Monday Musings: Sir Mark’s Arc

/in /by

It was good enough to chat to Sir Mark Prescott and Kirsten Rausing in the sunshine of York before and after Alpinista’s fifth consecutive Group 1 success back in the summer, when she beat the gallant Oaks winner, Tuesday, in the Yorkshire Oaks, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday I contentedly sat at home watching her battling performance in holding off a series of strong challengers up the last 200 metres to collect the £2.4 million first prize in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

The press and media were queueing up again, on an awful Parisian autumn afternoon to catch the now emotional Sir Mark – yes, he does sometimes let that relaxed urbane countenance slip! This tender side, in full view if not quite revealing actual tears, followed the victory of the same grey five-year-old mare, as she equalled a record that had stood from 11 years before the popular Baronet was born.

It was in 1937 that Corrida had been the last of her age and sex to win a race that then was only 17 years into its history.  Now the Arc is rightly acknowledged as Europe’s championship race. Sir Mark, a trainer for 52 years, plotted Alpinista’s path to greatness with the same patience that for half a century he has set up maiden three-year-olds to win strings of races as they improve and learn on the job, starting low and frequently ending high.

In her case, Alpinista didn’t start low at all, winning on her first juvenile start at Epsom’s August meeting. That alone should have told us she was different. Quickly up to stakes company, although finishing only sixth in a Goodwood Group 3 and then filling fourth in a Listed race at Longchamp, her first of many overseas sorties, on her final juvenile start.

Sir Mark gave her a reappearance on July 20, 2020, no doubt because Covid had not only interrupted the early part of that season for everyone on the racecourse but inevitably delayed all the time-honoured training regime he had made second nature over the decades.

But having finished fourth in that Listed race, this time at Vichy, she made up for lost time with a victory at the same level at Salisbury before outperforming her 33-1 odds when second to the Oaks winner, Love, in the Yorkshire Oaks.

From then, there has only been one more defeat, next time in the Group 3 Princess Royal Stakes behind Antonia De Vega at Newmarket, her final three-year-old start.

Thereafter, Sir Mark has produced a two-season, eight-race unbeaten sequence that could have been modelled on some of his more celebrated handicap coups, except that the last six of the eight have been at Group 1 level.

Last year involved a late summer/autumn German Group 1 hat-trick starting with a defeat of future 2021 Arc winner Torquator Tasso in Hoppegarten, a race of which Prescott modestly said her rival was “unlucky in running”. There was no hard luck story yesterday, though, as Torquator Tasso was brought with a perfect run down the outside by Frankie Dettori, but Luke Morris and his grey co-conspiratress were never contemplating defeat.

Afterwards, Prescott said that Morris had been with him for 12 years, a span that probably leaves him at least as long to go to match George Duffield. There can be few occupations anywhere in this uncertain world with the career security of Heath House’s stable jockey. Or indeed as the quiet assistant trainer William Butler might ruefully opine, “Nor assistant to Sir Mark!”

That self-effacing gentleman at least is not threatened in his post, but it reminds me of an exchange at the Daily Telegraph when a colleague, anxious to know what would happen when his department boss – he was the deputy - was leaving in the coming weeks. The Sports Editor, said, “Don’t worry old boy, your present position is assured!”

It embarrasses me (a little) to say he took the hint and quickly left and, a few short months later, I was appointed Racing Editor since which time it’s all gone downhill!

Alpinista was one of six UK-trained winners on the two-day Longchamp card with three on the opening day, added to by another three yesterday. That tally does not include Aidan O’Brien’s Kyprios, who, I must say, put up the best performance I have ever seen from a flat-race stayer.

In the two-and-half mile Prix Du Cadran, the previous winner of the Gold Cup at Ascot, Goodwood Cup and Irish St Leger, a Galileo colt, cantered along for the first two miles of the journey, as first Quickthorn (briefly, but alas with little conviction) and then Lismore set the pace.

By the turn in, the Coolmore runner had taken the lead totally untroubled and started to draw away inexorably. There was still more than a furlong to go when he began to find it all so boring and showed a liking for the fans on the stands rail, so in the manner of the 2014 2000 Guineas winner, Night of Thunder, he thought he would come and say “Bonjour” to the Turfistes that side.

It’s easy to overstate the amount of ground conceded by such a manoeuvre, but it caused Ryan Moore a degree of discomfort for a while. Not to worry, he still had a full 20 lengths to spare passing the post, and probably three or more gears that Ryan hadn’t troubled to utilise.

Having seen off now retired Stradivarius and Trueshan at Goodwood, Aidan and the boys will be aiming at shorter rather than keep to the stayers but, still only four, it will be tempting to call in at Royal Ascot for the next few Gold Cups. Yeats was great; Stradivarius was very good for a long time, but this is a late-in-career phenomenon to add to the Galileo legend.

Having watched Luxembourg struggle in the soft ground yesterday, I wonder if Aidan is already thinking “next year’s Arc” for a Classic winner, albeit the Irish St Leger. He is improving so quickly the problem will be just which demanding prizes they challenge for.

*

It was good to have ITV cover the races up until the Arc and Sky Sports Racing the subsequent events, but when comparing what came up on those screens, with results as published in the Racing Post, there was generally a pattern to discern. Not in every case, but mostly, the punters watching on the box will have expected being paid out on those prices and will probably have been disappointed at what the bookies returned them.

The most blatant example on a day when Andre Fabre, three months my senior whereas Sir Mark is two years less a day younger than me, almost single-handedly kept the home fires burning with two Group 1 victories. His Jean-Luc Lagardere winner Belbek was 16-1 or thereabouts in both versions. Contrastingly, after his Place Du Carroussel finished strongly to deny Nashwa and Hollie Doyle in the Prix de l’Opera, Sky Sports Racing flashed up 66/1, but if you found her, the Post says she was a 41-1 chance.

Hollie got her revenge a little later when Richard Fahey’s The Platinum Queen became the first two-year-old filly to win the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp since the celebrated sprinter Sigy in 1978 after a fine performance by horse and rider. Her 9-4 on the box, was as low as 7-5 with the firms. Alpinista was only a shade shorter in the Post whereas Kinross and Frankie won the Foret at only 11/8. Don’t say the bookies never show mercy – they returned 17-10.

On Saturday, there was nothing to choose between 7-10 (Post) and 4-7 (SSR)about Kyprios while Anmaat’s 23-10 was better than the 15-8 from the broadcaster. There was a big disparity though in the 13-5 about William Haggas’ Sea La Rosa and the telly’s 7-2 in the Royallieu. Then again, with so many well-backed UK-trained winners, they must have been onto something of a hiding.

Now all the big players will come back to the UK, making the annual trek to the sales at Tattersalls in Newmarket to start inspecting the choice Book 1 offerings that will be going through the ring and will be their prime targets as they seek to re-stock.

I doubt Tatts will be worrying about their gas and electricity bills with 5%, the guineas rather than pounds, if you are too young to know, commission on every sale and the prospect of many millions of pounds, euro, dollars, yen and whatever else you care to mention, sure to change hands. It’s worth a watch, Tuesday to Thursday, to see exciting bidding, big-name owners and trainers and, like me, you can keep yourself warm at someone else’s expense.  Or else you can watch it at home online, but then you’ll be footing the bill!

- TS

Monday Musings: If you build it…

/in /by

Autumn was already setting in on the second Sunday of October last year when the Curragh staged the Paddy Power Irish Cesarewitch, a long-established two-mile handicap, writes Tony Stafford. The race was billed as a Premier Handicap, and it attracted the customary full field of 30, with reserves on the day not getting a run.

The race was won by Line Out, a 79-rated home-bred nine-year-old of the Lillingston Family’s. The victory would have been greeted with many a fond memory of the late Alan, the family fountainhead, whose son Luke and daughter Georgina (formerly Bell) are still very much to be seen around the racecourses and major sales in Ireland and the UK.

Worth £47,200, or its Euro equivalent to the winner last year, it was staged as usual the day after its big Newmarket brother. That race has had multiple name changes over the years, a process that has accelerated more in recent times, just as the prize money on offer has also fluctuated. On that point UK trainers might be entitled to say “alarmingly”, but none of them in any case has found it easy to deprive the Willie Mullins jumpers of their annual winner’s prize when he lines up his squadron of class jumpers every October.

Nicky Henderson managed it last year when the one-time Hughie Morrison grey eight-year-old gelding Buzz with Oisin Murphy (remember him?) galloped past Mullins’ mare Burning Victory, the rest toiling. Mullins had won the three previous editions while Roger Charlton and Morrison had scooped the prize in the two years before that.

I digress. With 30 in last year’s Curragh field, in a race oft considered an afterthought for unsuccessful cross-Irish Sea challengers, or a second division for those that didn’t get in the HQ contest, the truth was probably somewhere in between. True, the relative prize was a clue, but so were the ratings.

Only two of 30 to take part in the Irish Cesarewitch last year were rated 100 or higher. In the Newmarket line-up of 32 the previous day, nine were rated 100 or above.

I promised a look at the recent administrative history of the race, so here goes. In 2017, the last year of a long period of various bookmaking alliances with the race, Betfred carried the banner, and the race was worth £155k to the winning horse. He was Withhold, trained by Roger Charlton for Tony Bloom, chairman of Brighton FC.

The following year, amid the heady atmosphere of the BHA promise of vastly increased support for top staying handicaps, a £1 million Ebor was mooted, though never actually realised. In that context we still had the Dubai £500,000 Cesarewitch in 2018 and the almost unimaginable £307,250 to the Mullins winner Low Sun, was gratefully received by all concerned.

In 2019, though not quite in the half-million bracket, the Emirates Cesarewitch still carried a £217,000 prize for another Willie Mullins hurdler of repute, the classy Stratum landing another nice touch in the race for Bloom, this time at 25-1.

Then came Covid and two major drops in funding as Together For Racing International lent their apparently worthy, if a shade unwieldy, title to the name of the second half of the Autumn Double, as those old-timers still regard it. I’ll tell you in a minute why I should still have been in there with a chance bar Saturday’s bad luck!

But back to money. In the circumstances, to pull up a first prize of £124k to reward the 2020 heroine, Mullins’ Great White Shark, was to be applauded following Covid’s savage interference with the first half of that racing season. To manage only four grand more for last year was less meritorious.

When what remains of only 53 entries in the race on Saturday week turns up on Newmarket Heath, there could be a rare instance of the great race not filling. Newmarket takes a maximum field of 32 – but if they did away with stalls for that one race the track could accommodate the entire 53 comfortably. It was a shock, though, that the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch, by which name it now exists, is worth only £103,000 to this year’s winner, barely a third of what was available just four years ago. It does not seem anywhere near good enough.

Hopefully the much publicised, and subsequently de-anonymised in terms of participants, two days of urgent talks between key industry people in London last week trying to solve racing’s ills will eventually bring some optimism to the sport. I can’t wait for developments. Maybe Matt Chapman can organise a Masked Delegate competition for next weekend’s televising.

Now though I return to the Irish Cesarewitch, because a seismic shift has occurred where that two-mile Premier handicap of 30 runners on the Curragh is concerned. In 2022 it is all of those things, but rather than wait until after its Newmarket senior member has been contested, the now Friends Of The Curragh Irish Cesarewitch took place yesterday with a new €500,000 total fund and with €324,000 to the winner – making it seven times more valuable than in 2021.

Last year, Mullins and Joseph O’Brien each managed to dredge up five candidates from their middle-ranking handicappers for the race and Aidan also sent a couple of his own. Yesterday’s race, however, was a beast of a totally different colour. To understand the transformation in quality, where there were two last year rated 100 or more, yesterday there were 16.

Having experienced the uncertainty many times that goes with waiting to find out if your horse gets in a race, I can imagine the conflicting emotions in the Racing Office at Ballydoyle as the declarations cut-off time approached. In the event, Aidan’s gamble to wait for the race with his three-year-old colt Waterville paid the ultimate dividend.

Waterville had won only once in five starts but, significantly, that was on the one occasion he tried two miles, in a handicap off 84 at Limerick in June. He had only one more run, finishing second in a 1m5f conditions race the following month. Since then, the gamble – of Truss/Kwarteng proportions – was whether the new mark of 99 was enough. When those declarations landed, he was last of 30 to get in the race. You guessed, yesterday he overcame his inexperience, as the 5-1 favourite under Wayne Lordan, to pick up the first prize in a tight finish.

Interestingly, for once the two Cesarewitch races are spaced conveniently. Aidan also entered Waterville, a son of Camelot out of a mare by stamina influence Hernando, in the newly-styled Club Godolphin Cesarewitch. I expect he will now send the now market leader to try to defy his penalty.

The identity of the trainers of the first 15 horses home yesterday was a lexicon of that country’s star handlers, apart from Jim Bolger, who has hardly bothered training stayers for many years.

In finishing order, it was Aidan O’Brien, Willie Mullins x 2, Joseph O’Brien, Dermot Weld, Joseph O’B again, Jessica Harrington, Joseph with the next four, then the sole interloper although a man from a great Irish racing family in the person of Richard Hughes, before a final one more each for Aidan and Joseph and then Ger Lyons. That merely covers the first half. The profile of many of the beaten horses fits them for either Newmarket or the Champion Stayers race at Ascot the following weekend.

I hinted at a frustrating Cambridgeshire. In all the years I tipped for the paper it was one of my most successful races and I loved to stand at the top of the old grandstand and peer down with the binoculars as they approached the last six furlongs while swelling from blobs to finite form.

Watching Dual Identity there yesterday, for much of that now screen-aided nine furlongs, was simply a blueprint for an imminent Cambridgeshire win, so easily was he going. In the Kennett Valley Thoroughbreds colours carried with distinction by Dual Identity’s older teammate Sir Busker in the William Knight stable, it seemed just a case of queueing up to collect as he bossed the much smaller far-side group.

Andrea Atzeni pulled him out quite a long way from home, and with no feasible competition nearby, had no option but to kick him on inside the last two furlongs as he sensed the stands group had the advantage.

While Dual Identity, after striking the front moved inexorably further and further clear of his toiling main rival, the solid block of stands runners was gradually generating the power of the pack. Just as victory looked assured, in the last 50 yards the last few strides brought first one, 25-1 shot Majestic, then on the line a second, Bell Rock, both with 5lb claimers, to head Dual Identity, even though he gave no sign of faltering.

The fascinating point, as ever, will be in the handicapping of the race. Will the BHA handicappers treat it as a single entity, raising the winner a little more than the second and third (by a nose)? Or, rather, will he regard this as two races and have sliding-scale assessments of merit according to relative position on the course?

If the normal standards are to be followed, Dual Identity could represent a handicap certainty next time out. Then again, I thought he was before Saturday having watched the film of Sandown. I told Ed Chamberlin after the race I thought Dual Identity was one of the unluckiest losers of a big handicap I can remember. Of course, that was to forget all those races when half the field on certain days at Ascot, Goodwood, Newmarket, Newbury or indeed Ayr and Doncaster need not have bothered turning up so unequal were ground conditions on either side of those courses!

I’ll be off on Saturday to Ascot to test whether Dusky Lord should have been better rewarded in terms of numbers by the various bodies assessing his brilliant win at Ayr two weeks prior. Roger Varian has him lined up for the Group 3 John Guest Racing Bengough Stakes over six furlongs. If he wins that, Jonathan and the rest of the Dusky Lord partnership will be in clover!

- TS

Monday Musings: A Dusky Beauty

/in /by

Some weeks, I worry right until the moment when I finally open the keyboard, wondering what to put into these rambling epistles, writes Tony Stafford. Often, it’s a lottery, with random episodes of equal, often minimal, importance to weigh. Other times, like this weekend, I’m spoilt for choice.

Monday Musings is not an organ of record, unlike my long-term employer, the Daily Telegraph, its great rival the Times, or another of my early parking places, the Press Association. Even before then, on a local paper it was instilled in me to chisel out the “who, what, when, where, why, how and to whom” coda for story compiling half a dozen years before the start of my DT days half a century ago.

Among the formula’s most exacting adherents of PA vintage was David Thomas, son of the Sporting Life’s celebrated Chief Racing Reporter, Len, who had been for decades and still was a doyen of the 'paper. If his issue was a doyen of anything, it was repetition, as upon confronting a winning trainer after a race, he would ask, bright bowtie to the fore, “how many do you have in this year?”, “where does the owner come from?” and, more acceptably, “where will he go next?”

In fairness, the domicile of the owner was important, too, as local papers needed those lines from the exciting world of horse racing and sport to flesh out their parochial coverage of robberies, brawls outside public houses and the misdemeanours of local politicians. How I loved Police Calls at Leyton nick in metropolitan Essex in my first newspaper job on the Walthamstow Guardian! Up to a point! I presented “Tommy” with a 1972 copy of Horses In Training one day and dared him to ask another trainer his worn-out trilogy. He defied me, but not until the next day!

There are more than enough “proper” stories elsewhere in this comprehensive, authoritative electronic publication to keep everyone on point, and to allow me an old man’s self-indulgence. In reverse order, in best Miss World mode – if we’re still locked in the 1970’s – the heroes are Hughie Morrison, Charlie Appleby and Roger Varian.

Hughie has been around the longest of the three and equally I’ve known him the longest too. A shade chippier than the others, he finds plenty not to admire about the administration of the sport, and trains at his own pace. He takes any injury the horses sustain as if it were to himself and opportunities for his horses are minutely sought out. On Saturday, his scouring of the Pattern programmes led to two of his progressive fillies collecting Group 3 races, at home at Newbury and in France at Chantilly. The latter foray Hughie declared necessary as he reckoned there was such limited domestic opportunity for the cross-Channel traveller. “Just one other suitable race before Christmas,” he said.

She was Mrs Fitzherbert, a Kingman filly owned by Sonya and Anthony Rogers. Her emphatic success at Chantilly earned €40k for the win and a decent multiple of that in inherent paddock value for her legendary owner-breeders.

The Arbibs, father and son, were the happy beneficiaries of the earlier winner, Stay Alert, as her jockey David Egan needed to, for she was apparently securely trapped on the rail inside the last furlong. But after belatedly worming a small gap, his mount got him out of trouble with instant acceleration to be ahead and back hard held before the line.

Before this challenge against the boys, which brought not just a similar prize but also the promise of much more to come, Stay Alert had been in line for the big fillies’ race on Champions Day next month, and the way she accelerated will make her a threat to even the top fillies at Ascot. “Had she not,” Hughie reminded me beforehand, “given Nashwa a real battle at Newbury earlier in the summer?”

Egan, with confidence emanating from last weekend’s St Leger win on Eldar Eldarov, rather than shrink after the sacking following Mishriff’s too-late finish into second behind Vadeni in the Eclipse, was riding the second of four consecutive winners on the day, more of which later.

I wouldn’t say replacing him has been a conspicuous success – the Eclipse was by far Mishriff’s best run of an unproductive year! The many millions he won for owner and trainer back in Saudi Arabia early last year obviously counted for nought in the face of that one slight misjudgement on a track where any jockey – the best down -  can get into trouble even in a three-horse race.

Egan had his day in the sun while William Buick was off travelling to North America for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin. The champion-elect had two mounts at Woodbine in Canada, while as Buick can only sit on one horse and be in one place at a time, former Godolphin habitué, a certain L Dettori, had the gig at Belmont at the Big A – presumably Aqueduct was needed to fulfil some of its near-neighbour’s dates. [It was/is, as Belmont is under reconstruction - Ed.]

The three horses, Nations Pride at the Big A, and the juvenile Mysterious Night and French 2,000 Guineas winner Modern Games in Toronto, all bolted up. They showed, as if we didn’t know already, that North American turf horses are a pretty crummy bunch, relatively speaking at least. Each of the trio won by at least five lengths – cumulatively just over 17 – and picked up a combined $1,450,000 - £920,000 according to the Racing Post. However, with the pound at a long-time low against the dollar, it currently converts at a shade more than £1,250,000, and so made it a very worthwhile trip indeed for all concerned.

Buick will not have been even a trice concerned at Egan’s clean-up job, which also encompassed an impressive Mill Reef Stakes victory for Sakheer, who looked one of the fastest juveniles so far seen out. By common consent that put a classy gloss on an astounding day for his trainer Roger Varian.

With a second St Leger in the bag, Varian has been flying up the trainer charts in recent weeks, but even he would not have anticipated a seven-timer on a single day. The wins came nicely spread around the nation with three each at Newbury and at Ayr’s Western meeting and one at Newmarket. Had Cobalt Blue not been caught on the run-in at Wolverhampton it would have been an eight-timer!

I know I’m putting it at the bottom, but my race of the day, and one of amiable Roger’s septet, was Dusky Lord. This was his eighth run of the season and second win. I’d travelled a total of 1,800 miles to see each of the previous seven, in representing Jonathan Barnett, the football agent, one of those in the Partnership in whose colours he runs.

Six days earlier he had raced from the worst stall of all in the Portland at Doncaster, frustratingly as it was a target I’d suggested for him all year, and he was never able to overcome the disadvantage. David Egan, who won on him at Newmarket in the spring and finished a close second on the four-year-old at Glorious Goodwood, was adamant. “He ran well.”

Armed with that intelligence, Varian declared him for Ayr, happy he had not had too hard a race thanks to Egan’s sensible ride. While he missed by only a few horses and a couple of pounds to make the Big Show, he slid in almost at the top of the Silver Cup, albeit with a massive weight – 9st 11lb.

So, in front of the TV, I was happy to see Jack Mitchell, who had won on Dusky Lord at Newcastle last year, get him away well in the middle group. From then on it was 70 seconds of regret that I’d not taken another road trip – this time 975 miles, there and back.

From here let me leave you in the hands of Timeform. They reported: "Dusky Lord turned out again quickly, having been drawn out of things in the Portland, proved a revelation back in headgear <cheek-pieces>, showing much improved form, rare to see a handicap of this nature won with such complete authority; midfield, tanked along, quickened to lead over 2f out, drew clear, impressive; it’s hard to see even a big rise in the weights being enough to stop him being of interest again."

The Silver Cup has been an adjunct of the Gold Cup for at least a decade. I checked the last eight and each time the Gold Cup, as one would expect, has been run in the quicker time, always between 0.2 sec and 0.8 sec faster. Saturday’s big race went to now 15-time winner Summerghand, trained by David O’Meara. His time was 0.93 sec slower than Dusky Lord’s.

The Racing Post, to my mind, often does a fair bit of massaging of their speed figures. Summerghand’s figure was 72, compared with Dusky Lord’s 95, which represents a second and a half or seven and a half lengths' difference. Yet to arrive at such a low mark on what is clearly Summerghand’s best run of the year, they felt obliged to give him his smallest time performance of the season after 79, 75, 88, 76 and 85.

They clearly felt they had to minimise the figure for Dusky Lord as it would have been in the stratosphere. After the way he won, without being slightly challenged by his 24 rivals, the margin of the win and the fast time, Timeform have raised his mark from the high 90’s to 109. Phil Bull, Timeform’s founder whose whole ethos was based on the accurate interpretation of times, will be turning in his grave!

I think the partners have a Group horse of the future. What a day for Roger Varian, David Egan, Charlie Appleby, William Buick and Hughie Morrison! Not too shabby for Dusky Lord and his owners either!

- TS

Monday Musings: Doncaster Pays its Respects

/in /by

They stood in the owners’ lunchroom at Doncaster yesterday on Mike Cattermole’s cue and perfectly observed the requested two minutes’ silence, writes Tony Stafford. Then, on the big screen behind the excellent cold and hot buffet, was the unforgettable image of Her Late Majesty’s greatest moment as a racehorse owner – never mind winning the Gold Cup with Estimate – the grainy St Leger victory of her home-bred filly Dunfermline in 1977, her Silver Jubilee.

Alone now of the principals of that moment, the indefatigable Willie Carson is still very much with us. With that distinctive head looking down style, along with the rhythmic punching action, he kept Dunfermline in touch with the super horse that was the previously unbeaten and never again vanquished dual Arc winner, Alleged, and Lester Piggott.

Unbelievably, the filly can be seen closing the gap that Lester began to extend once taking the lead at the four-furlong pole. In the last furlong, the filly joined her rival and inexorably gained the advantage. You can see Lester pointedly easing Alleged in the last few strides – no sign of a rat-tat-tat response once he knew the Vincent O’Brien colt was beaten.

Seven years earlier, the same peerless pair, O’Brien and Piggott, had arrived at Doncaster with a similarly unbeaten American-bred colt in the shape of Nijinsky. In his case he did indeed win the St Leger but his exertions in becoming the first (and last) Triple Crown winner since Bahram in 1935 prefaced defeats in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe and Champion Stakes.

Alleged, a late developer whose fragile forelegs had persuaded connections to race him in Europe despite his dirt pedigree, did not contest either of the earlier UK Classics. Piggott’s restraint on Town Moor left him fresh enough to win his first Arc three weeks later when Dunfermline did well to finish fourth. He followed up impressively in Europe’s Championship race twelve months later before retiring to stud in Kentucky.

In another uncanny moment, as the Dunfermline race was being shown, and the Royal hearse was making its six-hour roadside-packed way from Balmoral to Edinburgh, trainer Ben Hanbury happened to sit down at the next table to myself. We showed our respective respects without talking and I’m not sure quite how I recognised the former Newmarket trainer, soberly dressed, without the colourful trousers he always wore at Keeneland where Midway Lady was bought.

She won five of her six races and was unbeaten at three in 1986 when she won both the 1,000 Guineas and Oaks. Injury prevented any further active involvement but she bred an Oaks winner in Eswarah, trained by Michael Jarvis, in 2005. You guessed it, Midway Lady was a daughter – the best daughter – of Alleged.

Earlier, on my way to the track, I listened to a Radio 5 Live broadcast where I’m sure I heard that Dunfermline, situated between Perth and Edinburgh, was to be one of the towns where the car could be seen.

I bumped into fellow Arsenal fan and Derby-winning jockey Willie Ryan (Benny The Dip, 1997) in the seats outside the Press Room as they milled around before the start of the big race. He had driven Frankie Dettori to the races, laughing as he related the former champion had cried off riding Emily Dickinson for the Coolmore team to partner another filly, Ralph Beckett’s Haskoy, for whom a £50,000 supplementary entry fee was paid.

“I’ve backed Emily”, said Willie. “Frankie keeps switching off winners”, he laughed. Ryan agreed that to consider the St Leger in any ground as a mile and three-quarters race was mistaken. “It’s a long 14 furlongs anyway, but here with that five-furlong run-in it’s really a two-mile grind”, he said.

Ryan works for Charlie Appleby in his day job – “From the floor, not on top anymore”, but went on to say that the trip on that track would be the worry for New London, the favourite for the race. His stamina appeared to run out in much the way of Alleged all those 45 years ago as he finished third behind the Roger Varian-trained Eldar Eldarov.

Frankie got one thing right, Haskoy going past the post three places ahead of Emily Dickinson in second, but what he didn’t do correctly was to satisfy the stewards that there was nothing wrong with his riding. They found he had caused interference to fourth home Giavellotto, trained by Marco Botti and ridden by Neil Callan.

They demoted Haskoy to fourth, promoting Giavellotto to third and also giving New London a knock-on promotion to second. It’s quite a big deal in prizemoney terms, second and third both doubling up their original earnings while Haskoy, far from gaining a profit on the deal after the £50k supplementary fee, is now in deficit. No wonder Beckett, “under the interference rules”, is planning an appeal.

If the last few days have been a changing of the guard in terms of the Monarch, it was very much a similar situation in the race itself. The previous five winners had all either been sons or grandsons of Galileo. Yesterday he didn’t have a representative and the only second generation runners were sixth-placed 150-1 shot El Habeeb, by Al Rifai, and last home Lizzie Jean (100-1), by Nathaniel. He died last summer, so a maximum of two more crops of three-year-olds can represent him as Classic contenders.

The winner, third-placed over the line New London and fifth home Emily Dickinson were all by Dubawi, Galileo’s sparring partner for the past decade. Now, with a freer field for a few years at least, he can enjoy a King Charles III-like interregnum at the top of the stallion charts until the next King of the Sires comes along.

For Varian it was a second St Leger triumph, following Kingston Hill eight years ago, but a first for David Egan, the highly personable and talented son of weighing room legend and shrewd bloodstock dealer, John.

I had the good fortune to be representing Jonathan Barnett, one of the owners in Varian’s sprinter Dusky Lord, along with part-owner Jennie Allen at her home course. We stood in the paddock together with trainer and rider before the race. Dusky Lord had a near impossible draw but ran well. I was delighted for both trainer and rider, for whom Eldar Eldarov looks a stayer to follow.

Over in Ireland Kyprios kept up the pressure in the staying ranks, the four-year-old seeing off fellow older gentleman Hamish in the Irish St Leger. By then his Goodwood Cup victim Trueshan had failed to deliver odds of 9-2 laid on in the Doncaster Cup, his erratic steering in the last 100 yards viewed low down from right on the winning line as Hollie tried to straighten him for a final flourish. Coltrane, expertly ridden by one of this site’s ambassadors, David Probert, was a deserved beneficiary of what Alan King clearly believes is the memory of Trueshan’s hard race at Goodwood behind Kyprios and Stradivarius on faster than ideal ground.

It was gloom all round for the Trueshan team of owners. Their best-known member, Andrew Gemmell, had taken the 10.30 train from King’s Cross, travel time 90 minutes and arrived via a taxi five minutes before Trueshan’s race – scheduled off time 2.45.

All through what remained of the afternoon, Tony Hunt, Andrew’s “eyes” for the day monitored the denuded Sunday service which promised delays and cancellations, so I thought it appropriate on such a day to offer a lift to Central London.

We had a lovely three hours listening to the Test match, reminiscing about the Queen – yes, I did meet her and shared a few words when she visited the Daily Telegraph and talked about reading the racing page every day! – and learning the latest about Andrew’s great staying hurdler, Paisley Park. What a day!

- TS

Monday Musings: The Brigadier and The Major

/in /by

What is or was your favourite flat racehorse? Once that is revealed the inevitable question, certainly to my own favourite, is why, or more likely, who was he?

I have been unequivocal about mine for more than 60 years. I had already played my first game at Lord’s for London Federation of Boys Clubs when Hethersett, owned by Major Lionel B Holliday, prepared by his private trainer, Major Dick Hern, was one of seven horses to fall in the 1962 Derby won by Vincent O’Brien’s Larkspur.

Hethersett, winner of the three-runner Brighton Derby Trial – oh for that race to be brought back! – beating the smart pair River Chanter and Heron (he of the Sandown race of renown) in a canter so that on just his fourth career start he was 9/2 favourite in the 28-horse line-up.

After the fall at Epsom he came back with a poor run on firm ground in the Gordon Stakes but then three months on from achieving one ambition, I was to taste my first example of a “touch”, three winners in a “Trixie” all in a day on holiday in Bournemouth with my parents and an aunt and uncle. They had grown-up things to do. I played pitch and putt alone at Tuckton Bridge at nearby Christchurch then got to a betting shop in Bournemouth that didn’t mind under-age customers, in time for racing.

I forget how much I collected after the wins of Hethersett (Great Voltigeur); Sostenuto, owned by Phil Bull, in the Ebor; and, Persian Wonder (later a multiple champion stallion in South Africa) in the Falmouth Handicap, but it brought a “put it away!” from my mum when I surreptitiously showed the wad to her from the table behind as we sat down for supper in a café that night.  After York I thought Hethersett was my sure thing then for the St Leger and he duly obliged at a nice price, too.

The Major Holliday thing was reinforced when a schoolfriend, Sim Galpert, proved to have an even deeper obsession with the Huddersfield industrialist, whose family firm eventually became ICI and lately Zeneca. One of the business’s biggest claims to fame was that they manufactured 11 million tons of TNT and never had a single loss of life in their factories.

Sim would bang on about the Holliday breeding – all the foals had the same initial as the stallions, Hethersett from Hugh Lupus and a later champion, Vaguely Noble, was by Vienna. Although we lost touch when we both left Central Foundation Grammar School in 1965, I’m sure the white, maroon hoop, armlets and cap stayed with him as they did with me.

Casualties were far more common in the irascible Major’s racing operation. Trainers came and went and at the end of 1962 Dick Hern abandoned ship and moved to West Ilsley, previously the base for Jack Colling who was retiring. I remember with all the venom of youth, regarding Dick Hern as a traitor, an opinion reinforced when Darling Boy, one of the horses he’d taken over, beat Hethersett on the St Leger winner’s four-year-old debut in the Jockey Club Stakes at Newmarket.

He never won in three starts under the name of S J Meaney, the head lad in Hern’s time, Holliday himself effectively the trainer then, and retired to stud for a brief but successful career. He sired Arthur Budgett’s Derby winner, Blakeney, before dying soon after from a brain haemorrhage, caused in Hern’s opinion by the effects of that fall in the Classic.

While Sim and I have never spoken in almost 60 years, two other long-standing friends and fellow racing obsessives have stayed in contact. One of them, Peter Ashmore, called to see if I was going to be at Tattersalls sales last Wednesday, and when I said I would he brought me a book of which he was gushing in his praise.

It is called Brigadier Gerard and Me by Laurie Williamson, published by Brigustbooks and is sub-titled, A Personal Journey Through Horse Racing. Chunky, large and with print comfortably sized for senior readers, it has a cover price of £14.99 and extends to 524 pages. Peter said once he started reading the book he couldn’t put it down. I opened it on Friday morning and finished it at Sunday lunchtime.

Laurie was Brigadier Gerard’s groom throughout his entire time in the Hern stable, getting him at the start of his two-year-old year by a fluke – effectively none of the senior lads there cared for his owners, John and Jean Hislop.

This is where my other pal, of even longer duration than Peter, comes in. He is George Learoyd Hill, like me from the London Borough of Hackney, but with a far more interesting life than mine to tell. That said, he says the same about mine.

George’s racing interest was even more immediate than mine and he still had three of his teenage years in hand when he started work at Turf Newspapers in Curzon Street, W1. There, various members of the Jockey Club would pop in and out, taking George under their wing. Old Etonians almost to a man, their number regularly included John Hislop, whom George often spoke to.

Later we were colleagues for seven years at the Daily Telegraph, before George moved on but we’ve stayed firmly in touch. A man with thousands of racing books in his possession, I’m sure this one will be winging its way to him before Peter gets it back.

Like George, Peter and me, Laurie Williamson had a father who initiated and then shared the interest in racing. When the young man had the good fortune to land on Brigadier Gerard it was the incentive for him to stay with the horse for the whole of his career which coincided with the conclusion of his five-year apprenticeship.

Unlike the three of us, Laurie had the wherewithal to keep a detailed diary, so that many of the incidents that would have been confined to the dustbin of a fading memory have been retained in full focus.

John, and especially Jean Hislop, the breeders and owners of Brigadier Gerard, come out as off-hand or even rude and when confronted by the young man who cared day and night for their champion, they never had the slightest interest in giving his opinion house room.

Laurie, after the entirety of the horse’s career, reflected that he had only attempted to speak to John Hislop three times, twice being completely ignored. The one time he did get a reply was before the 2,000 Guineas where although third favourite, the Brigadier beat Mill Reef and My Swallow, the two other champions of that incredible 1971 Classic crop. Laurie asked Hislop what chance he thought Brigadier Gerard had of beating Mill Reef and was told, “if he doesn’t beat him today, he never will!”

On the other hand, Lord Rotherwick, owner of Duration, the other horse Laurie cared for throughout the same period, was very popular with the lads, always talking to them enthusiastically when his horses ran. He was the exception rather than the rule in those days of Military-type discipline and deference in racing stables.

Through the book it became clear that the relationship between Major Hern and the Hislops was not harmonious. Over time their insistence on planning his races themselves rather than taking full notice of Hern’s undoubted skill and knowledge, possibly, in Williamson’s opinion at any rate, was a contributory factor in his sole career defeat in the 1972 Benson and Hedges (now Juddmonte) Cup, his 16th race of 18.

A winner from five furlongs to a mile and a half, Brigadier Gerard has only recently, 50 years on, been given the full credit in ratings terms by Timeform, one of several well-thought-out themes in a book which tries with some success to argue his charge as superior to contemporary Mill Reef, predecessors Ribot and Sea Bird II, Nijinsky, his senior by one year and the sole Triple Crown winner since Bahram in 1935 and more recent superstars Dancing Brave, Sea The Stars and Frankel.

He has an analytical and form-based method, one formulated with those many hours’ studying with his father the implications of the Brigadier’s training and racing. The one regret for me is that he didn’t ask someone like me, a racing person with journalistic, editing experience to run an eye over the finished copy.

Having grown up for all those Fleet Street days, including editing stories from Peter Scott and John Oaksey, two of the most oft-quoted writers in Laurie’s formidable offering, with the Daily Telegraph style book, I can be very pedantic – when I remember, even that was a while ago!  Laurie’s book suffers from a comical treatment of possessives to the extent it can halt the flow of consciousness. Happily, though, it never stops the marvelling at this work of a lifetime. Also, the detailed index has all the names, but as Eric Morecambe might have said: “Not necessarily in the right order”! Or matching the pages where they are alleged to be found either in some cases! That index needs another look, too.

I won’t go any further to spoil what I promise is a great read. I knew what was coming for almost of all of it, names, race distances and the like from half a century ago. But then it was still early in my time in racing journalism, and long-term memory beats short-term by a distance, almost in Brigadier Gerard fashion! Younger readers will also find it enthralling.

In conclusion, Laurie confesses he was ready for some time to leave what was basically a five-year term of virtual slavery. It was only the good fortune of having a great horse – in his and probably my opinion, the greatest of them all - to live with, and a boss he respected, to a degree, that kept him there. The dream of getting rides soon evaporated for most of the 18 apprentices promised as such that tended to be there at any time. Despite that, he says it was a period in his life he would never have changed as it brought him in contact with Jill, his wife and mother and grandmother to their children.

When Brigadier Gerard retired back where it all started at Egerton Stud in Newmarket for his career as a stallion, Laurie travelled with the horse in the box from West Ilsley and said his farewells. Later, John Hislop, having heard that Williamson was quitting the yard and going out of racing, issued a decree banning Laurie from ever visiting the horse in his new home. He never again saw the horse that had been the entire raison d’etre of his life for three whole seasons. Nice man, that John Hislop!

Dick Hern was a man of the old school, and his two principal friends among the racing press, Peter Scott, Hotspur of the Telegraph, and Michael Seely of the Times, were allowed where all others were not.

I recall rather fortunately getting to him first after Henbit won the Derby in 1980. I asked him what he thought about Henbit and the race. Deadpan, with no hint of excitement, just a little supressed pride, he said: “He’s a nice horse. I always liked him. That was a good race.” Get the book and see what life was like for boys in stables half a century ago. Laurie survived it and should be proud of the volume he produced. If you’re reading this, Laurie, and you have a re-print in the pipeline, let me correct those irritating literals and that baffling index!

- TS

Monday Musings: On Buick’s Title Charge

/in /by

The last time I saw Tony Hind, the super jockey agent who shares his time between being a Tottenham Hotspur fanatic and grooming jockeys into becoming champions, three weeks ago at Newmarket, he wasn’t taking anything for granted, writes Tony Stafford. “No, we’ll be going full on until it’s mathematically impossible for William to be beaten.”

Three weeks later, maybe even Bony Tony will believe the race is won. Buick, after a remarkable eight wins from 12 rides on Saturday and yesterday at Goodwood, has a lead of 42 over nearest rival Hollie Doyle – 118 to 73 and with a prizemoney haul of almost double at £3,966,000 to £2,065,000.

Ben Curtis with 70 is the leader in the north. Doyle’s husband, Tom Marquand, is next, his 68 wins bringing in £2,465,000, a fair distribution of earnings between the couple. “I’ll let you be the principal bread-winner,” says Hollie, “as long as I ride more winners and get the bulk of the press and media coverage.” Something like that anyway – they seem to be in a blissfully happy state all the time, however, so I doubt those issues concern them.

It might surprise many that fifth place in the table belongs to another Northern-based jockey but one without a vestige of a northern accent, unlike his pal, Keith Walton, who is Leeds through and through. A former pro boxer who now trains a stable of fighters, Keith also finds time to run his own electrical business while being a regular on northern racecourses and boxing coach to several jockeys. Mulrennan is on 67 wins, but those and the other 316 mounts he has benefited with his undoubted skills have generated only £708,000, a measure if ever it were needed that shames the prizes generally on offer at most minor meetings away from the big tracks.

It's just as well that Paul’s wife Adele has so quickly become a valued member of the ITV Racing team’s coverage, having been head-hunted after her excellent work as a racecourse rep for the BHA in the north. Like the Marquands – or is it the Doyles? – two incomes will be handy as the price of energy spirals out of control from October and beyond.

Hind’s concern about the mathematical possibilities may have smacked of belt, braces and even bicycle clips, but were understandable. I contend though that the actual moment when William Buick won the 2022 Jockeys’ Championship, a contest which runs for less than half the calendar year – in 2022, April 30 to October 15 – arrived on February 22, a full two months before hostilities were to resume after Buick’s near miss as Oisin Murphy only narrowly saw off his rival in a last-day thriller on Champions Day at Ascot last October.

Oisin Murphy, do you remember him? Three times in a row he was the champion who had managed to stave off the implications of the tortured existence that only was to become fully evident after that exhaustive enquiry by his bosses last winter.

In the way of such matters, until last night I had never closely read the line-by-line conclusion of the case presented by the BHA which itemised the various breaches of the jockeys’ code and the misdemeanours which the BHA chose to layer on to the hapless miscreant.

In brief, Oisin was given a year’s ban until February 2023 for having been found to have, in order, breached Covid Rules, misled the BHA, indulged in prejudicial conduct, and incurred two alcohol breaches. The charge of “prejudicial conduct” covered the conclusion that he had acted in a manner that was prejudicial to the proper integrity, conduct and good reputation of the sport.

Note the order of the charges. Two breaches of the Covid rules, pretty much in line with what was considered one of the most heinous forms of law-breaking in the UK at the time, understandably took the headlines.

Murphy, as champion jockey, enjoyed considerable earning possibilities away from the UK, notably in Japan where he was a regular and most welcome visitor, enjoying rides on fancied horses in many of the well-endowed races there. At the 2021 Breeders’ Cup he was clearly very happy when the Japanese horse Loves Only You won the Filly and Mare Turf race, as he could be seen smiling away in the background when she returned to the winner’s circle.

That was the case, too, when he rode the 50/1 Japanese-trained winner of the Distaff race that same day in California, Marche Lorraine’s success bringing a £759k prize to connections. Oisin will have collected - if in line with UK percentages- maybe £50k from that.

The Covid breach involved a holiday in Greece, at the time in the Red Zone, while instead he said he was holidaying in Lake Como, a less offensive part of the world in those dark days. That was the “misleading the BHA” part of his ‘crimes’. Three months after his ban, Murphy might have smiled inwardly upon learning of the £50 fixed penalties meted out to Boris and Carrie Johnson and Rishi Sunak when they were found guilty of being present at Downing Street parties which also breached those same Covid Rules.

True in the end, that sequence where in all 100 fines were meted out to various drinks party goers, resulted in the Prime Minister’s eventual fall. Oisin was probably fined effectively at least one thousand times as much in terms of potential earnings over the year as the PM’s rebuke. By putting all his bad eggs in one basket the BHA has probably given him his best chance of retrieving his reputation and self-esteem.

During his sabbatical, he did go on at least one of the racing-themed mercy horsebox convoys to Ukraine, organised by Charlie Mann earlier in the year, but he has pretty much kept a low profile. Everyone who admired his riding will hope he has been able finally to end the alcohol dependence that was an all-embracing companion.

The riders of yesteryear had many formidable drinkers in their ranks – ask Henrietta Knight about the early version of Terry Biddlecombe before he became a reformed man as her husband in his later years. In the post-war days the top jockeys would be regulars in the night clubs in the West End of London, feted by owners, gamblers and bookmakers before going to the saunas at the public baths early in the morning to dry out.

They would still report for action at the track the next afternoon, showing little sign of their lifestyle, easier in those days as there was no fear of being tested.

Hopefully Murphy will be starting with a clean slate, but he may find he is returning to a sport where, largely through outside influences, it has become more difficult for him to attain a similar level. Much debate lately has been about the paucity of horses of a sufficient ability level to match the number of races framed in the higher echelons.

Small fields have been a constant for the last few weeks but that has been as much a function of the impossibly dry weather of the summer. What has been clear is that some of the top stables seem to be able to provide runners in pretty much all the valuable races around the country, leading to the domination by those jockeys connected to them.

William Buick’s rise, apart from his talent, has needed him to be associated with a top team and it has taken 16 years to graduate to the number one spot. By the time he rode his first ten winners in 2006, Kieren Fallon and Frankie Dettori had already finished their years as champion. In that year, Ryan Moore collected his first title, after which Seb Sanders and Jamie Spencer, a previous winner, shared one. Paul Hanagan, Richard Hughes, Silvestre De Sousa, Jim Crowley and Murphy all had their turns in the intervening period.

Buick achieved it with the constant support of his father Walter, a Scots-born jockey based originally in Newmarket who migrated to Scandinavia where he was a multiple champion jockey and later a trainer in Germany. William was born in Norway but frequently came over to England for the summer holidays and I remember his father bringing him and sometimes his brothers to the press room at Newbury in his early teens. When he took his first rides, aged 16, he weighed five stone wet through.

Those early trips involved spending time at Kingsclere riding out on the gallops, developed by Mill Reef’s trainer Ian Balding and further improved by Andrew, Ian’s son, to whom the young Buick was apprenticed. Over the years he has expanded his client base to the extent that only one of the Goodwood winners was trained by his principal employer, Charlie Appleby. Three were for his original boss Balding, with one each for Eve Johnson Houghton, Roger Varian, Simon and Ed Crisford and George Boughey, powerful allies all.

His annual haul of 140 wins – so 22 gained before the Saturday of the Guineas meeting, the official start of the championship – is a fair tally considering he spent most of the winter and early spring in Dubai, and has been shared between 33 different trainers. The best of all worlds.

With the power of Godolphin and the skill and support of Charlie Appleby to fall back on, Buick looks set for a good spell at the top with this most emphatic of titles behind him. Maybe Oisin Murphy will have something to say about that? Maybe Hollie can continue her progress and possibly have a major thrust for a first female title? The future though seems all about William Buick. Then again, after our experiences in the UK in particular and the greater world in general in 2022, what can we ever take for granted?

- TS

Monday Musings: A York Debrief

/in /by

They came in their droves to York on Wednesday just to see the best horse in the world, writes Tony Stafford. They saw him and he delivered by six-and-a-half lengths from the horse who had won the richest horse race in the world – if not this year, last.

A lot had been invested in the event. Not just the £1 million prize fund of which £567k went to the winner, Baaeed if you weren’t sure. A decent chunk went to the second, Mishriff, to bring his money-haul to £11,677,544, four times as much as Baaeed’s. Third home Sir Busker also picked up a six-figure prize for Kennett Valley and William Knight.

It was the razzmatazz of the whole week, seemingly trying so hard to lighten the general mood of gloom surrounding the sport and country. It appeared to try to ape the Melbourne Cup with the jockey introductions and the like before Saturday’s Skybet Ebor, the half-million total fund of which makes it the richest handicap in Europe.

That of itself is not much of a distinction, as no other major racing administration has anywhere near the preponderance of handicaps, save Ireland of course.

Everyone got very excited when the William Haggas-trained four-year-old made it ten out of ten, approaching the flawless record of Frankel, who retired to stud after 14 unblemished runs. Although Frankel was also a four-year-old when he left Sir Henry Cecil’s care for Banstead Manor stud, he had won six races before June of his three-year-old season including the 2,000 Guineas. His shadow Baaeed had not even made his racecourse debut before June as a three-year-old.

Six races were crammed within 101 days in 2021 between June and October. Then Haggas gave him seven months to mature before another quartet, all at Group 1 level, in 95 days from May to August. The last three have been a mirror image of Frankel’s: Royal Ascot’s Queen Anne, Goodwood’s Sussex Stakes, and a first try beyond a mile in the 10½ furlong Juddmonte.

The incentive for the York feature for the Khaled Abdullah homebred was obvious as the late Saudi prince had sponsored the race for many years. This time, once the path had been set for Baaeed, the only argument going around was whether Haggas might try to persuade Sheikha Hissa, daughter of the late Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum, to have a think about the Arc rather than end his career Frankel-like in the Champion Stakes later in October.

I had a lovely couple of days in York, securing a bed within walking distance of the track – although I did go by car – with Jim and Mary Cannon in their four-story abode in a quiet square near the Mount school, Alma Mater of Dame Judy Dench, so they told me.

Jim, a native of Carlisle, is a one-time Labour councillor in East London who moved with Mary to York nine or ten years ago and has had shares in loads of Wilf Storey horses for all that time and a little before. It’s like home from home and I can do my work, rifle the fridge and wait for him to rustle up something tasty for dinner.

That happened the first night, but on Wednesday I was in Delrio’s – known by all the racing crowd as “The Italian” and the only thing that beats it for its conviviality is the length of time it takes to turn orders into drink and especially food.

I had my back to the table immediately behind me, which among its ten squeezed-in bodies were several of the TV broadcasters. I’m pretty sure I did identify which of them pronounced: “It’s my mission to get him <Baaeed, no doubt> to the Arc”!

The way Baaeed finished off after coming from some way back offers every hope that he would stay the extra two furlongs, but would it make any difference to his appeal as a stallion? For all Sheikha Hissa and her family’s sporting and sensible policy of continuing her father’s work in a more streamlined manner, the fear that he might be beaten over a mile-and-a-half in the mud against the French (or Germans, or indeed Sir Mark Prescott’s Alpinista) should be incentive enough for the team to stay with the Champion Stakes.

Alpinista was the star of Thursday when she saw off a revived Tuesday – a little short of peak I was led to understand beforehand – in the Yorkshire Oaks. I always enjoy a chat with Sir Mark and, after he conducted interviews with every television station from the UK, Ireland and Dubai I finally got a word. His impeccable navy-blue pinstripe suit was set off with an immaculate tie, and it was only after studying him as I waited that I realised he had tucked in the tail part of it.

I said, “As you know I’m a year all but a day older than you, and I’m not too old to learn from you.” When I explained it was the tie issue that I noticed, he said he always does that. Then, after speaking to Richard Frisby, advisor to Kirsten Rausing, Alpinista’s owner-breeder, on the topic, he put me straight. “You learn that at prep school,” he revealed. I must have missed that!

Nobody missed the fact that Alpinista has won five Group 1 races including one defeat of Torquator Tasso, last year’s Arc winner. “We were lucky to beat him as he didn’t get a run,” said Sir Mark modestly.

So many amazing things happened at York. Like the 14-length win of Hughie Morrison’s ever-improving stayer, Quickthorn. Morrison and owner Lady Blyth had the option of a second shot at the Ebor, which he lost narrowly last year to Sonnyboyliston, who went on to win the Irish St Leger for Johnny Murtagh.

Instead, they took the bold step of taking on Stradivarius and Trueshan in the Lonsdale Stakes over two miles on the Friday. It was always possible that Trueshan may continue the Alan King policy of missing races when the ground was unsuitably fast and that was his eventual decision.

By that time, Stradivarius was already out with a bruised foot, so it was left according to the market as a match between Quickthorn, winner of the Group 3 Henry II Stakes at Sandown in May and a Group 2 in France last month, and Andrew Balding’s Coltrane.

Coltrane, winner of the Ascot Stakes under a big weight and then easily in a Listed over two miles at Sandown, proved best of the rest in the “finest stayers’ race ever run” when fourth in the Goodwood Cup behind Kyprios, Stradivarius and Trueshan at the Glorious meeting.

In the event, it was no contest. Tom Marquand took Quickthorn to the front, steadily building on an initial lead with consistent 12-second and change furlongs, and by the turn into the straight he was miles clear. Afterwards, Hughie told me, “I hadn’t realised how much he eased him.” The track record would have been his as well as a 20-length win at least.

I think the absent big two would have been fully stretched to have any more luck at staying with him than those that remained. He may well go the Irish St Leger route as that Group 1 win would look very nice on his CV, though that would very likely mean a shot at Kyprios.

Morrison is out of love with the Melbourne Cup nowadays after the controversy over conflicting veterinary conclusions by his own advisors and the local Flemington panel which ruled his Marmelo out of running in the 2019 edition on soundness grounds after he had finished runner-up to Charlie Appleby’s Cross Counter the year before.

One trainer perfectly happy at continuing his love affair with that race is Ian Williams and he almost carried off an Australian-style coup at York this week. It is commonplace for Australian trainers to run their horses in the days coming up to the big race, sometimes even three days before and over vastly shorter than the two miles of the Cup.

On Wednesday, Williams won the £51k to the winner two-mile handicap with Alfred Boucher by three lengths. That gave Alfred a 4lb penalty, enough to slot him in at the foot of the Ebor field. After much debate, he decided to run the six-year-old again, reasoning he would never be able to run for three hundred grand any time soon.

Backed down to 8-1 and benefiting from a fine ride by P J McDonald he was beaten just a short-head, as Williams asserted, “victim of a Frankie Dettori masterpiece.” He added, “Dettori went off fast and wide of the field, crossed him over to the front and then steadied the pace. He rode the socks off the rest of them, no criticism to P J.”

How Williams must have wished Dettori’s brief exile from the Gosdens over the Stradivarius Royal Ascot issue had been more permanent. He chose his best ride on their Trawlerman to deny what would have been one of the headlines of the week.

Talking of the Melbourne Cup, last year’s winner of that race, the seven-year-old mare Verry Elleegant, has pitched up in France in the care of Francis-Henri Graffard, presumably with the Arc as her main objective.

Frankie was recruited for yesterday’s run in Deauville and I wonder whether her Aussie owners were enamoured by this ride, sitting well out the back, asking for an effort turning for home, and then only plodding on at one pace. She finished last of seven and will need to have a form transformation if she is to add to her massive home reputation over in Europe. Connections were putting on a brave face and suggested a more suitable rehearsal will be the Prix Vermaille in three weeks' time.

- TS

Monday Musings: A flip flopping title race?

/in /by

Last week I said something ill-advised, writes Tony Stafford. What’s strange about that you ask? I put it down to my infrequent acquisition of the tangible paper version of the Racing Post. When it was my first act every morning, even before the long-discarded and much-lamented bacon sandwich, I quickly turned to the stats and particularly the trainers’ tables.

Having chanced upon one at Goodwood, I noticed how far Charlie Appleby had stretched clear in his attempt to back up last year’s first title. No sooner had my comments hit the web site last Monday, I chanced a look at the online paper and noticed the lead had shrunk, hardly surprising in retrospect given the flurry of winners that flow every week it seems from Somerville Lodge.

Partly to purge my guilt at such sloppy work, I vowed to get the latest possible state of play and was somewhat surprised to discover that three trainers are within £1,000,000 of the Godolphin maestro as we went into the three days that lead into the four-day York August meeting.

Monday morning will reveal how many horses will be taking on the William Haggas 2-5 shot, and the world’s highest rated racehorse, Baaeed, going for his tenth unbeaten career run in the Juddmonte International on Wednesday.

Eight were in at the latest acceptance and these include two other Haggas nominees, Alenquer and Dubai Honour. All bar one of the remaining quintet is trained from stables in the top five. This year, with barely half the prizemoney haul of Appleby, Aidan O’Brien is still in fifth, but his pair are both 33/1 chances, along with recent York Group 2 winner Sir Busker, poised to pick up another chunk of change for trainer William Knight who would not mind a withdrawal or two this morning.

As Monday morning is upon us, Charlie is on £4,055,331; Haggas £3,643,155; John and Thady Gosden – John won the three previous titles with only moral rather than official help from his son – has £3,166,384 and Andrew Balding £3,006,850.

The first observation is that Haggas need only win with Baaeed not only to claw back the deficit in one go – the Juddmonte carries a first prize of £567,000, the most valuable of the 28 races of the week – but move some way clear.

That eventuality is not lost on Appleby who has Irish 2.000 Guineas winner and Newmarket 2,000 runner-up Native Trail in the race. He is third favourite behind the Gosdens’ Mishriff, who will be aiming to restore his reputation after his weaker than expected finish when third to Pyledriver and Torquator Tasso in the King George three weekends ago.

That race was even more notable for the abject flops of the two star three-year-olds in the field: Irish Derby winner Westover and Oaks runner-up Emily Upjohn. Yesterday at Deauville, Coroebus, denied a run at the last minute behind Baaeed in the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood – stablemate Modern Games stepped in to land the £215k consolation spot that day – was a weakening fifth as the Gosdens’ filly Inspiral bounced back under Frankie Dettori to win the Prix Jacques le Marois for her breeders, Cheveley Park Stud.

If Appleby cannot win the Juddmonte he will be deadly serious about trying to get a similar figure for second thus limiting the shortfall to £350k or thereabouts. Should Mishriff have a similar bounce back as his younger female stable-companion contrived yesterday, he might still be in with a shout.

York’s importance in the context of the trainers’ title race is stark. None of the four days offers less than £1.4million in total purses. Overall, it’s slightly north of £6 million.  All four of the leading trainers have multiple entries over the first three days; Appleby with 15, Haggas 17, the Gosdens 12 and Balding 13.

The final figure for Saturday will not be known until lunchtime today but Haggas has three of the first half-dozen in the betting of the Ebor, making my weak joke last week of “what’s he got in the race?” little help to anyone. I bet if he could arrange it he would love to win it with Hamish for his dad, Brian.

Now a six-year-old, Hamish must have had a litany of injuries to restrict his career after four seasons – all he did as a two-year-old was to undergo a gelding operation – to 11 runs. He would have delighted the Yorkshiremen, father and son, when he won the Melrose as a three-year-old and it is with some surprise that he heads the weights for this ultra-competitive race over course and distance on Saturday.

Many though will prefer the chance of Haggas’ ante-post favourite Gaassee, backed down to an almost suicidal price of 6/4 for the Old Newton Cup at Haydock last time. He was a creditable third after getting the kind of interference that favours the bookmakers when they seem most certain to be victims of a massive punt.

A son of Sea The Stars running in the Ahmed al Maktoum yellow and black, he had won four in a row after a debut third leading up to Haydock. Over an extra two furlongs here he could be even more devastating.

Win or lose, the spice in the trainers’ title race – which should boil down to a private battle – will liven up York and it is hoped that Maureen Haggas is on the mend after a fall from her horse in Newmarket. It happened when the animal became unsettled in face of a dog on the training grounds at an unpermitted time of day.

It seems Maureen broke two vertebrae in her neck. If she is out of action for long that will be as big a handicap that her husband could countenance, such is the influence of Lester Piggott’s elder daughter within the family stable.

Having been at Ascot for a non-runner on Shergar Cup day, and the resulting loss of my phone in the car park, I’m fully fitted up with a new device and number. I’m also going to York on Wednesday. I had hoped the same horse, Dusky Lord, would be getting in the sprint handicap which opens Wednesday’s card but 37 were entered and I made a miscalculation as to where he might end up in the long list.

I guessed 27 or 28 but happily it was 24 and we need two to come out. Another near miss would be very frustrating as he’s only an 8-1 or 10-1 shot in the market after his great run over five furlongs when second at Goodwood. Fingers crossed.

One race I always enjoy on York’s opening day is the Acomb, a seven-furlong juvenile contest that is nowadays a Group 3. All 27 runners have run either once or twice, many having won, and the qualification is that they cannot have won before July 7.

Five of the last six winners have been trained in Yorkshire, Kevin Ryan, Tim Easterby, Richard Fahey and Mark Johnston the last twice, doing the honours. Charlie Hills was the one “foreigner” in that period, with subsequent Irish 2,000 Guineas winner Phoenix of Spain four years ago. He is now a stallion at the Irish National Stud.

Last year’s winner Royal Patronage runs in the Highclere colours and, after beating Coroebus in the Royal Lodge at Newmarket last autumn, he was second to Desert Crown in the Dante before finishing miles behind that colt in the Derby. He is now with Graham Motion and recently made his US debut at Saratoga.

The 2020 winner Gear Up followed the Acomb by winning the 10-furlong late-season Group 1 in Saint-Cloud but did nothing as a three-year-old. Switched to Joseph O’Brien, he has now won twice, last time in a Group 3. He has the Melbourne Cup as his objective.

It hasn’t always been thus for Acomb winners. In Hong Kong they love to buy English-trained horses for loads of money and then change their names, so much so that trying to trace them through the Racing Post library can be troublesome.

I spent quite a time tracking down the 2019 winner Valdermoro, who won the race on his third start having already been successful the previous time. The Post record shows the race to have been won by a beast called Perpetuum. He does surface with Valdermoro’s pedigree in Hong Kong 16 months later having been gelded and presumably bought for a small (or maybe a not so small) fortune.

His new owner Mr Kameny Wong Kam Man had the doubtful pleasure of witnessing his pride and joy running four times, the first three at Sha Tin, the last at Happy Valley, adorned each time with a tongue tie, for the Tony Cruz stable.

He finished 13th of 14, 14th of 14, 9th of 9 and 12th of 12, after which he never appeared again. Win the Acomb, it can lead to feast or famine! I hope Kameny has had a bit more luck in his horse recruitment since then. Maybe he should stick to the old adage in future: “Change the name, change the luck!”

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Shergar, Disappearance and Team Games

/in /by

They say you learn from your mistakes, writes Tony Stafford. If that is so, how come I managed to lose a mobile phone ten yards from the place in Ascot’s number two car park on Saturday, going home after a low-key Shergar Cup, where I mislaid the last one, never to re-surface?

The process was identical. Speak to a friend between the track and the car park; close the phone, open the car and rest the device on top while the luggage (straw hat and Racing Post) is placed inside. Drive off.

Last time I got to Legoland before I realised my missing means of communication. This time I was past Slough and closing on the roundabout leading to Pinewood Studios before I twigged. All the James Bond films were part-produced there. Wonder what he would have done?

Back to Ascot, scrabble about in vain on the grass-denuded ground – I’ve never seen that car park so sparsely-occupied or less strictly monitored - and leave details at the track’s Reception with two very helpful ladies.

Sunday was devoted to buying a sim card, some call minutes and trying to figure out vital numbers. In my prime I knew every number – as I did every horse in training, honest! My knowledge of the latter is much diminished, maybe partly as there are so many more races and meetings nowadays. As remembering phone numbers is no longer needed with lists to speed dial from, hardly half a dozen of the 150 or so that resided in Saturday’s lost soul are securely known. Honestly!

August was always reckoned to be the silly season in the newspaper business. There was even an Ian Balding horse called Silly Season in the mid- and late-1960’s who won plenty of races and was a great favourite with racegoers, including me.

August 2022 will take some beating for silliness. We’ve had no rain, heatwaves, inflation, war, strikes, disgraced politicians and the prospect of massive mortgage rate hikes and crashing property values. It’s mad and almost unrecognisable from even a year ago when we were still entrenched and totally pre-occupied with Covid.

It’s still there, but like Ukraine we’ve become all Covid-ed and Ukraine-d out with everything else we have to contend with.

What’s all that got to do with racing you ask? Well that also seems to get sillier by the week. The Shergar Cup was a great innovation two decades ago, but this latest episode suggested to me that it has played itself out. Frankie Dettori still turned up, but the team idea, once earth-breaking, now seems contrived.

Prize money was lavish, of course, but that doesn’t guarantee much of a response, so much so that having been scheduled for 12 runners each race, Ascot and the BHA decided to cut it to ten, with the fear of some teams having less than equal opportunities.

One race did indeed have only eight acceptors – and one of those came out on the day too – but the horse I was there to see on behalf of its owners, was number 11 and of course, he stayed in his box. Nothing came out of his race, but he had to travel from HQ in case one did. Hopefully he’ll make the cut at York.

Two other relatively new additions to the Racing Calendar are in the process of their second year of activity. Last Thursday, the first of six late afternoon/early evening fixtures comprising the Racing League was staged at Doncaster. Seven races, each worth a total value of £50k, all handicaps and mostly 0-90, but occasionally 0-85, attracted decent fields.

Teams of trainers and jockeys representing six regions in the UK, as well as one under the Ireland banner, take part. All six races are staged on Arena racecourses, with Lingfield this week and Newcastle (two), Windsor and Southwell to follow, concluding under lights at Newcastle on September 15. All are shown on Sky Sports Racing.

Meanwhile the second big idea, the Sunday Series, will come to its conclusion, with its sixth edition also, at Sandown on August 21st.  Once again this caters for an almost identical portion of the horse population, in this case mainly 0-85, but with the odd 0-90 and at Sandown a 0-95. There is a single maiden race on the Sandown schedule of seven races, but with a much-reduced prize. Yesterday’s fifth chapter was at Haydock, all six staged at non-Arena tracks and shown on Racing UK.

Where there is a reported £2 million to share out with the Racing League, that drops to more like £1.4 million for the Sunday Series, with its usual first prize being £15k rising to £18k at Sandown. While any stable can have Sunday Series runners, trainers and the horses they regard as suitable for the races have had to be registered for the Racing League.

It seems silly – that word again – that the East of England team in the Racing League extends to as far as 32 yards mostly in Newmarket with many of the very top involved. As each team can have only two representatives in each race, ridden by their nominated riders, even those Newmarket or rather the East, handlers might find it tough to get a runner.

They are at the foot of the table after the first day when London and the South are leading. Time was when Andrew Reid, in Mill Hill, was the only trainer with a London post code. He’s no longer in operation sadly.

The awful thing, for all the energy of the people that run the events, is that my reaction as a reformed punter is “so what?”  Racegoers can hardly be expected to adhere to any team for all Matt Chapman’s conviction. They want to back winners!

Owners lucky enough to get a horse in one of the three out-of-the-norm events can be rewarded by much better money than for normal races in those handicap categories. But it is far from easy for ordinary horses to get a run and even when they do, even tougher to win one.

To cater for the Racing League, races have had to be taken away from existing programming, thus limiting opportunities for stables that have not been registered. I have been told that notification of when that registration could and should be made had not been easy to find on the BHA site, or timely so for that matter.

The Shergar Cup started at around the time that Peter Savill was the boss of the BHB, the regulator's previous guise. Now Savill has intervened in the debate on whether the number of races and fixtures should be reduced. A figure of 300 - William Haggas among other top trainers likes that number – seems the starting point, but at a time when the BHA seems less able to control either fixtures or the individual races in them, with the tracks calling the tune, it will be an uphill battle.

Racecourses, in these times of falling attendances, are aggressively opposed to any reduction as their media rights return is based on the number of races staged. Arena is one grouping apparently implacable in resisting any cutbacks, but the trainers want fewer races, with the available money to be shared out to bolster the races and cards that remain.

One Racing League trainer, Joseph Tuite, listed in the Wales and the West team, will not be participating.  The Lambourn handler had a complement of 25 in the 2022 edition of Horses in Training but when last week he announced he would be closing his stable, he was down to a bare nine or ten.

His plight reinforced my conclusion that the biggest stables simply get bigger and more powerful. The handicap system plays to their advantage as they monopolise the 0-90 categories. Their best horses can be left to the Stakes races. Those lower down the scale get workable marks after their qualifying runs and can exploit the system to the detriment of the smaller stables – and that’s the 50-80 strong yards, not just those like Tuite’s.

With three wins in the Shergar Cup on Saturday, one 0-90 Classified and two handicaps, William Haggas is the ideal trainer to illustrate the point. So skilful has he been in playing the system, he is the acknowledged master of producing winners of valuable handicaps, often running up multiple sequences.

With 12 wins from his 46 runners over the past fortnight, he had an astonishing 27 (around 60%) of them starting favourite. He is most unlikely to catch Charlie Appleby as he goes unchallenged at the top of the trainers’ table. But, with his yard so stocked with lightly-raced, progressive handicappers, he has clearly supplanted the Gosden yard as the most feared challenger for the biggest handicap prizes in the programme. For a start, what’s he got in the Ebor?

- TS

Monday Musings: The New King of the Stayers

/in /by

Listening to one racing show last week I was surprised to learn that the broadcaster talking about the Goodwood Cup had not known the race distance had once been two miles and five furlongs rather than the two miles of nowadays, writes Tony Stafford. Why would he, he probably hadn’t been born when the last marathon was staged in 1990?

Funnily enough, as they went over the winning line on Tuesday, the thought crossed my mind that if the longer distance – midway between the two and a half of the Gold Cup and the just short of two miles and threequarters of the Queen Alexandra – was still in operation, the verdict would not have been any different.

We were used in the days of Ardross and Le Moss between 1979 and 1982, when both won the Gold Cup at Ascot twice and then three Goodwood Cups between them, to small fields being the order of the day.

They used to doddle around and then the favourite would generally put in a burst two furlongs out and take the race. So far removed were they from the run-of-the-mill staying handicap performers of their time that few were ever persuaded to take them on.

Not today though. Just as at Royal Ascot and the Gold Cup, first prize here was £283k, with places starting at £107k, through £53k, £26k, £13k and £6,000 for sixth, the lavishly endowed Glorious Goodwood meeting, backed by Qatar, the money was identical all the way down. Nowadays, there’s nothing lost in brave defeats with that sort of remuneration to go with them. There are plenty of poorer prizes around.

The Gold Cup had revealed a new star, although the betting before Ascot’s showpiece left us in no doubt that Kyprios was “expected”.

Slinking away after his fourth in the Lingfield Derby Trial in May last year, Kyprios looked anything but a potential champion stayer. But the Aidan O’Brien recuperation centre has no peer and, when he came back 11 months later to win a Navan Listed race at 5/1 over 14 furlongs, the son of guess who was on his way. You guessed, Galileo, of course.

Bookmakers were alerted now, so when he went on to a four-horse Group 3 at Leopardstown three weeks later, he was a 1/10 chance and won by 14 lengths. In the Gold Cup, he won narrowly from last year’s Derby runner-up, Mojo Star, in a race where Stradivarius took most of the headlines. His defeat was not the main issue, but it was more significant for the sacking, temporarily for the Gosden stable, and permanently by owner Bjorn Neilsen, of the champ’s long-time partner Frankie Dettori.

Mojo Star wasn’t there on Tuesday, but Stradivarius was, with a new partner in Andrea Atzeni, and also Trueshan, enabled to take his chance to repeat last year’s defeat of Stradivarius in the race by the bountiful employment of the Goodwood watering system.

On a day when there were plenty of owners and trainers grumbling at the significantly altered ground, it brought to the race the treasure of Trueshan who had been pulled out late both for the Gold Cup and Queen Alexandra after a couple of anxious and eventually frustrated weather watches by trainer Alan King and his owners.

He did get his June date though, up at Newcastle the following week when, from a mark of 120, he carried 10st8lb to an unthinkable win in the Northumberland Plate, causing the handicapper to put him up to 124.  So what a race we had in prospect and that’s without considering the other sextet who wanted to push on into the elite grouping.

Most obvious of these was Coltrane. Andrew Balding’s progressive stayer was second in the Chester Cup, won the Ascot Stakes and then a Sandown Listed (by ten lengths). Add the Group 1 winning Irish mare Princess Zoe, and Melbourne Cup bound Enemy and you have the deepest of deep races.

Sometimes an appetising prospect can fall flat, but not this time. In the home straight, with outsider Thunderous leading narrowly from Kyprios, the other three top contenders were winding up for the finale. As Thunderous dropped away leaving Kyprios in front, Trueshan loomed up on the outside, causing commentator Simon Holt to anticipate him and Hollie Doyle going straight past and win the Cup for the second time.

Then, on the inside, having extricated his mount from a brief mini-pocket, Atzeni challenged with the indomitable Stradivarius and his run proved longer lasting than Trueshan’s. But having faced both challenges, Ryan Moore, riding as well as ever this summer, asked his mount for a response and readily saw them off.

Riding rhythmically with his stick in his left hand, Moore called in Kyprios’ hidden resources and the answer was instantaneous. Kyprios was going away at the finish and although the winning margin was only a neck it was clear-cut. It was generally accepted that the early pace had been steady, but they came home to such good effect that the time was comfortably below standard.

Afterwards Moore suggested that, if there had been a stronger pace, Kyprios would have won more easily. Only four, he has years ahead of him and he could possibly run up a sequence in the Gold Cup and Goodwood Cup to match Stradivarius and Yeats, his own much-admired forerunner at Ballydoyle. Had it been at 2m5f, all three would have still been at the forefront and you have to conclude that the result would have been no different but maybe more emphatic in favour of the younger horse.

The best news was that Stradivarius, tipped for retirement leading up to Goodwood, may now go on to the Group 2 Lonsdale Stakes at York. Worth half as much as the Goodwood Cup, victory there would still be a worthwhile day out as the prospective stallion continues his farewell tour.

*

I had a nice chat with Charlie Appleby on Tuesday when he was still disappointed that his 2,000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes winner Coroebus was unable to take up his attempt at ending Baaeed’s flawless record in the Sussex Stakes. With eight from eight in just over a year and a passable imitation of Frankel in terms of his career stopping off points, William Haggas’s four-year-old was the inevitable focus of attention, but Appleby did well to dig out another Classic winner of 2022 to tackle him.

Modern Games won the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French,2.000 Guineas) on his comeback this year, and although twice a beaten favourite in Group 1’s in France since - when third to Vadeni in the French Derby and then a close fifth to Tenebrism at Deauville - he is a solid top-level performer.

Appleby’s sharp footwork brought a £215k second place in a race worth precisely double the Goodwood Cup. He edged out last year’s Sussex Stakes heroine, Alcohol Free, who most recently had won the July Cup at Newmarket. Baaeed, held up, breezed past them both with economy and disdain. The margin in distance was one and a half lengths; in class, considerably more.

I loved Haggas’s assessment of the performance:

“It was like riding the Tour De France on a motorbike.”

True words, and some of his fellow trainers, who day to day struggle to match his skilfully-placed and “thrown-in” handicappers, often have a similar sinking feeling.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Red Letter Weekend for Lambourn

/in /by

One training centre above all others was at the forefront of the action this weekend just past as four (or technically five) of its incumbents joined in the bonanza with wins of varying importance, writes Tony Stafford.

It was a rarity for me not to have been at the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot but instead I went to Newmarket. I’m glad I did for it was the day reserved as a memorial to the late football man and Newmarket races adherent Glenn Roeder, who always used to love a chat whenever we bumped into each other on one HQ course or the other.

What was marvellous was to find the superbly produced brochure for a two-day silent auction. Late last night when I looked at the site, 90 of the 95 listed items had bids totalling, addition permitting, more than £125,000, with some time to go, all destined to the benefit of the Brain Tumour Association. It was a brain tumour that Glenn fought with such courage for the last decade of his life but to which he finally succumbed aged 65 in February last year.

Midway through the programme, I had a chat with one Lambourn trainer battling valiantly to revive his career after his sacking late last year from Michael Owen’s Manor House Stables in Cheshire after many years’ success.

The trainer of course is Tom Dascombe, who started the New Year effectively with no horses and no stables. Now he has 21 in three rows at Uplands Stables in Lambourn, famously, in the second half of the last century, the base of the great Fred Winter.

Much later Charlie Brooks held the licence, then its former owner Charlie Egerton (who still owns the house and garden, but not the yard according to Tom), and latterly Warren Greatrex – now up the road at Rhonehurst, the fiefdom for 30 years of Oliver Sherwood.

If the village just from that snapshot seems like a rather incestuous enclave, that’s pretty much the case. The place does spread out though with such as Charlie and dad Barry Hills and Nicky Henderson out one way, and Clive Cox and his even more famous landlord, John Francome, radiating in another direction from the village hub.

As we started to talk, a racegoer came along and congratulated Tom on his first winner since his removal from his comfort zone where his tally in reverse order for the ten previous seasons from last year had been 60, 41, 67, 77, 59, 75, 45, 62, 56 and 79.

The winner, the 48th runner of the year from 17 horses to have gone to the track, was Felix Natalis in a handicap at Newbury. There must have been much reassurance that Felix had been ridden by his old partner, Richard Kingscote.

I asked Dascombe about how it all started for him with horses and he said that his family had been from Bristol and when he was young they used to go to Weston-Super-Mare: “If you led the donkeys on the beach they would let you have a free ride. It all came from that”, he said.

I mentioned what I had recalled in this column when Kingscote rode the Derby winner, Desert Crown, and how, years previously, I had met his grandmother who was working as a cashier at a Tesco store in East London; she had proudly told me about him when I presented a Racing Post to her early one morning. “My grandson’s in racing. He’s a jockey called Richard Kingscote.”

I asked Richard about her a few days after the Derby and, after establishing which grandmother it was, he confirmed she is still with us but did not go to the Derby. Kingscote, contrary to my amateur sleuthing, did not come from the East End like that relative, but rather from close to where Dascombe grew up.

Tom came into the lunchroom on Saturday frustrated after his solid handicapper Miramichi, who won four in a row last summer, was obliterated by first-time handicapper Francesco Clemente. An unbeaten Dubawi colt, he was running for only the third time for the Gosdens and owner-breeder Peter Brant’s White Birch Farm.

The margin was nine lengths and Dascombe said: “I’ve got a nice horse here, but the way the programme is framed he will have to be so lucky to find a race he can win off with his mark. There’s always a three-year-old like today’s winner, which is probably a future Group 1 horse, able to get an easy race as they get their careers started. No wonder owners are persuaded to sell horses when they get to a certain level. It can only get worse in the future,” he said.

Happily for Dascombe, things got better yesterday when Misty Grey, a five-year-old gelding and the top weight for Chelmsford’s feature, defied 9st 13lb, again with Kingscote in the saddle, winning by half-a-length and collecting a £25k first prize. Where there’s life there’s hope, Tom!

Two of the five trainers I mentioned at the start were at that time within minutes of the biggest triumph of their lives. Willie Muir, who nowadays trains in conjunction with Chris Grassick, sent his hard-knocking five-year-old Pyledriver to the King George.

In a market dominated by the Irish Derby winner Westover, trained by Ralph Beckett, and the Gosden pair of Emily Upjohn – considered by many an unlucky second to Tuesday in the Oaks – and Mishriff, similarly portrayed after his fast but futile finish second to French colt Vadeni in the Coral-Eclipse, Pyledriver was largely unconsidered in the betting.

Similarly under-estimated was last year’s Arc winner, Torquator Tasso, and in the event, while this year’s Classic form was left in tatters, these two veterans of many battles had the final furlong to themselves as the other quartet trailed home well beaten.

Westover’s fifth-placed finish, 18 lengths behind the winner, could have been explained by his making the running, a new departure, and at an exaggerated tempo, too. As likely, the race may have come too soon after his Irish Derby exploits: however easy a Classic win appears, any horse has to run hard to win one. Emily Upjohn was simply too free in the first half of the race; she would not be the first filly to shine brightly for a while but fail to sustain it. It appears talk of a second Enable was premature. [It generally will be. Ed.]

Muir’s renaissance has been allied to his unearthing of Pyledriver, winner of the Coronation Cup last year and second in it last month. Altogether the winner of seven races, he has earned more than £1.8 million and his toughness should ensure a lot more.

Whether an Arc can be one race for him, that is the target, but I believe Torquator Tasso, last year’s winner of France’s great race, might have the greater scope for improvement in the second half of the season. This was only his third race of 2022 and the ground was faster than ideal.

The next Lambourn resident to share in the weekend wins was Owen Burrows. Last summer at Brighton, on one of my first post-Covid racetrack visits, I sat talking to Owen who was telling how all the trainers with horses of the recently-deceased Hamdan Al Maktoum were fearing the future. “There’s going to be a big meeting in Dubai and we’ll learn more soon,” he said.

The massive reductions that eventually resulted might have shaken up racing a good deal, but the positive effect was that it enabled other owners and trainers to buy otherwise unavailable bloodstock at auctions. Burrows’ own numerical string at his new base at Farncombe Down Stables in Lambourn has been significantly reduced.

What has not changed is his ability to win races. Already in 2022 he has ten wins to his credit – his annual scores were usually in the mid-20’s – but from only 34 runs. Remarkably these have yielded just short of £500,000 in prizes, a tally only bettered in a whole season once – last year.

His weekend winner was Alflaila, a three-year-old Dark Angel colt in the Shadwell Estate Company colours, who collected £28k for his win in the Skybet-sponsored Pomfret Stakes, the main event on the final day of the Go Racing in Yorkshire Festival at Pontefract.

The other in-form Lambourn trainer has been Archie Watson with three wins over the weekend, two ridden by Hollie Doyle who has been in terrific form lately. One race Archie didn’t win though was Ascot’s lady riders’ handicap on Friday when Micky Hammond’s Carnival Zain and Becky Smith raced away from Alazwar and Brodie Hampson, Archie’s partner.

Hammond was also on the mark at Pontefract yesterday when his progressive ex-French Piecederesistance won nicely. In the calendar year 2022, Hammond is already on 49 wins, including 16 on the level, which is only three short of his highest-ever figure in more than 30 years as a trainer.

Another to be setting records is William Knight. It had been twenty races since his six-year-old Sir Busker had last won, at Royal Ascot in the Royal Hunt Cup Consolation race straight after the Covid break. He had been placed many times since but gained a first Group 2 win in the Skybet York Stakes on Saturday. The seventy-odd grand prize has pushed Knight beyond the best season’s prizemoney of his career.

- TS

Monday Musings: First World Problems

/in /by

All is not well in the United Kingdom, writes Tony Stafford. No, not the fact that racing in the Midlands and South today and tomorrow has been called off because of the expectation of heatwave conditions. Everything seems to be grinding to a halt, apart from Covid which is enjoying an unexpected out-of-season revival.

We used to talk about “First World problems” when the wealthy had some of their expected enjoyment interrupted. Now we’re more like a Third World country, maybe not quite at the stage where, according to one much-used definition, “A country which struggles to meet basic human needs”, but one where daily frustrations are occurring more frequently wherever you look.

Covid of course has much to answer for, not least in the breakdown of international air travel. Contagion decimated (yes, I know it means reduced to a tenth! – so used advisedly) passenger travel and even as demand and eligibility to fly have begun to return to normal, staffing still has not.

On two days last week, Heathrow and Stansted, two of the three biggest airports in the UK, had problems for two of our leading stables. Much was made of Emily Upjohn’s being stranded at Stansted prior to her planned departure for Dublin and the Irish Oaks on Saturday. She might not have beaten Jessica Harrington’s Magical Lagoon, following on from her Ribblesdale Stakes victory, but she would have started favourite.

Incidentally, the Ribblesdale was also mentioned for the Gosden filly as a likely consolation after her narrow defeat by Tuesday in the Oaks at Epsom.  For a few strides on Saturday, another Ballydoyle distaff dredged up from the never-ending (until two years’ time anyway) supply of Galileo fillies, in the shape of Toy, loomed; but Magical Lagoon, also a daughter of the great sire, saw off her late challenge in determined style.

The other sufferer was a human one. Hughie Morrison had enjoyed a nice trip to Paris for the Bastille Day card at Longchamp on Thursday and, after a leisurely evening celebrating Quickthorn’s smooth victory in the £62k to the winner Group 2 Prix Maurice De Nieuil, he set off for Heathrow on Friday.

I needed to call him that morning and received a text instead saying, “Plane unable to land at Heathrow as it is too busy so have just landed back in Paris.” I haven’t had need to call Hughie since but trust he has managed to get back to base somehow in the interim.

Quickthorn, who was runner-up in last year’s Ebor to subsequent Irish St Leger winner Sonnyboyliston, is one of 84 horses nominated to next month’s renewal and contenders will be flexing their muscles aiming at the £300,000 first prize. Yes, don’t worry Gary Coffey, I am aware both Desert Crown and Quickthorn are by Nathaniel, and Westover by his Galileo contemporary, Frankel.

Meanwhile Emily Upjohn, denied a shot at the £240k available for Saturday’s Irish Classic, could be nominated this morning for a race worth three times as much as early as this weekend. According to the bookmakers, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes has three potential leading contenders, the respective Derby and Irish Derby winners, Desert Crown and Westover, and Emily Upjohn.

The guaranteed starter is Westover and it is a great shame that Sir Michael Stoute has confirmed Desert Crown will miss the race with a “foot niggle”.

No doubt Chris Stickels will be throwing the water on in a valiant attempt to provide a tolerable surface for all who show up. Fast ground versus a £700k prize: a truly First World problem!

The obvious drawback to an Emily Upjohn challenge is Mishriff, also trained by the Gosdens. His fast finish at Sandown after David Egan found trouble in running in that small field was highly creditable. By the way, that was by no means the only time young Master Egan got there too late in recent rides.

The main race every year on the evening Bastille Day card is the Grand Prix de Paris, effectively the French counterpart to the Derby since the shortening of the distance of the Prix du Jockey Club to 10.5 furlongs (2100 metres).

While the Jockey Club winner, Vadeni, went on to win the Eclipse Stakes from the aforementioned never nearer Mishriff at Sandown earlier this month, five-length runner-up El Bodegon was one of three international challengers for the six-horse Grand Prix prize.

James Ferguson’s runner was preferred in the market by Roger Varian’s unbeaten young stayer Eldar Eldarov, who had won the Queen’s Vase at Royal Ascot. Ferguson’s colt, a Group 1 winner as a juvenile in France, won their domestic argument but the Jockey Club form was turned over. Onesto, trained by Frank Chappet, had been fifth at Chantilly but came through to win here from another French colt, Simca Mille, the neck runner-up, with the Newmarket pair well behind in third and fourth.

Some of the weekend’s most exciting sport came at Newbury when the Weatherbys Super Sprint was, as ever, a highlight. It provided an all-the-way win for Eddie’s Boy, a throwback flying juvenile winner for Archie Watson who appeared to have gone away from his initial style of training, but with Hollie Doyle’s assistance reverted to type. Eddie’s Boy went off like the proverbial substance off a shovel and never looked likely to be troubled by any of the other 19 speedsters in the field.

The win came 90 minutes after a similarly facile victory by Little Big Bear in the Anglesey Stakes at The Curragh. The 2-5 shot, one of a bumper weekend of O’Brien/Moore juvenile winners, had previously won the Windsor Castle Stakes when Eddie’s Boy was third.

The Ascot second, George Scott’s Rocket Rodney, had gone on to win the Listed Dragon Stakes at Sandown and on Friday, Chateau, fourth at Ascot for Andrew Balding, won Newbury’s Listed Rose Bowl Stakes with a strong finish. Some race the Windsor Castle, normally the weakest of the Ascot juvenile contests, is turning out to have been.

The most compelling performance of the lot though was undoubtedly the first appearance in the UK of the now William Haggas-trained German import, Grocer Jack, who was bought for 700,000gns at last year’s Tattersalls Autumn Horses In Training sale having only recently clocked up his second career victory on his 14th start.

Admittedly, he had compiled a good record in Group 3 company in France last summer, winning once, and the year before was third over the line to In Swoop and the following year’s Arc winner, Torquator Tasso, in the German Derby before being disqualified when a banned substance was found in his post-race sample.

After the purchase, the now Saudi-owned five-year-old raced once in his owner’s country, finishing fifth in a Group 3 on the under-card of the Saudi Cup, in which Mishriff finished last having won the race 12 months previously.

Then Grocer Jack had a run-out in early June in France, finishing fourth, so hardly a performance that prepared us for what was to come at Newbury. Sent off by Tom Marquand in front in the Listed bet365 Stakes, the Grocer appeared to be taking matters into his own hands by racing very freely. The conventional thought was to expect Grocer Jack to come back to his field. He didn’t, and instead stretched the lead out to nine lengths by the finish, a margin that could probably have been more likely extended to 15 had Marquand wished.

The only reason I sat up and took notice of the horse is the memory of a song, called An Excerpt From a Teenage Opera from 1967 by an artist called Keith West – I know it’s a while ago. The subject of the song is Grocer Jack and it relates how he disappeared from the corner shop he ran for many years

Near the end, there’s the line, repeated more than once which says “Grocer Jack, Grocer Jack, he won’t come back!” He didn’t!

- TS

Monday Musings: Horse Traders

/in /by

For a few years now I’ve had a constant companion on my bedside table, writes Tony Stafford. Horse Trader, published in the early 1990’s and written by Patrick Robinson with Nick Robinson, tells the story of Robert Sangster’s unlikely path to the pinnacle of international racing and breeding.

I’ve read it cover to cover at least six times and when I tell you it must be the best part of 250,000 words (at least three times as long as my sporadic offerings over the years) that’s plenty of reading material.

Nick Robinson, like the young Sangster, prospective heir to serious money, back in the late 1960’s had knowledge of racing through family connections. Over time in a Liverpool coffee house then favoured by the sons of leaders of Northern industry, he imbued his friend, the heir to the Vernon’s Football Pools fortune, with a similar love of the sport.

Without Nick Robinson there would have been no Sadler’s Wells, no Golden Fleece, no Galileo. None of the many champions of the past 40 years to have emanated from Ballydoyle and its adjunct Coolmore stud in its two distinct phases. The first, which goes to the end of the book in 1992, is basically pre-Arab domination.

Then there is the second period where the skill and enterprise from Vincent O’Brien’s successor, the not related Aidan, linked always by the constant of John Magnier, Vincent’s son-in-law. Magnier of course was the man who recruited the young O’Brien to succeed Vincent as well as embracing Michael Tabor and later Derrick Smith to the party in place of such as Sangster and Danny Schwartz as well as others who dipped in and out, like Stavros Niarchos.

At one time the owner himself of more than 1,000 horses worldwide and at the time of the book’s conclusion, owner of shares in all the best Coolmore stallions, Sangster’s destiny seemed secure. His six children, sons Ben, Guy and Adam and daughter Kate from his first marriage, and Sam and yet to be born Max from his third, could anticipate a never-ending stream of wonderful thoroughbreds in the family ownership.

But, as Sam said when I suggested it to him one day last year: “As if!”  Recently though, the wider family fortunes on the racecourse have shone, particularly with Saffron Beach, the four-year-old filly trained by their Australian-born step-sister Jane Chapple-Hyam, daughter of Sangster’s middle wife, Susan mark 1. Winner of the Group 2 Duke Of Cambridge Stakes at the Royal meeting last month, Saffron Beach is owned by Ben’s wife Lucy, James Wigan, and Ben and Lucy’s son, Olly.

The success of the Sangster, O’Brien, Magnier formula only came to its conclusion as the competition from the Arabs strangled the team’s buying power in Kentucky. For more than a decade their team of unrivalled experts had monopolised the best-bred and best-conformed individuals almost to the extent of “what we want we get!”

In some of the latter years, that buying power had greatly eroded and people like Schwartz, who was accustomed to put up his few million dollars every July (as it then was) and sit back and wait for the Classic and Group/Grade 1 wins to roll in and the stallions to roll off the production line, could no longer rely on that certitude.

Classic Thoroughbreds was the would-be replacement scheme whereby Vincent thought the Irish racing fan would take the opportunity to buy into his proven “buy and win the biggest races” formula. It needed, though, many thousands of small shareholders rather than a few major players taking serious financial positions to work.

It did initially succeed, to the extent that Royal Academy, the yearling O’Brien coveted above all those of the 1988 Kentucky yearling crop, won the July Cup and then later memorably the Breeders’ Cup Mile. Ridden by Lester Piggott on that never-to-be-forgotten day at Belmont Park in October 1990, only weeks after Piggott’s release from his prison term, he came past the whole field to win under his 54-year-old jockey. But it was unsustainable.

Meanwhile, Sangster had bought Manton, the historic Wiltshire training estate, spending lavishly under Michael Dickinson’s brief stewardship. The first year’s meagre return of four wins inevitably ended the Dickinson era and as MW went on to win major races in the US, Sangster battled on.  Barry Hills had a successful stint there but when Barry moved on to open a public stable in Lambourn, his assistant Peter Chapple-Hyam took over, making an instant impact.

Dr Devious had been a hard-working two-year-old, winning even before Royal Ascot, where he finished runner-up to Dilum, before his Superlative and Dewhurst Stakes successes. Sold to Jenny Craig and husband Sidney, he was bought principally to run in the Kentucky Derby and after a prep race second in Newmarket he shipped to Kentucky but he could finish only seventh to Lil E.Tee.

In such circumstances he was in some ways a surprise Derby winner, returning after such a short time, his toughness enabling him to beat St Jovite by two lengths. St Jovite got full revenge in the Irish Derby, but the Doctor gained a second narrow win over his rival in the Irish Champion Stakes for Jim Bolger and owner Virginia Kraft Payson that September.

Earlier that year, 1992, Rodrigo De Triano had given Lester his final English Classic win in the 2000 Guineas, adding to it at The Curragh with the Irish equivalent a fortnight later. He did take his chance in the Derby under Piggott and actually started the 13-2 favourite, but could finish only ninth of 18. Returned to shorter trips, further success came in the Juddmonte at York and in the Champion Stakes. He was sold as a stallion to Japan.

Chapple-Hyam was still at the helm when Commander Collins won the 1999 Superlative Stakes and Racing Post Trophy in front of young Sam Sangster, but then the rift came. John Gosden took over as the Millennium turned with Jimmy Fortune as his stable jockey. After Robert’s death in 2004 his older boys kept the show going with Brian Meehan as their trainer.

Success was never far away and Meehan, previously assistant to Richard Hannon, always had a sure hand with young horses and also developed many high-class fillies. Over the years he has won big races all around the world - one of his Breeders’ Cup successes came with a first-crop son of Galileo, the three-year-old Red Rocks who won the Turf race in 2006.

In later years the Sangsters sold Manton, although Ben still lives in Manton House and has also moved the mares and young stock of the family’s Swettenham Stud to land close to the house. Martyn Meade, now training in conjunction with son Freddie in another part of the 2,000-acre estate, is its owner.

When I started this piece, I used Horse Trader simply because of an encounter at Newmarket on Saturday afternoon after Isaac Shelby, trained by Brian Meehan, won the Group 2 Superlative Stakes. The colt is owned by Manton Thoroughbreds, a syndicate set up by Sam Sangster, who buys all the stock, usually as yearlings.

Earlier in the meeting, before Isaac Shelby ran a brave race to remain unbeaten after a drawn-out battle with 5-4 favourite Victory Dance, another Sangster yearling buy, Show Respect, was an excellent second in the Group 2 July Stakes. He is also trained by Meehan.

I’ve had the privilege of visiting Manton many times, and as I go through Marlborough and along the half-mile-plus long drive down to the Meehan stable area, the excitement never fails. It was there that I saw the gallop when Derby favourite Crown Prince flopped many lengths behind Delegator. I backed the latter at 33’s that morning, forgetting to add the words “each-way”. Sea The Stars had the temerity to beat him!

Sam and Brian, along with Brian’s wife Jax, were suitably thrilled on Saturday when all the chat, much of it fuelled by an on-the-ball Matt Chapman, was about the last winners of the Superlative Stakes to win in those colours – Sam has secured the use of his dad’s green, blue and white for Manton Thoroughbreds – to much approval on Saturday.

Everyone remembered Derby winner Dr Devious – sold by Robert to Jenny Craig, the California diet magnate, before his Classic win – but Sam also recalled Commander Collins. “I came that day with dad and I think I was ten or maybe eleven.”

Incidentally, Commander Collins was named after one of Robert’s great friends, Old Etonian trainer AK “Tony” Collins, who found fame or rather infamy for his role in the Gay Future affair, when some of the horses linked in multiple bets rather mysteriously did not manage to leave their stables on that Bank Holiday. The one that did, Gay Future, won and with bookmakers prevented from laying off commitments when the phones went down, it caused a furore in those innocent days. You couldn’t cause a whole telephone exchange to be out of commission nowadays – or could you?

Well A K spent Friday afternoon in the owners’ restaurant at Newmarket in the company of another grand old stager, former trainer Bill Watts. From a famous Newmarket training family, Bill left to go north to Richmond, Yorkshire, from where he sent Teleprompter and Tony Ives to Chicago to win the Arlington Million in 1985. Watts has moved back to Newmarket since retiring from training.

I managed a quiet word with Sam when the excitement died down a little later and said: “I always told you that you were the most like your father,” a suggestion that always brings its share of embarrassment for him. But he did say: “You know Horse Trader? Dad is wearing a tie on the front, and I’ve had it in my possession for years, but am wearing it today for the first time,” pointing to the rather old-fashioned neckpiece.

Trying to find potential Classic and Group-race winners in face of such incredible competition is getting ever harder and to secure the Night Of Thunder colt Isaac Shelby, Sam had to stretch to 92,000gns, one of his more expensive buys. The Godolphin-owned runner-up, by Dubawi, and trained by Charlie Appleby cost £700k. In this market, that colt will be regarded by connections as being right on track and showing terrific potential, so Isaac looks very well bought.

For me, the best part of the Sangster/Meehan operation is their mutual trust and loyalty. Brian has had some quieter years from the heyday when he had more than 100 horses in his team but, like most longer-established trainers, he finds it harder to get new owners and therefore new blood.

Sam, still in his early 30’s, does though have access to younger businesspeople who find enjoyment in the syndicated horses he unearths and buys. Meehan, as with Isaac Shelby, does the rest. If that ends up with a Group 1 success, which looks eminently possible about this still unfurnished and to the shrewd John Egan’s eyes, “still up-behind” colt, that could easily be the eventual outcome.

- TS

Monday Musings: Sir Mark Dreaming of the Arc

/in /by

The first weekend in July was always considered the pivotal moment in the flat-race season, writes Tony Stafford. It was the time when the best of the present Classic crop could meet their elders in the time-honoured Coral-Eclipse Stakes. That is certainly one sponsorship name that always deserves linking with its race.

Receiving a 10lb weight-for-age concession from the older generation over ten furlongs, I believe the stars of the three-year-old crop ought to beat more mature rivals, as second-favourite Vadeni duly did. But I reckon that, for all the talent the Prix du Jockey Club winner exhibits, the select six-horse Eclipse on Saturday was not won by the best horse on the day, more of which later.

They say patience is a virtue. Every year the remarkable Sir Mark Prescott lines up his team in the spring and we in the game await the flurry of winners from June onwards. It didn’t happen this year and at start of play yesterday morning, Sir Mark had sent out only six winners from the 19 horses to run from his Heath House yard at the bottom of the Bury Side gallops in Newmarket.

That means another 44 of the 63 horses listed in the 2022 edition of my favourite publication, Horses In Training, have yet to see a racecourse unless Sir Mark has twisted some arms to enable his star mare to have a jog up the Rowley Mile or July Course.

The six to have appeared had collected £54k in win and place earnings, £24,000 of which was courtesy of the five-year-old Revolver’s second place in a valuable handicap at the Guineas meeting. Off the track from September 2020, Revolver has yet to appear again. He won his first six races of that season, all handicaps, starting from a mark of 57.

By the time he finally ran in his first race outside handicaps he had gone up by a full three stone and was not disgraced when fourth in the Doncaster Cup, his final outing before Newmarket this spring.

Yesterday, Sir Mark took what must be his favourite active racehorse across to Saint-Cloud for her seasonal reappearance and the grey Frankel five-year-old, Alpinista, was untroubled to pick up the Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud.

The £192k prize will have cheered the trainer as well as owner-breeder Kirsten Rausing, stable jockey Luke Morris, and the uncomplaining Heath House team who will belatedly see a welcome injection into the stable pool.

Alpinista was emulating the example of Revolver by winning six races in a row, in her case all from the start of last season. First it was a fillies’ Listed race at Goodwood; then she moved on to Haydock in the corresponding weekend to this a year ago and gained a first Group 2 victory in the Lancashire Oaks.

The following month Sir Mark embarked on a tour of Germany’s top racecourses and most important races available to older horses with her. First, at Hoppegarten in Berlin, she beat the subsequent Arc winner, Torquator Tasso, in easy fashion.

Next it was Cologne and finally Munich, the last three all at the top level, as was yesterday. Now they are getting closer to home, but it seems after her comfortable victory in Paris yesterday, she will be returning to that city for two Longchamp dates in the autumn, with the Prix Vermeille and then the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe firmly on her agenda.

If she does get safely through the Vermeille leg of her itinerary, she will be going into Europe’s premier race with a fully-tested resume. She has won eight of her 13 career races, seven of them in stakes, and it will be interesting to see how she figures in any re-match with Torquator Tasso if he reappears in the race in which he shocked the racing world nine months ago.

His form had been largely discounted before his success, the one grudging element being German horses’ punching-above-their-weight record in big races in France.

Despite form such as that with Alpinista – multiple group winner Walton Street was third - many felt it a fluke. That opinion was reinforced when he reappeared in late May and ran very moderately. However, on Saturday in Hamburg, Torquator Tasso ran away from his rivals, and his jockey Rene Piechulek was already pulling him up long before they reached the post.

That was also the situation before the corresponding race there in 2021 when, after a modest warm-up, he comfortably collected that Group 2 contest. His only subsequent loss that year was in Alpinista’s race at Hoppegarten.

I would love to see Alpinista win the Arc for Sir Mark. It has a ring to it and it would be a richly-deserved achievement for Kirsten Rausing whose home-bred horses do so well in major races. I know Richard Frisby, her advisor, will take a great amount of pleasure from Alpinista’s continued excellence.

I mentioned the Coral-Eclipse at the top of the article, and it wasn’t until I weighed what I said that I had to wonder whether John and Thady might have gone into one again, this time with Mishriff’s rider David Egan.

It was an excellent training performance from the boys (old and new) to have Mishriff right after the disappointment of his second shot at the Saudi Cup, won so lucratively the previous year. He finished a tailed-off last that day and it was quite an anti-climax as a repeat victory would have catapulted Prince Abdul Rahman Abdullah Faisal’s world traveller past Winx, Arrogate and Gun Runner to the top of the world racehorse earnings chart.

Not seen out since, and turning up at Sandown as a 7-1 shot encountering two 2022 Classic winners in Vadeni and Native Trail, the latter who followed his 2,000 Guineas second to Coroebus with victory in the Irish “2,000”.

After Alenquer made the running from, to my mind, the surprise favourite Bay Bridge, the race became one of those Sandown scrums. Horses and their riders seem to find trouble there even in small fields as they cluster near the far rail in the straight.

As in the Gold Cup at Ascot, the trick was to be out in the clear. As Alenquer faded, Bay Bridge got enveloped in the traffic. Native Trail came on a furlong out and as he went for home it looked as though the Gosden second string, Lord North (33/1), could pinch it on the rail. But then, as David Egan searched in vain for room through the middle of the pack, Christophe Soumillon sailed past on the wide outside aboard Vadeni.

Extricating his mount too late, Egan took Mishriff into an impressive and fast closing second, beaten a neck, passing Native Trail by a head close home with Lord North only half a length back in fourth.

When Vadeni won at Chantilly I reflected on what a massive result that Classic win had been for his sire, Churchill, coming as it did from his first crop. The Coolmore team had always been hoping that the dual Guineas winner would become one of the most important successors to his own sire, the recently deceased Galileo.

Such was the importance of Vadeni’s win to Ireland’s premier stud farm that Aidan O’Brien and the Coolmore partners chose not to challenge for the Eclipse last weekend. That cannot have happened very often over the past 20 years – please excuse me for not checking! [2012, Nathaniel’s year, the only time since at least 2004 – Ed.]

There are sales going on at Newmarket this week, just as they were in Deauville over the past few days. One trainer came back with an Aga Khan maiden three-year-old for €95,000, saying it was almost impossible to buy there.

I love the July sale, which is a great counter-point to the wonderful three days of the July meeting on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Of course, many old-stagers still feel the last day is an unnecessary and unfair extra competition to Ascot and York and, to a lesser extent, Chester.

I will be interested to see what Year Of The Dragon makes on Friday. Slightly unlucky when a close third at Kempton last week, his Timeform p (for Polytrack) 93 rating should compute to a nice price. For purely biased reasons I hope he makes plenty for his owner.

His trainer William Knight had reason to smile at Sandown when Checkandchallenge redeemed his reputation after his luckless 2,000 Guineas run with a fast-finishing second off 108 in a hot mile handicap. Native Trail had got in his way in the Classic and it would not be a shock if his trainer takes “Check” straight back into Group 1 level for his next start.

- TS

Monday Musings: Dry Summer Frankie’s Downfall?

/in /by

The only people with a worse record than racecourse tipsters must be the weather forecasters who, in the early summer of 2022, have repeatedly predicted copious amounts of rainfall, only most often to have to admit they were wrong, writes Tony Stafford.

The latest example to affect me, or rather not, was Friday’s warning of serious flooding in East London and most of Essex and no doubt elsewhere. We barely saw a drop. Neither did they the previous week at Royal Ascot. Had the predicted precipitation happened, Frankie Dettori might still have been in a job.

It all revolved around Trueshan, three times the victor in tussles with Stradivarius, twice in the Long Distance Cup (Group 2) at Ascot in October 2020 and 2021 and also in the Group 1 Prix Du Cadran at Longchamp a couple of weeks before their second Ascot encounter.

Twice in the week before last Alan King and the owners of Trueshan agonised long and late about whether to allow the six-year-old to take his place in the field, in the Gold Cup on the Thursday and then in the Queen Alexandra Stakes, the meeting finale a couple of days later.

Probably an hour and a half before the Saturday race first Andrew Gemmell, one of the ownership group in Trueshan, walked past my table in the owners’ restaurant – I hasten to add I was a guest, not an owner! – and upon my question: “Does he run?” replied, “I don’t know.”

Maybe half a minute later, King came along the same pathway between the tables and gave a resigned shake of the head, not emphatic, but close enough. No Queen Alex or Gold Cup, so they would have to wait for the Northumberland Plate, a race in which he’d finished sixth 12 months earlier running off 118.

Since Newcastle he had been unbeaten in four races, the Goodwood Cup preceding the two Stradivarius defeats and a Listed prep when accounting for Hughie Morrison’s subsequent Henry II Stakes winner, Quickthorn, comfortably over an inadequate 1m6f at Nottingham in April.

In some ways it was difficult to suggest he should be running off just a 2lb higher mark on Saturday, but he was actually having to carry a full 9lb more as Alan King chose to take 5lb off his back last year, employing talented claimer Rhys Clutterbuck.

This time he allowed Hollie Doyle to retain her partnership with the gelding and as this year’s race was effectively 2lb inferior in quality, he carried the almost unfathomable weight of 10st 8lb. That he should come through and win merely made a certainty in retrospect that he would have beaten Kyprios, 2021 Derby and St Leger runner-up Mojo Star, and his “bunny”, Stradivarius.

But of course in the interim, by the time Trueshan did get his day in the Gosforth Park sun, Dettori had already been dumped by John and Thady Gosden as they and owner Bjorn Neilsen refused to compromise their dissatisfaction for his Gold Cup ride. It seemed they preferred to judge him on a single ride against the 15 wins in 24 previous associations between the eight-year-old entire horse and 51-year-old rider.

The various statements from Gosden senior showed only irritation at Dettori’s perceived allowing his mount to drift back in the field at a crucial stage. I and many people close to where I watched the race were admiring of Ryan Moore’s tactical nous in preventing Dettori’s getting out as he attempted to switch off the inside.

One man’s meat is another man’s poison. If Trueshan had been able to run, Stradivarius would probably have played one of his bum notes. Winning the Plate off 10st 8lb, conceding 28lb to the regally-bred five-times-winning stayer Spirit Mixer and 18 others should ensure a few pounds more to his mark tomorrow morning.

Over the years the Gosden axe has fallen on a number of jockeys. There is no doubt – and Frankie’s reception after his win from his sole ride at Newmarket on Saturday when he was eviscerated from two Gosden horses demonstrated as much – where the public sentiments lie. Could you imagine Big John, or even Thady, jumping off a horse in a winner’s enclosure? Silly observation? Never have I said anything sillier!

Trueshan’s performance was exceptional and confirmed once again that Alan King is a masterful trainer, equally adept at the top table on the flat as over the jumps where his talent was honed at the side of the much-missed David Nicholson. I only have to mention the Duke’s name to feel again the pain of his weighty right boot crashing against my shin bone when we met on the soccer field a lifetime ago.

Newcastle provided a tasty aperitif to an equally remarkable result in the Irish Derby, won by an eye-opening seven lengths by the Ralph Beckett-trained and Juddmonte-owned Frankel colt, Westover.

Third to the unbeaten Desert Crown in the Derby at Epsom when denied a run at a crucial stage in the last two furlongs, he had been only mildly supported as a 25-1 shot with his rating of 109. That was raised by 7lb before Saturday, and it will be intriguing where Dominic Gardner-Hill rates him in relation to Sir Michael Stoute’s colt tomorrow.

I would imagine Beckett, who until last autumn had dealt exclusively with fillies for his Group 1 successes, would love to take on Desert Crown again. On Saturday Westover had Piz Badile, a disappointment at Epsom, well beaten in second while it may not be a reliable line to point to Oaks winner Tuesday, who finished in a well-beaten fourth.

Joint-favourite with the winner, it was her turn to have a less than perfect run round under Ryan Moore. I doubt that Aidan O’Brien or the Coolmore owners will be looking to sever their association with their retained jockey who has been riding at the top of his game this year.

Last October, Beckett sent his two-year-old Angel Bleu on two trips to France and he came back with Group 1 wins in the  Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on Arc Day at Longchamp and the Criterium International at Saint-Cloud. He has yet to match that form in two runs since, including behind Coroebus at Royal Ascot.

Scope, a Teofilo three-year-old, collected the Prix Royal-Oak (Group 1) at Longchamp late that month in the style of a potential top stayer. There was nothing in his promising second over a short for him mile-and-a-half in a Newbury Group 3 last month to suggest he might not be up there challenging Trueshan, Kyprios, and Mojo Star, not to mention Stradivarius, for the remainder of an interesting season for the stayers.

The first of the one mile Classics were run less than two months ago but already we are getting word of possible Ballydoyle colts and fillies with aspirations of winning next year’s Guineas races.

Auguste Rodin, beaten on debut at the beginning of June, but a son of Deep Impact out of the multiple Group 1 winner Rhododendron (by Galileo) was expected to put that right in yesterday’s opener at the Curragh before missing the race owing to the rain-softened ground.

There was no hesitation on the part of Aidan O’Brien, though, in the following fillies’ Group 2 over six furlongs. Here, Statuette, a daughter of US Triple Crown winner Justify, a Coolmore America stallion, out of Immortal Verse, was “expected” and duly delivered.

The word beforehand was that she was superior to Royal Ascot winner Meditate, so impressive when making all in the Albany Stakes. Maybe she is, maybe she isn’t, but it’s a nice talking point as the season progresses.

Even more interesting was Ryan Moore’s observation after the runaway victory of 20-1 shot Aikhal in the ten-furlong Group 3 on Saturday. Aikhal, rated 109, was previously seen when last of 11 in the St James’s Palace Stakes, but the son of Galileo had placed juvenile form behind such as Angel Bleu and Coroebus.

“I think we ran the wrong one in the Derby,” was Ryan’s alleged whispered aside. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that this Galileo colt might be another dramatic improver to bolster the stable’s big-race armoury in the coming months.

- TS

Your first 30 days for just £1