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

Monday Musings: A Right Royal Week

/in /by

We’ve just been through five days of the most wonderful racing – and, until Saturday, flawless weather – at Royal Ascot, but for many the experience was incomplete, writes Tony Stafford. For my part, I don’t think I managed to make a single phone call on my mobile on any of the four days I attended.

Others fared better but the internet, and especially punters attempting to put on bets via their devices, proved a generally difficult and frustrating process.

One friend not in attendance said: “It’s just the same at West Ham. As soon as you get to half-time 60,000 people take out their phones and it’s just impossible.”

But going to a Premier League football match is nothing like spending six hours watching the racing and fashion and arranging to meet up with friends. You might be able to suggest a point to gather, but when as on Saturday there is a crowd of more than 69,000 that’s not so easy. Surely it’s not beyond the wit, or the finances, of Ascot to improve communications.

I described my feelings as the week progressed – not improved on Saturday when my glasses disappeared while eating lunch – as being in solitary confinement.  Not that I ever have been!

The racing started with a bang with world best Baaeed in the Queen Anne, quickly followed by a performance full of promise from Bradsell and Hollie Doyle for Archie Watson in the Coventry, and it went on from there.

Quite by chance I had the ear of Chris Waller for a little while before racing started on Tuesday and, as well as appreciating his confidence in the chance of Nature Strip in the Group One King’s Stand Stakes, which he won as a champion should, I also got some interesting stuff on the post-racing life of his great mare Winx.

Owners of many outstanding racemares have found that life in the breeding shed has not been as straight-forward as they might have hoped. Winx has had her setbacks, losing one foal, following which she had a tough time according to Waller.

If I understood him correctly, he believes extreme activity on the racecourse often inhibits the development of the reproductive systems making such mares immature in that regard. Winx deserves to get a foal or two to pass on her magical ability.

Then there was the narrow success of Coroebus in the St James’s Palace Stakes, William Buick bringing him with one of many well-timed challenges during the week.

Buick competed toe to toe throughout with Ryan Moore just as Godolphin did with Coolmore and while it was honours even in terms of good rides and victories for the two major powers, Ryan had the edge numerically. His riding this season is as good as it ever was.

Over recent seasons we had become accustomed to Ryan vainly trying to make up ground in the latter stages of Royal Ascot races after Frankie Dettori had made the first move. This year he seemed much more intent on riding closer to the front.

Once the field gets round the home turn at Ascot there is not much more than two furlongs for a rider to develop a winning run and, with crowding often to be expected, jockeying for position is more important there than on many tracks.

I did think Ryan’s riding of Kyprios in the Gold Cup was a masterpiece. It’s one thing making sure you keep your main rival boxed in when you can. At least twice as Dettori searched for a gap to start his move on Stradivarius, Moore, level and on his outside, kept the door shut.

But when Frankie’s race as far as winning was run, Moore still had saved enough on Kyprios for the Coolmore/O’Brien horse to deal with the dangerous challenge of Mojo Star around the outside. Last year’s Derby and St Leger runner-up, resuming for the Richard Hannon team after a long break, loomed up in the Amo Racing colours, looking sure to prevail.

Sadly for Amo boss Kia Joorabchian – in the paddock on Saturday with a football-oriented entourage that included Rio Ferdinand – none of his 16 runners at the meeting could win. This fastest-growing team in racing will win some big ones, that’s inevitable. How long, though, the emotional Kia can balance expectation with the inevitable disappointments that racing at this sort of level brings, is the interesting question.

Amo Racing’s support was a major factor in George Boughey’s rapid advance in the first couple of years of his career so it came as quite a shock for me to discover that of the 82 horses to have run from his Hamilton Road stable in Newmarket this year, only three have been in Amo Racing ownership.

Already successful at Classic level with Cachet in the 1,000 Guineas this year, Boughey now has two Royal Ascot wins to his name. Inver Park won Thursday’s concluding handicap, but a much more impressive winner showed the trainer’s sure touch on Saturday.

The Golden Gates Handicap, a three-year-old contest over ten furlongs, is a recent addition as Ascot went to a full five days of seven-race cards. Boughey’s Missed The Cut could not have been a more convincing winner.

I have mentioned before how significant it was for the UK racing and breeding industry that so many potentially high-class horses from the Shadwell stable were made available because of the economies needed after the death of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoun.

Missed The Cut, a son of the top US sire Quality Road, never raced as a juvenile and went to the February sale at Newmarket where he was snapped up by former jockey, Ed Babington. A successful businessman in garden furniture, he is also developing his racing interests, having involvement in the Roger Varian stable as well as with Boughey.

Missed The Cut cost 40k, which might not have looked a bargain when he first set foot on the track running fourth at the Craven meeting. But easy wins by eleven and then five lengths in two novice contests brought an opening mark of 95. He was heavily backed, as many of Boughey’s horses are – down to 5-2 on Saturday - and defeat never looked a possibility.

He stormed to the front two furlongs out and stretched the margin to almost five lengths, He’s already at least Listed class as we’ll see tomorrow when the new ratings appear. I reckon he’s a Group horse and maybe a top-level one.

Dettori did get some joy from the returning win of one-time 1,000 Guineas favourite Inspiral in the Coronation Stakes, but most people found his public “calling out” over the Stradivarius ride by joint-trainer John Gosden left a sour taste. You would think the number of winners the prince of racing has ridden for the stable, many at the top level, would have deserved a little more understanding in the face of one less than perfect ride on a horse for whom he has so much affection.

Nobody will ever worry in the fulness of time that Stradivarius, already a three-time Gold Cup winner, did not make it four. It was a shame for owner Bjorn Neilsen and no doubt Gosden senior would have liked another Gold Cup to his name, but that’s racing and for once Ryan rode the socks off Frankie.

Gosden was much more positive about the winning ride on Nashwa – like Inspiral a daughter of Frankel – in yesterday’s Prix De Diane at Chantilly. The Oaks third took the quick turn-around well when winning nicely under Hollie Doyle, who thus became the first female jockey to win a major European Classic.

I must say I have been dismayed all year once it became known of the departure of Tony Nerses from his role as the long-time manager of Nashwa’s owner. Initially for Saleh Al Homaizi, then for the partnership between Saleh and Imad Al Sagar, to Imad’s outright ownership when Al Homaizi bowed out a few years ago

I always believed Tony had a big input in the suggestion that Hollie might become the retained jockey for the team. Now we learn it was Mr Gosden’s idea all along. Just as it was when William Buick first went to the US, no doubt!

- TS

Monday Musings: A Royal Return

/in /by

A lot has changed in three years, writes Tony Stafford. Yes, it’s that long since I’ve been to Royal Ascot and it won’t be the same with different allegiances and in some ways different means of getting there.

Over the interim with first Covid and its continued effects – my younger daughter contracted it for the first time last week but seems well enough, thankfully – its impact and threat was never far away.

But what has changed is that I’ve succumbed to the era of the satellite in the sky that guides the car through traffic pitfalls, a practice insisted upon when my wife is travelling with me; never mind that I’ve been just about everywhere!

It’s then hard to shrug it off. I’ve known all the possible ways to Ascot, ducking through Windsor Great Park, sliding away from the track, and going through the same village that the Royal party uses to reach the straight mile, with the bunting put out every year by some of Her Majesty’s most loyal subjects.

Alan and Harry have since made alternate arrangements having been at the last “faux” Ascot I missed.  I think it was on my time before last when I might easily have subjected them to a police incident. There are two possible roads after that village street to turn down which take you alongside the start of the Royal Hunt Cup course. I slid in the first one, past a gun-toting police representative and was immediately confronted at the end of the immaculate gravel drive by the sight of the gates at the top of the straight.

It was a couple of hours before the Royal party would be decamping from the horse-drawn carriages into the limousines to cover exactly the same ground.

I did a quick about-turn; making a shame-faced soundless apology to the official. He by then was starting to take more appropriate attention to the potential threat posed by three men in their 70’s. Mouth wide open, he left us to re-join the correct route a hundred yards further on.

I’m not sure, travelling alone, I will venture anywhere near that approach to the track, but it always got us there quicker than the ‘tourist’ ways in. Resuming after five decades of going to Ascot will be just as thrilling as the 2000 Guineas and Derby have already been this year. I just hope this most British of sporting events proves to have lost nothing in the missing years for me.

Nowadays we have the benefit of 48-hour declarations, so we know the make-up of the seven-race opening card. Getting to Ascot by road is always a delicate balance, and with the start time now back to 2.30 p.m. and a 6.10 final race, travelling up every day will be a challenging and gruelling process.

If you want to arrive in time to get a trouble- and traffic-free approach, probably 11 a.m. might not be too early. I’m sure the track’s management will be delighted if everyone has a few hours to sample the (very expensive) catering on offer.

But then, it is Ascot. Going racing isn’t cheap in the UK. One northern track the other day was charging £20 a head – plus the obligatory £3 for a programme. I wonder how many first-time attendees there will hurry back. Maybe if they backed a few winners they might?

Winner-backing is what racing is all about and, while elsewhere on this site there will be comprehensive analysis of all the races over the five days in one article or another, I’ll restrict myself to this first card which is nicely varied with a balance of top-class contests and tricky handicaps. Also, it’s nice to know what’s actually going to run.

Everyone will hope to have got all the preliminaries – and whether that will include a Royal procession involving herself, I have yet to hear – over well in time for the first race appearance of the potential number one equine star of the week, William Haggas’ Baaeed.

Although it will have been only a year and a week since the colt made his debut as a three-year-old in a novice event at Newbury, he has progressed with such sure-footedness that in seven unbeaten runs he has gone to the top of the international racing tree.

The Shadwell Estates colours may have become a little less prominent than they were before the death of Sheikh Hamdan Al-Maktoum, but Baaeed is on the way to becoming perhaps the most illustrious to carry the blue and white silks over the more than 40 years’ involvement he had with the sport, in the UK initially, and then worldwide.

His family have inevitably slimmed down the size of the Shadwell operation, but rarely can a cull have resulted in such a positive impact on other owners and trainers. Horses that would normally have been in training for Sheikh Hamdan have been sold to race, along with beautifully bred fillies and mares passed on to other paddocks. This will enable smaller-scale owners and breeders to have access to horses that would otherwise never have come on the market.

But for as long as the family has a horse of the quality of Baaeed to represent it I’m sure it will be an honour to continue the founder’s tradition. Baaeed will be long odds-on and I’d like to see a performance of Frankel magnitude and magnificence. I think Baaeed is the nearest we’ve seen to that unbeaten champion.

A more recent death will continue to have a major impact on the Haggas family as Maureen, the trainer’s wife, is the elder daughter of Lester Piggott, who passed in the lead-up to the Derby.

Not content with nine wins in the premier Classic, Lester also rode a preposterous 116 Royal Ascot winners, starting in the 1952 Wokingham with Malka’s Boy when a 16-year-old. College Chapel in the 1993 Cork and Orrery Stakes (now Platinum Jubilee Stakes) completed the set. That haul was all the more impressive given the meeting was then staged over only four days, with Saturday being merely ‘Ascot Heath’.

Ascot 2022 will start with a bang early on Tuesday afternoon and continue in like fashion right through to Saturday evening. Sprinters are to the fore in the King’s Stand Stakes, nowadays also a Group 1 contest but over the minimum five furlongs, a furlong shorter than the Jubilee. Here the home team are promised another potential roasting from some overseas greats, human and equine.

Wesley Ward has long been a devotee of the Royal meeting, most often with his fast juveniles and older sprinters, and he brings four-year-old Golden Pal – impossible to beat at home but twice defeated in the UK,  by a neck as a two-year-old at Ascot and last year when only seventh at York in Winter Power’s Nunthorpe.

That Tim Easterby filly will be back tomorrow to challenge him again, but they may both have to take special care of the threat posed by Australia’s greatest trainer, Chris Waller. His seven-year-old, Nature Strip, has won 20 of 37 career starts in Australia and has earnings that will pass £10 million if he wins tomorrow.

Between the opener and the King’s Stand, there’s an intriguing contest for the Group 2 Coventry Stakes. This is the premier juvenile contest of the week and, such is the level of competition that 15 of the 16 declared have already won races, with seven of them unbeaten.

Until his third race there was very little suggestion that Blackbeard, a son of No Nay Never trained by Aidan O’Brien, was held in particularly high regard.

But then, as the second favourite to even-money shot Tough Talk in the Marble Hill Stakes on the Curragh, he put the favourite away by more than three lengths and now heads the Coventry market. With so many of the Ballydoyle two-year olds winning first time out, fears of an almost Cheltenham-like monopoly might be imminent in the two-year-old races this week.

Meanwhile, Coroebus, the 2000 Guineas winner, is the day’s other star performer. It would be satisfying if Charlie Appleby’s Classic winner could maintain his position at the top of the mile three-year-old colts’ totem pole.

In the old days we used to get nearly all the top-category races on the opening day with just the two-and-a-half mile Ascot Stakes (Handicap) as a diversion for form students at a more prosaic level – in other words people like me! I’d love to see Reshoun win it again, but here I offer my suggestion for a value bet. Surrey Gold has never raced beyond one mile and three-quarters but Hughie Morrison has campaigned him as though there will be more to come. I believe there will.

It's a great day all round, but if you need Wednesday to Saturday information (as well as more detail for Tuesday), Matt Bisogno and the team will put you straight. I’ll be too busy taking it all in!

- TS

Monday Musings: Crown King for a Day?

/in /by

Things move along rapidly in life in the 21st Century even if a certain English monarch has shown plenty of stickability, writes Tony Stafford. In the Coolmore box on Saturday after the authoritative triumph by Desert Crown in the Cazoo Derby, the main players were adamant we had all witnessed a superstar – one that might go all the way.

Even in his interview after the race, Sir Michael Stoute felt emboldened enough to declare him “promising”. Maybe he was saying, “seen it all before”, and I suppose he had all those years ago in Shergar, but promising? Hardly.

Maybe he was talking about his jockey. You would never have thought Richard Kingscote was having only his second mount in the race in a large field where more experienced big-race riders could easily have got caught up in the inevitable Epsom traffic that can envelop them on the wrong day.

But Kingscote, untroubled, could just as easily have been riding on a Friday evening at Haydock or Chester, the two tracks where he had best showcased his talents in the years he spent riding for the Tom Dascombe stable until Michael Owen’s mid-winter shake-up.

You need luck in this game. Sir Michael Stoute has never been a man in his half-century as a trainer to change his stable jockeys unduly, but Ryan Moore’s progressive unavailability with his Ballydoyle commitments meant there needed to be an available back-up.

In the past, Frankie Dettori might have been a contender for drafting in with Moore cemented to Coolmore, but Kingscote had moved south after leaving Manor House Stables and must have impressed Desert Crown’s trainer that he would do very nicely when he showed up to ride out at Freemason Lodge.

The son of Nathaniel, who before York had raced only once in a maiden at Nottingham last November, was obviously very talented. His trainer, though, was unsure whether Desert Crown could be readied in time for the Dante. Fortunately he was and Kingscote was on board, looking the part as they strolled home in what history has told us is always the best Derby trial.

All that was left was to beat the Godolphins and the Coolmores on Saturday, and this they did with panache, coming down the straight with a surge that took them past Moore and Stone Age as the Aidan O’Brien first string was battling to take control.

The consensus in the box afterwards was that Stone Age didn’t stay, along with a recognition that it would not have mattered if he had. The winner was supreme. It was going to take something special, they thought, to beat him.

That view held until mid-afternoon yesterday and, as is often the case when Coolmore don’t have the winner of a Classic, they still have more than a little to do with the breeding and production of it.

Step forward Vadeni, who swamped the front-running Modern Times for speed and drew effortlessly away in the last furlong of the Qatar Prix du Jockey-Club at Chantilly. He won by five lengths, avenging a defeat in a Group 3 on the track last September when third to James Ferguson’s El Bodegan. That colt battled on well to pip Modern Times for the runner-up spot.

The consolation for the Coolmore partners is that the winner was the result of an outsourcing by his breeder the Aga Khan, who sent Vadeni’s mother, Vaderami (an unraced daughter of the German stallion Monsun), to be one of the first group of mares to visit Churchill.

The quest is always how to replace – or in their wildest dreams – replicate Galileo. They’ve always thought Churchill was his quickest Classic son as the champion juvenile of his year and easy winner of both the Newmarket and Curragh 2,000 Guineas.

Having gone into this weekend as the sire of two Group 3 winners, Churchill now has a five-length winner of a Classic in a field of 15 where runner-up and third had already won at Group 1 level.

Churchill is, on a lower plane, the sire of one of my favourite handicappers, Brian Meehan’s Lawful Command, who has all the courage of his wonderful grandsire. That colt will keep on winning handicaps, but I bet Sam Sangster, who bought Lawful Command, will already be resigned that his yearlings will be priced out of most mortals’ budgets this autumn with the stud fee doing a similar exponential jump as Galileo’s did when his first three-year-olds began flexing their Classic muscles almost two decades ago. Not even his passing has stopped them twitching away!

I mentioned last week when discussing Desert Crown, that he might not have been the most obvious contender for winning a Derby. Not all products of Nathaniel, Frankel’s contemporary and three-quarter-length debut victim to the unbeaten champion, are high-class. Both colts of course were by Galileo, and Nathaniel will always be remembered as sire of the 21st Century’s best race-mare, Enable. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire and Gary Coffee and Julian Dollar have every right in declaring him a steal at £15k too!

Desert Crown may well aspire to similar heights as Enable. There have been many examples of Michael Stoute horses developing from ordinary performers in their three-year-old season to international champions, like Singspiel and Pilsudski all those years ago. When they start out good, they rarely disappoint.

Sir Michael must still hanker after the days when he trained horses of the calibre of Shergar for the Aga Khan, but His Highness’s horses have for many years been centred in France and Ireland for racing and breeding. Long-term stud operations cannot be carried on at full effectiveness without regular injections of new talent and, on the day Churchill offered fresh impetus for Coolmore, the Aga Khan Studs unveiled their latest trump card.

There were three Aga Khan winners yesterday and, rather like the perfect Harry Kane hat-trick (left-foot, right-foot and a header – that’s for you Your Majesty, sorry about yesterday!) – they offered a bright vision of the future.

First in the 12f fillies’ Group 3, the Prix de Royaumont, Christophe Soumillon brought Baiykara, only second best in the market, with an irresistible run which provided a step-by-step dress rehearsal for their Classic show a little later on.

The extent of Vadeni’s success over ten-and-a -half furlongs had been even less anticipated than the filly’s win. You got the impression from winning trainer Jean-Claude Rouget that he might be thinking less about Longchamp in October for Valeni than Leopardstown the previous month. That was probably in line with Soumillon’s earlier murmurings about the Arc for Baiykara.

“I love that race, <the Irish Champion Stakes>”, said Rouget, who has now won five Jockey-Clubs and four of the last seven. Some people in racing seem to think this is the “cheaper” alternative to Epsom and, while Rouget will not hold that view, he did concede that there have been some less than top winners of the Chantilly race along with stars like last year’s hero and European Champion, St Mark’s Basilica. Then again, not every Epsom Derby winner enters the sport’s pantheon either.

The third Aga Khan winner, almost bizarrely, was a sprinter, although in the year when the Aga Khan studs are celebrating the 100 years since the colours of his grandfather, also the Aga Khan, were first seen on a racecourse. That year he bought the flying speckled grey filly Mumtaz Mahal and as well as proving a great racehorse herself, she appears in many of today’s pedigrees, often through her descendant Nasrullah.

Yesterday’s sprint winner was Rozgar, easy winner of the six-furlong Listed race, and while out of an Aga Khan-bred daughter of Sea The Stars, she is by the Darley sprint sire, Exceed and Excel.

Returning though to Baiykara, she is from the first crop of Zarak, a beautifully-bred young stallion, coincidentally listed in 2022’s brochure from the Aga Khan’s French stud, the Haras de Bonneval, at the same fee as Churchill, €25,000.

By Dubawi out of the unbeaten champion mare Zarkava, he did not quite live up to his exemplary breeding, but one of his four wins in 13 starts was at Group 1 level – the Grand Prix De Saint-Cloud and he did just nudge the €1 million prize mark.

Zarak also had something to say later in the card, providing a cross-Channel win for the William Haggas stable.  This was Purplepay, a filly bought by his long-time clients Lael Stable at last December’s Arqana sale for €2 milllion.

That price would never have been countenanced in the first half of last year, even though she was prolific in the provinces, but she upped the ante for her last two runs and picked up a Longchamp conditions race before running third in a Saint-Cloud Group 1.

Fittingly, on the weekend when the 2022 Derby was run in Lester’s honour, his American friends Lael Stable, with whom he owned shares in Haggas horses, now have a very smart filly with his son-in-law.

As probably the trainer closest to the Sir Michael Stoute tradition of steadily bringing on his young horses, he can take this explosive filly a long way, perhaps starting at Royal Ascot next week. Yes, we’ve got that to come, in just eight days’ time. Chantilly was only one day after a wonderful Derby performance but, as we’ve seen, things in racing rarely stand still for long.

- TS

Monday Musings: Ode to Lester

/in /by

They descended on Leicester racecourse that October Monday afternoon in their droves, writes Tony Stafford. I arrived in the smooth-riding Mercedes driven by Bryn Crossley – incidentally, for one season, “my” project as we pieced together an apprentices’ title. But that was years before.

Now I was observer on the trip up from Newmarket on the day that Lester Piggott, newly out of prison after being found guilty of tax offences, was back in the saddle with three rides.

He was a fortnight short of his 55th birthday and I was travelling along to get the inside story for the Daily Telegraph. Leicester was what it was all about, but the three rides produced no wins, the nearest a short-head second place on Henry Cecil’s Lupescu for the pair’s great friend, Charles St George.

Another of his rides was on the John Jenkins-trained Balasani in a mile-and-a-half handicap in which he was a disappointing favourite. Owned by my friend Mark Smith, although he was not known to me at the time, Balasani was to bring Mark a big win in the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham a few years later after transferring to the care of Martin Pipe.

Pragmatic as ever, and aware there would be a scrum after his final mount of the day, Lester asked Bryn to give me the keys and said: “Bring the car round by the exit ten minutes before my last ride.”

I got to the car park in plenty of time, but having opened the driver’s door, I was confronted by a space that had been occupied by a 7st7lb waif, the steering wheel maybe two inches away from the seat. Add maybe another ten stone, you might have been close. But then there was the issue of how to move it forward.

I remember even now the sensation of sweat trickling down my back in my anxiety. Which button do you press to move the seat? It seemed like ages, but eventually my random and increasingly panic-stricken efforts from outside paid off and the seat glided forward.

Then all that was needed was to switch on. I did. Nothing! Looked for a manual – none to be seen. Tried again and all the while the cacophony from the track as that last race in which Lester was riding came full volume to my ears, drowning out any other sound. Then, suddenly, as they passed the post there was silence, and I could just discern the quietest hint of an engine purring that had ever befallen my ears.

I was off. I belted round to the gate – the crowd was already dispersing – and they caught up Lester and Bryn in their path on the way. Without hesitating, he jumped in the car, saying: “Close the windows”, and at my suggestion that he might want to speak to Graham Rock, sadly passed from us some time after, he uttered a word inappropriate for the occasion but which left no confusion as to his answer.

We high-tailed it out of there, me relishing my job as relief driver, but as we approached a service station just going out of Oadby, he said: “Pull over, Bryn’ll drive!”

As the story had not materialised, Lester suggested on the way back to Newmarket that I might like to travel down to Chepstow the following day. I would drive up to the house in Hamilton Road, from there we would go to the July racecourse, catch a flight to Badminton and from there take a taxi to Chepstow.

I was pleased to come on that leg of the comeback as the best chance was a horse his wife Susan trained for Henryk De Kwiatkowski, a man I had known for eight years since meeting him at Keeneland for the July Sales. I introduced him later to Jim Bolger and he sent him some nice horses to train including the fast filly, Polonia.

The horse that was running at Chepstow was called Nicholas, named after one of his sons and the colt was by De Kwiatkowski’s brilliant stallion Danzig out of Lulu Mon Amour, Lulu being one of the polo-playing aircraft magnate’s daughters.

Nicholas duly won and later won in Group company in Europe, becoming a minor stallion. The journey back was in sharp contrast to the day before and we hatched a plan to tell his own story of the comeback to the Daily Telegraph readers.

In those days, getting words from journalists to the printers for setting required an intermediary stage. These were the telephonists, who listened to your dictated offering, typed them up and, after they were put into type, another layer – the “readers” – would then check the spelling of the typesetters. Basically, we were only able to intervene if a major mistake had been perpetrated at one of the various stages.

The typists and readers were in the same union and their jobs were rigidly and jealously guarded. Anyway, I was lucky to get one of the best of the bunch at the time and while she waited for each phrase, originated by Lester and relayed by me, he got annoyed.

“Give me the phone,” he ordered, and, to be fair, on finishing off his tale of how proud he was to show that people in their mid-50’s could still have a lot to offer, and how he was hoping it would be an example to them, he was brief, to the point and very humble.

I felt humble when upon writing The Little Black Racing Book a few years later, Lester generously supplied the foreword, and the next edition, this time with a Daily Telegraph title, had Henry Cecil’s endorsement.

Now 31 and a half years after the events at Leicester and Chepstow, Lester is no more; and neither is Bryn Crossley or, of course, Sir Henry. I can confess that, more than once, the nightmare of that impossible to move seat and seemingly dead engine have come back to haunt me.

*

Nine Derby wins starting from 1954 and Never Say Die when he was just 18 wove a fabric with the great race for almost 30 years. His riding career, which started with a winner aged 12 on The Chase at Haydock in 1950, lasted for around 45 years. After the initial comeback, which we learned over time had been simply designed to show Vincent O’Brien, his greatest fan, that he was still the man to ride a fancied horse at the Breeders’ Cup later that month, he duly moved into the realms of fantasy.

Here I interject, an “amusing?”, nay embarrassing, headline put up in the Press Association racing office in Fleet Street by the then Assistant Racing Editor, a few years after I’d left the place. George Hill was in the room that morning and he was proudly shown the offering. “Never Say Die – but he did!” How awful!  I had not heard of Lester’s passing until a text from George yesterday 47 years after its forerunner. “Never Say Die – but he did!” To think he waited all those years!

But to return to Lester’s most unlikely triumph. On Royal Academy, he won the Mile with a most amazing run from the back of the field, at Belmont Park, at a time when the Vincent O’Brien magic was to some degree wearing a little thin. This was the time when the Robert Sangster/O’Brien/John Magnier initial era of international thoroughbred dominance had been gently declining as fellow investors like Danny Schwartz withdrew their funds, and the money and competition from ruling families from the Middle East took full effect.

As an attempt to replace their buying power at the sales, Vincent headed up the formation of Classic Thoroughbreds, the theory being that Irish racing fans might well be tempted into joining the most successful man in thoroughbred history. He would train great horses and continue to win the world’s most important races as he had been for decades.

They had some initial success in raising significant capital and Vincent went all out to land the Nijinsky colt out of Crimson Saint at the 1988 Keeneland Sales. He was Vincent’s pick of that sale and he thought he could be a re-embodiment of Nijinsky himself, the most recent winner of the UK Triple Crown, in 1970 and, 52 years later, still the most recent. Nijinsky had been ridden in all his UK races by Piggott and O’Brien was determined to get the colt for his new project. <Incidentally, Nijinsky’s Derby was the first I saw in person and the image of his beating the French star, Gyr, is also still engraved on the memory.>

In the end, having won the July Cup that year while Lester was still out of the picture, Vincent’s star buy was on the way to justifying expectations and, after the Breeders’ Cup triumph, he went off to be a stallion with Coolmore, first in the US and then later in Australia where he died in 2002. Classic Thoroughbreds’ management team soon found that trying to keep thousands of small shareholders happy as against five or six very rich men in the old days proved almost impossible, but anyone that did participate in that epic win in the US, will never have forgotten it.

Nobody but Lester could have done it. The sheer will to win for this singular man can never have been matched, certainly not until Tony McCoy came along. But I bet even AP never had the cheek to pinch rides in big races off his pals in the way Lester did. In the week of the Derby, his loss to the game is even more poignant.

Many people in racing knew him better than me, but I have loads of happy memories of Lester and, especially, his almost girlish giggle when recalling a misfortune that befell one of his friends. Priceless and, until yesterday, ageless. But the memories will always be just that.

- TS

Monday Musings: Charlie’s Guineas Hat-Trick

/in /by

He might have got the 2,000 Guineas the wrong way round for UK punters, but Native Trail’s defeat by stable-mate Coroebus left the way clear for the vanquished Newmarket favourite to gain his own piece of Classic hardware at The Curragh on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford.

In between, of course, Charlie Appleby, who trains both colts for Godolphin, also stopped off in France. There, he saddled Modern Games, the third of his elite three-year-old milers, to annex the Poule d’Essai Des Poulains and become the first trainer to win all three one-mile colts’ Classics in the same season.

Each is very talented and while for a time it looked as though Native Trail might have to be fully extended in the Irish “2,000”, he was well on top, going away steadily, at the finish. He beat two longshots, Sheila Lavery’s New Energy, almost two lengths behind, and Imperial Fighter (28/1), who was three-quarters of a length further back in third for Andrew Balding.

One trainer who would have been heartened by the result was William Knight, who went into the 2,000 at his home course of Newmarket with high hopes for the previously unbeaten Checkandchallenge. His colt made his move at the same time as William Buick on Native Trail – on the opposite (stands) side of the course to Coroebus – and got squeezed out by him and then hampered as he dropped into the pursuing pack.

He had beaten Imperial Fighter previously at Newcastle and Saturday’s result would have encouraged Knight in advance of Checkandchallenge’s likely target of the Jersey Stakes over a furlong shorter at Royal Ascot.

Appleby has only the three horses entered in the St James’s Palace Stakes on June 14, the first day of Royal Ascot, and the Newmarket 2,000 Guineas winner is usually the prime contender for that Group 1 prize for the colts. With the other pair running (and winning) more recently, one would expect Coroebus to be the one to take his chance.

No doubt their trainer will have more than a passing interest in the meeting’s opening contest where Baaeed transports his unbeaten record to the Queen Anne Stakes for trainer William Haggas and owner, the Shadwell Estate Company. Interviewed during a string of winners from his stable earlier in the week, Haggas, quite realistically talking about his present form and how that will go forward to the biggest meetings, simply said: “They might not be in that form then!”

Saturday proved a rare blank but a Group 1 international double yesterday with Alenquer in the Tattersalls Gold Cup on The Curragh and Maljoom in the Mehl-Mulhens-Rennen (German 2,000 Guineas) in Cologne brought his tally over the past fortnight to 17 winners.

This was a third success in a row for the unbeaten Maljoom, who made his debut only two months ago. The unbeaten Caravaggio colt may carry Ahmed Al-Maktoum’s colours in the St James’s Palace Stakes.

I enjoyed a nice chat during the sales at Newmarket earlier this year with Dermot Weld, one of the very senior Irish trainers but still one to target the big prizes over jumps as well as on the flat. Yesterday, in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, his filly Homeless Songs sprinted away from the Aidan O’Brien pair Tuesday, the favourite, and Concert Hall, winning by five-and-a-half lengths with the rest trailing way behind.

As the field approached the last two furlongs, Chris Hayes on the Weld filly could be seen coasting along on the outside and the daughter of Frankel, out of a Dubawi mare, accelerated from there and won pulling the proverbial cart.

Whatever preconceptions might be held by connections of Emily Upjohn, they will not be reassured unless Dermot decides not to send his filly to Epsom. Here was a performance to match that of Love in the same Classic race two years earlier although, to be fair, Love had already won the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

Love clearly made spectacular progress from two to three and Homeless Songs is making similar strides. Seven weeks ago she beat Agartha, a filly she also overcame when making a winning debut last year, by a length. Yesterday, the margin to the fifth-placed Joseph O’Brien filly was more than six lengths.

Love of course won by nine lengths at Epsom and last year’s Ballydoyle winner Snowfall extended that to a record 16 lengths. It would need her owners, the Moyglare Stud Farm, to fork out the supplementary fee to allow her to run. Her near-at-hand entries are the seven-furlong Ballychorus Stakes on June 4 and the Coronation Stakes over a mile at Royal Ascot.

Dermot seems to be treating her as a miler, but the sign that that might be a moving feast is suggested by later entries in the ten-furlong Pretty Polly and eventually at last over a mile-and-a-half in the Irish Oaks.

There was never a moment to question the veracity of Homeless Songs’ victory but there was plenty of questioning of the York stewards on Saturday when they allowed Believe In Love to keep the Group 3 Bronte Stakes after she weaved across causing interference to a couple of her rivals.

Inside the last two furlongs, Believe In Love, who at that point was on the inside of the whole field in the middle of the wide expanse of York, started to edge to her right. Admittedly Ray Dawson had his whip in his right hand, but when his mount continued to veer over, she was causing considerable discomfort to Ed Walker’s Glenartney who was carried all the way to right under the stands rails.

 

The measure of the stewards’ disapproval of Dawson’s ride – he didn’t take any corrective measure, say, stopping using his whip and grabbing hold of his mount’s reins to try to arrest the drift – was the eight-day ban he received.

Because the winning margin over strong-finishing runner-up Urban Artist was just over a length, the verdict was allowed to stand, but Believe In Love’s errant course gave Glenartney, who did well in the circumstances to finish third, no chance to win the race so badly was she discomfited.

Both Walker and Urban Artist’s trainer Hughie Morrison were considering appealing the result – and with £51k rather than £19k for second and £9k for third at stake, you can understand their irritation, not least with the kudos of a Group 3 win on the board for an older staying filly being denied them.

This rule of thumb whereby any interference in the case of a win of more than a neck is not normally reversed is like many issues in racing, a flawed convention. I still would prefer in the case of a horse badly interfered with by another, the offender should be placed behind the horse to which it caused that interference.

If that means, as in this case, the runner-up getting the prize, too bad. Without the ground towards the rails where she raced being badly compromised by the antics of the winner, Urban Artist could have won the race judged on how she finished once off the rail and getting a little clear running room for the last half furlong.

*

When Torquator Tasso won last year’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, it woke up many people to the talents of German horses and horsemen. The five-year-old is among the entries for this year’s Arc – yes, they’re out already! He will begin his season with runs at Baden-Baden a week today and then at Hamburg during the weekend of the German Derby according to his trainer, Marcel Weiss.

Meanwhile, yesterday in Rome at the Cappannelle, another talented German trainer, Markus Klug, sent Ardakan, a son of Reliable Man, to win the Derby Italiano and a prize of £244k. There was no English challenge for a race which in the past was always a target for horses perceived to be just short of winning at Epsom. Maybe we’ll be seeing him over here later in the year, or perhaps supplemented for the Arc.

- TS

Monday Musings: Paging Richard’s Granny!

/in /by

One early morning a few years ago in the days when I still bought a Racing Post rather than access the online version, my regular source did not have a copy, writes Tony Stafford. Not to be outdone I jumped in the car and made a stop at Tesco’s big store at Bromley-By-Bow in between Hackney Wick and Bow.

With only one till open I took my copy and, from memory, a BLT sandwich and went to pay. The senior lady with her full Cockney accent, looked and said: “Oh, you like racing? My grandson’s in racing. He’s a jockey. He’s Richard Kingscote!”

Now more normally you might expect to find grandparents of jockeys to have farms in Limerick or Wiltshire or to have ridden themselves. I doubt Grandma Kingscote – it could just as easily have been Piggott, Eddery or Buick but I think that unlikely - woke to the sounds of horses’ nostrils snorting in her early days which I guessed might have been, like mine, in the East End of London with bomb craters from World War II lingering still around every corner.

I mentioned that meeting to Richard soon after and wish I’d have gone into his heritage a little more. I bet granny wouldn’t have expected her grandson to have made the remarkable change in his source and scene of employment, so secure did the Michael Owen/Andrew Black/Tom Dascombe and Kingscote combination appear then and for a few years after.

Kingscote jumped first, moving south to pick up good rides from Newmarket stables, notably for Sir Michael Stoute, increasingly denied use of his long-term stable jockey Ryan Moore by his lucrative, Classic-bountiful Coolmore job.

Then Dascombe clearly got the tin-tack and he now operates with a team of 13 in Lambourn. Whether he can reinvigorate his career will be a serious challenge, though his interview on Luck On Sunday yesterday related that he’s up for it. All a jockey needs when forced to make a move is a saddle, a pair of boots, an agent and a car to take him to as many stables as he can to ride out and make an impression. Would-be trainers must (for starters) convince the BHA that they have the financial resources to set up and carry their (hopefully) growing business.

It helps if your dad was/is a trainer and he can help you along in the manner of a Crisford, Gosden, Johnston or even a Ferguson. So much more power then to the elbows of such as Boughey and Clover. George went close again yesterday when 1,000 Guineas heroine, Cachet, made a brave attempt to follow up in the French 1,000 at Longchamp, finishing second to the Mikel Delzangles-trained Mangoustine, ridden by the remarkable Gerald Mosse.

Half an hour later the Godolphin blue (Charlie Appleby brand) followed their Newmarket 2,000 one-two with Coroebus and Native Trail by sending out Modern Games under William Buick to win the counterpart French colts’ Classic.

Unraced since winning the hotly-contested Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar last November, the son of Dubawi came home strongly and adds his name to the already formidable team for the Boys in Blue in the major mile races.

They will still have to go some to match the year-older Baaeed in that division after the William Haggas four-year-old brought his tally to seven from seven when winning the Lockinge at Newbury. He started that career less than a year ago on the same course and looks set to be put right to the top of the official rankings after this display.

To be more accurate, Baaeed didn’t just win, he made mincemeat of a strong field of milers and the disdainful three-and-a-bit lengths by which he beat the Saeed Bin Suroor-trained runner-up Real World (a Coolmore-type sighter?) suggests even Classic form later in the season from the best of the younger generation will not be enough to stop him.

The big two power-houses are as strong as ever, but Baaeed’s trainer, William Haggas, is making ever more forceful strides in their pursuit and Baaeed was one of 13 winners for his Newmarket stable in the past fortnight. If you don’t enjoy backing short-priced favourites, never mind, just make sure you take your place early on day one at Royal Ascot when this potential world champion will be the stand-out in the Queen Anne Stakes.

But Richard Kingscote has matters more immediate on his mind after last week’s Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Dante Stakes at York. Riding Sir Michael Stoute’s Desert Crown on only his second racecourse appearance, he brought the Nathaniel colt home well clear of a strong field to clinch what is often the best of the Derby trials.

Ryan Moore was third in the race on the Galileo colt Bluegrass and that colt is sure to do better in time.  They were split by the Johnstons’ Royal Patronage who had run a reasonable race in the 2,000 Guineas, not far behind the principals having attempted to force the pace.

When Nathaniel made his racecourse debut at the Newmarket July meeting in the evening maiden race also chosen by Sir Henry Cecil for Frankel, both colts being by Galileo, there was only a half length between them at the line.

Frankel never lost a race; Nathaniel did, but also won plenty, including the King George and Eclipse at Group 1 level. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park stud where his fee for 2022 was only £15,000 but one eternal distinction is that his daughter Enable was probably the best filly to race in Europe in this century.

Now he could be getting his first Derby winner with a Tattersalls Book 2 purchase, admittedly bought for the respectable figure of 280,000gns. How this year’s Book 2 catalogue will celebrate him, Derby success or not!

Desert Crown has been brought along with typical patience by Sir Michael, who has five Epsom Derby winners to his credit, the last three since he was honoured by his home country Barbados for services unconnected to his profession. Ryan Moore rode the last of them, Workforce, in 2010 and was also on the Aidan O’Brien winner Ruler Of The World three years later.

The Derby can often throw up unexpected winning jockeys and you only have to go back to last year when Adam Kirby was the popular beneficiary of William Buick’s decision to ride third-placed Hurricane Lane, leaving Kirby to fill in on easy winner, Adayar.

O’Brien and Charlie Appleby between them have won the last five editions of the Blue Riband and only once has the stable first string been on the right one. That was Buick on Masar in 2018. Ryan has had to watch on from behind as first Padraig Beggy (on Wings Of Eagles), Seamie Heffernan on Anthony Van Dyck and, most recently, Emmet McNamara (Serpentine) won the spoils.

To think that Beggy and McNamara together have ridden as many Epsom Derby winners as the flawless Ryan Moore. As I mentioned last week, Ryan’s riding has been exemplary this season and I think we can expect a ride of supreme skill on Stone Age on June 4.

I have no idea whether Richard Kingscote’s grandma remains in good health. I hope she does and, even more fervently, that she has been gathered up by all the excitement that Richard will almost certainly be on the favourite that day; even more so that she can be there, because I’d love to meet her again!

One horse I would hope turns up on that day is Saturday’s stylish Newmarket sprint winner, Dusky Lord, who came through the eye of the proverbial needle to win the finale after a six-month absence.

I was happy to be representing part-owner Jonathan Barnett and, given the way in which he came through to make it three wins from six, I think this previous Brighton winner could win the Dash, a race I believe Raymond Tooth should have won with Catfish ten years ago.

The fact this remains the fastest-ever electronically-timed five-furlong race is a major achievement for John Best, who saddled the 50/1 winner Stone Of Folca to record a time of 53.69 seconds, which has never been beaten. That works out as an average speed for the entire trip of 41.9 miles per hour.

Catfish stayed on strongly after a tardy start to finish third in the big field, beaten for second by Andrew Balding’s Desert Law. But when Mikael Barzalona returned, he said: “She was unlucky. My saddle slipped at the start and the way she finished if I could have ridden her properly, I’m certain she would have won.”

David Egan reckoned after Saturday that Dusky Lord definitely needed the outing after his six-month absence. Now the Dash is back as a 100 grand race with half of that going to the winning owners. That’s worth going for, don’t you agree Roger?

- TS

Your first 30 days for just £1