Monday Musings: A Weekend in France

/in /by

It could only happen in France, writes Tony Stafford. There were 15 runners in the Grade 1 Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil on Saturday and despite seven from Ireland, four Willie and one Emmet Mullins, a dual Cheltenham Stayers Hurdle winner (Flooring Porter) for Gavin Cromwell, and last month’s impressive Sandown Grade 2 chase winner Hewick from Shark Hanlon, the French turfistes bet as though only one horse mattered.

Until a few weeks ago there would have been a big two, but over recent meetings, Theleme, Saturday’s 6/4 favourite trained by Arnaud Chaille-Chaille, so good a trainer they named him twice, had taken control. Last year, Hermes Baie had easily won the then eight-runner renewal by seven lengths from Mullins’ first string of three, Klassical Dream, who was coming on from winning at Punchestown, a feat he repeated late last month.

In another replica, while just preferred in the market to his conqueror, Klassical Dream was again seven lengths adrift of Hermes Baie, as that six-year-old got within a couple of lengths of his contemporary Theleme, a well beaten fourth last time. Still, third will have done quite nicely for Joanne Coleman and family and Mr and Mrs Mark Smith, not only enjoying a weekend in the French capital but also glorying in West Ham United’s Europa Conference League exploits. The bubbles surely will have been flowing and blowing!

This season, apart from an aberration when Goa Lil, a 7yo trained by Tom George’s son Noel, but running in the colours of Nigel Twiston-Davies, was allowed too long a lead and supplied an 18/1 shock against the long odds-on Theleme - Nige’s horse pulled up on Saturday – it’s been one way traffic.

The unusual thing I referred to at the start of the piece was the fact that in each of Theleme’s last dozen races over the past 20 months, Hermes Gaie has been among the opposition.  For their initial five encounters, Francois Nicolle’s charge had been on top, winning four of those races, but the tide has turned emphatically and Theleme is now unequivocally the master.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about a one-time Willie Mullins horse, not to mention his initial trainer, Guillaume Macaire, and subsequent not insubstantial handlers, Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton. He’s a discard from Sullivan Racing and hardly the type to make a living out of racing in France, the land of his birth, you would think.

But over the past 18 months, from her base in Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, Sophie Leech and her husband Christian have been loading up the horsebox for the eight-hour trip to the Paris tracks to campaign said Lucky One, with spectacular form and financial results for owner Ben Halsall.

Last month, the eight-year-old won more than 50k in a race over 2m5f at France’s principal jumps track, and afterwards the team reasoned he was unexposed at the extended 3m1f of the Grande Course, so the foolhardy – it seemed to others – plan was hatched.

A glimpse at his UK rating of 114 – probably unrealistic as his last ten runs (all of them in fact since being bought out of the Skelton yard) – have been in France. He was raised to an exchange equivalent of 129 (from 120) for the last win.

What is as equally remarkable as Lucky One’s achievements is the Leech race planning of his programme. He has taken up and raced in eight of his last ten entries.

Surely, though, he would struggle in such company? Well, no, in the event he ran on from the rear into sixth, admittedly behind Irish trio Klassical Dream, Hewick, and Emmet Mullins’s lightly-raced Feronily, all of those recent Grade 1 scorers. But, in turn, he was well clear of Haut En Couleurs, Willie’s 146-rated hurdler and 10lb higher chaser, in 8th place; 156-rated Flooring Porter (9th), with Willie’s remaining pair Asterion Forlonge (155 hurdles, 162 chase) 10th and Kilcruit (145 and 160 chase) 11th.

Christian Leech said they were all thrilled at the result and he and Sophie are looking forward to exploiting the opportunities in what they regard as their “home” programme book next season. In the meantime, they had another nice result at Compiegne last week when Alnadam, a 42/1 shot, picked up 7k for his fourth in a Listed hurdle.

Eight lengths behind in fifth was the Harry Fry trained Might I, a 3/1 shot. Rated 20lb above the Leech horse in the UK ratings, but conceding only 2lb, he was easily beaten off. Alnadam can look forward to some more trips under the Channel in the coming weeks and months.

If Willie Mullins was pained at having four unsuccessful darts at the big hurdle, the gloom would have intensified yesterday when the well-publicised plan to return with last year’s third Franco De Port for the Grand Steeple Chase de Paris proved in vain as he trailed home eighth of 18.

The master trainer had planned out his season minutely, with three previous trips across to Paris along with a date in the Cheltenham Cross Country when he ran third to Gordon Elliott’s smart pair Delta Work and Galvin, but to no avail.

There were three UK connections faring rather better. Lord Daresbury, who in his days as Peter Greenall rode many good hunter chasers under the guidance of a master trainer of an earlier era, the irrepressible Arthur Stephenson, four decades ago. His lordship is the principal owner of the big race favourite Gex, who was backed down to a very short 9/5 before the off.

Most of the way it seemed inevitable that he would win but he was pestered out of it on the run-in by a determined Johnny Charron on Rosario Baron, trained by Daniela Mele. Fourth were two familiar names, Nick Littmoden and Jack Quinlan, trainer and rider of Imperil, who collected £71k.

The seven-year-old was bought originally from France as a juvenile and I was at Fakenham on New Year’s Day in 2020 when the son of No Risk At All made his Littmoden debut and cantered away with the 2nd division of the novice hurdle, beating a 40/1 shot trained by the late Shaun Keightley.

I was there to see Waterproof win the first division of that race for Keightley in the colours of Raymond Tooth. Jack Quinlan, pretty much the only jump jockey of any seniority in most of the past decade to be based in racing’s HQ, had done all the schooling on Waterproof and ridden him in his previous starts, but was unavailable for Fakenham when he could also have ridden Imperil.

My connection with Jack’s father Noel goes back a long way and probably as far as with Littmoden. In his days around 25 years ago – Nick first took out a licence in 1994 – he trained on the track at Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton. In response to my asking whether he had anything for sale privately, he came up with two hard-working handicappers which were passed on to Kuwaiti brothers who raced on a small private track.

When, after a season, they reported back that between them they had won 15 races (one seven and the other eight), unwisely I passed on the “good news” to their previous trainer and Nick refused to sell them any more! At least, the boys offered me a trip to the wedding of one of them that winter which I was happy to accept.

Sometime after, Nick moved to Newmarket and trained from Julie Cecil’s Southgate Stables in the Hamilton Road after she retired. That’s now the base for Amy Murphy, Jack Quinlan’s principal employer, when her stable was much more jumping oriented. The best days were when Kalashnikov was winning the Betfair Hurdle and other nice races.

Amy herself has done well with mostly Flat runners in France and she is still toying with the idea of making the move to that country permanent to take advantage of the far better prizemoney on a day-to-day basis. A hurdles win there for now 10-year-old Kalashnikov at Auteuil in March brought a win prize of £23k and he was then sixth in another hurdle at Compiegne over 2m3f, won by Rosario Baron, who stepped up 10f and over to fences for yesterday’s triumph

Littmoden, unlike Amy, did go the whole hog; switching with wife Emma in early 2021 to a base at Moulins-les-Metz in Alliers, Central France, 377 km from Paris and just north-west of Lyon. With so many of France’s many racetracks within a few hours’ drive, that has proved an ideal location.

In 25 years’ training over jumps, his best single season’s prizemoney haul in the UK was £29K, although when he had the journalist/professional gambler Nigel Shields as the main owner in the yard, he was adept, with Nigel’s shrewd reading of the programme and form book, at getting many more wins, 80 being the peak in 2002.

In 2021 upon his move, the first season brought 14 wins from 78 runs and yielded €218k; last year 13/168 brought €268k and this year so far eight wins from 51 have added €259k so he is on course for a another much-increased tally. With almost £800k for his owners over just more than two years, this has been a transfer to savour. He operates from two yards, one based at Moulins racecourse housing around 15 horses – no new experience for him! – and the remainder are located nearby at a farm with an 800-metre gallop.

Yesterday’s fourth in the undoubted biggest race of the year over fences in France was one sort of pinnacle but when his career record as a foreign trainer in the country is remembered after he finally retires, Imperil’s success under Jack last month in the race that is known as the French Grand National, but is actually the Prix du President de la Republique, will stand tallest. Jack was along for that ride too, as Imperil beat 16 others in the race over just short of 3m.

While Littmoden was checking his France Galop account to see whether he had beaten last year’s tally, Willie Mullins finally got on the winner’s podium. His filly Gala Marceau, in the Kenny Alexander Honeysuckle colours, picked up her second Grade 1 win, having previously been the beneficiary of stablemate Lossiemouth’s traffic problems at the Dublin Racing Festival in February at Leopardstown.

Otherwise, she had been seeing Lossiemouth’s back end in a second place in the Triumph Hurdle and third at Punchestown, but she bolted up yesterday in the 4yo championship, Grande Course de Haies de Printemps (Spring), slaughtering the much-acclaimed domestic champion Losange Bleu by seven lengths.

Then again, you might say champion of what? Mullins had bought all the potential juvenile stars over the past 18 months and most of them, including Lossiemouth, are still on the upgrade. No doubt Willie and Howard Kirk will have had their notebooks out over the past few weeks, shopping for next season’s stars. And probably still trying to remember where they had heard the name Lucky One!

  • TS

Monday Musings: Of Rich Men and Trainer Fashion

/in /by

There are a lot of very rich people in the world. There are also many very talented racehorse trainers in the UK, in Ireland and France, writes Tony Stafford. Many wealthy individuals like to own racehorses, preferably blue-blooded ones.  As trainers enter their middle years, though, the tendency is for all but the legends like Sir Michael Stoute and John Gosden on the flat and Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls over jumps, to feel the draft from the younger, thrusting upstarts.

These can be talented, too, but as I often refer to in spring, there are some stark, indeed harsh, facts on this seemingly inevitable trend to be gleaned from the Horses In Training book which lists the strings of most stables.

I was shocked to see one entry upon receiving my volume later than expected because of the present state of Royal Mail. Colour coded and fully traceable stamps aren’t much use if it takes a week (more in this case) to get a little book a hundred or so miles.

Some surprised me by how many more horses they are now training compared to just a year or two ago. But the biggest shock was reserved for a trainer who won a nice handicap at the Craven meeting at Newmarket and then followed up with the same horse in the Victoria Cup at Ascot on Saturday.

The trainer, Amanda Perrett, the horse Rebel Territory, a 5yo home-bred gelding who streaked away at the end of the Ascot feature in the manner of a potential stakes horse. Home-bred is the key here, loyal but ageing owners that are so hard to replace.

I’d noticed that Amanda and husband Mark were listed as training only 19 horses at the famed Pulborough stables in West Sussex, base of her father Guy Harwood. He was the trainer of the peerless Dancing Brave and the equal in his day of Sir Michael and Sir Henry Cecil where Classic performers were being mentioned.

Amanda has held the licence at Pulborough since the late 1990’s and between 2000 and 2019 only twice did she and Mark send out fewer than 25 winners with a peak at 60 in the immediate aftermath of Guy’s heyday.

I canvassed several friends and racing experts, one of them who previously had horses there, asking how many they thought were in training now. Most estimates were around the 40 mark. “I wish it were,” Mark Perrett might have been saying when he told the media after the nice win on Saturday that “we only have 22 in, but we could always train a good horse when we got the opportunity, and we still can.” No question, Mark, and eight wins at 23% hit rate so far this year is a great start.

That intro was a long way round into coming to my main point. When you have a very good horse in your ownership and far from being one of the leading owners in the world, but you are part of a small, friendly syndicate, what do you do?

The history of the turf is littered with stories of people that did not take the opportunity presented to them when unexpectedly they got a good horse. Often, after refusing a nice offer, the horse in question does not fulfil expectations.

The fact that Isaac Shelby, winner of last month’s Greenham Stakes at Newbury in smart fashion, was owned by one of Sam Sangster’s Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates and trained by the pragmatic and vastly experienced Brian Meehan, ensured that when their opportunity to make a killing rather than agonise about it came, they agreed, albeit reluctantly, allowing the deal to go though.

“It was an agonising decision”, said Sangster, “but the chance for everyone to do well from the deal and at the same time welcome a potentially important new owner into Manton for Brian, made it the right choice. Everyone walked away with a smile on his face!”

It behoves a one-time journalist to try to delve beyond what little they want to reveal and find out rather what everyone else out there wants to know. But young Mr Sangster was not playing. Back in the bosom of his family, he continued: “Sorry Tone, there’s no way I can tell you how much Wathnan Racing paid for him.” “What was that? How many shareholders? Not sure.”

Knowing the present state of the market and the value of top racehorses, the number for a potential imminent Classic winner will be a minimum seven digits. “Not eight, I wish it was!” was as much as Sam could be pinned down to admit to. Neither would he say whether a contingency would have applied had Isaac Shelby won yesterday, or indeed if he picks up any other Group 1 race later in his career. Sorry Sam, I had to ask but I’ll leave you in peace, now!

It’s hard to remember all those years ago, but was it as difficult to break down Robert Sangster (Sam’s dad), and John Magnier’s, similar reticence when things like the multi-million Storm Bird or El Gran Senor stallion deals were having their problems? It’s hard to be sure through the mists of time – maybe I was just better placed in those days to pick up the correct rumours!

So, rather than work on trying to wheedle out of one of the future giants of the bloodstock business what he’d rather keep private – fair enough – instead I’ll pass on what I’ve found out about Wathnan Racing. This Qatari owning entity has been put together by Australian Ollie Tate, who can take full credit for setting up Godolphin’s operation Down Under in around 2002 when still in his mid-20’s.

He’s done plenty in the industry since, with his own operation for the past six years. Recently he was tasked by Qatari Abdullah Mana Al-Hajri to set up a racing operation back home. So rapidly has it developed that over the recently concluded season which ran from October to March, he was leading owner in Qatar with many winners of both thoroughbred and Arabian races.

The biggest acceleration for Wathnan came after an all-out assault on last year’s Newmarket Autumn Horses in Training sale. He bought nine mostly three-year-olds for a total of £1.75 million, an average of close to 200k each. Significant among them were Charlie Hills’ Inverness for 380k; Persian Royal, a 450k recruit from the Charlton stable and Hamiki, 260 grand from William Haggas.

He has enjoyed pleasing results at some of the more important meetings there. His local trainer is Alba De Mieulle and his go-to rider for the major days when international races were staged was Mickael Barzalona, who won several important races in his Technicolor silks.

It would not have escaped Mr Al-Hajri’s notice yesterday that just when Isaac Shelby looked home and hosed, ready to provide a Classic winner at the first time of asking, that along came the said M. Barzalona. Riding the 26/1 shot Marhaba Ya Sanafi, they got up right on the line by a short neck.

Another irony was that that the winning horse’s owner, Jaber Abdullah, a long-standing associate of Rabbah Racing in Dubai, had been selling off a good number of his surplus animals at the HIT part of the Guineas Breeze-Up sale at Newmarket just over a week ago.

Brian Meehan had been very confident of Isaac Shelby’s chance before the race and Sam said, “He was gutted!” They thought the gallop had been inadequate and having made all the running in the Greenham Stakes, there must have been the thought afterwards that it may have been better to have forced the pace again.

Meehan and the new owner’s representatives – the deal was brokered by Richard Brown of Blandford Bloodstock – will talk about the next target, but Royal Ascot, where a winner for Mr Al-Hajri would presumably be a major ambition, comes next this side of the Channel at least. As well as the St James’s Palace Stakes, which Meehan won with Most Improved in 2012, a sideways look might be glanced at the six-furlong Commonwealth Cup, in which the colt also holds an entry.

At this stage, though, the mile option looks more likely. Isaac Shelby certainly didn’t fail through lack of stamina yesterday and most bookmakers have him as one of the first four in the betting on the race.

I’ve spent many wonderful work mornings at Manton with Brian and Sam down the years. Their loyal relationship, which encouraged Sangster to pay a higher-than-usual 92,000gns for the son of 2000 Guineas winner Night Of Thunder as a potential syndicate horse, stands out in an often more routine game between owners and trainers of musical chairs. But make no mistake, Brian Meehan, has long been an outstanding trainer who, like the Perrett’s, just needs the raw material and he’ll get the job done at any level.

When Mr Al-Haji finally makes it to Marlborough, I’m sure he will fall in love with the place as so many before him have over the centuries.

- TS

Monday Musings: You Say Potayto

/in /by

You say tomayto, I say tomahto. You say potayto, I say potahto, as the George and Ira Gershwin 1937 song Let’s Call the Whole Thing Off goes, illustrating the spoken differences in the American and British versions of the English language, writes Tony Stafford.

You say Mage, I say Mawj. Two very similar four-letter words, beginning with MA that identify respectively the surprise winners of the Kentucky Derby on Saturday night and the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket yesterday on a Coronation weekend of great significance for the United Kingdom.

There were 20 horses in the Run for the Roses and 18 for the fillies’ mile classic and each time the winner was the only one with four letters in its name. In the entire history of the ten furlongs around the Louisville circuit, since its inception in 1875, only once, in 1892 when Azra won, has such an economically framed name adorned the winner. In that context, the win of Zeb, the only winner with three letters to his name exactly 100 years ago is a statistical disappointment, for someone who bothers with such trifles anyway.

We only need go back three years to Love’s winning the fillies’ race on the way to a sublime year of achievement for Aidan and the Coolmore boys to find another four-letter name. In the Classic’s early years, the more demanding breeders’ young horses were never given names until they won, simply regarded as the something colt or the something else filly. Many four-letter and mostly mundane names adorn the dusty pages of the 1000 Guineas winner register during the 19th Century.

At Churchill Downs on Saturday, it took a decision on the morning of the race by the veterinary examining committee to bar the Todd Pletcher trained Forte. The morning line favourite, winner of his last five, including a strong-running victory at 3/5 in the Florida Derby at Gulfstream Park, was ruled out on a soundness issue.

He was clearly the one to beat, so it was music to the ears of connections of Mage, twice behind Forte in his last two runs, but getting nearer and only overtaken in the last 100 yards at Gulfstream.

Now as a 15/1 shot and with veteran Javier Castellano on board, he came through to win the first leg of the 2023 Triple Crown at the 16th time of asking for the jockey. The colt came down the outside beating Two Phil’s by a length with Angel of Empire, who inherited favouritism, third. Trainer Gustavo Delgado would not have been one of the more likely handlers of a Derby winner in the line-up. His previous best win was in the G1 Test Stakes at Saratoga seven years ago, though he did also saddles the 2020 winner of the G1 Clark Handicap on this track.

What Mage did over there, Mawj did here and when I saw the blue Godolphin number one colours fighting it out with the favourite Tahiyra from some way out and then going well clear with her into the Dip and up to the finish, instinctively I briefly thought, another for Charlie Appleby.

Then the double realisation hit home. No, it’s Saeed and Oisin and then instantly, “and she’s going to win”.

The first conclusion was these are two very high-class fillies. Dermot Weld had only ever previously run one filly in the 1000 Guineas at Newmarket, some statistic considering he’s been at the forefront of international training for half a century.

But then Saeed bin Suroor, the most modest, polite and uncomplaining man you will ever encounter, has been at it a while too, associated firmly with Godolphin from its inception. The native of Dubai, where his first career was as a policeman, has never shown any resentment at being now the undoubted second trainer behind Charlie Appleby for Sheikh Mohammed’s team.

He said that Appleby worked under him for a long time and while conceding the big-race wins may not be so plentiful nowadays, this was his third 1000 Guineas, 20 years on from the second. It was also unique in that no filly campaigned in the winter in Dubai before running in this Classic had ever won it.

She had been a good second at Royal Ascot last year to yesterday’s second favourite Meditate but that filly disappointed in much the same way as the two Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore colts, first and third favourites Auguste Rodin and Little Big Bear, had on Saturday.

Before the race, Dermot Weld was ruing the fact that he probably needed another two weeks to have Tahiyra to his entire satisfaction. She will have the opportunity to take her revenge on Mawj – who may also improve in the interim, of course – at the Curragh and it’s hard to see anything else from this race at least, troubling either.

For Oisin Murphy, who missed the whole of last season in the aftermath of his various breaches of the rules in relation to Covid and alcohol, this was a joyous moment. Nobody doubts his talent. Now it’s up to him to steer clear of temptation. Non-riders might think that nothing could be more addictive for a jockey than winning big races. Maybe it’s not always that straightforward, such are the pressures.

This was his 52nd success of the year in the UK and 24 different trainers have contributed to the score which is running at more than 20% wins to rides. The Guineas win also took him past the £1 million prizemoney mark. If Murphy can stay focused, William Buick will indeed have a rival to fear as the former three-time winner will have designs on wresting the crown back from last year’s debut champion.

Strangely, this was Oisin’s first ride of the season in the UK for Saeed, although in the years 2019 to 2021 he rode 70 first past the winning line for bin Suroor. Saeed said in his post-race interview on TV that he has now won 192 Group 1 races. (Hope I heard correctly!). Few can match that.

Of course, on the day of the Coronation, racing’s enduring monarch of the saddle, Senor L Dettori chose one of the most exciting days I can remember on the Rowley Mile for years, for all that it rained all day, to steal another show.

The flood of racegoers and their cars arriving from early on the day was reminiscent of the 70’s and 80’s. Three of the mile colts’ Classics in the 30-odd years since Frankie came across from Sardinia had fallen to him. Two of those – Mark Of Esteem and Island Sands – of course were for bin Suroor while he was the undisputed number one rider for Godolphin for so many years.

Having announced this to be his final year in the saddle, with Chaldean earmarked for his final 2000 Guineas mount, it was a complete shock when he was jettisoned from the colt’s saddle on exiting the stalls as they set off as an odds-on shot for the Greenham Stakes two weeks earlier. That the colt came through unscathed, having accompanied Isaac Shelby and the rest up the straight mile without a rider, was a cause for relief for the Andrew Balding team, and his preparation for last Saturday clearly hadn’t been affected.

With the well-fancied Auguste Rodin and Little Big Bear not performing to expectations on the other side of the track – their normal transport routine, flying in on the morning of the race having been ruled out, was Aidan’s suggestion – here was Chaldean on the far side, fulfilling all that Dewhurst-winning promise with a smooth success in the Juddmonte colours.

I was delighted to be there for all the frustration of an awful day of drenching rain and with the race being run on such un-Newmarket like ground. Dettori, remarkably, but obviously, is as good a jockey as he ever was.

It’s a long time since, with many of his achievements in his future, I was asked to ghost-write a mini autobiography entitled A Year in the Life by Frankie. I’ve told before how the book was already in print in the days when computerisation didn’t exist. The pages were set if not in stone, in hot metal.

So, what does Dettori do with weeks to come before publication and publicity? Just ride seven out of seven at Ascot! An extra chapter was hurriedly added and placed at the front of the book– I can’t remember if he contributed anything to it – I think he was far too busy celebrating. No doubt he was in similar euphoria after Saturday.

When you write about someone in that way, taking such a long time gathering the material, inevitably you never lose that proprietary interest. I know that every big win in the 27 years since from Frankie has brought if not a warm glow exactly, certainly a little smile.

The book was written all those years ago when Frankie was still engaged to Catherine. Now with six children, and with three jockeys’ championships and 22 English Classics behind him, he’s still the same engaging, garrulous chap he always has been. Basically, a Peter Pan figure, the 52-year-old apprentice! How many more big ones await him? That he can still be around with Buick, Oisin and Ryan Moore all in their prime makes the prospect of the 2023 flat-race season, his last round-up, a vintage one.

- TS

Monday Musings: Route To Gold

/in /by

The problem with the international and even domestic racing programme is that when you get older, and appreciably so in my case, it spins ever faster, writes Tony Stafford.

It seems it was only a few months ago that I was looking back at a just concluded UK jumps season and saying that by the time of my next offering, 40 per cent of the UK Classic races will have come and gone. This time round we’ll have had a Coronation too – the second in my lifetime!

Thank goodness we had the Craven meeting to wean us back to flat racing of young, well-bred, and beautifully prepared horses, just in time for the 2000 Guineas on Saturday when Messrs O’Brien Sr., Balding, Appleby, C., and the Gosdens, father and son, will move back into focus.

Saturday at Sandown was a joyous event in many ways with top-class performances through the card, staged on the first spring-like afternoon of the year it seemed. Even if Paul Nicholls was unable to conjure the earnings needed to break the UK trainers’ record for a season, such as Kitty’s Light, giving another boost for Christian Williams as his family tries to cope with his daughter’s illness, and Jonbon, taking another sure upward step as a two-mile chaser with Nicky Henderson, enthused the massive crowd.

It was less of a cliff-hanger though in the normal way of a Nicholls/Martin Pipe or Nicholls/ Henderson last-day tussle and the jockeys’ championship, a third for Brian Hughes, was a one-horse race probably from October.

The identity of the top trainers on its prizemoney, rather than winners, criterion, was pretty much set in stone. Nicholls, Henderson (sneaking into second with a memorable last day double), Dan Skelton and, solely due to his Cheltenham Festival domination, Willie Mullins, predictably led the way.

That Mullins could add £1.72 million in the UK to the more than €7m in Ireland is remarkable. What may be less appreciated is that he sent 88 individual horses over here for the 106 combined runs it needed to earn the big bucks, considering only eight were wins.

As my former associate Derek Hatter always used to say, it’s only different numbers and that applies to everything in life. Racing is certainly a numbers game. The top three UK trainers had respectively 166, 142 and 212 individual horses representing them; fifth-placed Fergal O’Brien saddled 208 individuals on his way to 141 wins and £1.61 million in earnings.

Mullins’ domination of Irish racing – for a while challenged by Gordon Elliott who, though still a factor, in championship terms has been put firmly back in his box – extended to 17 winners over the five days of the recently-concluded Punchestown Festival. His earnings last week alone – €1,783,905 according to my admittedly questionable addition – almost exactly matched his whole UK season’s tally, depending on whose currency rates you use.

The domination of the top four trainers depends entirely on their purchasing power and having a stable full of owners who will pay the ever-increasing prices needed to acquire raw material from the Irish pointing field or the plethora of spring juvenile races in Auteuil and other French tracks.

These are more often of fillies who, like Lossiemouth, the outstanding juvenile of the season and a dual Grade 1 winner (in the Triumph at Cheltenham and again at Punchestown on Saturday) won or ran well on debut thus catching the attention of Harold Kirk, Mullins’ principal French talent scout.

Their shopping trips do not always produce instant gold. One private purchase, a gelding bought after two second places from Guillaume Macaire, the most successful French jumps trainer of the past two decades, illustrates that point. He was acquired on behalf of Sullivan Racing Ltd, whose red colours, previously associated on the flat with Richard Hannon, had become a significant part of the Mullins team.

The horse was called Lucky One, a gelded son of Authorized, the 2007 Derby winner and sire of Tiger Roll. He was no doubt selected as a prospect to rank alongside such as Sullivan’s smart winners Duc De Genievres and Eglantine Du Seuil, among several others.

Incidentally the narrow winner and favourite of that race, Aveiro, trained by Francois Nicolle, was bought on behalf of the Coolmore owners and so far, four years on, hasn’t made it to the track since.

Mullins did get Lucky One to the races, but only once and then a full 14 months after that French race. He finished fourth of 16 in a novice hurdle at Punchestown in February 2020.

The following winter he had moved to Paul Nicholls where he had two wide margin wins in eight starts and by the end of that season was rated 143, so smart. Moved again to Dan Skelton, he struggled with that high mark, and after five runs, was passed on at the Doncaster May sale for £18,000.

The trainer willing to take a chance on a horse that had been originally with a French legend and since had been under the care of three of the four outstanding handers in these isles as the stats show (only Nicky Henderson can plead innocence) was Sophie Leech.

Sophie and husband Christian have a 30-box yard at Westbury-on-Severn, near Gloucester, once occupied by my mate the late David Wintle and owned by another pal Keith Bell. Christian was formerly racecourse manager at Warwick and he and Sophie started training in 2007.

On Saturday at Auteuil, the same Lucky One, a 12/1 shot, who had been nurtured and developed in those prestigious environments for the larger part of his life, won the most valuable jumps race run in France so far this year.

Mme Sophie Leech, as France Galop describes her, picked up the Grand Course de Haies de Printemps, and £70k as near as makes no difference, at Auteuil on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday morning – “We go via Calais and it’s only ten hours”, said Christian, “and he’s already in the field.”

The Leech duo have successfully exploited the system of French jumping which has far fewer handicaps than is the case in the UK. “Older horses, like Lucky One, who might now be struggling in handicaps, have plenty of conditions races available to them. It’s almost as though they are back in novice company, and they are obviously much easier to win. Also, these old boys seem to enjoy the travelling,” he said.

It truly is a route to gold and Christian, still revelling in the enormity of the win, says Sophie has already decided on challenging for the French Champion Hurdle, over just more than three miles, on May 20.

Christian says: “He’s unexposed over further, but the way he kept battling over 2m5f suggests he’ll stay. The company will be hotter, but the top French hurdlers keep beating each other. No doubt Willie Mullins will send over one or two as usual. I wonder how he will feel if Lucky One was to beat him!”

Now though this upwardly mobile couple will be hoping that the 20 horses at present in their yard might be increased because of this amazing success. Their three winning horses, the other two are Demoiselle Kap and John Locke, have earned almost £180k just this year.

“In the UK, as we find with our runners here, the expected return is around 10-15% in our experience. In France, we’ve found you must be hopeless if you can’t at least break even with a jumper.”

Clearly the Leeches – there, I had to say it at least once! – are thinking about applying for a three-month licence for next winter. “We would be based at Cagnes-sur-Mer and that would make that course and Pau, whose season follows, much easier to reach, We have done well down there, race programmes clearly suit our horses. Paris is okay, but getting to the Riviera or to Pau, which is near Spain,is much more difficult,” he said.

Lucky One is the right name for a horse that is helping put this talented double act on the map, not that they have had much attention paid to them by the racing media. “It’s like flogging a dead horse,” says Christian. At least where the racehorses are concerned their training talent clearly has the desired effect, making it pay for their owners and themselves. And rather than flogging dead horses, they are extending their effective racing careers.

- TS

Monday Musings: Déjà vu

/in /by

There is no question that one male and one female jockey transcend all others in the perception of people who may not be regular followers of our wonderful, but undeniably niche, sport. ITV are valiantly and very professionally increasing coverage on the main free channels it controls and nowadays have great flexibility on which platform they use. Tough if you can only receive ITV1, but even you would have seen both those famous people in action on Saturday.

More accurately, the gentleman, Frankie Dettori, was in frequent, albeit unrewarding sight at Newbury. Rachael Blackmore, his female counterpart, Darling of Cheltenham, and Aintree, was on a first visit to Ayr along with her boss Henry de Bromhead.

She was there to ride another of Scotsman Kenny Alexander’s horses, in the same colours as the great Honeysuckle. At a Cheltenham meeting full of epic events, that superstar’s final act on a racecourse in winning the mares’ race at the Festival last month, following two Champion Hurdles, was the highlight of the week for many.

With the TV cameras and presenters watching every move on Saturday, Rachael successfully negotiated one fence on her mount Telmesomethinggirl, before being dumped unceremoniously when unseated at the next.

Being deposited on the turf – and Ayr’s was less than ideally receptive as the host of absentees from its £120k to the winner Scottish Grand National, testified – must have been a jolt.

Hopefully, she will be fit for one of her’s and de Bromhead’s most important fixtures, the five days of Punchestown, starting tomorrow. As with Leopardstown at Christmas and the Dublin Racing Festival in February, there is massive prizemoney available, and she won’t want to be side-lined for any of it.

Meanwhile Dettori had already bitten the turf 20 minutes earlier. The 52-year-old is, as everyone knows, in his final year as a jockey and he will be hoping to cherry-pick the best of opportunities all around the world right up until his final day.

He has a regular spot in California whenever he chooses to take it for Bob Baffert. This will always almost guarantee a top prospect or two for his final Breeders’ Cup in the autumn. Meanwhile he would dearly love another UK Classic winner or two to go with the 20 he already possesses as he stretches deeper into his sixth decade.

Hopes were high that Chaldean, the Andrew Balding-trained Juddmonte-owned colt he rode to victory in last year’s Dewhurst Stakes, would sort out the first of those five possible additions. Despite being slightly uneasy in the betting as the horses milled around behind Newbury’s stalls before the off, nobody could have anticipated the shocking outcome soon to occur.

The gates opened and Chaldean obviously made a troubled exit, as Dettori was dumped even before his mount could take a step, his horse suffering both from a violent left-handed swerve by the horse in the neighbouring stall to this right and the fact there was no horse to his left to help correct the unwelcome deviation due to two blocks of stalls connecting at that point. Chaldean decided, jockey or no jockey, to show these upstart horses what’s what and joined in the race all by himself. Meanwhile the Italian was slowly picking himself up in a state of disbelief. Unlike in almost every other sport, when something like that happens, that’s it – no comeback.

One man’s dismay can usually mean joy for somebody else and that was the case for Brian Meehan, once a regular challenger for Group and Grade 1 prizes around the world, but now operating on a smaller scale. The numbers might be down, but the talent and awareness of the ability of the horses he does control is firmly intact.

When discussing the race with me on Saturday morning, he acknowledged that Chaldean might be the superstar of the 2023 Classics, so his horse Isaac Shelby would not be taking any notice, he’d just be doing his own thing. Isaac Shelby broke nicely from his low draw at the left-hand side well away from the favourite. Sean Levey soon had him ahead and must have thought he was seeing things as the riderless Chaldean came into his vision off to the right.

In fairness, Chaldean would have been the only other horse he did see, as the Meehan colt settled into his stride and, when anything looked like getting on terms, he kept pulling out extra. At the line, he had three lengths and five and a half lengths in hand of Roger Varian’s colt Charyn and the Gosdens’ Theoryofeverything. If anything from the race is going to win the 2,000 Guineas, it is surely only Chaldean.

This is in large part because Meehan and close collaborator Sam Sangster, who bought the Night Of Thunder colt for £92,000 as a yearling, have not swayed from the original plan to go for the French 2,000 Guineas over a mile at Longchamp, rather than Newmarket on Saturday week with Isaac Shelby.

Time enthusiasts will have noted the Greenham was run in two seconds’ faster time than the immediately preceding Fred Darling (or whatever it’s called nowadays), for Classically-intending fillies. Its significance may be diminished, as that was the exact difference in the two races’ times last year.

Isaac Shelby won his first two races as a juvenile, a maiden at Newbury (good to soft) and then the Group 3 Superlative Stakes at Newmarket on good to firm ground. The going was nearer the opposite end of the spectrum on Saturday, riding at around one second per furlong slow. Saturday’s winner took seven seconds longer than Perfect Power did for the Richard Fahey stable in 2022, so probably not too dissimilar a performance.

Isaac Shelby’s only career defeat came after a slow start and a wide course in the Dewhurst at a time when getting into the middle of the track was very unrewarding. Brian just shrugs that off. It wasn’t his day, is the gist of it. Saturday certainly was!

Perfect Power failed to stay the mile in the 2,000 Guineas but went to Royal Ascot, where he comfortably won the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup over six furlongs. Perfect Power retired at the end of the season and stands this year at a fee of £15,000 at Sheikh Mohammed’s Dalham Hall Stud.

Despite a quiet (for them) Dubai World Cup meeting, there is little sign that Godolphin are any less acquisitive when seeking out talented horses at sales, in addition to their extensive and increasingly successful breeding operation. I finally received my Horses In Training Book (thank you Rupert!) this week and note that Charlie Appleby has 254 horses in his care this year.

He’ll have at least one more after last week’s Craven Breeze-Up sale at Newmarket, which I attended only on the first evening. Hence, I missed the sale of the Blue Point colt bought by Anthony Stroud and David Loder for a joint top-priced 625,000gns.

Blue Point, like Perfect Power, also stands at Dalham Hall, and he has gone off like a rocket with his initial lot of juveniles. Blue Storm won for the James Tate stable at Newmarket on Tuesday, making it three already in the UK. I understand he’s had a winner in France, too. [He has, Keran, trained by Jean-Claude Rouget for the Aga Khan, is Blue Point’s sole French runner so far, winning at Tarbes last Thursday – Ed.]

The other joint top was a son of Havana Grey, who on Wednesday was responsible for 28/1 winner Mammas Girl, also ridden by Sean Levey, this time for his long-standing boss Richard Hannon, in the Group 3 Nell Gwyn Stakes.

The Hannon stable has always been able to pull one out of the hat in Guineas races, both before Richard junior took over from his father and since. Don’t be shocked if this fast-improving filly – now as short as 6/1 – makes an impact in the Classic.

There have been some artistically planned big-race coups over jumps recently, but nobody seems as sure-footed as Christian Williams, who followed last year’s 1-2 in the Scottish Grand National with another well-executed win in the four-miler on Saturday.

In 2022, his mare Win My Wings led home a stable 1-2, the 13/2 joint-favourite sharing that price with Williams’ other runner, Kitty’s Light, a staying-on second. Win My Wings was retired earlier this season, but Kitty’s Light, having dropped in the handicap, easily won the Eider Chase at Newcastle last time.

Even after being reassessed for that, Kitty’s Light was able to run off 3lb lower than a year ago, and now as the 4/1 favourite he had the typical Christian Williams acceleration at the end of marathon distances. As with Win My Wings last year, his horse seemed to be going nowhere and then shot past the rest of the field to win easily. It was very much a case of Déjà vu.

Watching Robert Sangster’s colours come home in front on Isaac Shelby, it was so good to have a reminder of the long-term owner of Manton. His son Sam, through his Manton House Thoroughbreds syndicates, is keeping the tradition going with Meehan, while Sam’s nephew Ollie, son of elder brother Ben and wife Lucy, is embarking with great promise on a training career there. Déjà vu indeed.

- TS

Monday Musings: Tom Told Us!

/in /by

Seven weeks seems a fair amount of time, writes Tony Stafford. After all, it’s almost one seventh of a year and one-five hundred and forty-ninth of a lifetime if you judged lifetimes by my earthly experience. Actually, to me it seems like a couple of weeks.

When I sat down to pen my article for the week before the Cheltenham Festival on the night of March 5/6, fresh in my mind was the rather chaotic Cheltenham preview night, enacted behind a small, sort-of select gathering in the Horse and Wig public house along and up from Chancery Lane Station in Central London the previous Wednesday evening.

Two years earlier I had been one of the leading lights (chief guest securer) in a similar, albeit slightly grander and better organised, affair in the same venue. This time, as a last-minute thing, I got a late invitation along with a plea to secure someone significant to star on the panel hosted by Charlie Methven and dominated by Scott (Mr Cheltenham) Ellis.

I thought I had a great idea – and so it proved. “Leave it to me,” I said and worked away at asking Tom Scudamore, in the knowledge he’d just retired from riding and knew his stuff as well as anyone, whether he would come.

Scott and the event organiser, Les Straszewski, were all for him and, with the assurance that with the help of his long-time driver, Tom would aim to be there as soon after 6 p.m. as road conditions allowed.

The rest of the panel was all in place, mikes nicely balanced, Charlie ready to hold forth and Scott armed with ante-post vouchers from the front door to the tube station as I reported seven weeks ago. They probably stretched in truth back halfway to Brentwood in Essex!

Anxious at the lack of arrival and then, more pointedly, paucity of communication, we set the latter in play with a call or two. In the way of such things, like waiting for a kettle to boil, anticipating Tom’s arrival was an unrewarding activity – that is until he finally appeared.

Suggestions that they start without him were considered and only just resisted. Finally, though, after a few frustrating calls which revealed passing various points in West London, gradually edging to Knightsbridge and Piccadilly, the final bulletin came in on my phone’s text. Timed at 19.18 it read: Hi Tony, moving slowly, getting to you as quickly as we can.

Quickly as we can was another half an hour, but thank goodness (says Scott), we waited.

Settling into some rather nice wine, Tom adjusted to the pace of enlightened opinion and was quickly adding his professionalism to gems offered by our two main experts and Joe Hill, son of Alan and Lawney and their co-partner in the family pointing and Rules operation. Tom had ridden regularly for the Hill family, and his retirement had come just a day before he would otherwise have ridden a winner for them.

The one big message he had to offer though, as son of Peter Scudamore, partner to Grand National-winning trainer Lucinda Russell, was that they fully expected to have a Cheltenham winner in the shape of Ultima Handicap Chase candidate, Corach Rambler. The horse had won the race the year before.

Tom revealed that not only were they expecting a repeat in that always-competitive Festival three-miler but were equally hopeful that the nine-year-old would go on to success in the Grand National five weeks later.

Having been in the Charlie Methven role two years earlier – his big contribution was to suggest 16/1 winner You Wear It Well for Jamie Snowden in the Jack de Bromhead Mares’ Novices Hurdle – I was just an observer this time. When challenged by the panel for a bet in the week, I put up Langer Dan and repeated it in the article of March 5/6. I’d forgotten all about it until watching horrified as Harry Skelton drove him home in front of 25 others nine days later!

Scott, however, doesn’t forget - anything! Every snippet of Cheltenham Festival relevance uttered, printed, whispered, rumoured, or overheard is filed away. You can see from the accompanying betting slip, what Mr Ellis did with Tom’s timely bit of info, 4,500 quids-worth, is what he did! Goes to paying towards his trip to the Masters Golf the week before, or at least it should just about reimburse him for the suitcase full of Masters regalia he brought home.

After the fact, Corach Rambler was the obvious winner! [Aren't they always? - Ed.] I had strongly expected Noble Yeats to dominate the race in the way the Lucinda Russell-trained Derek Fox-ridden winner emphatically did. Last year’s winner took an entire circuit and a half to warm up after some surprisingly hesitant jumping quickly had him among the tailenders. They say in racing you can give away weight and distance but never both.

And so it proved, and the much bigger weight compared with last year obviously told. Yet for him to finish a closing fourth, just over eight lengths behind the winner (albeit a winner that could easily have stretched further away if necessary), was admirable, with 17 finishers in the race.

The Irish must have found it hard to believe they couldn’t continue their recent winning sequence, a run of four since One For Arthur in 2017 (one year missed by Covid) also won for Ms Russell.

Although having 26 (two-thirds) of the 39 runners in the final field, and filling second to seventh, six more UK-trained horses finished after them, one better than last year when 18 started for the home team. Best placed then was one-time Nicky Henderson Gold Cup candidate Santini in fourth for Polly Gundry.

For much of Saturday’s race Henderson, having struck on the opening day with Constitution Hill and Shishkin, and prefacing the big race with a bloodless triumph for the superb two-mile novice chaser Jonbon, looked likely finally to collect the great prize after half a century of trying.

His Mister Coffey jumped the Aintree fences with a rare alacrity from the off and was still several lengths clear at the second-last fence but, by then, his stamina reserves had run out. Joined at the last by Corach Rambler, who quickly strode clear up the run-in, Mister Coffey expired to finish only eighth. Gavin Crowell’s Vanillier ran a great race in second.

If we had thought Noble Yeats had made up a lot of ground in the Gold Cup in his previous race, he had even further to retrieve this time and to get as near as he did, reflects greatly on his stamina and resolution. He’ll be back again.

Corach Rambler only usurped him as favourite in the final minutes, despite Noble Yeats drifting to almost double his SP earlier in the day, as the Merseyside police, aided it seems by members of the public, were carting demonstrators away. More than 100 were arrested. As I said, it was obvious really. Corach Rambler had won only narrowly at Cheltenham, but his idling half-length margin was not fooling the chase handicapper who put him up 10lb. That much well in - no penalties after the weights are published - but he’ll be wearing Noble Yeats’ heavy boots in 2024!

Last year, Emmet Mullins worked the system to get his horse in, sold and triumphant. This time it was repeat "offenders", Russell/Scudamore senior and Fox (he needed to pass a late fitness to take the ride having been ruled out of Ahoy Senor’s near miss behind Shishkin, Brian Hughes taking over).

How the champion would have loved to have been asked to deputise in the big one! In the event he sat (I would imagine) disconsolately in the well-appointed jockeys’ room, waiting an hour for his unplaced ride on a 40/1 shot in the bumper. Maybe it’s time for the champion to ride in more of the big races rather than clock up title-winning numbers around the northern gaffs.

One footnote: my good friend Siobhan Doolan, nowadays adding spice to the training regime at her grandfather Wilf Storey’s Co Durham yard, took three days off from her busy multi-stranded life to be the face of Aintree’s owners’ dining room.

I am sad to report that over the entire stretch of the meeting, her efforts to placate owners waiting to be seated for lunch brought a very disappointing response from people who should have known better. If the racecourse executive provides a facility for owners, who after all provide the very expensive horses that put on this greatest of all horse racing shows, that facility should be big enough and have sufficient palatable food to last through a day’s racing. Three days in fact.

Neither consideration was successfully achieved by Aintree. But while the people that organised and prepared the food and accommodation came up short, just one front of house face bore the brunt of what she described often as “owners and their friends taking the piss!”. What do they say, don’t blame the messenger. Aintree’s course executive should offer a serious apology to a very popular young member of the racing fraternity.

- TS

Monday Musings: Another Noble National?

/in /by

For the whole of the intervening 12 months, I have been insisting that Noble Yeats will win his second Randox Grand National at Aintree on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. Winner at 50/1 as a seven-year-old last April, he is set to carry 15lb more this time and start at one-sixth the odds. But no matter!

As the legendary Red Rum, half a century ago, and his modern nearest equivalent Tiger Roll showed in their turn, weight is not really the barrier to a repeat win. It’s the aptitude for the fences and a spirit that remains unbroken having run over them, that wins the day.

The three horses had widely differing starts in life. Red Rum, foaled in 1965, started with a dead-heat in a two-year-old selling race at the 1967 Grand National meeting which in those days was interspersed between flat racing and jumps.

It was another six years from that modest start before his epic first win, when Red Rum and Brian Fletcher pegged back Crisp and Richard Pitman from a distance behind as that two-mile specialist ran out of puff on the run-in.

Saturday is his half-centenary and I can still remember that we watched the race in the Managing Editor’s office on the fourth floor of the Daily Telegraph building in Fleet Street. I believe that was the only television set in the entire building and in those days a cup of tea in the canteen cost 10p – amazing, really, how inflation took over after decimalisation two years before in 1971!

I’d tipped him in the paper coming back from the weights lunch the previous month in whatever swish Central London hotel they staged it. Red Rum had 10st 5lb, receiving 23lb from Crisp, the great Australian, trained by Fred Winter. He also won the following year and, after second places to dual Gold Cup winner L’Escargot and then Rag Trade, he completed the hat-trick aged 12 in 1977 under Tommy Stack.

Tiger Roll’s start came a year and a half later in life, in a three-year-old hurdle at Market Rasen, trained by Nigel Hawke. As with Red Rum, he was to change hands before astounding Hawke with what the son of Derby winner Authorized would achieve.

He too won consecutive Grand Nationals as an eight and nine-year-old. He was denied the chance of a hat-trick when the 2020 race was cancelled due to the Covid pandemic. Those two multiple winners were among 14 eight-year-olds that won the race in the period between 1940 and last year.

Noble Yeats was filling that gap, repeating the achievement of Bogskar, the 1940 hero and the last seven-year-old to win before Noble Yeats.

The amazing part of his story was his inexperience over fences. Indeed, his inexperience per se, before his date with destiny. He did not make his chase debut until six months before his Grand National victory, in a 2m2.5f conditions event at Galway, which he won by a neck.

At that point his entire career record had been: second in a point; then third and first in maiden bumpers before a sixth in a Graded bumper and then an easy win in the only hurdle race he’s ever contested.

Following on from that initial chase success, his next win, amazingly, was in the Grand National and the miracle is how trainer Emmet Mullins and the horse’s connections ever got him qualified to run.

The Grand National is a race open to horses aged seven years and upwards (phew, just made it) that have been placed in the first four in any steeplechase of at least 2m7.5 furlongs and must have run in six chases.

Additionally, they need to have run in at least one steeplechase in the current season and have recorded a rating of at least 125.

The cut-off date this year was February 15. So, by around that date in 2022, Mullins and the horse’s then owner Paul Byrne – he wasn’t acquired by Robert Waley-Cohen until after all the red tape had been successfully tied up – had several conditions to fulfil.

His chase programme after the initial win was an unplaced run a in a Grade 3 over 2m4f; sixth in a 2m110y handicap; ninth in the big Leopardstown 3m chase over the Christmas holiday; and then he pulled up in a race the following month. That just left a few days for him to run in a sixth chase and finish in the first four effectively over three miles.

Naturally, original planners Mullins and Byrne had the answer, coming across to England for a Grade 2 novice chase at Wetherby on February 5.  In the event, he was comfortably beaten by the smart Ahoy Senor, but Mullins and Byrne knew they would be fine to set up their attractively packaged Aintree prospect as there were only four runners. All they needed was for Noble Yeats to get round.

That he did for a creditable second and with his rating of 148 already well ahead of the minimum handicap requirement of 125, the deal was duly and swiftly completed. He even went off to Cheltenham for a feeler under the not so young amateur who was going to bow out of riding after partnering him at Aintree.

I must say, if anyone saw it coming I certainly didn’t, but here in Sam Waley-Cohen was one of the old-style amateurs who bar his family and business background, would have made a decent fist of challenging for a jump riding title. Instead, along the way he happily rolled up at Cheltenham, riding the 2011 Gold Cup winner Long Run for his father and Nicky Henderson.

His successes at Aintree were even more plentiful, often outclassing his fellow amateurs in the Foxhunters and always seeming to get round whenever he encountered the fearsome fences.  Even against the pros, he had possibly the best radar around the big fences. That was one of the qualities Red Rum’s dual winning rider Brian Fletcher also had at a time when it wasn’t so easily achieved.

Noble Yeats was ninth to Corach Rambler in the 2022 Ultima at Cheltenham, in the race before his big win, giving Sam a nice feel, racing wide all the way. Twelve months on, after the year older Corach Rambler was advertising his 2023 Grand National claims with a repeat Ultima success for the Lucinda Russell team, Noble Yeats’ attentions were fixed on much bigger fish.

He started in the Gold Cup, now with new rider Sean Bowen on board and, while never in contention, the way he finished to take a late fourth place, as the front three headed by Galopin Des Champs had their own private battle, was the most eye-catching Aintree trial you could imagine.

You could just about pick him out a dozen lengths behind the second wave coming down the hill for the last time in the Gold Cup and he was still a long way back two from home. From there he finished fastest of all for fourth. On the long gallop home from the last fence down the far side second time round to coming back onto the racecourse for the two final fences at Aintree, I expect his galloping power to wipe them all away.

Last year’s runner-up Any Second Now gets a nice weight pull and the first two home in the Cross-Country at Cheltenham, Delta Work and Galvin, are two obvious top-class threats for Tiger Roll’s trainer Gordon Elliott. But that fourth place in the Gold Cup and his fantastic fast finish was enough to reinforce my long-held belief that here is the reincarnation of Red Rum, exactly half a century from that little champion’s arrival on the Aintree scene.

- TS

Monday Musings: Easter Eggs

/in /by

For once, the start of the new turf flat season at Doncaster is not left jettisoned out on its own, writes Tony Stafford. Thanks to the convenient proximity of Easter, Good Friday racing in the UK – they still have refrained from joining in on the holy day in Ireland – features three flat-race programmes this week.

Ranged conveniently geographically apart – in the far north at Newcastle; Home Counties at Lingfield and on turf in the west at Bath – all three are staged on Arena Racing tracks.

I always used to love the early morning Good Friday drive to Lingfield where the All-Weather Championships were held until 2021. Newcastle took over for the keynote fixture last April and for the second instalment, seven “championship” races again carry total prize money of £1,050,000 – one race of £200k, five worth £150k and an opening 3yo Listed of an even £100k.

The last part of the Lingfield approach involved a slow crocodile through the streets of Lingfield village and then location in a massive marquee with some average fare for the invitees. Now Lingfield has a lesser, but still good quality card, entirely of handicaps.

It’s uniform in terms of rating limitations – upper maxima of 80,85,90 or 95 - and with five races of the seven for four-year-olds and upwards, it has been designated the All-Weather Vase meeting.
Last year Chelmsford got the third spot but Bath, where early-season mud is often on offer compared with the hard-baked, non-watered ground that can occur in high summer as it did last year, is back again.  This is again a uniform card, another level down in ability terms from Lingfield, with upper ratings respectively of 75, 70, 60, 3 x 55 and a lowest 52 for the seven races.

Lingfield has a total of 173 entered for its septet, with guaranteed money of £65k for four and £45k for the other three, making a total of £375,000 on the day. Maximum fields are guaranteed for five of the races, while a couple might fall a little short.

If anyone doubted how many ordinary horses are in training and how hard owners and trainers are willing to seek a chance to run them, let Bath tell its own story. In race order 42, 30, 72, 80, 66, 47 and 73 horses have been nominated – all handicaps with respectively 17 allowed in each of the first two contests and 14 in the other five. There is no provision for any race division. Total money available to be won here is a straight £200k, including £26,000 apiece for the 0-52 and 0-55’s, and making £1,625,000 for the three meetings on the day.

I wonder whether the Arena management team are happy with their change of venue for the big show. There have been compliments paid about the Tapeta track there in the past but there has not been universal approval of certain aspects of track management in the latest deep winter period. Some trainers have been telling me that the surface has been very different this winter, even vowing not to return.

Maybe that’s why, at Saturday’s five-day stage, only a total of 80 horses were entered for the seven races, collectively worth £1million-plus.

Last year 66 horses contested the seven races on the inaugural Newcastle staging and it does not take much imagination to suggest that it might be hard to match that after the 48-hour stage on Wednesday.

But the most disappointing aspect must be that only four horses are coming from overseas to Gosforth Park. Joseph O’Brien has recent Dundalk wide-margin winner San Andreas in the Mile race while Ado McGuinness has Hood’s Girl, also a Dundalk specialist, in the Fillies’ and Mares’ race, and Harry’s Bar in the Sprint.

Christopher Ferland has recent Chantilly winner Loubeisien entered, also for the Sprint, one of the races in the programme the French used to win for fun in the early Lingfield AW Championship. She is her country’s only entry this time around.

Last year five French and three Irish horses made it to Newcastle, Yann Barberot providing the 10/1 winner of a finish of two short-heads in the 6f Sprint. Joseph O’Brien’s San Andreas finished second in the mile race then, just nosed out by the William Haggas-trained five-year-old My Oberon.

Last week’s article majored on the fact that older horses can have a second rewarding life after being in training in the UK. A year on, San Andreas will be coming back to the North-East to aim at a nice prize. His conqueror from last year has since been moved on to Australia and Annabel Neasham’s stable. Ms Neasham was saying over the winter that she had a host of potential owners waiting to get into ownership of any the horses from Europe that she manages to acquire.

My Oberon was one of those and on Saturday at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, the now six-year-old, running in the ownership names of D F Degenhardt, Hirecha Racing Et Al, which probably encompasses a good proportion of those striving for a piece of the ex-British action, had his finest hour to date.

A winner first time on arriving Down Under in a Group 2 last October, he had a few less rewarding runs until this weekend. Annabel lined him up for the 20-runner Grade 1 handicap, The Star Doncaster Mile and again he was involved in a close finish.

Not quite a nose this time, but a short-head and it made a difference of £955k to D F D and company. Favourite Mr Brightside won it for the Hayes family and Lindsay Park Racing and partners who collected the first prize of £1,3778,000. Neasham’s team were left to slink home with a paltry £423,000 for their trouble and afternoon’s entertainment.

In his UK days, My Oberon took three runs (starting as a late-developing three-year-old) to get off the mark for William Haggas and after that first win he was already rated 109. He never dropped below 108 or reached higher than 114, thus a solid Gr2/Gp3 performer. In his 16 runs in the UK and France he won five and placed five times. He collected £350k, a reasonable figure, which averages out at just north of 20 grand a run, satisfactory enough you would say.

Five outings in Australia have, by comparison, brought spectacular riches to the new owners, who are already up to £563,000 with plenty more to come one would imagine.

Many believe UK and Irish racing are the best equine environments in which to develop talent, but rewards outside the top levels are simply falling behind many other administrations. Owners are almost forced to sell horses of the order of a My Oberon and with what can be earned elsewhere, they do carry a decent sell-on value.

Saturday’s Pertemps Network Lincoln looked an above-average version of the traditional Doncaster flat season curtain-raiser beforehand and the way the first three came away from the rest of the 22-runner line-up suggested it was. It was great to see a revival of form not just for David Menuisier and Migration, a seven-year-old top-weight running off 107, but also for owners the Gail Brown Partnerships.

Gail looks after the winning owners after every race at Goodwood all season but also runs syndicates based on Goodwood. These have been going through a quieter spell, but this big win will have cheered her up.

I say big win, but for a race with the tradition of the Lincoln and its place as the season curtain-raiser it’s a shame to be worth only the same as the average of all seven races at Newcastle on Friday. Migration’s previous most important win came fittingly in a near £40k to the winner race at Goodwood and no doubt if the ground is on the easy side for the May meeting there, he will be back for another crack at one of the bigger pots available.

Until Migration and Benoit De La Sayette breezed past up the stands rail, Awaal for Simon and Ed Crisford, looked like winning a big race on the Saturday after they also came up a little short in a rather more valuable contest in Dubai a week earlier. Their Algiers was second in the Dubai World Cup, picking up £2 million. No doubt Awaal, Arab-owned, will be plying his trade in the Middle East in the future after this fine run off 102.

Doncaster was hard work for the horses and everyone over the weekend, but isn’t it great to have flat racing on turf back again?

I’ll be going to Southwell tomorrow for the first run in the UK for Ray Tooth’s ex-French gelding Sea Urchin, trained by Ian Williams. The champion is booked to ride and I well remember William Buick coming clear down the middle of the track to win on Ray’s filly Catfish at the Glorious Goodwood meeting for Brian Meehan a decade or so ago. I think they will have their work cut out to beat the James Ferguson horse Zoology, but it will be great to see those grey and pink colours on the track again.

- TS

Monday Musings: Old Stagers

/in /by

Another big international meeting, the fourth of its stature since October, Dubai World Cup night following the Saudi Cup last month, the Breeders’ Cup in early November and the Arc meeting in late summer has been and gone; naturally, with a sideways acknowledgement to Champions Day back home in Ascot soon after the Arc, writes Tony Stafford.

Three conclusions occurred to me after Saturday’s latest extravaganza at Meydan. First, that the world’s biggest races nowadays seem ever more susceptible to older horses. Second, the Japanese can win the world’s most valuable and coveted international events more readily nowadays than anyone else, be they on dirt or turf.

And then thirdly, a question. What has happened to all those multiple-coloured caps of strongly fancied members of the home team that used to mop up at their leisure each last Saturday in March as we looked on, marvelling, from back home?

From the moment Coolmore- and Japanese-shared seven-year-old entire Broome swooped late under Ryan Moore to deny Siskany in the two-mile Dubai Gold Cup, the second race on Saturday’s card, Charlie Appleby and William Buick were reduced to an unaccustomed minor role, which was even more surprising given the astonishing success they had all over Europe in the previous 12 months at the highest level.

True, they did go close once more, when Nation’s Pride looked a possible winner before finishing a creditable, close third behind Frankie Dettori and last year’s runner-up Lord North in the Dubai Turf. This was one race with multiple representation for the boys in blue, with Appleby’s second string in 9th and Saeed bin Suroor’s one runner in 13th place behind the Gosdens’ globe-trotting gelding who is also seven.

A feature of World Cup night since its inception in 1996 has been the ability to attract top horses from around the world. With almost half the races confined to dirt, the poor record of European horses in those races was to be expected, whereas the Americans licked their lips and, from the outset, filled their boots. For the record, Michael Stoute with Singspiel in the second-ever running 26 years ago, remains the only UK-trained winner of the Dubai World Cup itself.

Such was, and still is, the draw of massive money that Cigar, undisputed world champion at six years of age when he turned up, led credence to the event and, over the years, some of the greatest US stars were tempted with Curlin, Animal Kingdom and in 2017 Arrogate, all, plucking the prize.

In all, 11 American horses have won the race, an equal figure with the home team, whose first nine wins (eight for Godolphin, one for Sheikh Hamdan) were all supplied by Saeed bin Suroor. The disgraced Mahmood al Zarooni (replaced by Appleby to such brilliant effect over the past decade) and Kiaran McLoughlin, by Doug Watson, an American who has been based in Dubai for 30 years, had one each.

There was much celebrating when Doug’s 6yo gelding Danyah, a 33/1 shot trained for Shadwell Farm, won the Al Quoz Sprint on Turf. Another winter Dubai hardy annual in the Hamdan colours, Dane O’Neill took the riding plaudits.

The last US winner of the World Cup was Country Grammar, as a 5yo last year, when he was a fourth success in the race for Bob Baffert. Since that big money win, Country Grammer was emphatically put in his place by the one horse of the last couple of years whose presence would have been greatly welcomed, but Flightline is already going through his paternal duties at stud in the US.

Flightline beat Country Grammer on his final unbeaten career start in last year’s Pacific Classic at Del Mar by 19.5 lengths, never mind that otherwise the Baffert horse hadn’t been out of the first two for a couple of years.

Second in the Saudi Cup last year before stepping up to win the big one at Meydan, he followed a similar route this time around. He again ran a good second in Riyadh but on Saturday, carrying Frankie Dettori’s hopes of a fifth win in the race as a 52-year-old in his final year as an international rider, he bombed and finished only seventh.

The winner in what developed into an interesting contest, if one lacking glamour and a serious home challenge, was the Japanese Ushba Tesoro. This 6yo entire from Japan was the country’s second winner of the race, by a widening margin from the Crisfords’ (father and son) year-younger Algiers. The previous Japanese-trained winner, in 2011, was Victoire Pisa.

Algiers is a rarity for a horse trained in the UK, being a dirt specialist, and he warmed up for Saturday with two wide-margin victories on the surface. James Doyle had the ride and for once wasn’t upstaged by his friend and colleague Buick, as this race carried £2 million for the runner- up – the winner got £5.8 million!

Ryan Moore was another UK jockey earning his corn, and there is no question that over the past year the former champion has got his best form back. He timed the challenge on Broome around the outside to a nicety on turf and then switched to an equally masterful display on Sibelius, trained by Florida-based Jeremiah O’Dwyer. Jerry has added two syllables and a new career thousands of miles away, since being banned from riding for 18 months in the UK 12 years ago.

Jerry was a likeable Irish journeyman, based in Newmarket, but his involvement with Sabre Light, late in 2008, cost him his riding career. A horse that was switched from Alan Bailey to Jeff Pearce earlier that year became Jerry’s regular mount, and one on which he won several times initially.

The case, I seem to recall, involved a couple of runs a little later and revolved around the horse not winning when certain individuals thought he should (or was it the other way round? – it was the other way around – Ed.) and then needing to put it right next time, whichever way round that was.

It took ages for the authorities to bring the case. Apart from Pearce, who also lost his trainer’s licence – wife Lydia and later son Simon taking over – another former handler, who had won a Classic some years before but by then had handed in his licence, was also rumoured at the time to have known what had been (or not) happening.

Now all these years later, there’s Jerry, proving that everyone deserves a second chance and the fact he trains Sibelius for Japanese connections suggests he might well progress further in his new career.

If there was an equine star on the Meydan card, it had to be Equinox, winner of the Golden Shaheen over 1m4f on the turf. Even money to win for the fourth time in only six starts (plus two close 2nds), he now has £8million in earnings after dominating this from start to finish.

This was another nice payday for Ryan, aboard Westover, the £1 million runner-up, albeit closer at three-odd lengths than the ability gulf between the horses truly represents. Still, it was a good run for trainer Ralph Beckett’s 2022 Irish Derby winner and nice for Ryan not to have a rear view of him this time.

One unsung hero in the World Cup, formerly owned and bred by Alan Spence and the Hargreaves’ and a regular winner for Clive Cox, was 8yo Salute The Soldier. He was only eighth in the big race but won a Group 1 (his second over there) the previous time and has earned more than £1m for Bahrein-based Fawzi Nass.

Alan Spence had something closer to home to celebrate on Friday when his veteran hurdler On The Blind Side won for the Nicky Henderson stable at 50/1. “Were you on, Alan?” I asked. “Not a penny”, he replied, “but am I Happy? Delighted!”

Just so, Anthony Honeyball, whose debutant Crest Of Glory, a 4yo gelding, won the £60k to the winner Goffs UK Spring Sale Bumper. He strode 15 lengths clear of 18 opponents which included a stable companion by the same sire, owned by a Geegeez syndicate. “He had an awful run!” said the Editor. “We’ll bring him back next season all being well, when we have high hopes of him.”

Oh, the name? It’s Dartmoor Pirate. By the same sire, Black Sam Bellamy as the winner, he was seventh despite the difficult run and is rated pretty useful - which the winner must also be!

- TS

Monday Musings: Big Priced Winners Hiding in Plain Sight

/in /by

Where to start about Cheltenham? Ever since the race following the Gold Cup on Friday afternoon, I resolved to write about a 66/1 winner that if we bothered (or had the time) to look closely at all the form, we could have been laughing all the way, if not to the bank, certainly to make a dent in our gas and electricity balances, writes Tony Stafford.

Earlier in the day a friend asked me to offer a shortie and a an each-way alternative for the last six races – Lossiemouth had already dotted in when he called. I won’t go into my unambitious, yet unsuccessful, calls, but I did have an opinion on the St James Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase.

I had a memory of the name Vaucelet, stablemate and chosen entry of three fancies for David Christie, whose Winged Leader was runner-up last year to the famed Irish standing dish Billaway, giving his Northern Ireland-based handler a change of luck. The old-timer Billaway was again in the field and was destined to fall before the action heated up.

Vaucelet had come over to the UK twice for races at the big May hunter chase showcase at Stratford. In 2021 he won the novice championship as a 6yo and a 4/1 shot, while a month after a Punchestown near-miss, behind Billaway, Vaucelet collected the Championship Hunter Chase, sponsored by Pertemps in the 63rd running for the Horse and Hound Cup.

He preceded the first UK win with hunter/point form figures that season of 21111 and since it, he’s gone 113112111. No wonder, you (as I did) might say, he was the 9/4 favourite in the 23 runner field.

Yet hiding in that line up, freely available at 66/1, was a horse that had started 11/4 off levels with Vaucelet in that Stratford novice championship.

This horse, namely Premier Magic, made the running that day and had just been headed before stumbling after jumping the last. He rallied on the flat but could do no better than a close third. He was pulled up in last year’s Cheltenham race but had the excuse of being badly crowded coming down the hill.

When he came back for that second shot against Billaway and Vaucelet, he had since been confined to point-to-points by his Welsh-based trainer and rider, Bradley Gibbs.

If Vaucelet had busily been picking up the pots on offer in the pointing field across the water, our unsung hero had been similarly campaigned. From March 2020 to Stratford in May 2021, his form figures were 21111. Since the defeat there, it was 11111 before Friday. His last win came by 14 lengths in the open at Garthorpe in February when an 8/11 favourite.

Yet he started 66/1 at Cheltenham last week! He was lucky to be clear of the late scrimmaging caused by loose horses, but he battled on genuinely, hardly a surprise with all those wins on his record. Meanwhile Vaucelet was struggling home in seventh.

Take a bow, Bradley Gibbs and Premier Magic. Some of those point-to-point experts will have been either rubbing their hands or cursing their lack of faith having backed or missed such a potential goldmine horse. I must give Jonathan Neesom a call to ask him if he had a few quid on.

Bradley Gibbs trains the horse for his partner’s father and was publicly grateful for the support given to him in developing their yard in Wales. None of the big names at the other end of the ownership rainbow would have been more deserving of satisfaction at their work of the past three years with this son of Court Cave.

As well as a Welsh winner, there was also a better-known Scottish-trained winner as Corach Rambler repeated last year’s victory in the Ultima Handicap Chase off a 6lb higher mark. This was only his 3rd run since and when Tom Scudamore came to the preview night in London he predicted this success, also that he would follow up in the Grand National.

Tom’s father, Peter Scudamore, is partner and assistant trainer to Lucinda Russell, so an element of insider information was involved there. On that preview event, at one point I was asked my bet of the week and repeated what I’d mentioned in my column here, Langer Dan on Thursday; but, by race day, I’d forgotten all about it.

So, what else from the week? I could go through the 18-10 Ireland domination over the home team, or talk about Constitution Hill, Honeysuckle and plenty more, but I imagine you’ve seen and read plenty about all of that. I’ll look for something different.

When the rain came, my thoughts were that on soft ground the potential for, if not catastrophe, then certainly mishaps, would be greatly increased. There were upwards of 400 runners over the four days and the quality of the preparation of these horses was such that only 12 were documented as having fallen. To those, you could add five unseated, with the odd horse brought down.

More predictable was the 80 pulled up, around 20 per cent of the total. Most unlikely was the Ultima which, as I’ve mentioned, was won by Corach Rambler. He headed home the Martin Brassil-trained Fastorslow, Jonjo O’Neill’s Monbeg Genius and another Irishman in The Goffer, the front four in the betting.

Notably unflattering outcomes for the home team were the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on day one when the first eight home were trained in Ireland, unusually with Barry Connell the winning trainer (and owner) rather than Willie Mullins. The half-mile longer Ballymore on the second day provided a 1-2-3 for Mullins and he gained revenge on Connell, who predicted his Good Land would win. Eventually, with his horse fourth some way behind the Mullins trio, the status quo restored.

There was never a doubt that the Mullins fillies would dominate the Triumph Hurdle on Friday. Perhaps the most remarkable fact of this race was that all five of the expensively acquired arrivals from France in the spring last year stood their ground, never mind the soft ground.

Lossiemouth pulled almost from the off, but this time getting a clear wide course under Paul Townend, she had far too much class for stablemate Gala Marceau, who had beaten her when she got a nightmare run at the Dublin Racing Festival, and Zenta, a close third. Susanna Ricci, Honeysuckle’s owner Kenny Alexander, and J P McManus are the proud owners of the flying fillies. It was miles back to the first gelding, also Mullins-trained.

The trio of UK runners were 11th, 13th and pulled up.

But there was isolated and not so isolated fighting back where Paul Nicholls and former pupil dan Skelton were concerned. Nicholls won two of the Grade 1 races (Stage Star in the Turners’ and Stay Away Fay in the Albert Bartlett), backing up Champion Hurdle win number nine for Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill. He was also an excellent second with Bravemansgame behind flying Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs from the Mullins team.

Once again Skelton pulled a couple of handicap rabbits out of the hat. It took Langer Dan three Festivals to win his race in the Coral Cup, but less expected was Bridget Andrews’ (Mrs Harry Skelton to her tradesmen) win on Faivoir, denying four Irish rivals pursuing her up the hill. She’s done it before – with Mohaayed, also in the County Hurdle, also at 33/1, and also trained by Dan Skelton – and is always a name to look out for in these highly competitive races with hosts of dangerous invaders to worry about.

In fact, the Skeltons do it so often, it’s almost as if it’s planned! Some operation that, and they know what’s needed to beat the Irish in any race at the Festival. We can’t wait for the next one.

- TS

Monday Musings: On Lord Oaksey and the Constitution

/in /by

All those preview nights; all those column inches and television opinions and now, the ground, if you please, is soft, writes Tony Stafford. And if the forecast I saw on BBC weather on Saturday is correct - I still look at it first even though you don’t get much worth having for your licence fee these days, ask Gary Lineker - it’s bound to get softer.

Day by day, hour by hour, the rain will intrude. The same precipitation that wilfully stayed away in the autumn and for much of the winter, then suddenly decided to turn up. Ironically, it materialised just when trainers of soft ground horses were barely going through the motions of training them, so sure had been the long-range prognostications of fast ground. Now, though, we can expect buckets of the stuff.

Only two weeks ago at a preview evening when good/good to soft was the undercurrent, we had to be aware that while the course officials would do their darndest to maintain it, Cheltenham and its far too efficient drainage would surely sort/rule that out. Beware running soft-ground horses on it had to be the message!

Now, though, the capricious UK weather has shown its full force. Nicky Richards planned a five-horse raid at Ayr the other day. On the wet west coast of Scotland in early March, the ground was fast and three of the quintet stayed home.

Yet here we are after a few rain showers and a couple of blankets of snow, and it’s shaping up like those days of yore when the Irish used to come over and relish the sight of hock-deep mud and jockeys twirling their whips like shillelaghs.

It’s March 14 tomorrow and already trainers I talk to regularly are avoiding risking winning novice chases with potential high-class prospects as we’re getting dangerously close to the late April cut-off point for season 2022-23.

Something needs to be done about that. Most of the top stables don’t really get going until October bringing in their top horses. Cheltenham in March is not just the Holy Grail, for many it’s the Only Grail and when you look at this week’s cards, that fact is driven home ever more forcibly. Equally, after Aintree next month, there’s not much left, either.

I thought I’d check up on Willie Mullins. He has declared 24 horses for tomorrow’s opening phase. He has 43 entered for Wednesday, 22 on Thursday and 27 on Friday. I’m guessing he’ll win eight races. Just a guess, though.

To business, Constitution Hill will not worry if the ground is fast, good, soft, heavy or under water. He’ll win as he likes and write another page in his and Nicky Henderson’s legend.

I mentioned shillelaghs earlier, advisably because it reminded me of one Cheltenham Festival meeting when the late and more than great John (Lord) Oaksey penned one of his most memorable outpourings.

And outpourings they were! It started something like this – I subbed it in the office that night and wish I’d kept it in my inside pocket for the 46 years that have elapsed since that awful day.

“Only two stands blew down at Cheltenham yesterday, the Irish only won four <I think> races and two of England’s greatest ever jumps horses, Bula’s and Lanzarote’s careers came to an untimely end.”

Both horses were trained in Lambourn by Fred Winter, the multiple champion jump jockey who progressed to even more fame and success as a trainer of elite racehorses and future trainers, among them Nicky Henderson and Oliver Sherwood.

Both horses were coming to the end of distinguished careers. Bula, winner of the Champion Hurdle in 1971 and 1972, won 32 more races over eight seasons until his fall at the fifth fence in the Two-Mile Champion Chase on that fateful day. He sustained torn shoulder muscles. For a while as he convalesced it was hoped he could be saved but after two months, one leg became almost totally paralysed and he was put down, aged 12, robbed of an honourable retirement.

The denouement was even more stark for Lanzarote. Selected to run in the Gold Cup, which was thought to be Bula’s target, Lanzarote was an early casualty, broke a leg and was destroyed. He, too, was a Champion Hurdle winner, in 1974.

Imagine the trauma for Winter, his staff and the horses’ owners. Both horses were regarded as superior champions of the breed. In the highly respected assessment of the Best Horses of the 20th Century, John Randall and Tony Morris rated Bula 5th best hurdler, only behind fellow champions Night Nurse, their number one, Persian War, Monksfield and Comedy Of Errors and ahead of Istabraq. Timeform put Lanzarote in their top ten hurdlers of all time.

One person who will have been as devastated as anyone that day – the future Lord Oaksey included – was Nicky Henderson. He was Winter’s number one assistant at the time of those twin tragedies and didn’t start his own stable until the following year.

Tomorrow he can be in a position after almost half a century to write a new page in National Hunt history by sending out Constitution Hill to usurp all those wonderful horses, names I grew up with just as he did.

Mullins, Henderson, Elliott, De Bromhead, Nicholls and the rest. They all wait for the good horse, but first need to land the big fish who will pay for the privilege of having horses in their elite and winning-most yards.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Willie Mullins stranglehold on Friday’s Triumph Hurdle. Of seven in the field, he still has two geldings and five fillies confirmed among 17 six-day declarations.

Gala Marceau, who won the juvenile race at the Dublin Racing Festival when original favourite Lossiemouth suffered a troubled run, now vies for the top spot, and Blood Destiny is the only other in the line-up on offer at less than 16/1.

All five fillies were bought from France, presumably for massive money and all have found their way into high-octane ownership. I hope all seven run and fill the first seven places. They pay down to eighth after all, although should any of the ten walk-on performers intervene, that would represent a slight on the Mullins method. Just joking, Willie!

I digress. Fundamental at the time was Oaksey’s concern with animal and rider welfare – he was a major figurehead in the original organisation of the Injured Jockeys’ Fund. He also found the flogging of horses to get every ounce from them in the typically near-waterlogged ground of those pre-drainage (and less global-warming affected) days to be total anathema.

I would imagine he might find the latest toughened whip rules to his liking, although Mullins and other top trainers seem to think that Cheltenham might be spoilt with jockeys concentrating more on counting than riding horses to their best.

John Oaksey was a force for good, causes and, above all, writing. As the son of the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trial, he could hardly have been anything else, never mind a wonderful colleague for many years. As they go up the hill for the first time tomorrow, his genial visage will slip briefly into the consciousness, before as he would wish it, thoughts turn quite rightly to the wonderful horses we are privileged to watch in action.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Future, via The Past…

/in /by

I got a call from Jonathan Powell the other day, writes Tony Stafford. He’d been at an Anthony Honeyball get-together attended by this site’s boss Matt Bisogno, who runs several syndicates with the trainer and others. The venerable Mr Powell also contributes his journalistic skills to Honeyball’s stable as well as doing, as he says, “plenty for Paul Nicholls” among others.

It seems he had been gently directed to these words by Matt and had even looked at half a dozen examples of them. We were colleagues for a few years at the Press Association at the end of the 1960’s before I got my marching orders from Bernard Jones, the editor, for some betting indiscretions, winding up at the Daily Telegraph after a troubling nine-month career hiatus.

Jonathan went ever onwards and upwards and, once or twice, asked me to step in when he was on holiday from the Sunday People which he graced for many years with his erudite columns.

On one occasion, I went into their sports room office and the sports editor said: “Hello Tony, sit over there in Fred’s seat.” I said: “Sorry, I’d rather not!”

Fred of course was their columnist, the great Freddie Trueman, bluff Yorkshireman, devilishly fast opening bowler for England and excused for his boorish excesses in behaviour because of his undoubted talent.

I’d been at an Essex – Yorkshire county cricket match in 1958, so maybe 15 years before Neville invited me to take Fred’s seat, at one of the possibly dozen local grounds that the nomadic Essex side used to drop into through every summer. I think this one was at Valentine’s Park, Ilford, and it rained all day. I remember half an hour before play was finally abandoned I saw Fred on the edge of the pavilion and took my life in my hands.

“Mr Trueman,” I began, summoning up what little courage I had then – it’s not altered much in the interim six and a half decades – “Could I please have your autograph?”  Mr Trueman, with a look of disdain, restricted himself to a curt “Fook off suun!” I sat somewhere else.

In Jonathan’s call he said he noted that I write all the time about half a century ago. This week I’m going to write solely about next week and if you think me unqualified, I am armed having gone, along with said Mr Bisogno, to a very small, select (and much delayed on the night) Cheltenham Preview gathering.

The delay was caused by the traffic problems of the star guest, Tom Scudamore, recently retired top jumps jockey. We reasoned, and rightly as it proved, someone with a measured and riding-oriented view of potential happenings at the first Cheltenham Festival he’d be missing as a jockey for the latter half of his 40 years would add plenty of value to proceedings.

His views were counter-point to the multiple ante-post framed opinions – and my word he does have plenty of each! – of Cheltenham Festival fanatic, Scott Ellis, who starts preparing for the following year on the Friday night the previous four days concludes, if not before.

You could line up Scott’s ante-post vouchers from one end of the Horse and Wig public house where we met to the little alley just up from Chancery Lane station in Holborn, and they would reach the door. Most of them seem to be favourites trained by Willie Mullins backed at 50/1 or 66/1 like Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle. I don’t bet ante-post.

The days when I had 100/1 Wayward Lad for three consecutive Gold Cups, taken after his first novice hurdle win for Tony Dickinson, but which had expired the year before he first ran in the big race, are long gone. When he did, by now trained by Tony’s son Michael, he never won it. He was of course one of the Famous Five, the first five home in the 1983 Gold Cup.

Wayward Lad was third, behind Bregawn and Captain John, owned by the remarkable Michael Mouskos, Greek Cypriot hotel owner in London’s West End, and ahead of Silver Buck, owned by William Haggas’ mum Christine Feather, and finally longshot Ashley House.

This speedy multiple King George hero didn’t really get up the hill at Cheltenham, famously succumbing three years later to the flying finish of the great Irish mare Dawn Run, only the second of her sex to win the race and unique in having already won a Champion Hurdle for Paddy Mullins, Willie’s father. But sorry Jonathan, I’m doing it again – pressing the history button. Small self-admonition!

Joining Tom on the Horse and Wig panel was Joe Hill, son and one-third partner in the Lawney/Alan Hill training triptych at Aston Rowant, much in the manner of Tony, wife Monica and son Michael Dickinson those four decades ago. The Hill yard, part Rules, larger part pointing and hunter chase- oriented, was described by panel chairman Charlie Methven as one of the leading pointing yards in the country. One of the yards also whose proprietors choose not to list its equine inmates in my annual gospel, Horses In Training, they are pretty much an unknown quantity for me.

Charlie, it turned out, was a colleague in my last few years at the Daily Telegraph around the turn of the century but in the sports room office perched on floor 14 in Canary Wharf, Docklands, while I was allowed to swan around at the racecourse from my at home in Hertfordshire – another lifetime ago!

Charlie is a bit of a mentor to young Joe, who I’d seen for the first time via my Racing TV screen 48 hours before. Charlie once bought a chunk of Sunderland F.C. and was a leading light at the admirable but short-lived Sportsman newspaper, conceived after the demise of another of Charlie’s former career stop-off points, the Sporting Life.

He is part entrepreneur, part informal village squire in the most expensive part of Oxfordshire and, on the evidence of Wednesday’s performance, something of a might-have-been matinee idol. But I digress – as is the common theme of this column. After the Hill yard supplied the 14/1 winner Hilnamix at Plumpton, Joe was interviewed, and he, too, looked the part. Hilnamix would have been the mount of Tom Scu but having ridden it all three times since it moved to the Hill yard, a new rider was needed. David Bass stepped it.

Adorned for the first time, on Scu’s advice, with a visor, it romped home only after “Bassy talked to Tom in the morning and got his instructions”, said young Mr Hill. The obvious question, with Tom free of any potential sanction for betting, was “How much did you have on, Tom?” The answer was predictable – “Not a penny!” Such is the normal fate of insiders in this always frustrating game.

Tom quickly settled into his stride, helped by the odd glass of wine as his driver of many years – a big lad! – watched on.

So here we go. Cheltenham 2023 and take my word for it, however good Willie Mullins’ State Man is, he won’t see which way Constitution Hill goes in the Champion Hurdle. That’s one 4/11 winner for you – don’t say you weren’t told!

The same opening day features the Supreme, where I take Barry Connell’s Marine Nationale to win at Facile Vega’s expense. Barry used to ride some of his own horses when Tony Mullins trained most of them and I remember having a bit of a touch on one when, in Brod Munro-Wilson style almost, he won a race at one of the non-Festival meetings there.

Jonbon got most of the panel votes in the Arkle to set up the Nicky Henderson Champion Hurdle spectacular, but it could be the turn of Willie and fast-going Dysart Dynamo. As ever it’s which of the Mullins squadron will win, not whether some will.

After the excesses of putting up three in one day – multiples being a dangerous tactic as I found to my cost on the day Punjabi won the 2009 Champion. That afternoon, resting home alone recovering from a detached retina operation, I fancied runners for my life through the card so linked the Ray Tooth hero at 33/1 in a full cover each-way multiple with the other five and none finished in the frame.

You would have thought I might have done a Lucky 63 where you get double the odds for a single winner to clear the win part of the bet at least, but no, just the Heinz sufficed: the £1 each way investment of £114 as a single would have raked in around four grand! Tom, I know how you feel.

We’re getting tight for space with all this talk of current events. Therefore, let’s just be content with Editeur Du Gite for Gary Moore in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and each-way on Klassical Dream (Mullins), if he gets there, in the Stayers for the Coleman family and Mark Smith.

Among a plethora of almost guaranteed Irish handicap winners, surely it’s time for an overdue Festival success for the Skeltons’ Langer Dan in either Wednesday’s Coral Cup or Friday’s Martin Pipe.

There you are Jonathan, hardly a mention of anything further away than last week at Plumpton. Who says I’m mired in the past?

- TS

Monday Musings: Distortion

/in /by

Much has been written and argued about concerning the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia’s attempts to shortcut its way into top-level international sport, writes Tony Stafford. First golf, where millions of dollars were paid several years ago to a few selected stars to entice them into a tournament where, if winning, they would only have added a minimal amount to their guaranteed pot. The only requirement for them was to turn up and smile – all the way to the bank.

That has continued with their own lavishly endowed tour which has caused such a personal rift between those like Phil Mickelson and Ian Poulter, who have broken away, and former friends Rory McIIroy and Tiger Woods, die-hard stalwarts of the existing PGA programme.

Then it was football – and, with the spotlight of the World Cup last autumn, their own footballers were on hand and even won a match – against champions Argentina no less! – to kick off their campaign before the competition eventually proved too hot. That their country’s football administrators could then manage to seduce Cristiano Ronaldo to abandon his lucrative Manchester United contract for one of infinitely greater instant wealth, even at the age of 38, to join their best domestic team, further emphasised their seriousness.

Horse racing has always been a focus for Saudi owners. Prince Khalid Abdullah, via his Juddmonte Farm breeding operation, had been a serious challenger in world racing both to the Maktoum family from Dubai and Coolmore for much of the past fifty years until his death in 2021.

Two decades earlier, two more Saudi Princes, the brothers Fahd and Ahmed Bin Salman, both had massive international strings. Fahd, the elder by a few years, won the Derby with Generous and, soon after, Ahmed, via the vehicle of his Thoroughbred Corporation, also won that Classic with Oath, as well as, in the US, four consecutive Triple Crown races, although bizarrely not managing to complete the Triple Crown itself.

I was fortunate to be involved with the TC throughout that entire period, and it was almost as much a shock to me as to the family and the country when both princes died in their 40’s, Ahmed a year after his brother. Their status in the country was immense, fittingly as sons of Prince Salman, now King Salman, who acceded to the country’s throne in 2015 and who remains its Head of State.

In those days, racing at their home track in Janadriya, and in the summer at Taif, where the temperature is much cooler than in the capital, was generally restricted to local owners. The horses raced around a very basic track, adjacent to which the smaller trainers and their owners would sit in the stables close to their horses for many hours and at leisure formulate their plans.

Then, as the decade of the 2010’s proceeded, news came of a big new racetrack, the King Abdulaziz Racecourse, in the same part of town. In 2020, the first running of the Saudi Cup was scheduled, a tactically astute four weeks before the Dubai World Cup at Meydan. Saudis regard the Maktoum-family emirate of Dubai, and the other Emirates for that matter, as Johnny Come Latelys and. while they are prosperous enough, the wealth in Saudi is, as was described to me when I first joined the TC, “a bottomless pit”. Funny how some phrases stay with you!

Consequently, the decision for Saudi Arabian horse racing massively to outbid and therefore upstage the Dubai World Cup and then get in ahead of it was probably only to be expected. Now on Saturday, the fourth running of the Saudi Cup, a 10-furlong race on the dirt, carried a total prize pool of £16 million and a first prize in excess of £8 million.

As with the golf and soccer, it was money no object and such distortion surely, one might think, must have the potential of causing a re-drawing of the world record for prizemoney for any horse in the history of the sport.

The leader up to Saturday morning was the wonderful Australian racemare Winx, on a final figure of £14,564,743 from 29 wins in 32 races for trainer Chris Waller until her retirement in 2019 for the breeding shed. She holds the record, from Bob Baffert’s Arrogate, winner of the Dubai World Cup for Prince Khalid. Japan’s Almond Eye, another great mare, is third, both horses having picked up more than £13 million.

Although the list I used does not include him, another of the world’s greatest money-accumulators was topically boosting his tally yesterday in Hong Kong. Preferred in the market on the Citi Hong Kong Gold Cup, the seven-year-old gelding Golden Sixty still recorded his 24th victory in 28 starts at Sha Tin, beating the 1-2 favourite, the two years younger Romantic Warrior, by a head. The 700-odd grand for this latest triumph actually puts him fourth on the overall list at £13,077,966.

It took Winx and Golden Sixty many years of endeavour to reach their massive cash accumulations. The Saudi riches will no doubt one day distort the record books, but despite Bob Baffert’s best efforts, it hasn’t happened yet.

On Saturday, Baffert brought a formidable double challenge to Riyadh. He supplied the Saudi Cup’s favourite in Taiba, a four-year-old with four wins back home in California, three at Grade 1 level. Despite having big-race specialist Mike Smith on board, Taiba could finish only ninth.

That was a long way behind the other Baffert runner, Country Grammer, now a six-year-old and runner-up in this race 12 months ago. It was a shock when he failed to beat locally trained Emblem Road last year but then, with Frankie Dettori drafted in, he collected the marginally (albeit almost £3 million) less Dubai World Cup a month later.

Dettori, as we know, is on his Let’s Get In As Much Cash As We Can In My Last Year’s Riding World TourTM and he stopped off for Christmas in California to win a Grade 2 on Country Grammer as the gelding’s prep for Saturday. Lo and behold though, the Frankie magic was in vain as the Japanese-trained Panthalassa, also a six-year-old, made every yard at 16/1 for trainer Yoshita Yahogi and rider Y Yoshida.

I spoke of distortion: If Country Grammer had picked up £8 million plus rather than a measly £2.91 million, he would have sailed a full £2 million past Winx. He can make up the deficit by winning the £5 million plus World Cup, so while it would be nice for Frankie to have another little payday to bolster his pension fund, let’s hope Winx can stay ahead of the pack for one more year at least.

There were several handsomely rewarded UK recipients of the Saudi largesse on the undercard. Unsurprisingly, they were headed by the Gosdens, winners of the second Saudi Cup with Mishriff, who as a result remains in the top ten money-earners narrowly ahead of Prince Khalid Abdullah’s great champion, Enable, whom John Gosden also trained. They picked up the £750k first prize in the Neon Turf Cup, Mostahdaf winning by seven lengths from Dubai Future, trained for Godolphin by Saeed bin Suroor.

While the Gosdens and Dettori are hardly unacquainted at picking up sackloads of lolly, one trainer more than happy to take just a small portion of the day’s rewards was Ian Williams.

He ran recent Dubai Carnival handicap scorer Enemy in the £1.25 million to the winner Longines Red Sea Turf Handicap over 1m7f. As his horse came to challenge under Richard Kingscote, for at least a furlong the trainer thought the unthinkable: “We’re going to win!”, but as in the big race later, the Japanese front-runner kept front running to the line and beyond.

Still, the consolation prize for second was a cool £440k for owners Tracey Bell and Caroline Lyons (from which Williams and Kingscote will both earn a nice percentage). Enemy has already been accepted for the Dubai Gold Cup on World Cup night and must be a prime contender, while the intended Melbourne Cup challenge, aborted when the horse lost his form last summer, may well be on. “We have to thank Ben Brain for that as he sorted out Enemy’s issues with his customary magic touch,” said Williams.

Waking up to reality yesterday, he was looking forward to watching his team Manchester United at the hotel in the Carabao Cup Final before going off to see that other spectacle, the big fight between Tommy Fury and Jake Paul, which is the preferred venue to end Saudi Cup weekend. Not much fun this racehorse training lark, is it Ian?

Less rewarding, sadly, was William Knight’s trip with his money-spinner Sir Busker, set up nicely with a run around Lingfield under big-race rider Ryan Moore, but after starting slowly in Mostahdaf’s race, never got in a blow. Most races on Saturday favoured horses away in the forefront and Sir Busker therefore had everything against him from the start. There will be other days for him, but few with the sort of money that might have been coming his way if things had gone to plan.

Monday Musings: Sheesh! He’s back…

/in /by

When Nicky Henderson sends one of his big guns to Cheltenham, something he’s been doing for 40-plus years, he and the racing world generally expects it to win, writes Tony Stafford. Racing expectations, though, are fickle; so, once one of those penalty kicks goes awry, often the reputation garnered through a steady pattern of achievement can be lost in a trice.

That was the case with Shishkin, until Saturday at Ascot anyway, when he restored his standing at a stroke. Going 2m5f for the first time under Rules – we forget he started as a winning Irish point-to-pointer, so we should hardly be shocked he stays – he demolished his rivals with a 16-length beating of Paul Nicholls’ front-running Pic D’Orhy.

The favourite and last year’s winner, Joseph O’Brien’s Fakir D’oudairies, was another seven lengths back in third after an uncharacteristically sluggish display.

In the manner of Sprinter Sacre and Altior, his Seven Barrows predecessors as champion two-mile chasers, Shishkin ran in the Supreme Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham, usually the place where Nicky as well as the general public finds out which of his theretofore hard to separate smart novices is the superior.

Even that yardstick is fallible. When Altior won the Supreme in 2016, stable-companion Buveur D’Air finished third, but Hendo insisted Altior went the chasing route and never again in a career of 18 more races, 15 wins, three second places, did he see a hurdle in public.

Fortunately for Henderson and new owner J P McManus, who bought him after the third at Cheltenham, Buveur D’Air didn’t impress in two runs over fences, and switched back to hurdles, winning the next two Champion Hurdles. At the time it left us speculating what had possessed Henderson to allow what was surely the best hurdler around to miss out on at least two Champion Hurdles.

He, though, and the owners of Altior and Buveur D’Air, were more than happy as his stable enjoyed the best of both worlds. Until injury and an unfortunate misstep intruded on Altior’s career, here was a two-mile chaser deserving of mention in the same breath as his illustrious predecessor, Sprinter Sacre.

He, too, had run in the Supreme, but in his case in 2011 he was only third and not even the best of the Seven Barrows horses, pipped for runner-up spot by Spirit Son in the Michael Buckley colours and, at 5/1 the preferred in the market with stable jockey Barry Geraghty aboard, following Paul Nicholls’ Al Ferof over the line.

Sprinter Sacre had led over the last hurdle but faded up the hill under Tony McCoy. He started 11/1 so the Henderson pair finished as the market, and presumably stable insiders, had predicted. Sprinter Sacre’s was an amazing career over fences, winning 14 of 18 starts even with a late-onset heart problem, from which the maestro and his staff nursed him back to win again at the highest level, making him one of the true legends of jump racing.

Michael Buckley, after a few quiet years, was involved in a much more recent Seven Barrows dual-pronged attack on the Supreme. Just 11 months ago, his Constitution Hill and J P McManus’ Jonbon were respectively 9/4 joint-favourite (with Willie Mullins’ Dysart Dynamo) and 5/1 third best, and filled the first two places.

There wasn’t a gap between them at the finish, though: it was more a gulf if that’s the correct terminology for 22 lengths. This time Nicky wasn’t messing around and Constitution Hill has been campaigned adroitly since, considering the problems caused to trainers in this most unpredictable of summer/autumn/winters.

He has been restricted to just two exhibitions, albeit Grade 1’s, where only Mullins at home in Ireland could have engineered a similar feat in his Cheltenham trials. Filling second place to Constitution Hill in the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle and the Christmas Hurdle (at 12 and then 17 lengths’ distance) was Epatante, Champion Hurdle winner in 2020 before placing in Honeysuckle’s subsequent two victories in the race.

As for Jonbon, he’s off to the Arkle, the switch to fences delayed for a Grade 1 novice win at Aintree in April after which he has stretched his career tally to eight wins from nine with only Constitution Hill ever besting him.

He has always been odds-on and progressively heavier in each of his three runs over fences. If the latest at Warwick was a bit of a damp squib when he made hard work of beating a single opponent, he is still the 13/8 joint-favourite to follow Sprinter Sacre, Altior and Shishkin (and four others) to win the race for Seven Barrows.

That brings us nicely back to Shishkin, who following his Arkle triumph initially went on his merry way last season, getting the better of Ireland’s star second-season chaser Energumene in the Clarence House Chase at Ascot with a strong late rally to deny the Mullins front-runner.

Then came the denouement at Cheltenham, Shishkin never going, as Energumene exacted devastating revenge in the Queen Mother Champion Chase. Shishkin’s return in the Tingle Creek in December at Sandown was another backward step, as he finished a tired third to Alan King’s Edwardstone. That put him briefly into centre stage until he in turn tarnished his gloss with a sub-standard Queen Mother warm-up over course and distance late last month.

The knives were out anticipating another Shishkin backward step on Saturday but, over half a mile further than he’d previously tried under Rules, he clearly found the more leisurely pace to his liking and the same finishing burst that had been the key to all his wins was even exaggerated by the trip.

Since the Festival last year, the spotlight has been so firmly aimed at Constitution Hill that Henderson has been allowed to take his time; and taking his time always means not listening to advice from “helpful” media, who never tire of trying to get trainers to allow a horse to run when they know it is the wrong thing.

Henderson has always regretted that he succumbed to the journalists’ clamour for Altior to take on Cyrname in a three-horse race over 2m5f at Ascot a few years back. That decision cost the horse his unbeaten chase record. Project to last November and there was no way he was going to allow Constitution Hill to run at that same meeting when he found on arrival at the track that the ground was unsuitably fast.

He made the right decision there, and now Shishkin is back, too. While he does have the Queen Mother option – he’s 10/1 for that - the two-and-half-mile Ryanair looks tailor-made and he’s the 5/4 favourite to stave off the always formidable challenge from across the Irish Sea.

With Constitution Hill, Shishkin and Jonbon for starters, and whatever else Nicky drums up, for once the home team will be going to war thinking a few races at least can help prevent an Irish slaughter in the Grade 1’s. That said, the multiplicity of dangers from over there in the handicaps remains a massive worry for the home team.

One jockey who will not be riding at his local and favourite course is Tom Scudamore who, after an unseat on Thursday at Leicester from a David Pipe 11/8 favourite, promptly announced his retirement.

Tom had quite a few rides for Raymond Tooth when he had jumpers and I always found him a joy to talk to with his ready smile. The worst thing about his retirement was when it was revealed he is 40; I still think of him and trainer brother Michael as in their early 20’s!

One day in the paddock somewhere I told him his dad Peter had only ever had two rides in my colours each at (non-Festival) Cheltenham and both were winners. “I know”, he said, adding: “the picture of one of them was in Mum and Dad’s toilet when we were growing up!”

ITV didn’t take long to sort him out on their coverage at the weekend and hopefully he’ll be in the team at next month’s Festival. I wouldn’t be surprised if one or two brown envelopes come his way over the four days either!

Monday Musings: Nicholls Clunk and National Disaster?

/in /by

Last weekend we had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, writes Tony Stafford. In the proceeding Monday’s piece I referred to Willie Mullins’ win haul, speculating without adding that a million Euro plus would have been won. Overall, there was €2 million on offer.

UK trainers and their owners have become so defeatist about the annual annihilation at Cheltenham every March that the thought of challenging them on their home turf at Leopardstown five weeks before C-Day is anathema at best, the road to suicide at worst.

So, even with the riches on offer there, only two UK horses were dispatched across the water, one on each of the days. Nigel Twiston-Davies offered up Weveallbeencaught for the opening 2m6f Grade 1 novice hurdle.

A winner at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day, he started the 7-2 second favourite, just half a point longer than the Barry Connell-trained Good Land, but after making the running under son Sam, he stopped quickly and finished last of eight. In the subsequent veterinary inspection, he was found to have a skinned knee but otherwise no physical abnormalities.

Day two last Sunday also brought a single runner, the Alan King-trained and double-greens owned Sceau Royal, a 9-1 shot behind 4-1 on favourite Blue Lord in the same ownership. As expected, he couldn’t match the market leader, finishing almost four lengths in arrears, but the other Willie Mullins horse, Gentleman De Mee, did to the tune of seven lengths. Sceau Royal earned connections a handsome consolation €13,500 for his third place in a field of five to bring career earnings to a few quid short of £700k.

Over recent seasons, Paul Nicholls has been loath to travel across to Ireland, scene of so many major triumphs in the past, and he also seems very cautious about sending his best horses to Cheltenham in March. Instead, he favours saving some of the best for Aintree the following month where the invaders do not quite match the ferocity and numerically overwhelming strength of Cheltenham.

But, while an advocate of Aintree generally, his defeatism where the Irish hold sway is also shown with only one entry among 85 in the Grand National, run this year on April 15th. His lone candidate, Threeunderthrufive, was last seen finishing a well-beaten sixth in Warwick’s Classic Chase. More of the Grand National later.

The domestic trials days for Cheltenham in March are mainly at the same track at the end of January – a fixture which almost surreally survived the prevailing frost – and Saturday’s well-endowed card at Newbury.

Nicholls had his team primed for the latter, with nine runners on the seven-race Betfair Hurdle card. His sole entry in that tough handicap hurdle (which he had won with Zarkandar and Pic D’Orhy previously) was Rubard. He was a well-fancied 8-1 shot but, in finishing only tenth, was just one of a series of severe disappointments for the Ditcheat handler.

The Betfair Hurdle was won with determination by Aucunrisque, reverting to hurdling after some good runs in novice chases. He held off the plotted-up favourite Filey Bay, trained by Emmet Mullins and running in the McManus colours, by a hard-fought length. The Gary Moore pair Teddy Blue and Yorksea were a long way back close together in third and fourth but will have big race wins to come I’m sure.

Aucunrisque, well handled by Nick Scholfield, is trained by Chris Gordon, who was once a bit of a comic turn around the Southern jumps tracks and a magnet for the Sky Racing TV cameras and interviewers both before and after his runners performed. He is now anything but – a serious and highly successful trainer who knows how to win big races.

That was the only race in which Nicholls did not send out the favourite and he must have had an early hint that maybe things might not go to plan when McFabulous, 4-6 for the three-runner limited handicap chase which opened proceedings, was never travelling under Harry Cobden and was pulled up a long way from home as Coeur Serein won, Jonjo O’Neill junior for his father taking gleeful advantage. Unfortunately, McFabulous was found afterwards to have an irregular heartbeat.

Next up was Barbados Buck’s in the much-loved Andy Stewart colours, going off 7-2 best in a handicap hurdle. He ran well enough for second and that was the finishing position, too, for Hitman in the Denman Chase, but the Philip Hobbs 16-1 chance Zanza galloped all over him to the tune of seven lengths. This would hardly have encouraged hopes for the Ryanair.

If Hitman’s run was disappointing, Greenatean’s in the four-runner Game Spirit Chase must have been simply demoralising in the Nicholls yard. Rated 15lb superior to Venetia Williams’ Funambole Sivola (off levels), he couldn’t go with him on the run-in and even lost second place to the Tizzards’ Elixir Du Luxe, rated 25lb inferior and only getting 6lb here. The Queen Mother Champion Chase seems to be receding into the distance.

There was another second place from 7-4 favourite Holetown Boy, annihilated in the novice hurdle by a smart Gary Moore debutant, Love Is Golden, recruited from the Johnston stable. Big things can be expected from him.

They can also be anticipated by the winning trainer of the final race, Aslukgoes, who retained an unbeaten record when battling home under Jack Quinlan in the valuable Listed bumper. Nicholls ran two here, 9-4 jolly Meatloaf, who was fifth, and Fire Flyer, 4-1 in seventh. The total prizemoney on offer for the fixture was paltry – in relation to the Irish trials meeting’s riches – at £365k. Nicholls’ owners collected less than ten per cent of that, just over 30 grand.

The Bumper winner was just the second success of the fledgling training career of Ben Brookhouse, whose father Roger owns and bred the horse. I met Ben first when he was assistant to Ian Williams, but last summer he and his father’s horses moved into the yard Wiilie Musson owns in Newmarket. He has followed, among others since Willie retired, James Ferguson, now a Group 1 winning trainer.

Aslukgoes won twice for Williams in summer bumpers, but the style of this success suggests he can be a force for the Brookhouse duo going forward in good company over jumps, maybe stopping off for the Festival Bumper and the Mullins hoards first.

I gave a passing reference to it earlier and on the evidence of this year’s entry for the Grand National, most English, Welsh and Scottish-based trainers can do little more than that these days either.

No race has had a bigger turn-around in the relative fortunes of home and Irish trainers than this greatest of all steeplechases and the unbroken sequence of winning raiders through the past five years looks almost guaranteed to be extended.

Of 85 entries, only 31 are trained in the UK and no domestic trainer has more than two horses in the field, those twin-prongers being Dan Skelton, previous winner Venetia Williams, Joe Tizzard, Henry Daly and Sam Thomas.

Lucinda Russell was the last UK winner with One For Arthur in 2017, following Mouse Morris a year earlier, but the decade before that was bereft of Irish success. Following Gordon Elliott’s explosion onto the scene with the 2007 winner Silver Birch, I seem to recall before he’d even had an Irish winner in his name, David Pipe, Venetia Williams, Jonjo O’Neill, Donald McCain, Paul Nicholls, Sue Smith, Dr Richard Newland and Oliver Sherwood won in succession.

Now the pendulum has swung so violently to the West that in the 2022 race won so impressively by UK-owned but Irish-trained Noble Yeats, he led home six more Irish and only two home runners in the first nine. Santini, fourth for Polly Gundry then, is not entered this time, but Fiddlerontheroof, fifth, is involved again and has not been seen since disappointing in the Coral, late Ladbrokes, even later Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury last November.

Three-time winner Gordon Elliott, two with Tiger Roll, alone has 21 entries, Willie Mullins eight and the rest of the Irish the remaining 25.

But to my mind, as I’ve said before, eight-year-old Noble Yeats is the one to beat once more. His stamina is outstanding and while we must wait for him to run at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup first, the 10/1 available now looks a gift. Help yourselves!

- TS

Your first 30 days for just £1