Monday Musings: Horse Traders

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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?

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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

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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

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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!

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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

Monday Musings: Shocks on the Derby Trails

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So the age-old Derby formula will not be holding this year, writes Tony Stafford. Third in the 2,000 Guineas (well fourth it used to be, as I conceded last week) meant first in the Derby at Epsom, but Luxembourg is lame. He will therefore not be carrying the Coolmore/Westerberg colours into yet another very probable annexation of English racing’s most sought-after prize.

Just as well then that a legion of bench-warmers took the opportunity at Chester and Lingfield to step up into the principal positions. First it was Changingoftheguard, running all over Godolphin’s theretofore Derby second favourite, New London, in the Chester Vase. It was great to see a revitalised Ryan Moore dominating the entire three-day fixture with superlative tactical riding from start to finish.

Chester revealed Ryan back to his very best, remarkably so in the face of the continuing serious health problems of his younger brother Josh, which have brought universal messages of sympathy from all around the racing world.

Changingoftheguard won the Chester Vase by a wide margin and then, in picking up the Dee Stakes with Star Of India, the Ballydoyle team had already started stacking up the back-up squad for the first Saturday in June.

It’s probably worth mentioning that their other three runners at the meeting - the filly Thoughts Of June in the Cheshire Oaks (there’s a name to conjure with!), Temple Of Artemis in the three-year-old handicap on the Thursday, and a lone Friday runner, Cleveland, who picked up the Chester Cup almost as an after-thought - all also crossed the line in front.

Then on Saturday it was on to Lingfield for their Derby Trial and, faced by another Godolphin/Appleby/Buick favourite in Walk Of Stars, Ryan and his mount, United Nations, were comfortably the best on the day.

Paul Smith, son of Derrick, was quizzed at every call on Saturday (as was Kevin Buckley at Chester) as to where he thought the pecking order might now be behind Luxembourg, but that was before yesterday’s news that the favourite will not run. Now I’m sure if you were to ask Paul or Derrick Smith, or Michael Tabor, or John and the junior Magniers or Georg von Opel or even Peter Brant in whose colours he runs, they would all shout in unison, “Stone Age!”

Where did that colt suddenly appear from, you would be entitled to ask? Well, certainly not from the upper reaches of the Classic consciousness after his five winless, although not promise-free, runs as a juvenile.

They brought a couple of second places in Group races, notably a one-length defeat behind the James Ferguson-trained Kodiac colt El Bodegon in the Group 1 Criterium de Saint-Cloud over ten furlongs in testing ground in late October. If it proved Stone Age’s stamina credentials – as if they were ever in doubt – it certainly also hurried Ferguson into the upper stratum of international racing.

El Bodegon has yet to appear since, but he has a Dante entry at York this week and then is a 25-1 shot for the Derby. That makes him ten times the price of Stone Age after a 13-length reappearance win at Navan on March 22 and then a five-and-a-half length romp in the Derby Trial at Leopardstown yesterday.

Each successive winning triallist won with authority, with Changingoftheguard and Stone Age showing the most. It will shock nobody to learn that all four colts – and the Cheshire Oaks heroine, too, are by Galileo, his famed Classic-winning genes still as effective a year on from his death at the age of 23.

Talking of Chester, only one of the five O’Brien winners was not by Galileo. Cleveland, who was stepping up a mile from his longest previous race distance to win the great staying handicap, is by Camelot, also the sire of Luxembourg. Camelot will doubtless have other chances of siring the winner of the second Classic he won.

The hardest part for any trainer is to break into the big league. Last week George Boughey won the 1,000 Guineas with Cachet and Ferguson must also be harbouring that dream, probably first imagined in the years his father John was, with Simon Crisford, at the helm of running the Godolphin interests of Sheikh Mohammed.

Another young Newmarket handler who may not be too far away from joining them is Tom Clover. On Saturday Clover took the Oaks Trial at Lingfield, his first stakes win, with the unbeaten Rogue Millennium, a bargain buy for the Rogues Gallery from the Shadwell dispersal. She was bought on the strong recommendation of her previous handler, Marcus Tregoning, who never got her to the track. A beautiful, strong daughter of Dubawi, she cost 35,000gns at auction and with her pedigree, looks and above all ability must be worth half a million!

I’d love her to win the Oaks. Tom and his wife Jackie, daughter of the late and much-missed Classic trainer Michael Jarvis, are showing signs of moving smoothly onto racing’s top table;

 *

One necessary ingredient in racing is luck. Another is the ability to take an opportunity when it comes along. On Friday morning in Kentucky, one of the original 20 horses in the field for the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs, Louisville, was withdrawn owing to a late injury.

That left the way for the 21st acceptor on the list, Rich Strike, an 80/1 shot trained by Eric Reed and ridden by the unknown South American jockey Sonny Leon, to squeeze into the line-up and race from the widest draw of all.

His two best runs this spring had been placed efforts (third and fourth) in minor stakes behind Tiz The Bomb, favoured on both occasions, each time as a 20/1 shot or longer at Turfway Park. That horse was also in Saturday’s field and started a 30/1 shot.

Race commentator Larry Colmuss couldn’t have considered him much either because the second highest-priced winner of the race in the past 110 years had already run past the two favourites into the lead before he even noticed him.

Rich Strike bolted up and afterwards his trainer, who had the mortification of losing a large part of his string, his records, trophies and memorabilia in a stable fire a few years ago, said he had been very hopeful as he knew he would stay.

I don’t know what the horse is like in his stable but I can honestly say I have never seen so graphic a sight of one horse trying literally to savage another. For several minutes as Sonny Leon was trying to participate in a post-race interview his horse was attacking the pony, despite all the efforts of that horse’s rider.

Eric Reed certainly had luck on his side when he decided to claim the colt out of a race on the same Churchill Downs track last autumn. You pay your money beforehand over there, and if they run badly you have to bite the bullet.

Eric Reed and his owners didn’t have a bullet to bite, just the thrill of seeing the horse, bred and raced in the famed Calumet Farm colours, romp home by more than 17 lengths. Even then, thoughts of the Kentucky Derby must have been some way from even their optimistic minds.

It is hard not to sympathise with the jockey who rode him that day. That young man had to endure each of the two days of the meeting riding a single unfancied and unsighted horse, before watching the Derby. An Englishman who between 2010 and 2017 rode between a high of 39 and low of 15 wins over those eight seasons, he left for a new career in the US the following year.

Initially his move to the US brought great success and by early December 2018 he had ridden well over 50 winners, enough to put him second in the Fair Grounds, Louisiana, jockey standings.

No doubt he would never have expected to have ridden a Kentucky Derby winner in that horse’s only previous career win. The way Rich Strike finished on his return to Churchill Downs offers hope that the winning will not stop there.

Anyway, have you guessed the identity of the jockey? I think I’ d like to delay the revelation to allow me what I have always thought was the funniest moment ever at a disciplinary inquiry in the UK. Up before the terrifying if slightly out-of-touch gentleman in charge of the inquiry, upon being asked for his name, our hero said: “Beschizza” which the gent misinterpreted as “Biscuit, sir”. “Well Mr Biscuit,” he began. No wonder Adam of that name thought he’d better go elsewhere to ply his trade.

A nephew of Julia Feilden, he’s very much from a racing background and if he hasn’t quite made the big time in the US he will always be able to tell his grandchildren of the day he rode the horse that was to win the Kentucky Derby to a 17-length win also at Churchill Downs.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Guineas Double Top for the Doyler

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Standing by the side of the paddock as the generally agreed handsome field for the 2,000 Guineas lined past, Alex Cole, son of trainer Paul and elder brother of joint-trainer Oliver, and Olly Sangster, grandson of Robert, were agreed that the three principals in the market were the biggest and the best-looking, writes Tony Stafford.

“Both Charlie Appleby’s are coming up to 540 kilos and Native Trail already was a giant as a two-year-old”, said Alex. “Dad always said it was better to buy a big horse. As long as you are careful with them, they usually have so much more substance.”

How the Cole stable would love to be back in the same milieu inhabited nowadays only by the likes of Godolphin, Coolmore and the biggest established teams like Varian, Balding, Hannon, Fahey and Johnston (father and son). The five supplied the fourth, fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth respectively and the only absentees from their “two-hundred club” were William Haggas, and the Gosdens father and son, without a runner in the first Classic race of 2022.

For all the merit of the supporting cast, though, they could not match the three market leaders – the big, very big, three of Coroebus, Native Trail and Aidan O’Brien’s Luxembourg, of whom everyone immediately afterwards said, “The Derby!” If the old “fourth in the Guineas, first in the Derby” adage needs a little finessing, so be it.

Master Cole, still glowing after the Palace House Stakes success immediately beforehand of Khaadem, owned by Mrs Fitri Hay, to whom he is racing manager, will be an adherent of the formula.

Back in 1991, when Alex was but a lad, Generous, trained by his father for Prince Fahd Salman, finished fourth in the 2,000 Guineas and did indeed go on to success in the Derby a month later. I’m sure that Guineas is engraved on the family’s hearts and it is on mine, too.

As the semi-celebration of a Classic fourth place from the large Saudi entourage developed that day as I’m sure talk of the Derby took root, a tall elegant young gentleman beckoned me over from among the waiting press corps for an early chinwag.

That was Prince Fahd’s younger brother, Prince Ahmed bin Salman, and he told me he would like me to write some articles for the newspaper his family owned and still does three decades later. In Central London, on news-stands, the “green paper” as London’s Arabic community knows Asharq Al Awsat, is to this day highly conspicuous.

I did indeed thereafter write a column – translated of course – every week for a decade and that led to working with the Prince’s Thoroughbred Corporation which was also to win the Derby with Oath eight years later. Many international races also came its way including five consecutive US Triple Crown races (but oddly no Triple Crown) and many Breeders’ Cups. Then, in 2002, his sudden and untimely death, almost exactly a year after Prince Fahd’s, both men had been in their forties, ended an era.

For both Charlie Appleby and Coroebus’ rider James Doyle, this was a 2,000 Guineas first and, for Doyle, an initial success in any UK Classic. It must have been a wonderful family occasion all round and one that William Buick did not begrudge his friend as he filled second place on the favourite Native Trail.

Charlie’s mum, Patricia, and James’s mother, Jacqui, are constant companions on the racetrack at the major meetings. Former trainer Jacqui has been the biggest and strongest support for her son and elder daughter Sophie, riding with great success in the US for the last few years. Her pride in their success can only be exceeded by the knowledge that she has produced two wonderful, modest human beings.

When she was training in Lambourn at around the turn of the century, her biggest financial supporter was Tom Ford, coincidentally my former opening partner in the Eton Manor cricket side of the late 1960’s, but by then a big financial player in the City. Tom and Jacqui split after a few years’ intermittent success, and the way she battled to bring up her kids and kept going through various difficulties was more than admirable.

Long before those days, my former next-door neighbour in Hertfordshire, Roger Anderson, knew Jacqui from the pointing field and I remember chatting to her with Roger at Huntingdon races while the two very young children would be running around, playing in front of the grandstands.

On Saturday, James Doyle had his first British Classic. Yesterday, in the manner of London buses, a second comes along right after and, in guiding Cachet to an all-the-way success, he was returning the favour by giving George Boughey his initial Classic triumph in only his third full season with a licence.

Boughey’s rise from the time he was assistant to Hugo Palmer has been, to coin a hackneyed phrase, meteoric and anyone who thought it was only Amo Racing’s horses which represent football agent Kia Joorabchian that has got him there, think again.

It was fine that Godolphin and Coolmore would fight out the colts’ Classic ahead of the rest of the domestic major teams, but this was a victory for the small – probably not for long – man.  George was listed with 104 horses in the latest Horses in Training and that is sure to go up – probably already has at the breeze-ups with some more to come.

This filly has modest antecedents as a daughter of the £6k National Stud stallion Aclaim, a horse raced and trained by Martyn Meade to win seven of his 15 starts, including the Group 1 Prix de la Foret on Arc day in his final race.

The £6,000 fee in 2022 is just below half his starting point and Cachet, a member of his first crop, is alone going to be responsible for sending him into orbit and providing Martyn with a healthy dividend for his massive investment in the sport. The biggest commitment has been the purchase of Manton, which even put a strain on Robert Sangster’s finances three decades ago.

When Cachet came up for sale as a yearling, she attracted a bid of 60,000 guineas and became one of the many successful Highclere purchases, master-minded by Harry Herbert and his brother-in-law (and Her Majesty’s racing manager), John Warren.

I have friends who have been with Highclere all along since they started and I’m hoping, Andrew, that you came into this one although I fear you probably did not. But again, a win for a syndicate horse of prosaic origins can be the life blood of the sport going forward.

James Doyle only rode at Newmarket for two of the three days of the Guineas meeting – he had a success at Goodwood on Friday – and he preceded Coroebus’ victory with a well-judged win on 22/1 Ian Williams-trained Cap Francais in a valuable nine-furlong handicap.

As he welcomed the former Ed Walker inmate into the enclosure, he reflected on what could have been at Ascot earlier in the week when Enemy got squeezed up the rail by the tough Irish mare Princess Zoe which allowed Quickthorn to pinch second place close home.

“At least we know now I was on the right track with Enemy”, said Williams on Saturday. “He’ll run in the Henry II at Sandown at the end of the month, then I’ll give him a long break before he travels out to Australia for the Melbourne Cup. He’ll have his prep as the best Australians do just before in the Caulfield Cup. You might as well run for a couple of million if you’re going to have a trial,” he said.

Before that for Williams and everyone else, it’s the small matter of Chester. Friday’s Chester Cup fell to his last Melbourne Cup challenger, Magic Circle, four years ago when he also won the Henry II Stakes. He fears the Cup may be beyond him this time but he has a plethora of possibles in Friday’s finale, and the Plate for Cup eliminations. I will be shocked if he didn’t win it but don’t ask me (or Ian probably) with which one!

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Ryan, and Raiding Parties

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“It’s a long way to Tipperary”, the first world war British army recruits used to sing as they trudged along the blasted fields of France, writes Tony Stafford. More than a century later, Ryan Moore fitted in an afternoon there sandwiched in between two successful days in Surrey, with a winner apiece at Epsom and Sandown Park.

Tipperary also provided a victory for Aidan O’Brien on Thursday but when the private jet touched down for its second Irish hop for Navan on Saturday, the serious business began. It is, after all, Guineas week – yes April 30th rather than the first Saturday in May - and the barely started flat-race season will be two-fifths of the way through the 2022 Classic races by May Day.

If we needed a sign that O’Brien senior, like his main adversary for the first Classic, Charlie Appleby, has his team in form, then Navan would tell us. Before the meeting Ryan told a mutual friend that all the maidens would run well.

In the event Ryan got on three of O’Brien’s five winners, Aidan matching stay-at-home Paul Nicholls’ tally on the final day of yet another victorious jumps championship at Sandown. Understandably, Nicholls preferred saving his best horses for the two four-runner and one five-runner highly-priced (if not as highly-prized as the swollen jumps pattern would wish) contests largely free from Irish interference. *Note: If you would like a detailed, reasoned evocation of the negative effect on the sport of the ever-growing jumps pattern, read editor Matt Bisogno’s highly informed piece on the subject.

Where the Irish did challenge, in the £90k to the winner Bet365 Gold Cup (nee Whitbread), they mopped up the prize, via 16/1 shot Hewick, trained by Shark Hanlon. Why he, of the flaming ginger hair, should be called “Shark” remains a mystery to me.

Indeed why he alone should have that designation when so many of his compatriots make an equally skilled job of matching and bettering his exploits by turning equine base metal into gold is probably a case for the Monopolies Commission, assuming of course that his nickname was acquired from his training days. But then it sometimes feels like there are other aspects of Irish stables’ domination of the major British jumps prizes every season that need referring to that body. All else seems to be failing as this year’s early false dawn at Cheltenham soon reverted to the usual bloodbath for the home team.

As a domestic aperitif to their top teams’ coming over at the weekend to Newmarket, there is the small matter of Punchestown, five days starting tomorrow and concluding on the day the 2,000 Guineas welcomes Luxembourg from the Coolmore boys to challenge the two prime Godolphin candidates, red-hot favourite Native Trail and market second-best, Coroebus.

Coroebus’ style had many admirers on the day he and Native Trail both won their 2021 finales, the favourite in the Dewhurst and the back-up in a lesser race.

But Native Trail is the only unbeaten colt of the pair, a distinction shared by Luxembourg and just two others from the 24 that stood their ground before the field is whittled down once more at noon today. I dealt with the case of William Knight’s Checkandchallenge, winner of a deep race at Newcastle last weekend. Coincidentally the other unbeaten colt is also trained in Newmarket, in his case by David Simcock. He is Light Infantry, twice a winner last year, and like Checkandchallenge, a son of the deceased Fast Company.

At the time he was in training as a juvenile with Brian Meehan, Fast Company showed many of the attributes of a potential Classic winner, but after an excellent half-length second in the 2007 Dewhurst behind the following year’s Derby winner, New Approach, he never raced again.

I was a regular on Thursday work mornings at Manton in those days and it was a great disappointment to Brian when Fast Company was sold to Godolphin and sent to be trained by Saeed bin Suroor. If either of these relative longshots wins on Saturday it will be a long-awaited accolade for a horse that had been under-valued for all his stud career despite being in the care of Darley throughout.

In the manner of such things, now Fast Company’s son Checkandchallenge has inevitably been attracting interest from people who could more easily shrug off the disappointment of a below-expectation run in the race – be that fourth or eighth as anything better would be a triumph - than Mr Hetherton whose colours he has carried hitherto.

I recall a last-minute pre-Derby sale by Karl Burke around a decade ago that probably made all the difference financially to his training career which at the time looked to be stalling or probably worse. I hope this very smart, sweet-travelling colt does his owner (whoever he may be on the day) and his talented trainer proud.

I make no apology for interjecting here on the Nicholls plans for Punchestown this year which are miserly in the extreme. Nicholls has never been as enthusiastic a Punchestown challenger as Nicky Henderson – I travelled to see Punjabi at the meeting four years in a row for two wins, a nose second and a pulled up (wind).

At time of writing on Sunday afternoon, Clan Des Obeaux, the impressive Aintree winner, is ranged alongside Allaho, Minella Indo, Galvin and Al Boum Photo in Wednesday’s Punchestown Gold Cup. He is a 3-1 shot, a short-enough price for all the domination of Aintree if that quartet turns up.

The only other possible for the UK jumps champ is Monmiral, slated to take on the two wonderful mares Honeysuckle and Epatante, the latter another Aintree winner, in her case over further. With around €160K to the winner in each of a dozen Grade 1 races over the five days, you would think sending a horse with place chances might be worth the risk even for cautious Paul.

Yet tomorrow’s card, worth in all €735k, hasn’t attracted a single English, Welsh or Scottish challenger. It will be great to watch on Racing TV all week but with the wistful thought that surely things should be different.

Back in the Guineas, Camelot, by Montjeu rather than the more influential Galileo (both sons of Sadler’s Wells) but hardly his inferior in terms of producing Derby winners, is Luxembourg’s sire.

When asked about his abilities, Aidan O’Brien said he has superior speed to Camelot, a horse that just saw off French Fifteen in an epic battle for the 2,000 Guineas ten years ago. He followed up in the Derby and the much-sought third leg of the Triple Crown was denied O’Brien and son Joseph when Camelot lost the St Leger by three-quarters of a length to Encke, a horse trained by the subsequently disgraced Mahmood Al Zarooni for Godolphin.

That was Camelot’s first defeat after five successive wins and prevented the first English Triple Crown since Nijinsky graced the 1970 season for an earlier O’Brien – the revered Vincent.

It's always great when the champion two-year-old gravitates to winning the 2,000 Guineas and after his bloodless Craven Stakes return that is entirely possible. Charlie has the horse with the form, but Luxembourg has the Coolmore badge all over him, not just on the sire’s side, but the dam is by Danehill Dancer, a sprinter that ran in Michael Tabor’s colours but far exceeded his decent racing ability when sent to stud.

The mare Attire provides another major link to the glorious past of Ballydoyle. Ben Sangster, her owner-breeder, is of course a son of the late Robert Sangster whose inheritance from his Vernons Pools-owning father funded the domination of the international bloodstock market in the 1980’s and 90’s. Along with Vincent’s supreme training skills and the business acumen and animal husbandry of Vincent’s son-in-law, John Magnier, they were an unbeatable partnership for more than two decades.

I’m with Luxembourg to prove on Saturday that blood is thicker than form lines and take him and Ryan, not to mention Aidan and the Coolmore team, to beat Native Trail with the underdog Checkandchallenge coming from the pack late on to clinch third. Easy, really, this flat racing.

I have loved the 2021-22 jumps season as my little daily job editing fromthestables.com which involves sharing the thoughts of around 15 trainers, ended with a nice win in the William Hill Radio Naps table. The 2022 summer table started yesterday and we were off to a flier when Rogue Millennium won for Tom Clover at 9/2. Only seven months to go!

- TS

Monday Musings: Racing Chess via Knight, Queen’s and a Check mate

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I have a friend who, whenever he sees the name Fast Company against a runner in a race on soft ground or worse, thinks it’s going to win, writes Tony Stafford. More often than not, his inability to back anything much beyond 5-2 prevents his turning intuition to action, thereby preventing his backing a nice long-priced winner.

The fact Fast Company horses do win in extreme conditions exercised my curiosity yesterday morning and I thought I’d better look at the facts. Actually there is little difference between the late stallion’s stats - he died two years ago at a time when his fee at Kildangan Stud was €12,000, the highest of his ten-year career.

From good to firm through all readings to heavy, his winning ratio moved little away from the 23% achieved on heavy ground. What he hasn’t got so far though is a top-class three-year-old colt. Jet Setting, trained by Adrian Keatley, did break the mould with an unexpected defeat of the brilliant Minding in the 2016 Irish 1,000 Guineas, a run that was out of kilter for much of her form. Twice well behind Minding either side of that, she did win a Group 3 easily as an older filly.

Now, though, Fast Company has a Classic contender, and from an unexpected source. In Friday’s opening Listed race on Newcastle’s All-Weather finals day, Checkandchallenge thrust himself into the consciousness with a smooth defeat of a trio of 100-plus rated colts.

Winner of his only previous start at two, when he got up to beat a Karl Burke horse (rated 80 before Friday) he had only inches to spare, but that was after having at least six lengths to make up inside the last furlong.

I was at William’s stable coincidentally last Tuesday when we saw Checkandchallenge quite by luck in the distance. “There’s my Guineas horse”, said William with a laugh, adding that Newcastle on Friday would tell him whether the idea was fatuous or had legs.

Legs it certainly has. With Danny Tudhope at his unobtrusive, business-like best, Checkandchallenge sat at the back of a six-runner field leavened with a couple of three-year-olds who had followed Godolphin’s number two for Saturday week over the line at Newmarket last October.

Coroebus, preferred in some quarters last year to the number one and European champion 2021 juvenile, Noble Trail, won the Autumn Stakes by two lengths from Imperial Fighter with Dubai Poet third. At Newcastle, Checkandchallenge had that pair behind him but in reverse order when the winning margin was slightly less, although Tudhope hardly had to exercise his arm muscles to achieve the result.

Obviously now, after his 4-1 on cakewalk in the Craven Stakes last week, Noble Trail is shorter than ever as the 5-4 market leader, but Coroebus is still next in line at 7-2 ahead of the leading Coolmore / Aidan O’Brien contender Luxembourg, who is a 9-2 chance.

As one very long-tested punter always used to tell me: “you can’t eat value”, but there seems to be a wider disparity in the prices of said Coroebus and Checkandchallenge than the collateral form merits. Ladbrokes and Coral, who work in concert (same firm) for the most part these days, both offer 40-1 about the Rathmoy Stables horse, whereas he is more like 16-1 elsewhere.

Incidentally, when with my Editor I ventured up the steps to meet the trainer in the luxuriously-appointed owners’ room, among the guests enjoying the facilities and watching the day’s racing was Karl Burke.

On Friday morning, when discussing Checkandchallenge with his trainer, Knight ventured: “Karl really likes Aasser <the horse Checkandchallenge beat at Wolverhampton> and thinks he’s much better than 80. That’s why he runs in the handicap at Lingfield today!” He won it comfortably if narrowly at 7-2!

By then Checkandchallenge had already endorsed the previous form and the wonder of it was how little the Lingfield market was affected in the last moments before the race. He’ll go up a few pounds tomorrow while Checkandchallenge, having won both his races, will be eligible for a mark and it won’t be anywhere in the 80’s!

Imperial Fighter, about whom the Sky Sports Racing team laboured to find an excuse to explain the reversal of his form with Dubai Poet, ended 2021 rated 110 and Dubai Poet was 104. Coroebus was 115 and Noble Trail 122. I reckon Checkandchallenge deserves 114 but the officials might go with the “favourite didn’t get a run at a crucial time” get-out and mark Knight’s horse down accordingly.

William Knight spent much of his early career assisting Ed Dunlop at Newmarket before moving to Sussex for ten years, training with success at the late Anne, Lady Herries’, Angmering Park.

When the chance unexpectedly came around two years ago to take over a vacancy left by David Lanigan at Neville Callaghan’s former Rathmoy Stables in the Hamilton Road, he jumped at the opportunity. No wonder! The yard had been totally rebuilt – apart from the trainer’s house – by its new absentee owner.

Last year, his first full season, brought an equal best number of winners and a clear best in terms of prize money. Sir Busker, a large part of the success in recent years, collected $150,000 for finishing fifth in one of the Dubai World Cup feature races last month and the signs already are that better is to come for this upwardly-mobile trainer.

New owners are the life-blood of established trainers and at Newbury on Saturday, Moktasaab, a Shadwell discard picked up for 110,000 guineas last autumn, adorned Harry Redknapp’s colours and won most impressively first time out from a big field.

Moktasaab is due for a big hike and looks a natural for the valuable summer handicaps around ten furlongs, and another of Saturday’s winners is in line for even more drastic attention by the officials.

Last autumn, Ian Williams took the opportunity to strengthen his stable with a few judicious purchases from Arqana and the most dramatic result from the new intake came at Musselburgh in the £100k, better than half of which to the winner, Betway Queen’s Cup over one mile, six furlongs. Ridden chilly at the back, again by Tudhope, Enemy came through in the last two furlongs, eased clear and, while winning by four-and-a-half lengths, ten would be a closer estimate of his superiority.

Williams is one of the more innovative of trainers and Enemy, before he’d broken sweat in the UK was sent as part of the team to Dubai earlier in the year. Originally with John Gosden but transferred midway through his three-year-old season, he joined the Graffard stable which now houses the bulk of the Aga Khan horses.

A consistent strong finisher in his French races, he had been running at just short of ten furlongs there but after Williams secured him for €92k for Tracey Bell and Caroline Lyons, he made the team for Meydan.

Non-country-owning proprietors have the chance to have their horses’ travel paid if they can get two runs on the board during the Carnival and Williams is an ace at contriving that for his inmates. East Asia, Dubai-owned and a money-spinner from nowhere in the UK last year, was lined up for a Group 3 where Godolphin’s Manobo was the stand-out in February, but Williams added Enemy to the field to secure the reimbursement, having given him a warm-up run on arrival.

After East Asia finished well, vastly exceeding anything he’d achieved before to take a lucrative second place behind the favourite, Enemy came through in his wake for a closing fourth. Unfortunately, whereas it is possible to find films of pretty much every horse race around the world, it proved beyond the wit of me to do so.

I just had the trainer’s assurance that if he had not been baulked on the home turn, Enemy would have come out on top in the domestic battle of the 66-1 shots. That resulted in a rise in his mark from 94 to 99, matching East Asia’s new rating.

When I sat down in the buffet at Park Paddocks on Tuesday for the first stage of the Craven Breeze-Up sales, Williams and his shrewd assistant Ben Brookhouse told me they had got 8-1 with four places about Enemy, by which time he had shortened generally to 4-1.

I resolved then to make him my nap for Saturday in the ongoing quest for the William Hill Radio Naps Table prize but deserted him on the morning, idiotically noting a “suspicious drift” back out to 8’s. Ian tried to reassure me. “It won’t start that price!” he asserted. It didn’t, the SP was a ridiculous 11-1.

I guessed the Chester Cup might be the target but yesterday Ian said that he’s always wanted a proper Melbourne Cup challenger and this very sound animal fitted the bill, as he surely does class-wise. With the ability to quicken at the end of a 14-furlong handicap here, the racing requirements of Flemington look assured.

“We had Magic Circle a few years back.  He won the Henry II and the Chester Cup but he didn’t have the soundness you need for the race. Hopefully this horse has the full armoury”, said the trainer. You wouldn’t put it past him.

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Sam’s Fairy Tale Last Hurrah

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It wasn’t necessarily the story we were expecting beforehand but Grand National day always delivers, writes Tony Stafford. Sam Waley-Cohen obviously had his retirement speech ready on Thursday when, partnering Jett - the horse on which he led the 2021 Grand National field a merry dance until tying up half a mile from home - he and everyone else assumed he would make all the running in the Foxhunters’ Chase.

After his failure even to get to the front thanks to an uncooperative James King riding the 2021 winner of the race, Cousin Pascal, Jett went the way of most horses denied their customary lead – he gradually went back through the field before pulling up.

After being quizzed by Luke Harvey at the top of the steps going into the world’s highest weighing room, Sam went over his great career in a few moments before announcing to Luke’s shock, that Saturday would be his last ride.

Jett, formerly with Jim Dreaper (son of Tom, Arkle’s trainer) in Ireland but now playing the family game with Sam’s father Robert at the homestead farm in Warwickshire, had been backed down to a ridiculous price (5-2) considering the demands of any race around these obstacles.

But, of course, he had the Sam factor, six wins in 40 rides around the track I think he said in that great chat. The ability to find gaps where others run into traffic has always been his friend – helped by the fact that, for many of his races, especially in the Foxhunters’, he was meeting riders of a lesser ability.

Now within days of his 40th birthday, too busy in his business life – he runs a dental empire with 3,500 employees – to be anything but (according to dad) a 30-rides-a-year man, he is the potential champion jockey that might have challenged A P and Ruby if he had come from a different family.

Instead, he has been the true embodiment of the old Corinthian tradition and, in Thursday’s race, his nearest equivalent, David Maxwell, went close to winning it, his Cat Tiger just failing to see off the strong finish of the brilliant Gina Andrews on Latenightpass, last year’s runner-up in the race.

The difference? Maxwell uses his own money to buy the horses. Covid must have questioned him as to whether, given he was already in his 40’s, he should continue to shell out the training fees to Paul Nicholls and the rest. Then we saw his face – nothing like an A P or Ruby countenance after a near miss in a big race – beaming in an ecstasy that no other experience could match.

But where Maxwell looks more from the Chris Collins, Dick Saunders, John Thorne and dare I say it the late, lamented (by me anyway) Brod Munro-Wilson riding book, Sam could be another Aidan Coleman as watching his wins up the run-in at Aintree didn’t look too much different on Noble Yeats.

Yes. Finally I’ve got there. A horse bought by Robert Waley-Cohen, not out of the Emmet Mullins stable, but very much to stay with his already upwardly-mobile young trainer. Nephew to Willie, cousin of Danny, whose dad, Tony, of Dawn Run fame, has been such a help to my life.

Emmet Mullins has master-minded, with his pal Paul Byrne, not just the rise of Noble Yeats but many of the gambles such as that with The Shunter at the 2021 Cheltenham Festival that Mullins has delivered.

Byrne was approached to see whether Noble Yeats was available for sale back in February and as he says, “you have to keep turning them over when you can take a profit”. Asked whether he regretted missing out on the £500k winner’s prize, he simply said he was delighted for everyone concerned.

After the race you had to scratch your head. The winner, obviously by the great flat-race multiple Gold Cup scorer, Yeats, was a seven-year-old. I know my memory isn’t what it was – ask the Editor – but I couldn’t remember the last time it happened. Looking through the records, no wonder. The last one was in 1940, years before I was born.

In the last pre-War decade victory for that vintage was almost de rigueur, with Gregalach, Kellsboro Jack and Golden Miller – during his five-time winning spell in the Gold Cup – all great names of jumping, each winning as a seven-year-old. But Bogskar in the first Wartime National, was the last so to do, 82 years ago.

I sat on my son’s sofa to watch the race on Saturday and as soon as I noticed the brown and orange colours – the orange sleeves actually – inching forward I exclaimed: “The best rider over Aintree fences is going to win on his last ride!”

He came there and jumped ahead two out but then he was outjumped at the last by Mark Walsh on the 2021 runner-up, Any Second Now. Surely the top youthful Irish pro would be able to put away the near 40-year-old amateur? But there was no amateur to be seen as he re-rallied Noble Yeats for a memorable win. It cost him a £400 fine for excessive use of the whip and, as he said later, “I’m the first rider ever to be out of pocket for winning the race!” – I’m sure dad will pay the fine if nothing else from his half-million pay-day!

The problem for Waley-Cohen senior is where to find anyone with his son’s ability when he returns for a repeat in 2023. This was only a second win over fences for Noble Yeats, but surely once Ahoy Senor had seen off the best of the staying novices earlier in the week we should have taken notice. Had Noble Yeats not run Lucinda Russell’s top-class young horse close when they met at Wetherby in February?

It was Sam’s second ride on dad’s bright new hope - they had a nice spin round together at Cheltenham last month when after making a little ground out wide he gradually weakened. Quite a nice warm-up for horse and rider you might say.

There was no weakening on Saturday and another measure of the performance was the 20 lengths back to the third, Delta Work, a five-time Grade 1 winner who did best of the seven Gordon Elliott runners.

There was no Fairy Story 2 for Rachael Blackmore on the day the wonderful documentary of her life, broadcast astutely on the morning of her repeat attempt by ITV, answered many of the questions to her talent and toughness. An outgoing, confident girl from the outset, she has transformed into a captivating woman and exceptional rider.

The morning on ITV also offered a computerised prelude to the race. Minella Times, to the shock of the watching Bob Champion fell and, in the race itself, was brought down at Valentine’s, the ninth fence. Snow Leopardess, who won that computer event, never got to her desired place near the front of the huge field and was eventually pulled up.

Red Rum, of course, came out on top in the Champions’ race, just outbattling Arkle – 1970’s course form bettering 1960’s and probably all-time world best. Noble Yeats, with Tiger Roll out of the equation, has the best chance for decades to match Rummy’s record with time on his side.

*

After Cheltenham it took me at least a week to get over what I felt was the immense injustice done to Party Business in the boys’ race. Stopped dead twice he came from miles back to be fifth. Our each-way bet paid off at 25/1 with so many runners but when you are trying to win a naps table that was a blow and a half.

Ian Williams said afterwards he would probably find a nice novice race for him and aim at a big handicap next season. Williams and owner Mark Sheasby, boss of Eventmasters, decided to go again at the last minute and their decision paid a deserved dividend in Saturday’s opening three-miler.

In a forerunner of the big race, two horses came to the last obstacle in close contention, one in the McManus colours later to be denied on Any Second Now, and Party Business. I had reckoned that his troubles probably cost Party Business upwards of 15 lengths, but on Saturday the horse that confronted him had finished a place behind him there.

Ilikedwayurthinkin was now on only 1lb better terms but he ran Party Business a couple of lengths closer than at Prestbury Park. It was great for Sheasby, a client and friend of Williams’ for 20 years, and the thousand guests he had at the track for the big day.

Did I nap him again? Of course not, but Micky Hammond came good at Wolverhampton on Saturday night. Thirteen days left to scour the William Hill Radio Naps table to see whether their assorted experts can catch From The Stables, under whose banner I nominate my pick of the trainer’s reports each day. Given I can select only from our trainers’ horses, it speaks volumes of their skill and vitally, their openness, that FTS is again top of the pops, for the time being at least. 🤞

- TS

Monday Musings: Having a mare for the National

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He could hardly have stage-managed it any better, writes Tony Stafford. Trainer Charlie Longsdon faces five days of anxiety and excitement as he prepares his grey mare, Snow Leopardess, to attempt what will be a doubly unique achievement in Saturday’s Randox Grand National.

Not only is the ten-year-old a mare and a grey to boot, but also uniquely one that has had a foal which has now reached racing age.

For the record – repeating (and I hope accurately) facts I trotted out when the aim was mooted a few weeks back – there have been 13 winning mares of Liverpool’s great race, but only two, Sheila’s Cottage (1948) and Nickel Coin three years later, in the past 120 years.

Three grey horses have won the race in its 183-year history since Lottery won the inaugural race in 1839. The Lamb in 1868 and 1871, Nicolaus Silver in 1961, and Paul Nicholls’ Neptune Collonges ten years ago, were the trio.

As far as I know none of the first 11 winners taking us up to 1902 had a foal, but in those days of milk-cart pullers turning up to have a go round the fences having walked miles to get there, who can say?

Snow Leopardess fulfils all three requirements and can also boast a win around the Aintree fences – in the Becher Chase, the middle of three unblemished appearances this season. And as if the portents hadn’t been positive already, having been some way out of the top 40 before her last win at Exeter, withdrawals mean she is safely in at number 38.

Longsdon sent her to that mares’ Listed race to gain the few extra pounds he reckoned it would take to guarantee her place in the field, but the jumps handicapper was unimpressed, leaving her unchanged on 145 after a ten-length romp. The Grand National gets special treatment and she resides there 1lb higher and, in these days of blanket Irish entries, it was just as well.

Looking at the race I think we should deal not much lower than the top 40 as it would take an idiot to neglect the opportunity to run for half a million sterling on a track presently officially good to soft and with a few showers to top it up. So little used, Aintree’s Grand National course invariably offers a sympathetic surface.

When the dry spell was continuing, the prospect of fast ground on Saturday was a worry for Longsdon, but if it stays as advertised she should be fine. Also, she is ideally placed, right at the bottom of the weights and therefore not in danger from a lightweight taking advantage of a hefty weight allowance.

The make-up of the race is interesting. Looking at the top 40 horses, 24 are trained in Ireland and 16 in the UK. Gordon Elliott (or rather owner Michael O’Leary) has declined to allow Tiger Roll to attempt the Red Rum-equalling third win, but they do have Delta Work, the horse that beat him in that thrilling battle in last month’s Cheltenham Foxhunters, to carry the maroon and white colours.

Delta Work, 8-1 equal-favourite at this stage with compatriot Any Second Now (Ted Walsh/J P McManus) and Snow Leopardess, is one of eight Elliott horses, all in the top 22, which can represent the trainer.

While he is no longer pilloried for the events which led to a suspension last year, he must have found Cheltenham an ordeal as he watched his great rival and obvious role model Willie Mullins winning ten races at the Festival. Mullins has a low-key trio (among the top 40) in on Saturday of which Burrows Saint looks his best chance.

If he had not run his last race, when beaten miles in third behind close contenders Any Second Now and Elliott’s Escaria Ten, Burrows Saint would surely have been higher in the market especially as he started favourite that day. He remains one under the radar and everyone knows Mullins’ capability of pulling rabbits out of hats.

It’s always fun to hear trainers and owners moaning about their horses’ treatment at the Grand National weights unveiling and Henry De Bromhead duly joined that group in complaining that Minella Times, last year’s record-breaking winner under Rachael Blackmore, had too much weight.

Pointing to this year’s two runs – a pulled up and then a fall as evidence – he reckoned he should not have been higher than when running in those two races. I am 100% behind the handicapper and 2lb for the long-established Aintree factor looks fair enough for me, especially remembering how easily he won last year’s race for J P McManus.

There is no incentive for trainers guaranteed to get their horses in the race to over-exert them in the season leading up to it, but I think Colin Tizzard deserves credit for the attacking policy he has pursued with Fiddlerontheroof, runner-up giving away plenty of weight in last November’s Ladbrokes Trophy at Newbury.

The Fiddler then went to Ascot for an excellent second to Fortescue in the Swinley Chase attempting to concede 17lb. He jumped the last in front of Henry Daly’s horse and subsequent revelation that he lost a shoe possibly enhances the merit of the performance.

Sometimes one modest run is enough to convince the betting public that a horse’s improvement may have come to an end. When Chatham Street Lad toiled home 22 and again 22 lengths third behind A Plus Tard and Royale Pagaille in the Betfair Chase at Haydock in November, he immediately dropped out of the subconscious.

But Michael Winters, his trainer, is a dab hand at the big races and it is probably wise to remember the ease of his runaway Cheltenham win in December 2020 and last May’s equally impressive victory in a Graded chase at Limerick.

A combination of Kauto Star and Denman would not have stopped A Plus Tard that day, nor indeed at Cheltenham last month when he was the most impressive of Gold Cup winners. Chatham Street Lad is my best outsider.

De Bromhead got A Plus Tard back to that peak – and what a peak! - at the right time for Cheltenham after a hit-and-miss campaign for much of the winter, and now you have to think Minella Times will have been precisely and single-mindedly aimed at this second shot. Repeat wins are less infrequent than you might think, and he could easily do it again. Imagine the noise if they did. Champion Hurdle, Gold Cup and another Grand National for Rachael in the space of three weeks? It could easily happen.

Apologies for another truncated offering – trouble getting my Internet sorted! – but I must end with a salute to Christian Williams and his achievement in supplying the first two in the Scottish Grand National last weekend.

His nine-year-old mare, Win My Wings, was held up a long way back for much of the four miles at Ayr but came through strongly in the straight. Leading halfway down she moved easily into the lead and scooted clear of stable-mate Kitty’s Light in a show of complete control.

Williams can now be sure she will be raised enough to qualify rating-wise for next year’s Grand National proper – her 140 will be raised at least to 150 unless the official was looking elsewhere on Saturday.

In the meantime a mare one year senior to her will have her chance to make the headlines and history. I hope Snow Leopardess can add a final accolade to her already impressive tally of achievement and win the Grand National. Chatham Street Lad, Fiddlerontheroof and Minella Times complete my four for the exotics. Good luck to everyone and let’s hope they all come home safe and sound.

- TS

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