad the story of when I met Richard’s grandma in Tesco’s supermarket in Bromley-by-Bow, East London. It was early one morning, and I had picked up a Racing Post – my usual shop didn’t have one yet. She said: “Oh, you like racing. My grandson is a jockey, Richard Kingscote.” You could see how proud she was. Imagine what she felt when he won the Derby!

  • TS

Monday Musings: Ebor Wrap (and a word on a late friend)

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The fashion had been highly acceptable for the first three days of York’s Ebor Festival, but I hadn’t been prepared for what was to confront me on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. I arrived early as usual, and it was only when I ventured from the box after an early cup of coffee, that ranged before me was a sea of colour.

Looking closer, the wearers of those extravagant dresses were rarely past mid-teens, some even as young as eight or nine. It was Travellers’ rather than Ebor day, and by no means for the first time, but I had generally gone home before the final day of the meeting, so it was totally unexpected for me.

But regulars were fully aware of the make-up of the day and watching more closely, you could also discern the young men, again many in early teens. Both sexes were immaculately turned out, suits and ties for the boys, fulfilling the old-time posh enclosure style requirements (largely relaxed nowadays) and the girls, beautifully coiffed and their dresses looking fit for a catwalk at Paris Fashion week.

As I made my way out of the stand aiming at the paddock, those 70 yards were a minefield – no hint of trouble, just difficult to navigate through the throng which swayed back and forth all day.

I learnt that the travellers come from all over the UK for this day, swelling the crowd on Ebor Day on which inevitably Frankie Dettori, now operating without his long-time business manager Peter Burrell, took the riding honours.

He conveniently collected the big race (£300k) on Absurde and the other half-million Group 2 City Of York Stakes on Kinross to end a most astonishing fortnight of achievement.

Referring to the Burrell issue – Pete was the man who set up the book deal when I ghosted Frankie’s Year in the Life book. Frankie said the other day: “That must have been 25 years ago! <27 in fact> and added, “Pete didn’t like that I was retiring – it was as if he was the one retiring.”

You would have thought that the rider/manager bond would have been able to withstand this after 35 years together but apparently not. The way Frankie is riding though, you wonder whether he might go through his enjoyable winter spell in California with Bob Baffert and think, maybe, “just one more year?”  - the punters will love it if he does.

A little admin followed by a catch up: I failed to deliver an article last week – I was almost halfway through an Ebor preview when we were forced to take our 15-year-old lovely little Yorkie Josephina to the emergency vet. She had suffered a sudden seizure and they said there was no alternative but to euthanise her. Here we are, on a happier day not long ago...

Tony Stafford and his beloved pooch, Josephina

Tony Stafford and his beloved pooch, Josephina

 

The week before, I suggested Frankie had probably picked up around £40k for his percentage of the half-million first prize for the Jacques Le Marois at Deauville. He took a few days off after that and from that point, he had ten more rides, mainly at York.

Five wins from the 11, with two second places both in valuable contests and one third place, his total tally of prize money amounts to £1,882,000. His percentage – bearing in mind the place earns a jockey considerably less – will still be the best part of £150k. Nice work.

Before he changed out of his civvies, a smart light-blue suit as befitted the general air of sartorial elegance on the day, Frankie spotted Brian Meehan in the paddock. “What a winner, 16/1, why didn’t you tell me?” “Why would a jockey want to know?”, asked Meehan before Isaac Shelby’s run - he finished a slightly disappointing fourth to Kinross.

Frankie had time for his lightning change into the Kinross livery while I spoke to Sam Sangster about his ever accelerating career as a buyer of yearlings. The 16/1 shot Frankie referred to was Friday’s Newmarket debut scorer Jayarebe, who had tracked and then outpaced 4/11 shot Broadway Act, a Charlie Appleby/ Godolphin colt who had already had a good debut.

Sangster had bought him for €180k at Arqana’s October Yearling sale and the colt was passed on to the returning Iraj Parvizi, owner of Meehan’s 2010 Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Dangerous Midge at Churchill Downs 13 years ago. Parvizi had been out of racing for some time and Meehan’s predictable comment was, “It’s great to have him back.”

Jayarebe could be in line for some big-race action and the decision seems to be the Royal Lodge Stakes over a mile rather than the Dewhurst at seven. That would seem sensible for the son of Zoffany who is a half-brother to a true two-mile mare and decent staying hurdler, Ian Williams’ Malakahna.

Sam Sangster said that the 180k he paid for Jayarebe was comfortably the most he’d ever paid for a yearling; Isaac Shelby cost €92k to his bid two years earlier. The Greenham winner, and runner-up in the French 2,000 Guineas and the Lennox at Goodwood has picked up £340,000 on the track but realised a good few times more than that (Sam remains coy about just how many times) to Wathnan Racing before the French Classic.

He says he has bought 12 Group performers, ten of which have been trained by Meehan – the other two by Nicolas Clement in France. Four of them have been Group 1 performers, although he has yet to supply a Group 1 winner. The average price paid for those smart performers has been a very modest £51,000, given the amazing prices paid at the sales these days. He truly is Robert Sangster’s son.

When I spoke to Brian Meehan on Friday morning, he was very measured in his analysis of Jayarebe. “He’s very, very nice.” On Saturday I tasked him with, “You put me away. You said he was very, very nice. He’s very, very, very nice!”

In performance terms, on debut he beat a field chock-full of potential and almost all with big-race entries this autumn. He put up the fastest time of the day, rare enough for a two-year-old. You could imagine Derby thoughts going through the minds of trainer, owner and talent spotter. It’s early days but if he did win the Royal Lodge, it could be within the realms of possibility.

Deauville’s month of excitement came to a climax with a big win for Paul and Oliver Cole, their Jack Darcy winning the Group 2 Grand Prix de Deauville at 11/1. A winner of his first two races, Jack Darcy’s best run since had been a second place to the smart William Haggas seven-year-old Hamish, who would have been top-weight for Saturday’s Ebor if he had taken up the entry. But 10st9lb (including a penalty) would have been too much, requiring a 9lb higher weight-carrying achievement than Sea Pigeon’s 44 years earlier, in 1979, to win.

It was great last week to see Sea Pigeon’s winning Ebor rider, Jonjo O’Neill, still looking in his prime. He reported his team at Jackdaws Castle is ready to go as the jumps season gathers pace. One jumps trainer, though, whose horses are always primed obviously is Willie Mullins.

When I bumped into him, asking if it was right that he was expected in the same place that had been my base all week, he said: “Sorry no, I’m off to do the day job. Maybe later.” You could say it was day job done after Absurde had won with a peach of a ride from Dettori. Later I saw him leaving the track and said, “You might be okay at the day job, but you aren’t much good at coming up for a drink.” He laughed and said: “Next time.”

- TS

Monday Musings: Holidays

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A bright sunny Sunday smack bang in the kids’ school holidays, writes Tony Stafford, and what’s to do? “I know”, says Dad, “How would you like to go horse racing? You’ve seen it on ITV on Saturdays and always seemed to like it, especially when my bets win. But there’s nothing like being there.”

Looking at his computer – he doesn’t bother with newspapers nowadays, it’s all on the screen. “Oh dear”, he says. “Only Windsor and Leicester and nothing over jumps, which we always find more exciting. It’s a bit far to both, so we’ll have to give it a miss this time. You’d think there would be more choice right in the middle of summer.”

Dad’s right, you would have thought so. As a telly punter, no doubt he wouldn’t necessarily go into the intricacies of the day’s two programmes, but I have. Eight races at Leicester and seven at Windsor. The Thames-side track comes out just on top on prizemoney but only because it includes on the card a qualifier for a series contest, the £15,462 to the winner Juddmonte British Stallion Studs Restricted Race (Bands C and D).

A race designed for cheaper buys that might have some talent, it was by £10,000 and change the most valuable on the card. Apart from one 0-65 handicap, worth £5,234 to the winner, all the other five races carried a first prize of less than £4,500.

There was no stand-out race, value-wise over at Leicester. The top race was a handicap which carried £6,281 to its victor. All the other seven races were worth less than 5k.

Leicester did cater for slightly better class, if inadequately remunerated, horses, viz a 0-85 nursery, £4,711 and that six grand race which was 0-80. Otherwise, the upper limits in card order were 65, 75, 68 and 55.

Windsor, as stated above, had its most valuable (sic) prize in handicaps for a 0-65. Lesser prizes were affixed to a 0-60 amateur riders’ race and further contests with upper limits of 68 and 52.

Sundays in Ireland are usually planned to appeal to the likes of Aidan O’Brien and the other top trainers, but yesterday’s card, apart from one Listed race for fillies and mares, worth €32,450 to the winner, was humdrum.

That never means small fields and, with the big guns elsewhere or just taking a Sunday off, the other six races were worth two each at €14,750, €11,800 and €8,800 for a total of €104,250, still comfortably more than the £77,000 for the two UK meetings.

It’s unfair to compare with Deauville which featured the Group 1 Prix Jacques le Marois, worth £505,664 to its winner and a handsome £25,309 for fifth place. Fifth in the bulk of the UK races yesterday ranged between £367 and £214, not enough to pay the jockey and entry fees, never mind the ever-escalating transport costs and training fees.

Generally, two-year-old novice and maiden races here do not even carry a fifth prize nowadays, but the Juddmonte qualifier did break out from the norm with £906 for fifth place and even £453 for sixth.

The four Deauville Group 3 races, each worth a not exceptional £35,398 in comparison with their UK counterparts, had a uniform £3,539 for fifth place, near as makes no difference to matching the win prize for 12 of yesterday’s 15 UK contests.

Now take Dad’s other gripe. No jump racing. Indeed, the stables with summer jumpers have been put on an artificial hold for two weeks, ironically at a time when the recent weather would have allowed plenty more to run than would have been the case in last year’s exceptionally hot and dry weather.

They start again on Saturday at Perth and Market Rasen when there’s also four flat fixtures including Newbury with its Group 2 Hungerford Stakes. There’s no jumping next Sunday either, I’m afraid Dad, just Sandown (Sunday Series finale), Pontefract and Southwell hoping to attract the family audience.

If our mythical Dad had not been dissuaded already he might have asked whether Frankie Dettori, Ryan Moore, William Buick and Oisin Murphy would be there to sign autographs. No dice. Indeed, the only thing Dettori had to worry about yesterday was not breaking his ageing ankles with his flying dismount after Inspiral won that Gallic Group 1 for the Gosdens and owners Cheveley Park Stud.

https://youtu.be/ke9UdusqV9A

That probably works out at around 40 grand for the ever-accumulating veteran whose farewell tour is proving lucrative in the extreme.

Jamie Spencer would have been delighted too with his share of the 100k Light Infantry earned for the David Simcock stable for third and Neil Callan picked up some handy pocket change for his fifth place, referred to above, for Kevin Ryan on Triple Time.

The aforementioned Moore and Buick had to be content with smaller rewards having trailed home in the last three in the big one. Buick won a Listed (24k to the winner) and Moore was second in another. Even the top jockeys don’t have it all their own way every day.

Cut back to the sort of owners, trainers and rides who ply their trade at the lowest end of the UK horse racing pyramid. One trainer sent me details of a recent runner he had in a 0-60 race at Carlisle. The entry fee for this £3,000- odd to the winner contest was £37.45. Jockey insurance was £24.42. Jockey riding fee was £131.60 with £26.32 VAT and a processing fee by Weatherbys of £36.42 plus £7.28 VAT. Expensive things to push, those computer buttons. The total outlay, never mind transport to the track and training fees, was £263.49.

That same owner/trainer was bemoaning the fact that, as he sees it, the smaller owners with lower-grade horses are subsidising events like the Sunday Series which does not carry entry fees.  Six lots of races carry extraordinary amounts for the grade of race and the last of six Sunday dates next weekend at Sandown will carry total prize money of £225,000.

Yet the take-up has been less overwhelming than might have been expected by trainers. The last of the series at Haydock eight days ago featured six races and none went ahead with the intended full field of 12, although one non-runner in the last reduced that to 11. The other field sizes were 9, 7, 11, 7 and 6. I can understand that person’s suggestion it was a waste of money.

Last Thursday’s latest instalment of the Racing League hardly suggested that this competing Sky Sports Racing Thursday series was doing much better than its Racing TV equivalent. The seven races, culminating in a richest flat race ever at Chepstow (echoing a similar situation at Yarmouth two Thursdays previously) still struggled to fill fields. The numbers here were 12 (full), 6, 11, 8, 10 and 8, with 11 for the big one.

Ian Williams, always one to aim for the big money, has regular runners in both series. He says that there is a real fear that if the take up does not improve, neither series is safe for the coming season. His horses in the Racing League run under the banner of Wales and the West, one of seven regional teams. They lead the way after two rounds with 319 points ahead of Ireland (242) London and the South (231), The North (217), The East, so Newmarket (187), Yorkshire (147) and Scotland (58).

As much as the presenters on the channel try to keep the team competitiveness interesting, it’s all so much a contrived enthusiasm. Punters want to back winners and are not bothered that the Wales and the West second string got up for third to stretch their points advantage.

These two competitions of course owe more than a sideways acknowledgement to the daddy of them all, the Shergar Cup, which started in 1999 and despite nowadays being less of a magnet for top jockeys, has a formula which has stood the test of time. Its latest edition happened conveniently on Saturday while both the other events that mimic it to a degree or another, were still ongoing.

There were some nice camera shots from the inside in close finishes on ITV on Saturday and it was clear that the Ascot grandstands were packed as usual. Ascot has that magic whatever time of year, although some people suggested to me that Craig David performing after racing might have had a bit to do with it.

The day before, I tried out one of racing’s most notorious traffic hotspots, the M6 on a Friday. I left home before noon and it took me almost exactly seven hours to complete the 260-odd mile ordeal thanks to one accident and some long established road works leading to my destination.

I had time for a quick bowl of soup before going into the paddock and was surprised to see just how calm Tom Dascombe’s Dufresne looked as he went around before the race as his horsebox preceded me by only two vehicles into the course. Imagine how long the poor horse had been on his feet rocking around.

The object of my journey was in the same race, the Michael Bell-trained Wootton’s Jewel fading to a very disappointing fourth after making the running in that novice race for juveniles.

Dufresne was a couple of places further back but considering he probably didn’t get the chance to have a quick rest in his box in the racecourse stables before being readied to run, that was a very fair effort, Next time, Dufresne could well do much better for owners Sleeve It Ltd and Tom Dascombe.

- TS

Monday Musings: Still Glorious despite the weather

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There have been a few Goodwood meetings where the term Glorious did not exactly comply with weather conditions, writes Tony Stafford. Indeed, the lavish sponsor Qatar, whose name affixes to several races, in the process making the meeting’s prizemoney extravagant by most UK standards, is a more accurate term nowadays.

What was glorious and equally extravagant though was the performance of Quickthorn in Tuesday’s Goodwood Cup. It was notable for the less than gushing praise allotted to Hughie Morrison’s six-year-old gelding compared to the deluge of compliments afforded to his jockey Tom Marquand’s front-running ride.

Tom sent him quickly into the lead, maintaining the speed for the first half of the race by which time he was a good dozen lengths to the good.

It’s worth reiterating here, lest we forget, that in opposition were the winner, Courage Mon Ami, runner-up, Emily Dickinson, third home, Coltrane, and fourth, Eldar Eldarov, from the Gold Cup at Ascot six weeks previously. In between Aidan O’Brien had found time to win a Group 2 at home with Emily Dickinson.

On television and on the racecourse the commentators glowed with praise for Marquand as he merely had to keep his mount going to maintain a sizeable lead – albeit diminishing to six lengths at the line.  It was a very good ride, replicating his 14-length win on the same horse at York last summer.

Excuse me if I misheard, but I understood the stewards had the also rans in to ask about their “misjudged” riding, as they had “allowed” Quickthorn and his rider to go around 20 lengths clear at some stage.

But this was a Group 1 worth £283k to the winner, and therefore worth at least 20 grand for the winning jockey. I doubt they were in any way culpable, just guilty of taking pains not to go too hard after what they considered a pace, if not too quick for the leader to maintain, certainly one to burn up their mounts in the early part of the race if they pursued it too energetically.

In finishing order, the beaten jockeys were Moore, Murphy, David Egan, Atzeni, Dettori, Buick, James Doyle, Rossa Ryan, Crowley and Kingscote, hardly the least talented band of ten to challenge for a major race.

In the event they provided a rousing conclusion (for the not inconsiderable place money) with a short-head, short-head, neck, and one and a half lengths separating Emily Dickinson (£107k), Coltrane (£53k), Eldar Eldarov (£26k), Giavellotto (£13k) and the favourite Courage Mon Ami (a puny £6,750 for Frankie to take a piece of.)

I always (additionally having been lectured by the Editor over the years) take no more than a passing interest in Racing Post speed-figures but it is remarkable that, having gone so quickly in the early stages, the winner of a two-mile race should record the fastest speed figure of the entire meeting.

Their RPR’s also sometimes have a sickly sweet aroma of fudge about them, too, but since his head second to the very well handicapped and subsequent Irish St Leger winner Sonnyboyliston in the 2021 Ebor at York, Quickthorn has run 14 times and only once recorded an RPR below 100. That happened when he collapsed late on (and was by no means the only one!) behind last year’s champion stayer Kyprios in the Prix du Cadran (2m4f) last October.

His overall record boasts nine wins in 22 starts, with three second places and one third. As well as that Ebor near miss, he was also close behind Princess Zoe in last year’s Sagaro Stakes. By the way, the moving of that great mare from Tony Mullins earlier this year smacks of ingratitude if ever I heard it.

Criticism of last week’s Goodwood Cup jockeys was the obvious way to go, but Oisin Murphy, who won twice on Quickthorn earlier in his career, told Morrison he dare not chase him as when his mount Coltrane, ridden by Rob Hornby, attempted that in last year’s Group 2 Lonsdale Cup at York, he was beaten more than twice as far as at Goodwood. The question now is whether Hughie will attempt the Lonsdale double but when I spoke to him after the race, he seemed to be thinking more in terms of drawing stumps for the year. “He doesn’t seem to like the winter, so we can always bring him back next year if we are kind to him now.”

His earnings are a touch short of £800k, putting right the near miss of a slightly bigger prize in that 2021 Ebor. Morrison had been without a Group 1 win since Sakhee’s Secret gave him his second July Cup, two years after Pastoral Pursuits also won that Newmarket sprint. In between, the 10-year-old Alcazar won the Prix Royal Oak. Also a gelding, if the typical Morrison training pattern holds firm, what more could come from Quickthorn?

**

I recently outlined how Paddington is quickly creeping up on the Iron Horse sequence of Group 1 wins of his O’Brien forerunner Giant’s Causeway. His emphatic Sussex Stakes victory on Wednesday made it four Group 1 wins since the end of May and leaves him only needing to collect the Juddmonte at York already to match the achievements of the old champion.

Many more options are available to this later starter and now Ryan Moore has confessed publicly that Paddington could be the best horse he’s ever ridden. He even suggested that the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe may not be beyond his scope. If that was either the seventh in a row (with the Irish Champion in between) he surely will have eclipsed Giant’s Causeway. Slip in a race at the Breeders’ Cup and the Coolmore cup (and even their superlatives!) will runneth over.

My second favourite horse at the moment is one that hasn’t won a race this year, but the doughty sprinter Apollo One, dubbed trained by Peter Charalambous and James Clutterbuck, but firmly in the Chambo camp, is a true star.

Saturday’s latest instalment of his sequence of near misses in sprints came in the Stewards‘ Cup in which, remarkably considering the meeting was to be called off immediately afterwards, all 28 horses stood their ground.

Annoying for two, previous winner Summerghand, who was withdrawn lame at the start, and the sole three-year-old Rumstar, who dropped to his knees as the stalls opened jettisoning his rider Rhys Clutterbuck, only 26 completed the six furlongs that was finally about to succumb after a day-long  deluge on top of all the earlier drenchings during the week.

When I spoke to Pete last Monday, I got the feeling Apollo One, up near the top of the weights with his rating of 100, might not run. The ground had been good to firm when he ran a one-length second of 27 in the Wokingham Stakes at Royal Ascot and similarly when also second to prolific winner Badri in a close finish on Derby Day at Epsom.

He’d never indicated an equal facility for handling heavy ground, for that assuredly was what it was on Saturday. But Richard Kingscote got him away alertly from his stall one off the stand rail and he was always heading the pace on that side as the contest devolved into the customary three groups.

Apollo One maintained his pace and above all his action in the ground all the way to the line but could not quite match conceding weight to the penalised Aberama Gold, a six-year-old ridden by Goodwood ace and soon off to Hong Kong Andrea Atzeni and trained by David O’Meara for lucky owner Evan Sutherland. Aberama Gold earned his penalty only seven days before in another valuable race at York, but nowhere near the £128k on offer on Saturday.

Charalambous had the consolation of collecting the £60k second prize for pcracing.co.uk which he heads and now can be looking at the Portland at Doncaster and, realistically now the heavy ground question has been positively answered, the Ayr Gold Cup.

Behind him in third and fourth were two eight-year-olds, Bielsa and previous Stewards’ Cup consolation winner Mr Wagyu. Quite a week then for the old boys, but Paddington stood firm for the Classic crop and bestrode the meeting with his sheer class and toughness.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Smack in the Mouth

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Now I know what it feels like, writes Tony Stafford. Coming to the end of my eighth decade, I can now honestly tell you what it is to experience pain. Thinking back to my football days, a broken wrist and a regularly sprained ankle were about the size of it.

I’m sure every woman past puberty has been doubled up on a regular basis and most sportsmen – none more so than jockeys – accept it as part and parcel of their lives. Sorry Keith - and boxers!

But I’ve poodled along and, despite the odd bit of skin cancer on my face and Type 2 diabetes for the past 15 years which has realistically only involved taking the tablets (and not passing up biscuits and cakes), have had a trouble-free run. My friend George Hill, who has had his share of scary medical issues over the years, always says I’m made of tungsten. The tungsten has run out.

It started a few months ago with a twinge in the corner of the mouth, usually when eating. That developed to such an extent that I went to a dentist to see if there was a problem. Nothing on the X-ray.

The pain got worse – not permanent, just intermittent concentrated bursts for seconds or minutes, often while eating in company with friends at the races or in restaurants with my wife. How embarrassing! Ask the editor!

I finally booked an appointment with the doctor for last Thursday but went to watch Ray Tooth’s Glen Again at Sandown the previous evening. It was after his race, trying to have something in the owners’ room that the pain got unbearable.

The nice guy who monitors the room and likes Chelsea FC and Surrey CCC said: “If you need painkillers go to the First Aid room in the main stand.” I did, to be greeted with a: “Painkillers won’t make a difference. I think I know what you have.”

To my shame, I didn’t take down her name, but this highly capable woman told me that she had been originally a dental nurse and for 30 years a paramedic. She was clearly the boss, working very congenially it seemed with her two male colleagues: “It’s trigeminal neuralgia.” Relief, I know what it is. I’ll tell the doctor tomorrow.

Then I Googled it after I left her room and, for relief, read horror as I realised I will have this condition for the rest of my life.

I slunk to the surgery on Thursday, telling the GP the symptoms and it took about ten seconds for him to repeat the dreaded name. “I’m pretty sure it’s trigeminal neuralgia, but it’s not entirely certain. We’ll prescribe the usual drug for the condition. Start with one a day for a few days, then go to two.

Thursday, Friday, I had one each day. Saturday, I went to Ascot, had the good fortune to be in a box where the food was laid out in glorious, nay luxurious profusion. To that point, all I’d managed to get down me from Wednesday had been a couple of coffees and a diet coke, but anything that involved access to the right-hand side of my mouth was the inevitable trigger for another shooting pain.

On Wednesday evening, post paramedic, I was trying to put away a little soft dessert, to no avail, and recently retired trainer Harry Dunlop hove into view. I was keen to ask him what he was doing now and just as I began, the pain came at maximum force. All I could do was stand there like a moron; mouth open trying to stave off the agony. Kindly, with an apologetic smile, he moved away.

So what is trigeminal neuralgia? It stems from the trigeminal nerve, the biggest nerve in the brain. That sends signals of pain to the face, ear, upper and lower jaw and teeth. When it gets damaged for whatever reason, the neuralgia follows.

The literature says that the sharp pain, like an electric shock, can be induced by talking, smiling, chewing, brushing your teeth, washing your face, a light touch, shaving (or putting on make-up – pass), swallowing, kissing, a cool breeze or air conditioning, head movements, vibrations, such as walking or travelling in a car. If that catalogue wasn’t comprehensive enough, it can happen spontaneously with no trigger at all.

Looks like I’ll have to change many of the things I thought I could do!

The literature suggests it can never be cured, the medication – a smaller dose, but the same that is given to epilepsy patients, great news eh -  can help ease or even stave it off for periods, but it’s always lurking in the background. A bit like the tablets I must take for the diabetes.

If you’d have asked me yesterday morning how I felt, it was still at stage one. I was beginning to see why patients with this condition can go into depression or even worse. I won’t. At Ascot, I drank a coffee without incident, but thinking soup would be the only sensible option, I asked if they had any and a nice bowl of tomato was put in front of me.

I needed two goes. The first when I managed three spoonfuls; the second, a third of a bowl, before the wave of pain sailed in. That was game, set and match and after the King George I went straight home.

Yesterday, though, the fourth day of medication and the second with the full daily dose of two tablets, I thought I would try to drink my soup rather than eat in the conventional way, for lunch. That worked. For dinner, a Tesco Fish Pie, spooned minutely so that it took 25 minutes to consume, also went without a problem, although two or three times, the hint was there. So, you pause, take even more care for the positioning of the next morsel. For now, I’m still clear.

The menu is to go back for a blood test tomorrow (Tuesday) and see the doctor again on Thursday week. As I write this, for the first time in weeks I’m feeling optimistic. Maybe the tungsten is still in there somewhere, but boy does it hurt when that shockwave of pain comes!

                                                              **

Two years ago, I sat down – eating again, in the days when I could – having a bite before racing at Brighton racecourse and for the first time, met and had a chat with Owen Burrows. He was clearly anxious about his future as Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum had recently died and the entire Shadwell Estate Company organisation was very much up in the air.

He told me: “There’s a big meeting in Dubai next week and all the trainers are worried that the Sheikh’s daughter Sheikha Hissa and the rest of the family won’t be inclined or even able to keep it going.”

At that time most of Owen’s horses ran in the blue and white Hamdan livery and with the prospect of massive numbers of mares, horses in training and young stock on their way to market, it was understandable the uncertainty, indeed trepidation, that all the Shadwell trainers were feeling.

Project forward two years to Saturday July 29th 2023 and within 25 minutes, Owen’s older generation horses in the Shadwell ownership collected two big prizes. The four-year-old Alflaila, in his first run since last autumn, made it four wins in a row and six from 13 career, in the £70k to the winner Sky Bet Stakes at York.

Then at Ascot in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes, his Hukum picked up almost exactly ten times that in beating last year’s Irish Derby winner Westover after a sustained battle. Jim Crowley, used to winning big races as recently as last year on Baaed, expressed great joy at picking up this massive pot with a six-year-old entire, whose tally over five seasons’ racing is 11 from 17. At six, he matches dual winner Swain and triple heroine Enable, the only previous horses of that age to win the race in its 73-year history.

This was a second flop of the year for Derby and Irish Derby winner Auguste Rodin, whose sudden capitulation before the home turn after which Ryan Moore looked after him, coasting home a long way behind, was a shock, no doubt especially to connections. Minute medical checks will be taken, but Auguste Rodin was not the only disappointment in the race.

Emily Upjohn, who gave Paddington such a brave fight in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown three weeks earlier, probably left her race on the Esher slopes, and never looked like getting Frankie Dettori a last King George winner, finishing 27 lengths behind the first two in seventh.

The Classic generation form was given a small nudge by King Of Steel, second in the Derby clear of the rest and an easy Royal Ascot winner. For a while it looked as though Kevin Stott was bringing the Amo Racing/ Roger Varian representative with a telling run, but he weakened and had to be content with an honourable third.

Tough stuff this Group 1 racing, especially in soft ground. Hukum is tough and Owen Burrows knows how to keep his golden oldies going.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Diamond Studded King George in Prospect

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It looks as though we might be getting a twelve furlong Race of the Year in England just as Sandown’s Coral-Eclipse Stakes three weekends back provided a midsummer pecking order between the generations, writes Tony Stafford. Ballydoyle’s Paddington won that and now the Aidan O’Brien stable’s other 2023 Classic-winning colt is due to line up in Ascot’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes.

That horse is Auguste Rodin, coming on from the two Derby wins, emphatically at Epsom over King Of Steel, and a shade controversially against fellow Coolmore inmate Adelaide River in his home Derby. More than a few close observers of the Curragh race noticed a marked differential between the relative energies of Ryan Moore on the winner and Seamie Heffernan on the runner-up.

Adelaide River had been only eighth at Epsom, so as the favourite joined him on the outside at the head of affairs, a “see you later” type of accelerating flourish was on everyone’s minds, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

Then again, Adelaide River is a fair tool as he showed under Ryan in the subsequent Grand Prix de Paris on Bastille Day ten days ago. He ran a close second to the Pascal Bary-trained Kingman colt Feed The Flame, now a winner of three of his four career starts, all this year, with just the French Derby as a negative.

More easily quantified for Anglo/Irish observers was the presence in third in Paris of the Gosdens’ Oaks winner, Soul Sister, who saw off Savethelastdance at Epsom in a battle of the super fillies. Savethelastdance put her seal on the overall form picture with a Group 1 win of her own in the Juddmonte Irish Oaks on Saturday.

Lucky it wasn’t on Sunday as the two scheduled midsummer Sunday flat programmes, one each in Ireland and Redcar in the UK, were off through waterlogging as is Cartmel’s jumps card today. It was a bit wet at the golf and the cricket, too, but it was nice for the Athletics in East London.

So here we are, summer half over, the nights are starting to draw in and eight of the ten UK and Irish Classics are already done. Every year I say something similar. We’ve Ascot this week, Goodwood, York, the St Leger and not much else. And before the next month is out, trainers will be asking owners to re-invest at the upcoming yearling sales and chase all that generous BHA prizemoney.

But to return to the King George. Adelaide River and King of Steel, the two runners-up in the Epsom and Irish Derby wins of Auguste Rodin, form – along with their vanquisher – a three-horse bloc against 16 older horses at the latest entry stage. We will know after midday today how many have stayed in. The most likely port of attrition is O’Brien, who had nine still engaged up until last night. That number is sure to be trimmed by a few.

The first question of course is whether Auguste Robin will be pitted against the Roger Varian-trained Amo Racing colt, King Of Steel. Varian had been very forthright about the chance he thought the son of Wootton Bassett had on his stable debut at Epsom having been trained previously by David Loughnane.

Starting at 66/1, a furlong out he looked to have won the Derby having gone clear in the straight under new Amo jockey Kevin Stott, but Auguste Robin pulled him back late to win by half a length. It was five lengths back to the rest – hence no extra three-year-old challengers for this weekend.

While O’Brien waited for the Irish Derby, Varian went quickly to Royal Ascot and the Group 2 King Edward VII Stakes. Once called the Ascot Derby, it gave a chance for a trio of Epsom also-rans to try to depose the emerging star, but they were wiped away. It was the ease of that win that encouraged some of the Machiavellian thoughts to emerge among the racecourse crowd – if there is such a thing.

One view was, if Auguste Rodin takes on King Of Steel again and beats him once more, that’s fine. If the result gets turned around, though, the downside for Auguste would be severe. If he stays away and King of Steel wins – “We’ve already beaten him in the Derby”, they can and will say – and in that regard in the Derby hero’s absence, effectively King Of Steel would be running for him, reputation-wise.

Some of that tortured reasoning has its basis on that less emphatic than expected run on the Curragh, but whatever the rights and wrongs of that, Auguste Rodin is lining up to be the first winner of the two Derbys and then the King George since Galileo.

The Ascot race has gone to the Classic generation seven times in the 22 years since Galileo’s success. Two went to fillies, Taghrooda in 2014 and Enable three years later. Of course, Enable was destined to win the race twice more after a break as a four-year-old when she missed the entire summer.

Adayar, the Derby winner of 2019 for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin did win the King George but didn’t appear in Ireland in between. He is one of two further Derby winners still engaged, joined by Desert Crown, last year’s Epsom hero for Sir Michael Stoute, but absent for the rest of his Classic year.

Adayar did make a winning return to action this spring, but two defeats, including at long odds-on as recently as the July meeting at Newmarket, must make him a doubt on both the scores of form and the short time since that appearance.

Desert Crown’s comeback defeat, half a length behind Hukum in the Brigadier Gerard at Sandown in late May, was diminishing in form terms, but the apparent growing confidence behind the Owen Burrows six-year-old, who would enjoy a testing surface, should also throw a favourable light on last year’s Epsom victor.

Talking of 2022 winners, how about the ever-improving Pyledriver? Also a six-year-old, he ran his best race of an illustrious career when seeing off 2021 Arc winner Torquator Tasso in this race last year and returned at the Royal meeting a month ago after that near one-year gap, romping away with the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes.

He might have knocked a few of his rivals over in the closing stages there, but after his delayed return you could imagine William Muir and co-trainer Chris Grassick would have left something to work on for this weekend.

Then, for good measure, we also have the prospect of 2022 Oaks runner-up Emily Upjohn. She followed Epsom with a weak effort in Pyledriver’s King George, but has done little wrong since, winning the Filly and Mare Championship race at Ascot last October and cleaning up in the Coronation Cup a year on from what most people thought a luckless defeat in the Oaks.

Last time, she got within half a length of midsummer sensation Paddington in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown. She was down in trip, with the winner stepping up from a mile, and it’s hard to fault her, especially with the older filly having to concede that outstanding colt 7lb in the Esher showdown.

As the only female in the race, Emily Upjohn now gets 8lb over the two furlongs longer trip and if she doesn’t have a repeat of last year’s poor showing, she must be dangerous.

If either of the first two at Epsom this June should stave off all that older talent, he would be celebrated as the interim middle-distance champ, with only the Arc to dent that reputation. It will be well worth travelling a long way to see it!

- TS

Monday Musings: G1 Galore

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They were coming at the big prizes from all directions over this second weekend in July, Classic winners attempting further Group 1 triumphs, writes Tony Stafford. While some notable stars continued their upward momentum, the challenge of maintaining that level of excellence is never easy.

Normally staged on the first Saturday of the month, the Coral-Eclipse Stakes over 1m2f at Sandown might have attracted only a four-horse field, but the quartet posed an intriguing puzzle as the opening clash between the top Classic horses from the respective generations.

Considering the record of three-year-olds in this £425k to the winner prize, it was disappointing that only one attended the party. But then it was a distinguished representative, the winner of five previous races in a row, culminating in the Irish 2,000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes.

This of course was Paddington and, like several of his Aidan O’Brien predecessors, here he was trying ten furlongs for the first time having been campaigned at a mile.

Ranged against him as the obvious threat was last month’s Coronation Cup heroine Emily Upjohn, dropping back to ten from 12 furlongs and without the reassuring presence of Frankie Dettori. William Buick stepped in.

As the horses started to vacate the paddock, Matt Chapman for ITV approached William Haggas, asking about his runner, the 5yo Dubai Honour, winner of two valuable prizes in Australia and placed in another massive pot at Sha Tin last time out.

“He has won twice as much money as the rest of these,” he said, but that confidence statement did not fool the market, his horse’s price of 8/1 also at variance with his official rating which slotted in between the big two.

Once that pair launched their joint bids past the one other runner, the Crisfords’ West Wind Blows, who had quickly taken the lead after initially being bettered from the stalls by an alert Paddington, it was a match. As the duo stormed together up the hill they proved to be in a class of their own, with Ryan Moore always looking to be holding his rival.

The other pair are talented, but in finishing six (WWB) and eight (DH) lengths adrift, it will be globetrotting, as Chapman suggested “against inferior foreign opposition” rather than Group 1 shopping at home and in the top European venues, that they will have to do to continue bolstering the coffers.

Emily Upjohn is firmly in line to go back up in trip with part-owner John Shack keen on the Arc. The original outright owner, he cashed in a chunk of his great filly last year and still owns a mightily valuable proposition when she ends her career and goes to partners the Lloyd Webbers’ stud.

There will clearly be a massive stud job for Paddington, too, when the son of Siyouni finishes racing. Much has been made of his going from a handicap to Sandown but, as I’ve said here before, the Coolmore team need to offer fulsome thanks to the Irish official who decided to allot him a mark of 96. He had demolished a field of 20 2yo maidens at the Curragh on second start following an exploratory opening foray at Ascot late last September.

The next offer of gratitude is that the Sunday of the Irish 2023 turf flat programme’s opening weekend, at Naas, features the Madrid Handicap which accommodates 3yo’s with high ratings. Paddington won it and then, five days before the 2000 Guineas was being contested at Newmarket, he earned a smooth albeit unspectacular win in Listed company.

The well-chronicled and minutely explained by their trainer unhinging of Auguste Rodin and Little Big Bear at Newmarket – soon eviscerated by the simple expedient of going up in trip (AR in the Derby) and down (LBB to sprinting), conveniently left a vacuum in the Irish 2000 Guineas. We now know who filled it.

Aidan has a supreme ability to get improvement race on race for his charges. In less than five weeks, Paddington has won three of the toughest Group 1s in the English/Irish calendars and his career holds a gathering similarity to that of one of his most famed predecessors at Ballydoyle.

Giant’s Causeway was known as the Iron Horse, but when I looked back at the career of the 1997-foaled son of Storm Cat, I hadn’t remembered he raced only at two and three. Unbeaten as a juvenile, with the Group 2 Prix de la Salamandre as his biggest win, he raced another ten times at three.

A win on his comeback run in a Group 3 in Ireland was followed by a near miss in the 2000 Guineas (2nd of 27 to King’s Best) and the Irish 2000, when runner-up to Bachir. He then went on a five-race Group 1 winning spree taking in the St James’s Palace Stakes (by a head), Eclipse (head again), Sussex Stakes (three-parts of a length), Juddmonte (head once more) and Irish Champion (half a length).

He finished off with two second places, in the QE II at Ascot, half a length behind Observatory, and the Breeders’ Cup Classic, a neck behind the brilliant Tiznow in an epic battle on the Belmont Park dirt track..

Having started more conservatively with Paddington, the O’Brien colt has already gone a long way onto the Giant’s Causeway ladder and in one way is already ahead of that horse’s Group 1 schedule.

Understandably, both the Sussex and Juddmonte were mentioned after Saturday and should he take in and win those, five Group 1 wins would already match the Iron Horse with the prospect of the Leopardstown and Ascot races to follow, not to mention a possible turf foray at this year’s Breeders’ Cup. Eight would be nice and for Iron Horse we would have to substitute Diamond, the hardest mineral known to man.

At Royal Ascot, Paddington meted out stable revenge on Chaldean, the horse that won the 2000 Guineas for Andrew Balding, and there was no hint of Giant’s Causeway’s love of a tight finish in which to show his battling tendencies as the Irish colt went almost four lengths clear.

Chaldean was expected to get back on the winning trail in yesterday’s Prix Jean Prat at Deauville, but after showing up in the middle of the track in the Group 1 over a straight seven furlongs, he faded away to fifth. Other veterans of this season’s mile Classics to finish unplaced here were Indestructible, 4th, Charyn, Hi Royal and the O’Brien filly Mediate.

The winner was the Fabrice Chappet-trained Kodiac colt Good Guess, 40/1 according to the Sky Sports racing caption afterwards but barely half those odds at a miserly 24/1 for off-course punters in the UK. Sixth in the French 2000, he has always been highly regarded and reflects how quickly fortunes and abilities can change as each Classic generation unfolds through the season.

One other Classic winner, Westover, Ralph Beckett’s Irish Derby hero from last year, was also in action in France this weekend, strolling home as the 2/1 on favourite in a four-runner renewal of the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud on Saturday.

Westover had been a creditable second to Emily Upjohn in last month’s Coronation Cup, the pair finishing a long way clear of Point Lonsdale and 2021 Irish Derby hero Hurricane Lane. He, too, will be lining up for an Arc challenge.

Two further 2023 Classic participants made the trek across to New York for the very valuable Belmont Derby Invitational. Oisin Murphy must have been hopeful of winning the main prize on Dante winner and Derby fifth The Foxes,but, having been given plenty to do, he could not peg back the Todd Pletcher-trained Far Bridge who got first run and beat him by a length.

Further back was the Charlie Appleby-trained Silver Knott. Silver Knott had been only 11th in the 2000 Guineas but had been a good second when travelling to Keeneland for last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf, where he was beaten a nose by Aidan O’Brien’s Victoria Road.

Incidentally, Victoria Road, who has yet to reappear after a training setback in the spring, has a handful of imminent entries taking in later this month up to September.

No joy for Oisin in the Belmont Derby Invitational, then, but his trip was made more than worthwhile when the Fozzy Stack filly Aspen Grove (15/1) won the Oaks Invitational earlier on the card. Last of ten to Tahiyra in the Irish 1000 last time, the Justify filly, half-owned by Sue Magnier, collected the £229k first prize with a strong late run.

Oisin’s share of the £355k earned by his two mounts will have helped salve the disappointment of Chaldean’s defeat yesterday. You win when you lose when you’re in the Oisin, Ryan and Frankie (who missed both Emily Upjohn and Chaldean) bracket!

- TS

Monday Musings: Aidan’s Curragh Monopoly

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You would think a €1.25 million pot would be enough to entice raiders from across the water to the Irish Derby, writes Tony Stafford. English connections of six of the nine runners duly did arrive at The Curragh in anticipation of the second Derby win of Auguste Rodin, and some friends and family too, but as far as the horses were concerned, it was a private party for the home team.

A length-and-a-half victory for the 4/11 shot, Aidan O’Brien’s almost obscene 15th success in his principal home Classic, might smack of routine, but routine it definitely was not.

Aidan had five runners, all for the Coolmore boys, and Messrs Tabor and Smith were on hand, along with John Magnier and Georg Von Opel alias Westerberg. Donnacha and Joseph supplied one each, Donnacha’s for the boys, although Joseph’s fifth home – incidentally behind four of his father’s – Up And Under, has Go Racing Ltd as its owner and I’ve no idea who they are or where they come from.

In the Derby at Epsom, nine of the 14 runners were trained in England. Runner-up King Of Steel gave the winner quite a battle before giving best, and was a full five lengths clear of the rest of the field. Roger Varian’s colt lived up to it in a fluent victory at Royal Ascot in the King Edward VII Stakes. There he had two of the better-fancied runners from Epsom similarly well beaten again.

They were Artistic Star (Ralph Beckett) and Arrest (John and Thady Gosden) and the way they were put in their place by the Epsom runner-up gave a very solid look to the form.

You could see why none of the other, more remote, Derby Day also-rans from the UK took on the re-match. There was more realism in the second challenges of home-team contenders White Birch, third for the John Joseph Murphy stable, and Sprewell (fourth for Jessica Harrington), and unsurprisingly they were the second and third in the betting yesterday and the only two at single-figure odds.

Neither replicated the Epsom form, but in some ways neither did the winner. As had been the case there, where Adelaide River cut out much of the running, he again set the pace. He had been a well-beaten eighth at Epsom, but now it took a long while for the favourite to master him.

Much of the story of the race, though, involved the one Aidan runner not to be involved in the finish. This was San Antonio, a son of Dubawi, who at 16/1 was the second shortest of the Ballydoyle quintet even after he finished as far back as 11th at Epsom.

Here he was galloping happily alongside and just behind Adelaide River with the favourite in customary Irish Derby O’Brien comfort zone, close up, when suddenly four furlongs from home, San Antonio broke down and unseated Wayne Lordan. San Antonio sadly was fatally injured having fractured his right foreleg. Lordan was taken to Tallaght Hospital where last night he was said to be “concussed but fully conscious and able to move all limbs”..

The fall caused interference to the favourite and considerably more to some of those in behind including the two other home hopes, who both ran below par, their riders and trainers blaming the incident.

Ryan Moore certainly thought leaving Auguste Rodin without cover on the outside of the leader was a major contributor to what appeared a workmanlike at best performance. With a strong headwind in the first half of the race, and a tailwind in the straight, leading had been hard work initially and then pegging back the leaders just as difficult in the run home.

Eventually Auguste Rodin got on terms and, with his rider working hard, edged ahead, but Adelaide River, in Moore’s words, having enjoyed “the run of the race”, was even pegging back the favourite, and in no way looking a 33/1 shot.

Covent Garden, 80/1 in third, had been three lengths behind Sprewell in his latest race, the trial the Harrington horse won before Epsom. It was left to Peking Opera (66/1), a disappointment in the Queen’s Vase (1m6f) at the Royal meeting 12 days previously, to take fourth under Tom Marquand.

We’ve been accustomed in recent years of O’Brien multiple representation, especially at Epsom, to see more than one Ballydoyle work jockey step into the limelight: Padraig Beggy (Wings of Eagles, 2017) and Emmet McNamara (Serpentine, 2020) picked up career defining wins in the greatest race in the UK Calendar, but the home boys have stayed home of late.

Now, the five Ballydoyle horses were ridden by the regular trio of Moore, Heffernan and the unfortunate Lordan, while Tom Marquand will be happy to pick up his rider’s share of 50k for the fourth place of Peking Opera. Former Irish champion Declan McDonagh (2006) and more frequently riding nowadays for Joseph, finished third. Not a chalk jockey in sight!

They are clearly taking ever more careful account of jockeyship, something which especially concerns Michael Tabor; and his championing of Moore was the main reason for that appointment after Johnny Murtagh’s time there ended. Ryan has been riding with renewed vigour and enterprise, and at Ascot his energy and tactical awareness were the best we’ve seen from a flat race jockey for a long time. That has filtered through to his regular trips across to Ireland where before racing yesterday, he jointly led the riders’ table on 30 wins.

O’Brien sits second to the Gosdens in the UK trainers’ prizemoney list, having won £2,746,146 against Big John and Little Thady’s [he’s not that little! – Ed.] £3,210,084. At home, before racing yesterday, he was on more than €1.8 million. That has swelled to just a few Euro over the three milion mark, almost three times Joseph’s far from negligible tally in second.

Tabor was fulsome in his praise of his trainer yesterday. It is salutary to relate that it was only a few years ago that the media and those rumour mills, always so prevalent in racing, were predicting that David O’Meara was about to take over at Ballydoyle and that the Coolmore owners were ready to jettison their man.

John Magnier must go down in racing history as the genius who discovered the man to follow his unelated namesake but equally supreme, Vincent O’Brien.

When he retired, Vincent got an honorary doctorate and was forever thereafter described as Dr O’Brien. Maybe somebody can think up an appropriate appellation for Aidan when he allows someone else to win the Derby (nine and counting) and Irish Derby (15). It must be something unique as there’s been nobody like him.

Ryan Moore, so much more at ease with the media nowadays – the natural caution of this private young man having been hard for him to come to terms with - also was fulsome in his praise of the trainer. He said that over the past ten years he had provided so many good horses for him to ride. Auguste Rodin was Ryan’s first winner of the Curragh race, to go with his three at Epsom, two for O’Brien including last month.

The rest of the season is panning out quite nicely for them with such as Irish 2.000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes winner Paddington dominating the mile division for now and, despite his near miss at Ascot in the Commonwealth Cup, top sprint honours can still come the way of Little Big Bear.

As for the two-year-olds, there was a rare reverse in yesterday’s opener when close Ascot third Bucanero Fuerte rallied late to get the better of Aidan’s favourite, Unquestionable, in the Railway Stakes. The pair, both sons of Coolmore’s star young stallion Wootton Bassett, were miles clear of the third-placed His Majesty, who had been a close fourth in the Norfolk Stakes.

That followed two wins at the start of both Friday and Saturday’s Curragh cards, all comfortably achieved. The highlight undoubtedly was the facile all-the-way win of Frankel filly Ylang Ylang on debut on Saturday. This 1.5 million gns buy from Newsells Park Stud had the look of a guaranteed contender for races like the Moyglare Stud Stakes. I was at Chester on Friday night watching another Wootton Bassett colt, owned in partnership by Newsells Park with Jonathan Barnett and trained by Michael Bell.

He ran a promising first race finishing third to Witness Stand who looked very smart. Tom Clover trains that one. It took five hours without stopping to get back from Chester which was just five minutes less than the journey home from Lingfield (one third the distance) on Saturday when a three-hour wait on the M25 put in perspective how lucky I had been with my five hours each way on the M6 on Friday.

It wasn’t entirely a weekend without enterprise by English trainers. Michael Dods sent his top-class sprint handicapper Commanche Falls for the Listed six-furlong race yesterday and was rewarded with a nice payday as he outpaced the local speedsters.

But his chance was there for all to see. Much less obvious were the claims of the Hughie Morrison-trained and Arbib family-owned Stay Alert, a Group 3 winner last year, but only fifth behind Free Will and Rogue Millennium in the Middleton Stakes at York.

In running an excellent second in the Yulang Pretty Polly Stakes on Saturday to the George Boughey favourite Via Sistina, she collected valuable Group 1 placed black type as a 25/1 shot, and can go on from here.

The winner looks a top performer. Boughey has lost one major owner from his yard after a run of unfortunate veterinary issues during Royal Ascot but the way he spoke diplomatically about his former client, wishing him and his family all the best, suggested he has the right temperament for this tricky profession in which he has started out so well.

- TS

Monday Musings: Compensation for Dylan

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A friend called yesterday afternoon and asked, “What are you going to write about? Dettori? Coolmore? My choice”, he said, “would be the King and Queen Camilla, how they fully and seamlessly followed the example of the late Queen, treating Royal Ascot with fitting respect.” He could have added, even down to owning a winner and having the joy of the Duke of Kent presenting the trophy to them, writes Tony Stafford.

My preference though, only locked in my mind a few minutes after 6pm yesterday, was one that got away. All week, until Thursday at 10am, a small trainer based in Newmarket was convinced he had in his stable the winner of the Golden Gates Handicap, penultimate race on Saturday.

The unfortunate thing for Dylan Cunha, though, a South African with just under a year behind him as a trainer in the UK, was that the 10-furlong Round Course allows only 16 runners in races as against 20 at a mile-and-a-half.

With a few minutes to go, we spoke, and he said: “It’s not looking great, Johnston and Appleby haven’t declared yet” – but then they did and Dylan’s hopes for Silver Sword and a £50k first prize evaporated in a trice.

He did have yesterday’s one-mile Sunday Series race at Pontefract as back-up, but a ten grand winning dividend hardly makes up for five times that as well as the kind of publicity a win at the meeting would mean to a small stable.

“It’s been very hard to convince UK owners of what we are capable”, he said in an earlier chat before we got to know each other better. “Most of the horses have a South African ownership element at least and all we can do is show on the racecourse that we are up to the job.”

The same goes for Greg Cheyne, 46, ten times a top five rider in South African and twice runner-up there. An experienced rider with more than 2,000 wins to his name and who has moved to the UK to take up a job as pupil assistant to William Haggas.

He’s not the usual pupil assistant, the type sprinkled around Newmarket especially, from “good families” often with ownership and breeding in the family tree, much like Haggas was in his early days and even before.

I’m sure I’ve told this story before. William, now 63, was at school when at the time I used to speak every night to Michael Dickinson who was still riding. He’d come in from his nightly sauna when father Tony’s plans percolated through his head as the steam ebbed away the excess pounds from that spare, long frame.

The Dickinson trinity of dad Tony, mum Monica and son Michael were for a time almost the equivalent of a 70’s version of Willie Mullins and trained, among other very good horses, Silver Buck for William’s mother Christine Feather. The young master Haggas, apart from being a star cricketer that Fred Trueman once declared as a future Yorkshire captain, also kept a close watch on affairs at Gisburn in Lancashire, the original Dickinson base before the move across the county line to Harewood near Harrogate in West Yorkshire.

One evening Michael came on the phone. Always a little hyper, this time he neglected the usual greeting of “now then”, instead launching into a furious tirade saying: “That little so-and-so William Haggas keeps phoning me from Harrow telling me how to train his mother’s horses!”

A Cheltenham Gold Cup and two King Georges at Kempton were to fall to Silver Buck as well as fourth in the Famous Five Michael Dickinson Gold Cup of 1983. His was a long, honourable career which ended with a stable accident when still in his prime the following year.

By that time, Haggas had already moved to Newmarket, as pupil assistant for two years with fellow Old Harrovian Sir Mark Prescott and then four with John Winter before starting training in his own right in 1986. Thirty-seven years on, he is of course one of the acknowledged masters of his craft, working alongside wife Maureen, daughter of Lester Piggott.

Anyway, I digress, Dylan and Greg went north to Pontefract yesterday rather than south-west to Ascot the day before. The market was unequivocal, Silver Sword being backed down to 13/8 favouritism. If you need to know a little of Dylan’s talent, consider this about the Group 1-winning handler during his time in South Africa where he was one of the leading trainers. Silver Sword, an 11 grand December 2021 yearling had two runs in August last year early in Dylan’s UK training career and the result each time was catastrophic, at least for the trainer.

Apprentice Grace McEntee had the misfortune to be on the already gelded grey son of Charm Spirit for whom the comment on debut at Chelmsford was “dwelt, refused to race” and then, at Newbury 18 days later, “slow away, soon hung left, refused to race.”

Now what can you do after that? Well Dylan took him home, gradually instilling confidence so that by October he was ready to show more conventional reaction to training, finishing fifth of 11 as a 250/1 shot at Newmarket before three weeks later getting his first place with a second of 13 at Lingfield. Thus he could be sent away at the end of his juvenile career with reputation restored – to a degree!

Project forward to the February sale at Newmarket and I was having a cup of tea with my pal John Hancock, bloodstock insurer extraordinaire, and another friend, Michelle Fernandez, and knowing I edit a couple of sites every day, Trainers Quotes and From The Stables, she thought I might like to meet this trainer she had got to know. “He might be one for your site, he’s South African.”

I asked her to find out from him before he came over whether he knew Bernard Kantor, a friend who was the joint-founder and long-time boss of Investec Bank, sponsors of the Derby for quite a few years, sharing the podium with Her Majesty and the winners of the great prize. He is now retired.

Dylan Cunha came over and said: “You asked if I knew Bernard Kantor. I trained for him and we had plenty of winners together. In fact, one of his horses probably was most responsible for my coming over here as he had looked like a potential champion but had serious problems. I was so disillusioned I decided to call it a day and came to England a few years ago.”

He agreed he would join the Trainers Quotes team and told me that day about this grey gelding he had that was going to be a big part of his year. By April, Silver Sword had won very easily at Southwell and the plan was the London Gold Cup at Newbury in May. When you have one or two nice horses, you need the luck to hold and a couple of days before the race the horse had a small setback and Newbury was off.

Instead, turning out at Epsom, the gelding was second to a smart John and Thady Gosden performer on an interrupted preparation and that convinced him he would win at Royal Ascot.

Early in the week, when I wondered whether he would get in on his mark of 86 – up 4lb for Epsom – he said, “84 and 83 got in last year, so we should be all right.” History will show he wasn’t.

The best thing about the decision to run over an inadequate trip of a mile was the stiff nature of the Pontefract track, and having broken well from stall two, he soon had the two leaders covered and the punters who had shortened his price during the day never had a moment’s anxiety. Pulled to the outside by Cheyne, he took control just over a furlong out, drew clear and then had time to be eased. The winning margin was just over three lengths under 9st10lb joint top-weight. If they had another two furlongs to go, the margin could probably have been trebled.

Before yesterday’s race, still disappointed about missing Ascot, Dylan told me of a valuable ten-furlong race at his local course that is already on his radar. The Bet365 Handicap over ten furlongs for three-year-olds is a 0-105 that opens day two of the July meeting. That race carries a similar prize to the Golden Gates and he should have no fears of making the cut, especially as he’ll be into the 90’s by then.

I’m thrilled for this hard-working handler, and another winner with Ascot connections also pleased me greatly on Thursday. You won’t find the name Paradise Row on the list of Ascot winners, but part-owner Jonathan Barnett and trainer William Knight were in a box watching the progress of that three-year-old filly when she ran at Chelmsford, a few minutes after 150/1 shot Valiant Force had carried football agent Kia Joorabchian’s colours to victory in the Norfolk Stakes.

Barnett is also a major football agent, and founder and Chairman of ICM Stellar sports, race sponsors every year at Chester.  Rather less ebullient than the boss of Amo Racing, he watched as his filly battled home to a first career success at the Essex track. With a few friends around him and his trainer to cheer her home, it felt like a Royal Ascot winner. I agree with her handler that bigger things await this Zoffany filly as she gains experience, maybe even a run in one of the handicaps at next year’s Royal meeting. After all, dreams in racing can come true!

  • TS

Monday Musings: A New Head of the Table

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As Royal Ascot looms, writes Tony Stafford, what could be better for the boys from Coolmore Stud as they ponder their prospects across another important week than that a brilliant dual Classic winner comes along to advertise their operation?

When the horse in question, by their UK and Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Churchill, is owned and trained elsewhere, it must be almost more satisfying. Chances are that when the Christopher Head-trained Blue Rose Cen beat their filly Never Ending Story, trained by Aidan O’Brien, by four effortless lengths in the Prix De Diane at Chantilly yesterday, it will not have bothered them a jot. There, she was supplementing her triumph in the French 1000 Guineas from a month ago.

Fixing stallion fees is one of the primary skills of this operation. A dual Guineas winner by Galileo, so one of his speedier Classic horses, Churchill might have been earmarked from the outset to get to the top. In that context the initial fee of €35k was more an enticement than a reflection of their faith in their horse.

That was in 2018 and, the following year, he was introduced to Queen Blossom, a filly that had started out as a €15k graduate of the Goffs Sportsman yearling sale (3rd division stuff really) but who did well for P J Prendergast with a win on debut and a one-mile Group 3 success on her third start. Later she was exported to the US.

It took a while for her to match that first stakes success and reach her peak over there. But she found it in the unusually severe stamina test (for the US) of the Santa Barbara Stakes at Santa Anita, a 1m4f Grade 3 for older fillies and mares, which fell right into her wheelhouse. By then a five-year-old, she was the lesser fancied of two Richard Balthas entries but won nicely and was soon on the way back to Europe, after a $220k sale.

A few months later, she was through a sale ring once more, but this time the late John Hassett had identified the daughter of smart but ill-fated dual-purpose sire Jeremy, as a prospect and acquired her through Ted Durcan for 110,000gns. She was sent to be one of Churchill’s second crop harem. Three and a half years on, her daughter Blue Rose Cen stands with a record of seven wins in nine starts, her only defeats at two on debut and when a close second to Aidan’s subsequent Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf winner Victoria Road, who has yet to appear following a training injury at the start of the season.

Those two impressive Classic victories will be the impetus for Churchill to move into the next level as a stallion. The fee was down to €30k for the present covering season, but we can expect something more akin to €50k or more when the numbers get crunched by the back-room experts in Co Tipperary come the late autumn.

Blue Rose Cen had hitherto been the second-top-rated horse in the stable of relative newcomer Christopher Head, but no longer. Head, 36, could hardly have a better heritage if he wanted to operate within any branch of thoroughbred racing as he is a fifth-generation member of the revered Head dynasty.

Originally from the UK, his great-grandfather William moved to France early in the 20th Century and soon became a leading National Hunt rider and later trainer, winning four jumps championships either side of World War I during which he fought with the British army.

Son Alec initially started riding over jumps and won successive runnings of the Grande Course de Haies, the second time on Le Paillon (1947) on which he finished runner-up to National Spirit in the 1948 Champion Hurdle.

Le Paillon went on to win the Arc but, after some falls and increasing weight, Alec’s wife Ghislaine encouraged him to retire and to set up as a trainer which he did as a 23-year-old. For half a century he won a series of major races including four Arcs which he also won three times later as a breeder and another as an owner.

When he retired to give full attention to his Haras Du Quesnay, which he ran with outstanding success with wife Ghislaine, his daughter Christiane (Criquette) took over as trainer while younger brother Freddy had a stellar riding career on the flat, before also proving a top-class trainer.

Christopher is Freddy’s son, and when I spoke to Ted Durcan last night, he said the sophomore handler has really been shaking up the established order and practice of training in France. In some ways his methods make him French flat racing’s equivalent to Ben Stokes and Brendan McCullum in England cricket.

Blue Rose Cen, following that record of four from six as a juvenile, the last of which a five length romp in the G1 Prix Marcel Boussac, has now won a Guineas trial, the French 1,000 and the French Oaks in 2023 by increasingly easy margins.

I mentioned that she only moved ahead of stable-companion Big Rock because of yesterday’s success.  Big Rock had run three races in maidens before the turn of the year with another trainer before his owners moved him to Head.

Starting in a minor handicap at Longchamp three weeks after that fifth place for his previous trainer he won off 37 (81 UK equivalent) by five and a half lengths. Raised in grade the following month, Big Rock won a Listed by 4 ½ lengths; then two Group 3 races, the La Force by 2 ½ and the Guiche by five lengths.

By the time he turned out for the Prix du Jockey Club as the 17/10 favourite this month, his mark had been elevated from to 115. Even though beaten into second in the Jockey Club, by the unbeaten Ace Impact trained by Jean-Claude Rouget, he went up another 1lb.

It will be interesting to see whether Big Rock will continue running with the regularity he has so far, with some smart entries already including the Arc; and no doubt his trainer would love to follow the family tradition in that race. At this stage Blue Rose Cen might seem the more likely to be there on the first Sunday of October.

Christopher will have been aware of the many brilliant Head family fillies all his life, such as Three Troikas and dual Arc winner Treve for Criquette. While not an Arc heroine, the remarkable Goldikova, winner of the Queen Anne Stakes on the opening day of Royal Ascot in 2010, was trained by Freddy. She went on to win three consecutive Breeders’ Cup Mile races and was a close third as a six-year-old when attempting the four-timer.

Tomorrow’s Queen Anne field is nowhere near the level of last year, when Baaeed enjoyed his exhibition. Neither is there anything within a stone and then some of Frankel, winner two years after Goldikova. Thoughts of his grandfather will also be at the forefront of the emerging young handler as it was a year ago this Thursday that the great Alec Head died aged 97.

But on the opening day I’m most looking forward to the clash between Chaldean, the 2000 Guineas winner, and Irish 2000 victor Paddington, who stepped into the void left by vanquished Ballydoyle 2000 flops but subsequent Derby (Auguste Rodin) and Haydock sprint (Little Big Bear) winners.

Royal Scotsman, Galeron and Charyn all try for a third time having run in both colts’ Guineas, but I’ll be cheering for Isaac Shelby to keep Brian Meehan’s spirits up after his near miss in the French 2000.

My bet of the week, however, is Zinc White in the Ascot Stakes. There’s only an 8lb range between the 100-rated top-weight Tritonic and Ian Williams’ Chester Plate winner on his first run for ages. The 8lb he was raised was just enough to get him in here on the bottom at number 20 and Ian is entitled to say it’s just as important to be lucky as to be talented.

***

For those of you that might have been confused having read the various versions of last week’s effort, I can only hold my hands up, especially to Conrad Allen, whom I misquoted several times, making a pig’s ear of getting his amazing story in some order. Writing in the middle of the night has its potential downside, not least eliminating the possibility to re-check, or be corrected by the subject once he has read what has been attributed to him.

Fortunately, Conrad was able to point out where I’d gone wrong in transcribing my notes and the final effort, I trust, was acceptable to him. Many thanks to the Editor too for his forbearance. Meanwhile Conrad’s filly Princess Chizara is jocked up to run in Wednesday’s Queen Mary Stakes in the colours of owner Izy Manueke and I hope she gives them a bold showing after her speed-laden debut win at Brighton.

- TS

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