Monday Musings | geegeez.co.uk

Monday Musings: New Blood

14 June 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

If there is one thing horse racing in the UK needs above all else it is owners: men or women with resources, a love for the sport and the willingness to put up with the absurd economics of excessive and ever-rising costs against persistently modest returns via prizemoney, writes Tony Stafford.

The new player would need to be committed to the game. Like the brothers Maktoum, now down to two from four after first Maktoum Al Maktoum, Ruler of the Emirate, died in 2006 and, only this year, second in terms of age, Sheikh Hamdan also left the stage.

Nominally third in seniority but the long-term number two auditioning for the top job was Sheikh Mohammed Bin Rashid Al Maktoum, now in his 70’s after more than four decades’ involvement in our sport.

We had met in Kentucky and one day I sat with him and Michael (not yet Sir) Stoute as we waited near the famed King’s Head pub and eating house in Dullingham to see the young home-bred stock that the late Richard Casey, subsequently trainer of top handicap chaser Hogmanay, had in his charge. The Sheikh opined, “it doesn’t take ten years to build a breeding operation, more like thirty”. After last weekend, probably 38 years after our chat, with home-bred winners of the 2021 Derby and Kentucky Derby on the Roll of Honour, he has just about made it!

Hogmanay had been one of a package of ten horses I bought without the luxury of having the £100k to pay for them from Malcolm Parrish, owner of a massive stable of his own horses, a sort of precursor to Jim Bolger, but an Englishman based in France with carpet-making mills in Belgium.

Malcolm supervised the training but a M. De Tarragon, his head lad, held the licence and was officially responsible for the 100-head or so horses. I met him in July 1984 in the long-gone Cashel Palace Hotel near Ballydoyle but it was a total fluke as I was really over to meet David O’Brien who at 27 had become the youngest trainer to win the Derby with Secreto.

While the later O’Brien’s seem to have perfected the art of enjoying each other’s major successes, the 1984 Derby brought major tensions as the favourite and previously 2,000 Guineas winner El Gran Senor was lined up for a massive stud deal subject to his winning the Derby. In the race, Pat Eddery on the favourite appeared to be going far better than Christy Roche on the eventual winner but in a desperate finish was beaten a short-head.

The verdict had to delayed while Eddery objected but the result was upheld. Fortunately for the initial Coolmore team, El Gran Senor won the Irish Derby – his task eased by Secreto’s absence – and the Epsom hero also missed both the King George and Eclipse Stakes, retiring without racing again.

I had previously met David O’Brien on my trip that July to Keeneland, invited for my first look at the great Calumet Farm, owned by several generations of the influential Wright family. Then an outsider, J T Lundy married into the family and by this time controlled the place. His stewardship was to become a matter for serious concern in the city, but he had arranged a deal to buy 50 per cent of the would-be stallion for $20 million. The strain of training told on young O’Brien whose sister Sue Magnier says he is much happier tending his grape vines in France where he has been based for many years.

I was to see Calumet later when a previous contact, Henryk De Kwiatkowski, bought it and started the revival of the farm’s fortunes. Upon his death, his own family never having been interested in racing and breeding, new owners came in and it is again at the forefront in Lexington.

Incidentally, my wife recommended I watch the Netflix series The Queen’s Gambit and I was amazed when this epic tale about a female chess genius was entirely centred on Lexington. Right at the start her mother’s car is on New Circle Road, a mini-M25 I cruised every inch both ways during my many visits there. The scene again early in the seven-part series where the heroine plays a tournament at the Henry Clay school also invoked memories of a good friend of Brian Meehan, Henry’s grandson, who had several horses with him at Manton. Great series, you will love it, I promise!

Secreto was owned by a Venezuelan, Senor Miglietti, who also owned the main bus company in Caracas and had, it seems, connections with some less-than-reputable individuals in his country.

Down the decades, other major Arab owners have stayed the course, none more valiantly than Prince Khalid Abdullah, breeder and owner of dozens of the world’s great horses but two will do – Frankel and Enable. His passing, also this year, will no doubt lead to a diminution of seeing his pink, green and white on the racecourses of the UK and beyond and for the blue and white of Hamdan a reduction of 100 is immediately to be enacted.

Two Princes to suffer uncannily similar early deaths at the first years of the Millennium were Abdullah’s countrymen brothers Fahd and Ahmed Salman, both dead in their early 40’s. Their father has since become King Salman in Saudi Arabia.

I brought in Malcolm Parrish and Hogmanay because he was one of the ten horses. We got onto that tack as earlier he had sold two good horses to Michael Dickinson and I had a small part in that. “Want any more?”, he asked then elaborated. “Yeah okay, you can have ten for 100 grand, I won’t put you wrong,” he added.

Hogmanay was one of them but Rod Simpson, who had the job of sorting them out (and on balance did pretty well) said Hogmanay will never stand training, so the £5k he represented in the deal was deducted. For each of his eight wins (seven over fences) and £60k prizemoney a dagger went to the heart. In the end, I did manage to pay for them and there were some very decent animals among them. Later Malcolm bought both Lordship and Egerton studs in Newmarket before passing them on.

With deference to the Dixon brothers who head up the Horse Watchers, and who combine television expertise with phenomenally successful ownership, journalists are hardly likely to make that jump. But one man who has shown signs of joining racing’s big time is the football agent Kia Joorabchian, who has been one of the more visible personalities in the first months of the season.

His horses – 37 have run – have collected 22 wins and more than £400,000 in prizes. That compares with £240,000 in the whole of last season with 18 wins. But what gives the game away is that his horse Mayo Star, a maiden who finished runner-up to Adayar in the Derby nine days ago, earned £241,000 for that one run, so a touch more than for all last season’s exploits.

There is no doubt Kia has gone about it whole-heartedly. Using trainers like Roger Varian, Richard Hannon and Ralph Beckett he has not been shy to spend, paying for instance 460,000gns for a Shamardal colt he sent to Varian. Great King has won one of five starts and is rated 88. Of the horses he has run this year alone – he also has several similarly-expensive acquisitions from the recent breeze-ups in the pipeline - he has spent almost £6milion in acquiring them.

As the man behind the controversial Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano deals a decade or so ago, Kia has become a leader in his business and at 49 he is still a relative young man in racing ownership terms. This year his colours could be represented at Royal Ascot by up to 16 horses. Pivotal to his early success this year have been his two-year-olds with Beckett being joined by George Boughey and Michael Bell as having feasible chances in the juvenile events.

The best candidates in the purple silks must be in the Albany Stakes where once-raced 350,000gns Wolverhampton winner Hello You (Beckett) and twice-successful and cheaply bought Beautiful Sunset (Boughey) are due to line up and are both prominent in the ante-post market. He also has realistic chances with the Varian-trained and seemingly well-handicapped Raadobarg, £200k, in the Britannia, with Hannon’s Sir Rumi (£160k) as a potential second string.

Kia will have a major interest of course in the Euro 2020 championship as will another of the big soccer (and many other sports) agencies, the ICM Stellar Group’s boss, Jonathan Barnett.

From an earlier generation than Joorabchian, Jonathan, along with partner David Manasseh, sold the agency last year to the American group, but they remain in day-to-day charge. Their major players at the competition include four of the England squad (Mason Mount and Jordan Pickford, who played yesterday, as well as Jack Grealish and Luke Shaw who watched the 1-0 win from the subs bench). Gareth Bale (Wales) and Kieren Tierney (Scotland) will also be well to the fore at the championships.

Less than an hour after full-time at Wembley, Jonathan was watching his lightly-raced four-year-old Fitzcarraldo winning with a fast finish at Longchamp for trainer Nicolas Clement. Fitzcarraldo was a €27k buy that took time to mature but now looks like a stayer with a future. Clement, who is head of France’s trainers’ association, has a record of bargain buys having paid £30k for Ray Tooth’s Group 1 winner and later 2,000 Guineas second French Fifteen, who has been sending out jumps winners as a stallion lately.

Given a £40k budget to buy a yearling last autumn, Clement came up with a €21,000 daughter of Derby winner Ruler of the World and he rates her very highly. That’s the way Barnett, also owner of the decent handicapper Year Of The Dragon with William Knight, prefers it, rather than the Joorabchian method.

I bet the people that have been recruited to buy the Amo racing horses would be horrified at M. Clement’s behaviour. Watch out for Fitzcarraldo. I would not be at all surprised if later in the year the jumping boys come calling for this big strong gelded son of Makfi. Maybe then the Clement business acumen that turned a £30k colt into a £1.3 million Classic prospect and future stallion will be rather more in evidence.

Monday Musings: Epsom Wonders

7 June 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Friday morning 6 a.m. and I was keeping one of an increasing number of early-morning assignments with my good friend Steve Gilbey, long-term right-hand man of Raymond Tooth, writes Tony Stafford. He habitually – for Steve is very much a man of routine – starts his morning at crack of dawn at the North Audley Street, Mayfair, Grosvenor’s Café just along the road from Selfridge’s.

His first unofficial action is to help the early-morning setting out on the generous pavement of nine round tables and 36 chairs, using his boxing and security-man strength to speed up the operation.

But as we approached on Friday, there was a difference. A nicely-tanned, fit-looking gentleman came towards us, beaming at Steve, interrupting his own initialising that first task of the day at the café.

“How are you, my friend?” he asked. Steve had often mentioned the owner over the years but only on our previous visit the week before to my enquiry, said: “No, it’s been ages since I’ve seen him; he’s been stuck in South Africa because of Covid”.

So here we were on the morning of the Oaks and I was being introduced to the café owner, Mr Bernard Kantor. It wasn’t exactly a year before, more like eleven months, that Mr Kantor was standing alongside The Queen on the presentation dais for the Investec Derby as she gave the trophy to the Coolmore partners of shock winner Serpentine.

Co-founder and long-term managing director of the bank which had for ten years sponsored the entire Derby meeting, he had since retired upon reaching the age of 70 – you would guess ten years less when you see him.

So here was a highly-successful man actually enjoying the physical release of helping his bijou business – “I love it, it is so old school”, he says – start its day.

We had a pleasant chat, as racing people usually do, with the news that he had already been speaking to his trainer William Haggas and expected a call from him before we left after our toast and in my case some very tasty bacon in between.

As we went out, he thrust a napkin with an email address and imparted the news that Sans Pretention was fancied for the 3.00 race at Catterick that afternoon. When I got a chance to look up the race I discovered not only was the Haggas-trained three-year-old a daughter of Galileo but that she was owned and bred by a certain Bernard Kantor.

Naturally she won and this went along as just another of the ridiculously-fortuitous encounters I have experienced in my long life – even longer than the man who sponsored the Derby and who in 2018 dreamt on the morning of the race he might be winning it himself.

Haggas-trained Young Rascal, a son of Intello, had just come out on top in the Chester Vase, beating Mark Johnston’s Dee Ex Bee, but at Epsom while Dee Ex Bee filled the same position behind Masar, Young Rascal was back in seventh.

He won two more Group 3 races, both at Newbury, and a Kempton Listed to make his career tally five wins from ten starts and then he was passed on to Australian interests to continue his career. There is clearly a strong bond between owner and trainer and Kantor describes Lester Piggott’s son-in-law as “the perfect gentleman, someone who brings great credit to his profession and to racing”.

Obviously, there was little time to sample the benefit of the experiences of a man whose husbandry of his company even though he had basically lived in London for almost a quarter of a century, maintained its South African roots, always with the theme of inclusiveness of the entire population of his homeland.

But he did offer one nice moment. One year as they were erecting the presentation platform for the Derby, one of his staff showed him the three steps he had sourced up which the monarch would climb to reach the presentation area.

“I said, “can you get two taller steps?” and he asked me why. “Wait and see”, I told him. “So when the Queen came to the top step of two I had to bend down to reach her hand to help her up. As I did, right behind me a massive banner depicting “Investec” came into view. I thought he knew why then”, said Bernard.

By the way, I can’t wait to go back and try to get in between the two powerful senior citizens at least to take a couple of chairs out and next Tuesday is already in my diary. As I said, the bacon is delicious and so too are the lunches according to Steve. Grosvenor’s is open until five p.m. so if you want to sit in the sunshine just up the road from Selfridge’s, and sample “the life” I can heartily recommend it.

Ten hours after we left the café, a filly won the Cazoo Oaks by six lengths more than Shergar had won the Derby; four more than St Jovite’s margin in his Irish Derby and only second in terms of a Classic-winning distance in an attributed leading racing nation to Secretariat’s 31-length romp in the Belmont Stakes.

Big Red, though, was unbackable and faced only four vastly-inferior non-staying opponents already worn out by taking him on in the Derby and Preakness. Snowfall wasn’t even her stable’s first choice, that distinction going to beaten 1,000 Guineas favourite, Santa Barbara.

Two starts before the Oaks, Snowfall had finished eighth at 50-1, beating only two home in the Fillies’ Mile at Newmarket although if you have another look at the race you will hear the commentator calling her a close third in her pink cap.

But that was the day the caps between her and better-fancied stable-companion Mother Earth were inadvertently switched, so the white cap, intended for Mother Earth ended on Snowfall who was just hunted up once victory was out of the question.

The Aidan O’Brien team were given a disciplinary sanction for the mix-up but events for the two fillies in 2021 have been ample compensation. Mother Earth, ridden by Frankie Dettori as Ryan Moore partnered the much-lauded favourite Santa Barbara, won the 1,000 Guineas and on Friday, Snowfall, also with Dettori as Moore was again more-or-less obliged to stay with the now Oaks favourite but Santa Barbara never held up much hope as Dettori landed on his feet on an O’Brien Group 1 winner.

There was a race in between the 50-1 no-show and the best Oaks winner of all the years I’ve been watching racing and probably any in the previous two centuries. That was the Musidora when Moore made all the running on the 14-1 shot and just when it looked as though the better-fancied challengers would be coming to get her at the end of the ten and a bit furlongs she opened out again. Most observers on the day thought she might struggle to repeat it at Epsom.

I mentioned last week that O’Brien horses could suddenly make massive strides from two to three. Already up from an official 90 after the Fillies’ Mile, she was raised to 108 after York and with the look from that race and in her pedigree that stamina would not be a problem, she had to come into the Oaks argument.

But this was not an argument. Projecting the late York surge away from the trio that were chasing her at York another almost two furlongs on a more testing track and on rain-drenched ground clearly produced extra dimensions of superiority.

In the last furlong and a half, perfectly in tune with his filly, once Dettori grabbed the stands rails with a little tickle to the long-term leader Mystery Angel, the margin stretched exponentially. As with Secretariat who, once his far-inferior rivals were stone cold, put in an exhibition for the Belmont Park crowd, so did Snowfall in leafy Surrey.

If the Epsom finish line had been another furlong on, 30 lengths would have been a realistic margin. How Snowfall can lose the Arc off bottom weight with all the allowances against her elders and male opponents is hard to imagine. I wonder how daring Dominic Gardner-Hill will be in rating her after this?

We all expected, especially once Aidan removed his other five acceptors from the path of favourite Bolshoi Ballet, his own ninth Derby to go with the same record number of Oaks (Oakses? Ed.) looked almost a case of going down and coming back.

But while that can happen occasionally in a Derby, there are always potential pitfalls. Afterwards everyone was musing on why the favourite had so clearly under-performed. It was only as the generous praise for hard-working Adam Kirby, winner on Charlie Appleby’s well-deserved second score in the race with strong staying Adayar, that Aidan O’Brien was tweeting a ghastly-looking wound on the favourite’s off-hind leg where he had been struck into in the early scrimmaging.

Hopefully he can be brought back to full health to challenge Adayar later in the season, though maybe their future diverging distance requirements might make that unlikely.

Not 24 hours later, with last year’s Dewhurst winner St Mark’s Basilica annexing the Prix Du Jockey Club yesterday in such emphatic fashion to add to his earlier French 2000 Guineas success, Coolmore and O’Brien instantly re-established themselves at the top of the three-year-old colts’ division, too. It all makes for an exciting year.

Adam Kirby is such a nice bloke. One day coming back from a race meeting up north, one of my tyres blew but luckily it was close to the services on the A14. I limped into the garage and luckily noticed Big Paulie, formerly Adam’s driver, who had just stopped to re-fuel.

Paulie looked into the car, spoke to a bare-chested and clearly sleepy passenger who hastily pulled on some clothes and came out to look with Paulie at the damage. Within minutes they had changed the tyre with minimal help from the driver and we were all on our way. As I reiterate, very nice bloke is Mr Kirby!

Godolphin’s second win in four years started an astonishing day, rounded off by Essential Quality, who made the Belmont Stakes – the third leg of the US Triple Crown – his sixth win in seven career starts.

Before yesterday, Essential Quality, a son of Tapit and, like Adayar a home-bred Godolphin colt, suffered that sole defeat when fourth to the controversial Medina Spirit, absent from the field last night and with his trainer Bob Baffert now under a two-year ban from having runners at Churchill Downs.

Even if Medina Spirit is disqualified, as seems inevitable after two positive drug tests, the latter in a laboratory Baffert chose to carry out the test, there is no prospect of Essential Quality being the beneficiary beyond being promoted to third. Had he won the Derby, I’m sure trainer Brad Cox would have run him back in the Preakness.

In any case it was a memorable weekend for Godolphin, but even if they win ten more Derbys and three US Triple Crowns, it will never wash away for me the memory of a horse and jockey in perfect synchronicity slicing up the last furlong in the biggest show of superiority I have ever witnessed in a championship Flat race.

Monday Musings: New names in Epsom frame

31 May 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

There are Classic trials and Classic trials, but never before, I suggest, has there been a situation like that which leads into Friday’s Oaks, writes Tony Stafford.

I was about to trot out “Investec” as usual but checked and it’s now the Cazoo Oaks– yes, I wondered who they were too! There are 15 acceptors and it is possible to line up all bar one of them running in one of four races and all within a ten-day time-frame.

So there should be no excuse on whether the filly in question has trained on or indeed whether she will be fit. Only one of the 15 finished out of the first four – Martin Meade’s Technique, fancied for the Lingfield Oaks Trial but only seventh of eight behind the Archie Watson-trained 28-1 shot Sherbet Lemon.

Five of the eight that ran there, including runner-up Save A Forest, Ocean Road and Divinely reunite: the 1-2-3-4 that day are in the line-up.

There seemed only minimal evidence why the Aidan O’Brien filly Divinely should have attracted a gamble from an early last week’s 50-1 to one-fifth those odds, so a fraction of the 33-1 available about the first two home at Lingfield. But then she is a full-sister to Found, winner of a mere £5 million in prizemoney and a consistent improver throughout her three seasons’ racing.

Then again maybe a leaked whisper of a sensational Ballydoyle gallop might have had something to do with it. Anyway, the races in question in time order and in number of days before Friday start with the one-mile 1,000 Guineas (33) from which runner-up Saffron Beach and fourth home, the beaten Newmarket favourite Santa Barbara, come.

Three days later, the Cheshire Oaks at Chester, the race which first indicated Enable’s outstanding potential, revealed three more Oaks possibles and a more predictable outcome. The Mark Johnston filly Dubai Fountain, a daughter of Teofilo, beat Zeyaadah by a length with O’Brien’s La Joconde fourth in what was clearly a scouting mission for the girls back home.

Lingfield, which we dealt with above, was three days after Chester and the final link in the Classic chain came another four days on, so just over three weeks before the big race. The Musidora Stakes at York, run over slightly more than ten furlongs provided a surprise O’Brien winner in Snowfall, living up to the tradition of abrupt form progression from two to three for horses from that stable. The daughter of Deep Impact – do not worry, the dam is by Galileo – swamped the principals in that market leaving Noon Star, Teona and Mystery Angel to fill the places at a respectful distance.

The only outcast from those four tightly arranged and informative indeed series of races is Willow, the fifth and possibly on form the least feasible of the Coolmore contingent. She was third in a Naas Group 3 on Lingfield Oaks day and is, so far, winner of one race in five (a maiden), so normally just an also-ran.
But then you notice that the daughter of American Pharoah is out of Peeping Fawn who, at the time she ran in the 2007 Oaks, also just had one maiden victory from five career starts. She did not run at two but packed in five runs before the end of May, finishing a more than creditable third in the Irish 1,000 Guineas.

Despite that she was a 20-1 shot for Epsom, hardly surprising as she was stretching out from a mile to a mile and a half and only five days after her third behind the brilliant Finsceal Beo. In the event she easily outperformed the trio of other O’Brien candidates when a half-length second to Sir Henry Cecil’s Light Shift with the stable number one All My Loving four lengths back in third.

For the rest of the summer Peeping Fawn was supreme in winning four Group 1 races in succession, the Pretty Polly, readily from the previous year’s 1,000 Guineas heroine Speciosa; the Irish Oaks, emphatically turning around Epsom form with Light Shift; the Nassau at Goodwood and then the Yorkshire Oaks, wrapping up her 10-race, five-win career in 144 days.

So if Willow does turn up on Friday I wouldn’t put you off having as my friend Prince Pippy always says – and I’m sure he’s missing going racing as much as me – a chip each-way on her.

It’s a very different Oaks this year with no Gosden, Charlie Appleby or Wiliam Haggas runner, but Roger Varian is upholding the Newmarket challenge with three contenders along with Sir Michael Stoute, veteran of many Classic triumphs over the past 50 years and Hugo Palmer, a 2,000 Guineas winner with Galileo Gold (ironically not by Galileo, but with him as the broodmare sire) and now proud progenitor of two winners from his first crop including Listed winner Ebro River, hero of the National Stakes at Sandown for Palmer last week.

The Oaks would already have fallen to a Hugo Palmer filly had his Architecture not had the misfortune to be in the same age group as the amazing Minding, comfortable winner of the race five years ago. Architecture was an excellent second.

There are at least three names in addition to Martyn Meade that do not fall easily from the tongue in relation to Group 1 fillies’ races. The afore-mentioned Archie Watson’s filly Sherbet Lemon, despite her almost-unconsidered status as a 33-1 shot, did extremely well to hold off a quartet of challengers around Lingfield and that race has been a more promising indicator of events at Epsom than was the case in the early part of this Millennium. Still regarded as more of a two-year-old “get-‘em-out-and-run-‘em” trainer, there seems to be more of a measured approach these days. As Watson’s stable grows into its new coat, so Hollie Doyle keeps pace and more.

That prospect of a first Classic for her is almost too exciting to contemplate but virtually guaranteed to happen one day.
If Watson used to be that specialist trainer, George Boughey, with the help pf Amo Racing’s big-spending Kia Joorabchian, has smoothly stepped into his shoes. A former Hugo Palmer assistant, he has all the hallmarks of a future top five trainer.

The name Chapple-Hyam has been notable in Classic terms and Peter of that ilk trained two Derby winners, Dr Devious and Authorized. At the time of his training for Robert Sangster from his Manton stables, Chapple-Hyam was married to Jane, daughter of Sangster’s second wife, the former Susan Peacock.
In 1992 not only Dr Devious brought Derby success, but the outstanding miler Rodrigo De Triano won the 2,000 Guineas and Irish 2,000 Guineas.

Over the past decade while her former husband has been operating on a much smaller scale – though with little sign of diminished talent – Jane Chapple-Hyam has gradually shown her own skills as a handler. Starting in 2006 she had tremendous success with multiple stakes-winner Mull Of Killough, trained for some of the younger members of the Sangster family, headed up by Sam and his nephew Ned and now her step-brother Ben’s wife Lucy with James Wigan and Lucy’s son Olly own Saffron Beach.

Winner of her only two races at two, a maiden and then the Group 3 Oh So Sharp Stakes, both over seven furlongs at Newmarket, Jane has kept the daughter of New Bay to the same track this year.
She reappeared in the Nell Gwyn, finishing runner-up to Sacred and then comfortably left Sacred behind in sixth in the 1,000 Guineas, staying on strongly past Santa Barbara into second behind that filly’s stable-companion Mother Earth who did not let the Classic form down with her second to Coeursamba in the French 1,000.

There are plenty of potential stories, but save a Hollie win, Jane Chapple-Hyam winning a race for her step-nephew and step-sister-in-law would run it close. There are certainly worse 12-1 shots around to waste our money on.

It would be great if Love could turn out earlier in the afternoon in the Coronation Cup. We only saw her once after her two Classic wins, by almost five in the 1,000 and nine in the Oaks. That later five-length win in the Yorkshire Oaks seems so long ago. It would be nice to see her challenge the fast-improving Al Aasy for William Haggas and the French colt In Swoop who has carried on the good work this spring after that excellent second in the Arc last October.

As to the Derby, you tell me, although it is hard from here to look past the favourite Bolshoi Ballet who won the same two races that his sire Galileo did before his triumphant run in the Derby. In winning the Ballysax Stakes and then the Derrinstown Stud Stakes, Bolshoi Ballet has convinced Ryan Moore he is the most uncomplicated colt he has ever ridden. I believe him.

-TS

Monday Musings: The Genius of Jim

24 May 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

It’s Sunday morning in the breakfast room of Glebe House, Coolcullen, Co Carlow, writes Tony Stafford. Ranged around the kitchen table are trainer Jim Bolger, wife Jackie, daughter Una Manning, grand-daughter Clare Manning, who runs the family’s Boherguy stud, and two jockeys. Stable jockey and the Bolgers’ son-in-law Kevin Manning has been a fixture here for decades but a young interloper is an honoured guest.

It’s the morning after Jim Bolger’s historic first victory in the Irish 2,000 Guineas with Mac Swiney, but not just that, he also provided the short-head second, Poetic Flare, more than three lengths clear of the third, the Aidan O’Brien-trained Van Gogh.

The interloper is young winning rider Rory Cleary, who edged out the main man in a thrilling private duel between two colts whose breeding had all been an act of JSB.

The atmosphere around the table is rather tenser, though, than you might have imagined after a long-awaited Classic success. Then Jim began.

“Now do you remember when we talked about the race yesterday morning I told you what I wanted you to do?” said Jim. “Rory, I told you to make the running as Mac Swiney is our Derby horse so the better stayer and Kevin, you were to join him on the line. Obviously Poetic Flare, as the Newmarket 2,000 Guineas winner is more the miler of them and after failing to follow up in France last Sunday, we needed you to make amends here!”, said Jim.

“How could you get it so wrong? Rory, either you were just a little too forceful on the run to the line – you hit him eight times rather than the permitted seven after all and got that ban - or Kevin, you couldn’t keep Poetic Flare straight in the finish. That result cost us a second Classic winner in one day!” added the trainer.

Then I woke up!

The alchemist of Irish racing had just pulled two rabbits out of the same hat. Has ever a Classic been decided by a dead-heat where every being, human or equine – save Rory Cleary, and even he’d been fashioned in the manner of Aidan O’Brien, Tony McCoy, Willie Mullins and so many more, in the Bolger hothouse – had been so minutely sculpted by one man?

The fact it was not a dead-heat, and make no mistake neither horse deserved to lose, was the only issue that stopped this result from transcending reality into fiction.

To describe Bolger’s unique status during a lifetime as trainer, owner and breeder as the supremo of an Academy doesn’t go anywhere near to covering it. It’s been more like a multi-generational pattern of life based on hard work, honesty and intuitive talent. Forty years ago he talked of an ambition to own all the horses in his stable. Even that apparently over-blown dream has proved to be much less than the surreal actuality.

He not only does – in the name of his wife Jackie - own almost all the horses in the yard, but breeds the majority too. He is the breeder of both the Guineas winners and, much more improbably, their respective sires, Derby winner New Approach (Mac Swiney) and that horse’s son Dawn Approach, sire of Poetic Flame, not to mention Teofilo, Mac Swiney’s broodmare sire.

To breed one unbeaten champion two-year-old in a lifetime would be beyond the dreams of most stud owners. To breed three, all of which won the Dewhurst Stakes to clinch their European juvenile championships and ensure their reputation, is something beyond comprehension.

Much was said of his genius in identifying Galileo as a sire to bank on when he first went to Coolmore following that horse’s epic career under Aidan O’Brien including his impressive Derby win. At the time Derby winners weren’t the most fashionable for stud careers – often being packed off to Japan or indeed ending up as jumps stallions, but Galileo was the exception.

Teofilo emerged from that first crop, running five times – all at seven furlongs – and only twice winning by more than a neck, and even then never by as much as two lengths. In two of the three narrow victories he rallied at the finish to regain the lead, a characteristic of both Saturday’s main protagonists.

He could not have proved more justified in his patronage of Galileo, but even for Jim Bolger, it is impossible to be right all the time.

I remember one day at Arqana’s Saint-Cloud sales seeking a stallion to cover one of Raymond Tooth’s mares asking David O’Loughlin which of Coolmore’s new sires might fit. He kindly pointed me in the direction of another of their Derby winners, the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi. He said: “Jim Bolger’s sending a load of mares to him.”

So we sent Laughing Water to Pour Moi and her son, Waterproof, did win a hurdle race on New Year’s Day last year but nothing else. Coolmore meanwhile did not waste much time diverting Pour Moi to their successful NH division despite his producing a Derby winner from his first crop in the shape of Wings Of Eagles.

From a €20k starting point, Pour Moi is now serving his mares having been banished for the last two covering seasons to the Haras de Cercy in France at €3,000 a pop. That’s less than 1% of what Galileo still commands as he approaches the twilight of the greatest stallion career of all time. From his starting point of €30k he will stand in historical terms at least on a par with his own sire Sadler’s Wells and that great horse’s father, the inimitable Northern Dancer.

Just as Bolger identified Galileo’s potential so did John Magnier all those years ago when with the assistance of Robert Sangster’s financial clout and Magnier’s father-in-law Vincent O’Brien’s training skills, they descended on Keeneland in Kentucky to cherry-pick the best of the Northern Dancers.

Again here was a champion and a Derby winner, despite in his case being very small. He missed out on the Triple Crown, finishing only third in the Belmont Stakes following victories in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness, but once sent to stud, he produced the English Triple Crown winner Nijinsky, trained by Vincent O’Brien from only his second crop.

That event guaranteed the future success of Northern Dancer, standing at Windfields Farm in Maryland, near Washington DC, initially for $10,000. It also galvanised the O’Brien/Sangster/ Magnier certainty that Northern Dancer should be the sire to concentrate on. As well as Sadler’s Wells, the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner who did not contest the Derby, but became such a prepotent stallion winning 14 Champion Sire titles, 13 in succession, their shopping trips also brought back The Minstrel, one of the bravest winners of the Epsom Classic in memory.

If Jim Bolger was the biggest star on Irish 2,000 Guineas Day 2021, David O’Loughlin, or rather his wife Treasa, and also the wives of fellow Coolmore senior executives Tom Gaffney and Clem Murphy, won the Group 3 Marble Hill Stakes for two-year-olds with Castle Star, trained by Fozzy Stack.

Magnier has always encouraged his most valued employees to own, breed and above all cash in on the potential of horses and no doubt the trio (and their wives of course) will be hearing plenty of offers for this very stylish winner by Starspangledbanner, who has returned from the ignominy of infertility to a full part in the Coolmore story.

Last week I mentioned Sam Sangster, son of Sadler’s Wells and The Minstrel’s owner among many other Vincent O’Brien stars, for his own exploits with a filly called Beauty Stone. The daughter of Australia, originally a 475,000gns Godolphin buy, but a Sangster acquisition for barely 1% of that when culled from the Charlie Appleby team, made it four wins in a row at Goodwood on Saturday.

Running off 77, 15lb higher than when she started her winning run as recently as February at Kempton, the Tom Ward-trained filly battled on well to defeat 0-90 opposition. Black type could be next for Beauty Stone and no doubt young Mr Sangster will know how to handle the experience and also her future marketing which will involve rather more figures than those he paid for her. It’s all a matter of breeding as Jim Bolger will tell you. Nice kitchen by the way!

Monday Musings: Boutique Classic

17 May 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The Arqana Arc sale, staged every eve of the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe at the company’s Saint-Cloud base, used to be a major source of excitement with several candidates due to run the next day, sometimes even in the big race itself, going through in a real boutique auction, writes Tony Stafford.

It was the model for the much more recent pre-Royal Ascot auction where many of UK racing’s great and good, and many over here from overseas for the week, would be wined and if-not dined, certainly canape’d to their hearts’ content in Kensington Palace Gardens with nary a horse to be seen.

Friends of mine got a great result a few years ago selling a decent handicapper for an embarrassingly-large amount. I hope his new owners were as satisfied in the longer scheme of things as his original partners but I very much doubt they were.

Last October 3, with Covid in full force throughout Europe, a slimmed-down catalogue of 27 horses went virtually “sous le marteau” – I used the translation for hammer as the French for “gavel” is, boringly, gavel, what a let-down!

With absentees, reserves not attained and simply horses unsold or bought back, only 11 changed hands.

Most of those were three-year-olds and in the 43-49 kg mark, translating to 86-108 in UK ratings. The highest price was the €975,000 for Virginia Joy, a German-trained filly that has been exported from France to the USA, and won an optional allowance claiming race last month at Belmont Park for her new owner, Peter Brant.

One oddity and the only obvious jumps prospect was the once-raced (placed third) AQPS gelding Hercule Point, bought for €270,000 by Dan Skelton. I think we should look out for this son of the top French jumps sire, Network.

Two of those sold had in fact performed at ParisLongchamp that afternoon on the first stage of the Arc meeting. Step By Step, a colt, was third in the Qatar Prix Chaudenay. He went for €320,000 and has not been sighted since being bought by Narvick International.

Until yesterday the only other subsequent winner from the batch was King Pacha, €100k worth of three-year-old colt that has been strutting his stuff in Qatar. First time there in January he was second in the Qatar Derby and after a lesser runner-up spot, won a 100 grand race before two later fifth places.

But then there was yesterday, and what was expected to be the second leg of an Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore double 35 minutes after St Mark’s Basilica won the French 2,000 Guineas – forget all that Poule D’Essai stuff!

St Mark’s Basilica was allowed to start at 4-1 in his first run since claiming top 2020 European colt honours having won last year’s Dewhurst. That choice of Classic for his comeback run shows that a fair bit of planning goes into those Ballydoyle Spring pack-shufflings as St Mark’s Basilica is a son of the top French sire, Siyouni.

After this victory, leading French breeders will be unable to resist him when he goes to stud. A quick look through the list of Aidan’s 192 inmates in Horses In Training shows he is the only Siyouni in the yard. Of course he does have a family connection a few miles down the road at Coolmore stud, the home of Siyouni’s 2020 Arc winner, Sottsass.

It’s been rather long-winded but at last I’m there. Sottsass was trained by Jean-Claude Rouget and that most prolific of French trainers from his base in the west of France is always dangerous in the Classic races on home soil.

Yesterday he had a single runner pitted against Mother Earth and, while the O’Brien filly was anything but disgraced in finishing runner-up in another Classic so soon after Newmarket, she could not match Rouget’s outsider.

Coeursamba is a daughter of The Wow Signal, who raced only at two and won his first three races, including at Royal Ascot, for John Quinn but lost his unbeaten record in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere. He was the 7-4 favourite, but finished last of seven behind Gleneagles, the future 2,000 Guineas winner, and promptly retired to stud in France.

Coeursamba won only one of her six races at two, but did enough to earn a rating dead on 100. She dutifully took her place the next day in the Prix Marcel Boussac, and finished fifth to Tiger Tanaka, who was unplaced yesterday. Then last autumn she had one more run, third behind Lullaby Moon, the Redcar Gold Trophy winner, another also-ran. Lullaby Moon now runs in the ever-more-recognisable Amo Racing colours.

That was one of many private and public deals that have bolstered the strength of Amo’s celebrity football agent, Kia Joorabchian. A stream of juvenile first-time winners in his purple and white silks have been inevitably attracting attention and quickly propelling trainer George Boughey into the big time.

No doubt they will be going on a shopping spree this week when Arqana stage their breeze-up sale in Doncaster rather than Paris with the Covid recovery trailing behind the UK’s – touch wood and whistle, as Len Baily, brother of Spurs and England footballer Eddie used not only to say but perform with a modest trill.

I worked in Len and middle brother Charlie’s betting shop in Clarence Road, Lower Clapton, before leaving school and passed up an offer to take their partner Sid’s share when he retired – for free. I’m clinging on to that sort of memory – Len’s whistle – for dear life, still wondering whether I should have been on the other side of the argument for the past 58 years!

Coeursamba, at €400,000 the second most expensive of those Arqana Arc sale graduates, might have started 66-1 but could have been mistaken for the favourite as she quickly asserted over Mother Earth.

Mr Joorabchian doesn’t show many signs that he is finished with his acquisitions. Rossa Ryan, a young jockey who is showing that the best way to go from mid-range to top-level rider is to get on good horses, revealed in a recent interview that his boss has a team of 85, more than 50 of them two-year-olds.

As I said, we’ve seen a few of them and good luck to Kia, a welcome incoming force just as two of the biggest players ever in the UK, Prince Khalid Abdullah and Hamdan Al-Maktoum, have left the scene. As the O’Learys are finding with the Gigginstown House hordes, it’s not easy to rationalise overnight, so I’m sure we’ll be seeing the Frankel and Nashwan colours for years to come until the two bosses’ successors decide on which way they will go with their massive operations.

One disappointment in the “1,000” was the running of King’s Harlequin in the Sam Sangster colours; but that Camelot filly has already far-outweighed her original purchase price of €30k, by Tina Rau and Nicolas Clement as a yearling.

It might not have been what connections had been hoping for yesterday as King’s Harlequin raced too freely and gradually dropped away. Sam, though, is continuing to show signs that he is a chip off the old block and in time could be winning big races in the manner of his father, the late Robert Sangster.

At Windsor on Monday Sam watched on from home as the four-year-old filly Beauty Stone came from last to first off her mark of 69 to win a fillies’ handicap over an extended 11 furlongs by just over six lengths.

A daughter of Australia she had three runs for Charlie Appleby in the Godolphin blue without making any impact. She was a 475,000gns yearling buy but cost only 5,500gns when Sam picked her up when culled at the February horses-in-training sale at Newmarket last year.

She had a busy 2020 when racing resumed winning a small race at the fifth attempt for trainer Tom Ward, chosen as he had been a school-friend of Sam’s brother Max, the youngest of the Sangster siblings.

To show just how good a choice that was, Beauty Stone was completing a hat-trick and winning for the fourth time in all at Windsor. Fancied in the morning, trainer and owner were constantly on the phone with Sam quizzing Tom as to why a filly which had won its last two races could still be available at 20-1 even though she’d been backed.

Making a final contact as the filly was being saddled, Sam asked the trainer: “Does she look big?” to which Tom replied: “Looking at her now, maybe?” I wish I’d heard the story before rather than half an hour after the race, but with her nice pedigree, there’s no doubt that’s another Sangster steal. Sangster the Gangster is back! In a manner of speaking, of course .

Monday Musings: Chester Chat and the HIT Book

10 May 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Joy O Joy! Tuesday morning, almost two months later than usual when the social-distancing postman left my little package on the doorstep having already scooted ten yards away before I answered the doorbell, it was here, writes Tony Stafford.

A helpful bookseller used his influence to get a pal to send me my copy of Horses In Training, guaranteed reading matter for the next two months and reference until the next one arrives hopefully off the bookstall at Cheltenham racecourse next March.

I swiftly turned to the William Haggas page and saw with some surprise that he had the same number of horses listed – 199 – as last year. On further scrutiny they WERE the same horses. Not surprisingly, as I’d been sent last year’s book.

When a friend does you a favour you need to let him down lightly, and he took no umbrage, instead putting in motion the right volume, which duly arrived speedily enough on Friday morning. I note that Mr Haggas is doing rather badly in stock market company annual results terms with just 197 horses under his care this time round. Still he’ll have one per cent more free time this year for which I’m sure he and Maureen will be grateful.

They’ll have to get son and ace agent Sam to get a few new owners through the door. Maybe he already has at the breeze-ups this spring?

Chester has come and gone – without me, of course, but Harry Taylor dutifully went driving up on his own on Tuesday evening. For anyone who has never been there in May, Chester town centre is the busiest and most vibrant place with bars, restaurants and hotels brim-full with people for the whole week.

After checking in to his up-the-hill-from-the-track hotel at what appeared a more-than-bargain rate, he thought he ought to stretch his legs – and found a ghost town: nothing open and freezing cold to boot!

Never mind, he thought, tomorrow we’ve got the owners’ restaurant at the track – the best food anywhere in UK racing bar maybe the Royal Ascot Racing Club, but they don’t let the likes of us in there! Not this year: “It’s the worst food I’ve had anywhere. Newmarket and Sandown were great, in fact for the first time I found a racecourse chef that could cook roast potatoes properly, but this was dreadful.

“Because of Covid, the waitresses weren’t allowed to serve food so we had it cold in a cardboard box.” Harry was booked in for three nights so he was gritting his teeth, but after the lunch debacle and then being forced to stay outside, by the evening he decided he’d had enough.

“Thursday morning I set off for home. I’m sure if I’d stayed another day I’d have got pneumonia”, he said. Having denied myself the usual bonhomie with Harry and also Alan Newman (another absentee this time) that we’d enjoyed for the past few years, it was probably fortunate that I stayed home.

One delight we missed was a promised Thursday dinner with Ian Williams, on the eve of his nine-pronged challenge on the Chester Cup (three) and Chester Plate, the consolation race in which he had six runners.

Ian’s The Grand Visir was a brilliant second in the historic Cup to the Irish (yes, them again) Falcon Eight, trained by Dermot Weld and ridden by Frankie Dettori. That horse’s success owed as much to handicapping leniency as anything else and Dermot is a talented international trainer and one hardly needing any gratuitous assistance from officialdom.

The only Irish runner in the main race, the six-year-old’s most recent run was in a Group 3 at The Curragh last June when off level weights he was fourth, beaten just over five lengths by Twilight Payment.

While Falcon Eight was kicking his heels on The Curragh in the intervening ten and a half months, Twilight Payment added to that June win with another, by eight lengths, in a Group 2 over course and distance before a close third in the Irish St Leger.

Sent to Melbourne by Joseph O’Brien, Twilight Payment then won the 23-runner Melbourne Cup getting the better of an all-Irish, all O’Brien 1-2 just ahead of dad Aidan’s three-year-old Tiger Moth.

For those achievements, it might be thought that Twilight Payment may have earned more than the 5lb handicap rise the three wins and a Group 1 third have entailed. Even more mystifying, Falcon Eight, beaten five lengths by Twilight Payment on his last run at levels might expect to be no more than 5lb lower than Twilight Payment’s rating at the time, never mind the collateral form that handicappers are wont to invoke when it suits.

But no, this high-class stayer, who on Friday brought his career stats to four wins in ten runs, was DROPPED 4lb to 104. Just to get a flavour of the injustice, The Grand Visir, whose last win of five over his career came in the 2019 Ascot Stakes off 100, has been beaten nine times since then yet remains on 103!

Ian Williams’ six runners in the Plate did no better than the third achieved by versatile winning hurdler Hydroplane, but here another less expected owner of that surname which sprinkles nicely through the W’s in Horses In Training 2021 came to the fore.

This was heavy-ground steeplechase specialist Venetia Williams who since the mid-1990’s has sent out around 1500 winners over jumps in the UK.

It’s rather different on the Flat. In all, over 24 seasons she’s had a total of eight winners and by taking the Chester Plate with much-travelled Green Book she was equalling her best score for any season – namely one.

The eight wins have come in that time from 153 runners but this was the first from the five horses that have appeared from her stable over the last five seasons. Originally trained by Brian Ellison for his prominent owner Kristian Strangeway, Green Book was placed in four of five starts as a two-year-old.

Kristian moved the French-bred to France, presumably to take advantage of the higher prize money – especially for places – and owner premiums and was rewarded with five more runs in the money from eight starts for Patrick Monfort at Senonnes.

The decision was made to sell the gelding and he was picked up at Arqana’s Deauville sale in November for a partnership of owners of Venetia’s – 100% to go jumping. He had one try, a promising second place over hurdles at Hereford in February and it seems the decision may well have been to keep him a novice for the embryo season which got going a couple of weeks back.

So instead of a second jumps run, Green Book turned up at Chester and the €30k buy made all under Franny Norton and was never troubled to take the £18k first prize. Venetia loves a French-bred and, of 80 horses in her stable according to HIT 2021, 40, including Green Book, started out from France.

There are other trainers with a higher proportion of horses emanating from that well-travelled source, even among trainers called Williams. Two, Mrs Jane and husband Nick are each listed as training at Culverhill Farm, George Nympton, South Molton, Devon and their strings are respectively numbers 583 and 584 of the 602 in the book – it also includes a few from outside the UK.

Mrs Jane has 24, all bar seven French-bred, while Nick has one more, so 25, and of these 20 are French-bred. It’s as close as you could get to an equal opportunities operation for their two teams.

The way they source raw material, often quite cheaply, from France and habitually turn it into competitive racehorses, is no mean feat given the West Country hothouse in which they choose to compete.

It’s a shame that Richard Fahey, for several years probably the trainer with the most horses but one who for years declined to reveal his hand where juveniles are concerned, now has pulled out completely. It’s a particular shame when you’re as nosey as me.

The new Gosden partnership still keeps the older horse contingent – 151 this year – available for snoopers, but for a couple of years now the juveniles have gone missing. I remember only a short time ago adding up the cost of all the auction-bought two-year-olds in dad John’s string and you were hard pushed to find many that cost much less than 100K with many three and four times that. It probably got uncomfortable just how advantaged they and others at the top end are in terms of numerical and quality of opportunity.

Three of the other of the big names – Johnston, Hannon, and Haggas – have their full strings available, but with sale prices expunged. How refreshing that Michael Easterby, who hit the age 90 mark on March 30, has no such sensitivities. Surely creating a UK training record for the number of horses in the care of a 90-year-old, he has 116 at Sheriff Hutton.

Twenty of the 41 juveniles have their sale price proudly displayed. The most expensive was a filly by Caravaggio, who is a likely champion first-crop sire, which cost £28,571. The cheapest purchase was a colt by Estidhkaar at £2,857. Go Mick! He, of course, has son David well to the fore as his assistant!

Nephew Tim Easterby, son of Mick’s elder brother Miles Henry (Peter), who also happily is still very much around, has 173 and again, no coyness where prices for yearling buys is concerned. The Easterbys are so successful (and of course brilliant at their job) that soon they might be having as many horses as acres on which they train. <Don’t be silly, Ed!>.

Monday Musings: Irish Domination

3 May 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Where once there was meaningful rivalry, now there is renewed omnipotence. A picture spread through social media early this year of a grinning trainer talking on a mobile phone atop a dead horse has had even more effect than its horrified recipients throughout the horse world could have imagined, writes Tony Stafford.

Up until Cheltenham, the remnants of the Gordon Elliott stables, which had run 321 horses from the time jump racing resumed after the initial stopping through Covid19, was still punching most of its weight under the name if not the supreme control of Mrs Denise Foster.

Traditionally though, every late April/early May the Punchestown Festival has ended any wistful hope that the brash Elliott with his legion of major owners, most notably the O’Leary family’s Gigginstown House Stud, might finally gain a first Irish NH trainers’ championship.

Last week, respectable second place seemed a long way off, that eminence supplanted by the exploits of Henry De Bromhead, he of the surreal Champion Hurdle, Gold Cup and Grand National hat-trick over the previous six weeks.

But now we were in Willie Mullins territory and the week was just perfectly situated to welcome back the trainer’s previously stricken stable jockey. Paul Townend had seen his advantage over the challenging and seemingly unstoppable Rachael Blackmore slip to less than a handful of winners with seven days to go.

Mullins doesn’t do Cross-Country races, of which there are four over the five days of Punchestown, but he does do everything else. And how!

Eight races are staged each day, leaving 36 to go for. Mullins, with five on the opening day and never fewer than three on the four succeeding instalments, put together the unbelievable tally of 19 wins from the available 36 – so more than 50%. He did have 87 runners, very often multiple chances, then, and another 21 of his horses made the first four, that’s 40 win or placed. Place money at the meeting goes down to sixth and he had another ten of those, so altogether 50 in the money.

In all, Mullins’ runners brought back a total haul over the week of €1,470,950. For the season his 182 winners brought almost €5.5 million.

Elliott’s monetary reward for his 155 wins was €2,863,875 at the time of his suspension. Add to that Mrs Foster’s 16 victories in 205 runs from 135 of the Elliott horses was another €412,860.

But the magic which initially lingered after the paper – if not actual – change of control all but died last week. Mrs Foster’s 36 runners at Punchestown brought no wins, three second places, two thirds and a single fourth and a mere total of €52k. Nineteen of her runners either finished outside the first ten or failed to finish.

You would think that everyone associated with the Closutton steamroller would have been delighted, but what was probably the most spectacular of his victories, in terms of style of performance and the circumstances behind it, was a cause of regret for that horse’s connections.

When Mark Smith first moved to his present house in Essex 40 years ago the one-time Foreign Exchange trader met a neighbour who was soon to become his best friend. Mark owned Balasani, a horse that won the Stayers’ Hurdle for Martin Pipe at the Cheltenham Festival, and soon he and his friend, John Coleman, regularly went racing together.

Then a few years back John became gravely ill with cancer by which time he had bought Klassical Dream. Sadly he was never able to see the horse on the track – it raced in the name of his widow Joanne but was a family horse with his two sons and a nephew taking shares. They insisted that Mark should also accept a share.

It was bitter-sweet for the team when Klassical Dream won his maiden hurdle first time up at Leopardstown’s St Stephen’s Day fixture in 2018 and he duly went on to take three Grade 1 prizes, at Leopardstown in February, Cheltenham’s Supreme Novice, and Punchestown’s Champion Novice Hurdle.

The 2019/20 season proved a massive anti-climax, the ante-post Champion Hurdle favourite racing only twice and beaten at odds-on behind less talented stable companions. Cheltenham 2021 was originally on the agenda but that came and went without him, after which the plan was laid for Thursday’s big stayers’ hurdle over three miles. Klassical Dream had never raced over much further than two miles and would have a 487-day absence to overcome.

Mark spoke to Willie a few days before the race and on Thursday morning before leaving home for a funeral of another good friend he tried unsuccessfully to reach the trainer. Mullins left a recorded message when he could and Mark says it was very similar to the previous one.

I’ve heard it and in it Willie says he would be happy if the horse finished in the first six but above all the priority is that he comes home sound. Mark interpreted this to mean the trainer wasn’t sure he would make the first six.

Mark relayed the news to the other owners, and before leaving had what he calls a “suicide throwaway 50 quid” at around 17-1 when he first noticed the price was dropping. He had expected to be home in time to watch the race, but was still at the reception at the off, so watched it on his phone.

In what was described as the biggest gamble of the week, 20-1 down to 5-1, Klassical Dream under Patrick Mullins, and one of four stable-mates in the race, cantered into the lead going to the last hurdle and drew easily clear of Mullins’ James Du Berlais for a nine-length victory.

There was more than a degree of consolation that the horse had come back with such a bang, and not least for winning the €147,500 winner’s prize, but also some irritation that the message might have been a little more accurate.

These words will be written before Mark and the trainer have their next conversation. “I knew I shouldn’t talk to Willie, who has always been so helpful in all our dealings, as I would probably have lost my temper. None of the other owners are racing people in the way John was and of course I am, and their delight at their horse coming back in such a dramatic manner easily outweighs for them any irritation that they might have had a bigger bet if they knew a bit more beforehand”.

The Irish dominated Cheltenham and Aintree and it was the Flat trainers from that side of the wet divide who collected the first two Classics of the season at Newmarket.

First Jim Bolger, 79, and jockey and son-in-law Kevin Manning, 54, took the 2,000 Guineas with brave home-bred Poetic Flare, 16-1 and a son of Dawn Approach, also a Bolger home-bred and winner of the same Classic.

Then yesterday, Aidan O’Brien, a pupil and amateur rider for Bolger before embarking on his own stellar training career, made it seven wins in the 1,000 Guineas. His second string 10-1 shot Mother Earth, ridden by 50-year-old Frankie Dettori, made use of her greater experience to run past long-time race favourite and stable-companion Santa Barbara.

Like Love last year, who came to the “1,000” with three wins from seven juvenile appearances, Mother Earth put in plenty of creditable runs at two but in her case for just one win, although second at the Breeders’ Cup was hardly a negligible effort.

Unlike Love, though, who went on to Epsom and then York for two more emphatic wide-margin Group 1 victories, Mother Earth is being pencilled in for the Irish 1,000. Santa Barbara, who understandably showed signs of greenness - she raced only in one maiden as a two-year-old – goes straight to Epsom.

It was quite a weekend for big numbers and veterans. Bob Baffert, now 68 years old, made it a seventh Kentucky Derby when Medina Spirit, at just over 12-1, made all under John Velazquez, who is in his 50^th year. The colt had won only once previously too, so it was stretching credibility after three defeats that he could win the most important three-year-old race of the year in the USA.

But it was even more amazing given that two runs back, in the San Felipe Stakes at Santa Anita, Medina Spirit had been crushed by eight lengths by another Baffert colt, Life Is Good, who was unable through injury to get to Churchill Downs.

The old prototype for winning the “Run For The Roses” was plenty of race-conditioning as a two-year-old, but Medina Spirit didn’t appear until January this year. That was also the starting-point for Life Is Good. That day, Medina Spirit came up short by only three-quarters of a length and he must have been energised when he noticed that his nemesis was not in the field.

Still pictures of the race finish show the Churchill Downs grandstands were packed. I just can’t wait for that to happen here - sooner rather than later I trust!

Monday Musings: A Controversial End

26 April 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The jumps season 2020/21 ended with controversy when the heavily-backed favourite Enrilo finished first past the post in the Bet365 Gold Cup at Sandown Park, but was disqualified and placed third after hanging left and hampering the challenging Kitty’s Light up the run-in, writes Tony Stafford.

Meanwhile, as newly-crowned champion Harry Skelton struggled to keep his mount straight, up the inside steamed the Alan King-trained Potterman. His spurt under Tom Cannon got him into a narrow second place just before the line and, following a lengthy stewards’ inquiry, Paul Nicholls and owners Martin Broughton and friends were left with a £52k shortfall as Enrilo was put back to third.

Nobody, least of all Alan King, believes Potterman deserved to pick up the money and it was almost in the Nureyev mould of verdict. Back in 1980 that French-trained son of Northern Dancer interfered with Posse some way from home when a hot favourite for the 2,000 Guineas, beat Known Fact by a neck, but afterwards he was disqualified and placed last by the stewards.

Posse had recovered well enough to finish third and while I’m sure owner Stavros Niarchos would not have been any less unhappy had a similar outcome to Saturday’s left Nureyev in the minor position, it had real reverberations at the time. Nureyev was due to return for the Derby but missed the race, never appeared again and was retired to stud, where he was a great success.

In those far off days I loved an ante-post punt – any punt really! – and had quite a chunk at 20/1 about Nureyev after his six-length debut victory in Paris the previous autumn. My memory in the interim had played its usual tricks, the recollection being that he’d won by far more than the actual margin. For the outrage to last well into this century as it did, he needed to have done so!

If the stewards of the BHA do not overturn the verdict at the appeal Paul Nicholls plans to lodge, it will not take too much gloss off the stellar seasons of either trainer or rider. Nicholls for now ends with 176 wins, five more than his previous best achieved in 2016/7. Skelton finished with 152, ten ahead of last year’s champion, Brian Hughes. A late flurry of winners, 17 in the final fortnight compared to five by his rival, clinched the deal with much more comfort than could ever have been predicted.

What did alter the dynamic was the readiness for Harry to accept more rides for outside stables. Of the 152 wins – not his best, he got to 178 when Richard Johnson had 201, his second double-century, but this was a delayed start due to Covid last summer – 136 were for Dan. Of the 558 mounts during the season, only 68 were for other trainers, yet in that last fortnight, six wins were hewn from 16 outside rides.

When Nick Skelton sent his two sons to learn their trade with Nicholls 15 or so years ago, he will have had lofty ambitions for them. One day, walking past Raymond Tooth’s Mayfair office, Nick bumped into the lawyer who at the time had a powerful team and indeed had already won his Champion Hurdle with Punjabi. “When are you going to send a horse for Dan to train?” asked Nick.

It was probably a couple of years on that Notnowsam, whose trainer Noel Quinlan was about to hand in his notice, arrived in the Skelton yard. A few days later, on May Bank Holiday Monday six years ago, he duly trotted up first time in a novice handicap chase, not a bad effort for a four-year-old.

Sadly Notnowsam proved much better at finishing second than winning after that bright start and when eventually he was sent to the sales, he was bought by Micky Hammond, for whom he was little short of a disaster.

At the time I hadn’t been aware of it, but later I learned that before Dan had arranged to collect Notnowsam he called Noel Quinlan to check that he was happy for the horse to leave and join him. “That’s a gentleman!” said a delighted former trainer, after the Warwick win.

This time of year always coincides with Punchestown and the conclusion of Ireland’s jump season. For four consecutive years I made the journey to Ireland and in 2009 drove via the ferry as Punjabi attempted a third successive win at the fixture.

As a juvenile in 2007 he was third in the Triumph Hurdle behind Katchit but won the Grade 1 juvenile race at Punchestown. The next year, he was again third to Katchit, this time in the Champion Hurdle before winning the Irish Champion at Punchestown.

After his win at Cheltenham in 2009 hopes obviously were high for the three-timer, but he missed the last hurdle when narrowly ahead and, in the testing ground, just failed to hold off the stayer Solwhit who got up on the line.

As I said, I’d driven over this time, and where I had to park the car, the ground was absolutely sodden. A few days later my ankle became very swollen and I ended up spending almost a week in hospital – my first since having my tonsils removed 56 years previously.

The diagnosis was that I’d probably been bitten by insects and the poison had got into my bloodstream so badly that I needed to be on a drip for the first few days of my stay. It was so frustrating because I’d wanted Nicky Henderson to try to win the Chester Cup. Punjabi had won the only two Flat races he ever contested since joining from previous trainer, Geraldine Rees. I’ve no idea if he’d have been good enough to win it but at the time my reasoning had been, we’ve already won twice over there, whereas winning the Chester Cup would always be special for an English owner.

Nicholls and the Skeltons will both be in action at Punchestown this week, but UK-trained raiders will hardly make a ripple, certainly nothing to compare with the steamrollering domination of the Irish at Cheltenham and Aintree.

Kim Bailey runs First Flow and Skelton Nube Negra in the William Hill Champion Chase tomorrow where the Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Put The Kettle On will be missing as she tried unsuccessfully to win at Sandown on Saturday. For once the raider was blown away as Nicholls’ new star, Greaneteen, a valiant Altior, and Sceau Royal all finished ahead of the mare.

In a seven-horse race, this still means the Queen Mother Chase’s beaten favourite, Chacun Pour Soi, will be out to repair his slightly-tarnished reputation on a day that Paul Townend’s title challenge enters a crucial stage.

Passed fit to ride after his recent injury, his absence has allowed Rachael Blackmore to get to within four as she seeks the first championship. Her list of achievements is already overwhelming, but a jockeys’ title would in terms of merit be the pinnacle. Willie Mullins isn’t making it that easy for Townend as his mount is only one of three in the race for the trainer in a field of seven and Blackmore retains the ride on her easy Ryanair Chase winner, Allaho. I reckon that horse’s stamina will have the Cheveley Park colours to the fore at the line.

The first handicap of the day, a 0-145 hurdle is a typical full field of 25 with reserves. Mullins has seven in that, including three that came over for the Festival, running respectively in the 0-155 County Hurdle, the Coral Cup and Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ race. What chance Gentleman De Mee, the beaten favourite who set up the Martin Pipe for stablemate Galopin Des Champs when making the running, will have his day in the sun tomorrow dropping back to two miles?

With 19 runners on the opening day then 42, 23, 22 and 40 entered for the rest of the week it might look a foregone conclusion that Townend will hold on. The snag with Mullins though is that there’s multiple entries in so many of these races and they are all “off for their lives” – “up to a point” as William Boot, the hero of Evelyn Waugh’s hilarious novel “Scoop” might say. And that is as it should be.

Not everyone thought that a certain race at Lingfield the other day was totally kosher. Last Wednesday, seven horses lined up for a mile and a half novice race and Polling Day, trained by John and Thady Gosden and ridden by Frankie Dettori, was the 2-9 favourite following a smooth debut win over the course a month earlier.

Also in the line-up for the Gosdens was 16-1 shot Stowell, a Nat Rothschild-owned son of Zoffany making his debut under Rab Havlin. In an almost comic-cuts exhibition, Havlin managed to get his mount to finish a close second when it looked from the sidelines that he should have won comfortably.

The post-race interview by the local stewards provided lengthy ammunition for the Racing Post comments writer who reported Havlin’s saying that Stowell is a fragile colt with a high knee action. He said John Gosden had instructed him not to use his whip but that he should be ridden to get the best possible position.

I’ve spoken to plenty of trainers and they are all adamant. One said: “If those two horses had been trained by me, I’d have been looking at a lengthy ban!” Have a look yourselves. Seriously, it can seem in racing there’s often one rule for the chosen few and another for everyone else.

Monday Musings: Haggas a Dab Hand with Addeybb

19 April 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

On February 6^th 1954, two years to the day after her accession to the throne, Her Majesty the Queen, on a Royal visit to Australia, was present at Randwick racecourse, Sydney, to witness the first running of the Queen Elizabeth Stakes, writes Tony Stafford.

Inaugurated by the Australian Jockey Club in 1851 in honour of Queen Victoria, it was staged as the Queens Plate throughout her reign. Later it became the AJC Plate with single-year editions in 1928 and 1934 as the King’s Plate, honouring the present Queen’s grand-father, King George V.

Early on the morning of the funeral of HRH Prince Philip, her husband of 73 years, Englishmen William Haggas (trainer) and Ton Marquand (jockey) fittingly won the 4millionAust$ 2021 Longines Queen Elizabeth Stakes with the seven-year-old gelding Addeybb in the colours of Sheikh Ahmed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, youngest and least publicised of the four Maktoum brothers who so transformed UK and world racing.

Like the Queen, Sheikh Ahmed has had a recent family death to endure after Sheikh Hamdan, second in terms of age of the quartet and mastermind of Shadwell Farm, passed away last month in the week leading up to the Dubai World Cup meeting at Meydan.

So, 67 years after that initial running, the QE Stakes is still going strong. In its pre-QE history it was won by many of Australia’s best horses, none more so than the legendary Phar Lap, winner of the Plate in 1930.

That was in the midst of a late-flowering career that brought a sequence of wins (career total 37/51) after a halting start. Sent to race in the US, he started with a track record before dying in agony after what was subsequently identified as a massive dose of arsenic. It is believed that his murder was at the behest of criminal elements worried that Phar Lap would be a threat to the profitability of the Mafia’s illegal bookmakers.

Tulloch, another Australian great, won 36, finished second in 12 and third in four of his 53 starts, with only one unplaced. This despite his being off the track injured for a full two years after his three-year-old campaign. He won the Randwick race in 1958, 1960 and 1961.

Tulloch was the only triple winner since 1954 until along came Winx. The great mare had won her first three races, then went the next seven with only a single victory before embarking on a 33-race unbeaten spree until the end of her career.

Three consecutive Queen Elizabeth Stakes fell to her spell, the last at 10-1 on as a seven-year-old in 2019 after which she retired having won 37 of 43 starts and, helped by the massive prize of the Sydney race, with world-record earnings and Group 1 wins.

Winx’s retirement left a vacancy in 2020 and William Haggas, who sent down the then six-year-old Addeybb, previously best known as a mudlark, was aiming to fill the void. Addeybb, another late bloomer, first hit the headlines when winning the Lincoln on his four-year-old reappearance and had won six races and finished second to Magical in the 2019 Champion Stakes before that first Australian jaunt.

On March 21 last year, five days after the first lockdown was announced by Boris Johnson, Tom Marquand was in Sydney to ride Addeybb in the Ranvet Stakes and in the first of four memorable clashes with the two-years-younger Verry Elleegant <what an inelegant name!> beat her by half a length.

Five weeks later – Marquand having been marooned away from partner Hollie Doyle by Covid19 restrictions – he enjoyed a more emphatic defeat of the filly in the QE II.

The relative exploits of the two developing stars between that day and last month again in the Ranvet Stakes where they renewed their rivalry, was stark, largely governed by the need for Haggas to take account of his horse’s tough time away from home base.

He fashioned a minutely-planned three-race home campaign, returning to finish an excellent runner-up to Lord North in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot. He then duly collected the Listed Land Of Burns Stakes at Ayr before winning another big pot, the Qipco Champion Stakes at Ascot, where he avenged defeats by both Magical and Lord North. A 9-1 shot, he also numbered the Gosdens’ future Middle East money-spinner Mishriff among his victims.

Meanwhile, Verry Elleegant was making hay at home. After a break she won over a mile in August; was fourth in September and was victorious twice in October over a mile then a mile and a half before stretching out with a creditable seventh in the two-mile Melbourne Cup. Freshened up, the mare was third and then won, both races in February, before lining up for the Ranvet last month.

Fully conditioned, she got the better of a possibly ring-rusty Addeybb, but memorably on Saturday, the Haggas horse gained fulsome revenge. As a gelding and given the trainer’s skill with older horses, he could easily return next year aiming to match the three-time exploits of Tulloch and Winx.

I’ve been remiss in not yet collecting my always-valued copy of Horses In Training as I’ve been nowhere for more than a year and the usual sources either at Cheltenham or from Tindalls In Newmarket High Street have been unavailable.

I do see this morning that I can get it from Amazon at a discounted price of 20 quid so when I finish these words I’ll get a move on. It will be interesting to see the status of the Haggas string which numbered 199 last year. One definite change will be among the stable’s trio of assistant trainers as Harry Eustace is now training in his own right.

He has succeeded his father James, who ended a 30-year stint at the end of last season and his son is sure to have learnt plenty. I believe he (and possibly brother David) spent time in Australia learning his trade as did George Boughey who has been pulling up trees in his early training career.

I know they were house-mates in that hothouse of thrusting young training talent a few years back with George Scott, who was a little in front of his colleagues in his career. Others there included Ed Crisford, who now shares the billing with father Simon and James Ferguson, son of John, former colleague of Simon Crisford for many years in running Sheikh Mohammed’s racing affairs in the UK and Dubai in the winter.

It’s become fashionable for trainers to hand over either joint-, as in the case of John and Thady Gosden, or outright, like Eustace and also the Bethells up in Middleham. Listed as assistant trainer in last year’s HIT, Edward Bethell has taken over seamlessly from father James at the palatial Thorngill Stables just outside Middleham and threatens to take the family fortunes by storm.

He’s already up to the six-winner mark from only 28 runners and the recent victories of Briardale (twice), Grantley and Blu Boy, his by miles and a in a canter, threaten an explosion. There were 30 horses in last year’s Bethell team. I can imagine a flood of new owners wishing to take part in what looks sure to be an exciting project and sending horses to him.

Yesterday, two meetings delayed from Saturday to free up mid-afternoon for The Duke’s funeral made for exciting viewing and Al Aasy promises to be another potential Group 1 horse for the Haggas stable and in the colours of Shadwell Farm. Not a home-bred, Al Aasy easily won the Dubai Duty Free Stakes (the John Porter to you and me) and will be following in Addeybb’s footsteps no doubt as the season progresses.

Ayr’s Scottish Grand National meeting was one of the last jumping highlights in the UK before the domestic season ends next Saturday at Sandown. Harry Skelton’s inexorable pursuit then rapid-fire passing and drawing clear of Brian Hughes has all but clinched his first title and you have to think that with brother Dan’s fire-power and a greater readiness to take nice outside rides, he could be in for a longish spell in the number one spot. Congratulations to jockey, trainer and of course father Nick whose determination to support his sons was only exceeded by the far-sighted planning to set up their operation.

I would also like to congratulate Ian Williams for a superb training achievement in sending out One More Fleurie to win the highly-competitive novice handicap chase over three miles at Ayr.

Setting off in front, the gelding jumped every one of the 19 fences like an assured veteran, easily kept ahead of his 12 rivals throughout and stretched away for a six-and-a-half-length success with Charlie Todd not having to do much more than steer.

The exhibition was one almost of an automaton so perfect were the parabolas he executed at every fence. He didn’t gain his first career win, off a mark of 105 on his third chasing start, until seven weeks ago. He won twice more, with only a concentration lapse in between at Fakenham spoiling the sequence. This was his fourth success, now off 23lb higher than the initial winning mark.

It is easy to imagine him one day coming back to Ayr for a Scottish Grand National, or with his mix of stamina – he was going away from talented rivals rather than coming back yesterday – and jumping prowess, later on winning a Grand National.

Ian Williams is one of the truly versatile trainers who can win with any type of horse, but One More Fleurie could put him and his young rider deservedly onto a different level. I reckon he’ll be elevated to somewhere near 138 – those iniquitous handicappers are never very lenient with Ian’s winners – so that means he will probably get in the Ladbroke Handicap Chase <Hennessy> next November. Cloth Cap won it this season off 136, so go on Ian - fill your boots!

Monday Musings: In Threes They Come…

12 April 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

They say disasters come in threes, writes Tony Stafford. The same is true where things we thought would never happen do actually occur. In four short days early in April, Prince Philip was no longer with us; a woman rode the winner of the Grand National, and a Japanese golfer became the first to win a major championship.

Having spent 73 years married to the Queen, Prince Philip was so much a fabric of our lives that it was a real shock when he did not make the century, unlike his mother-in-law Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother who died in her 102^nd year on March 30 2002.

On Friday morning I was stuck in a traffic jam having undertaken a routine 30-minute round trip to buy some hard-to-find organic dog food for our delicate and elderly Yorkshire terrier. As I emerged on the south side of Blackwall TunneI, I noticed a police car blocking the northern approach.

Three hours later, having missed the first three races on the second day of the Aintree meeting, I had undertaken a near 50-mile diversion to avoid the resultant gridlock. For all that time, after switching on the car radio and hearing of Prince Philip’s passing, I learnt lots I hadn’t known about him in Radio 4’s blanket coverage. How fortunate that the future Queen as a very young girl could discern the qualities which clearly entranced her on their initial meeting at Dartmouth Naval College more than 80 years ago.

Both descendants of Queen Victoria, who also made it to her 80’s despite being a carrier of the recessive gene haemophilia – none of the existing generations is afflicted happily - their marriage has been the one constant in a world increasingly subject to the potential horrors of social media and the like. Things may never seem to be the same again.

That’s true too of life after Covid. Today, on my late father’s 101^st birthday, shops can again open in the UK in the midst of a week’s mourning for the Royal family. Hopefully we can start to go racing – I resolved not to until the ravages of the disease had been beaten. It seems it almost has been and on Thursday my second helping of the Astra Zeneca will either kill (if you believe the Euro politicians) or fully protect me.

Missing Aintree didn’t prevent us celebrating the continued rise of the remarkable Rachael Blackmore. It’s not a surname you hear very often although John Blackmore was in my first primary school class. He was well enough behaved and from memory quite a jovial chap. That was unlike Johnny Robinson who was only in the reception class of Amherst Primary School for one day. He was so disruptive that halfway through the afternoon he was tied to a chair. We never saw him again, nor was anyone else in need ever of similar constraint.

Amherst was the third Christian name of Sir Henry Cecil whose father was the younger brother of the third Baron Amherst of Hackney. It was my pleasure to know him well enough to ask him to write a foreword for one of my few “proper” books, all three of which my elder daughter presented me with (two to return) when I made a first visit to her house for more than a year recently. I was especially pleased to be reminded of Frankie Dettori’s Year In The Life, ghosted before and amended after that seven-out-of-seven at Ascot.

The Cecil-embellished volume was a second go at the earlier Little Black Racing Book, foreword by Lester Piggott. The idea for that was spawned by Collins Willow’s commissioning editor, Michael Doggart, as a racing stable-companion to the Little Red Book, a best-selling and much-admired volume by Harvey Penick, the great American golf coach.

His most celebrated student at university in Austin, Texas, was Ben Crenshaw. When Penick died in 1995 after a long illness, Crenshaw was one of the pall-bearers.

The following day he started his Masters quest, and as Ben later confessed, he was guided to success in that Major championship by Penick’s memory. His triumph will no doubt have made only a ripple in the sporting lexicon of the 1990’s in comparison with what will happen back home in Japan after Hideki Matsuyama held on by a stroke on Sunday night in Augusta.

That event came just 30 hours after what for most of our lives we’ve believed would never happen. In 1977 Charlotte Brew, riding Barony Fort, got as far as the 27^th fence before her horse was pulled up. In those days Aintree was much more fearsome and the fact she could negotiate 26 of the fences should have prepared us for a future female winner. Forty-four years on we have one.

The first of a series of Flat races in which women could ride came five years earlier than Barony Fort, at Kempton Park, when Scorched Earth ridden by Miss Meriel Tufnell won, the first of three victories in a 12-race sponsored-by-Goya series which brought her the title. Sadly she died from cancer aged 53. Charlotte Brew, who watched Rachael’s victory at home in the West Country with her three daughters, is now 65 years old and confessed to a tear or two as she watched Minella Times’ triumph.

As with momentous events happening in triplicate, Rachael Blackmore’s achievement at Aintree, coming hard on her domination and champion jockey award at the recent Cheltenham Festival, was the first of three memorable female rides within an hour on Saturday.

The third of them came in the concluding bumper at Aintree where Megan Nicholls, riding her father’s Knappers Hill, was involved in a drawn-out battle in the last furlong with jumps championship contender Harry Skelton and lost nothing in comparison with him or with Paddy Brennan on the fast-finishing second.

Indeed her strength in the finish was notable as she gained a sixth bumper win of the year for her father from only 15 rides. Considering she has ridden on the Flat in the last year at 8st 1lb, to lug the saddle with around three stone of lead back to scale with her horse carrying 11st 4lb was a feat of strength in itself!

Before turning to riding on the Flat, which at the time when she was only 16, her father described as “getting it out of her system”, she had ridden one earlier bumper winner but none more until this term. Instead she has won 96 races on the Flat, based in the north, so, far from merely getting it out of her system, she has become very accomplished. Also at the age of 23 she has shown herself to be a talented broadcaster when given the chance, usually as the expert analyst at jumps meetings close to the Nicholls stable.

The middle winner of the three had already long weighed in by the time Megan went to post. Every day I do a line for FromTheStables.com, and pass on the thoughts of a dozen or so trainers, including Micky Hammond, to the members.

Micky had four runners at Newcastle on Saturday but clearly best liked the chance of Ballycrystal in the finale. Becky Smith, one of the leading female amateurs under both Flat and NH Rules, had been starved of action during the ban on amateurs and point-to-point racing. Now the younger sister of Gemma Hogg, Hammond’s assistant trainer, is raring to go and is quickly at full flow.

After talking to Micky, I looked up Ballycrystal’s form. When trained by Brian Ellison, on Nov 23 2018 he had carried the same weight (rated 125) as the favourite and eventual winner in a 3m1f chase at Catterick. He was well beaten in fifth place but now, fancied after a decent run in a jumpers’ bumper at the track in February, was running in a handicap hurdle off a mark of 93, 32lb lower.

Fifteen minutes before the scheduled start of the Newcastle race, Cloth Cap, the horse that beat him at Catterick, was lining up as the favourite for the Grand National, 14lb well-in after winning at Kelso. If the two old rivals were to meet next weekend, Ballycrystal would be 69lb (so almost five stone) better off!

Becky expertly guided Ballycrystal (18-1 to 8’s) to a facile win in his handicap hurdle race, while Cloth Cap was pulled up after being in the first two for much of the marathon journey. I texted Micky later: “On the way they ran today, it might have been close between them at levels!” He’s looking up to see if he can find a race where he can take him on again!

Monday Musings: My Three Aintree Contenders

5 April 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

So we will be seeing Tiger Roll at Aintree after all, writes Tony Stafford. Not of course in Saturday’s Randox Health Grand National but in the Betfair Bowl on the first of the three days of the meeting. Judged on the way he won the Cross-Country race to give him a fifth Cheltenham Festival success, the dual Grand National winner could easily beat Clan Des Obeaux and Native River.

Clan Des Obeaux missed Cheltenham to wait for this premier level-weights chase at the Aintree fixture. Not so Native River, who put in a valiant attempt to add a second Gold Cup when finishing fourth to Minella Indo. Sadly, his regular jockey Richard Johnson will not be riding this week, the 43-year-old having announced his retirement after fulfilling his duties for the last time at Newton Abbot on Saturday.

I will leave the Johnson eulogy to others save to say that his 3,726 winners in the UK over 28 seasons, was second only to A P McCoy’s 4,204. He achieved four titles in succession and 24 consecutive centuries. The first failure to be champion since the retirement of A P McCoy came last season when Brian Hughes took advantage of his rival’s prolonged injury absence. His final season brought 73 wins from 521 mounts and Native River was given full assistance by his never-give-up partner all the way to the line.

So we come to the Grand National and it will be interesting to see how many media people, owners, administrators and in-crowd will be able to make their way to Aintree this week to join the more vital trainers and stable staff. I’m guessing somewhere north of 1,500, or is that just sour grapes?

With the Covid19 numbers of deaths for the past two days at ten for both Saturday and Sunday, the situation in the UK now looks more promising, never mind the ever-vocal critics of the government’s handling of the year-long crisis. I’m due my second jab next week and hopefully then I can go racing again.

Quite the most intriguing prospect is to try to calculate the possible number of finishers in the great race. I suspect there could again be around half the 40-strong line-up getting round this year. Whether the authorities deny it or not, in recent seasons, Aintree has become rather more toothless compared to its predecessor. Of course, horse welfare is paramount in these sensitive times and a few more years without fatalities is something to be very much wished for.

Tiger Roll’s two winning years have brought a total of nine casualties that were officially declared as fallers, six in 2018 and only three the following year. Another five unseated in 2018 and two the next time round. Thirteen and 14 respectively were the pulled-up totals, so 12 finishers in 2018 and 19 the last time the race was staged.

The latest barometer of the course’s teeth was the early December fixture which features two races over the Grand National fences. First up is the 3m2f Becher Chase and that 14-runner race had eight finishers with three fallers (including unusually Yala Enki) and three unseated riders, so was tolerably attritional.

Then the Grand Sefton over half a mile shorter had a field of 18, and 13 finishers. Only two fell and three pulled up in this.

The Becher Chase was won by the big outsider Vieux Lion Rouge for the David Pipe stable. That was his second win, along with one second place, in five straight tries at that race and he would have matched it with consecutive appearances in the big race itself last April had it not been called off.

He’ll be back on Saturday as a 12-year-old for his tenth go-round having successfully negotiated 223 of the unique Aintree obstacles (one fence in the Nationals of 2018 and 2019 had to be omitted on safety grounds). He has been seventh, sixth, ninth and 15^th without ever looking either like winning or that he would fail to complete.

Tom Scudamore was usually his partner in the past but he has bigger fish to fry on Saturday, continuing his spectacular association with the Jonjo O’Neill-trained Cloth Cap. An all-the-way winner of the Ladbroke (ex-Hennessy) Handicap Chase at Newbury in late November, O’Neill resisted temptation until Kelso last month when his gelding was again dominant, making all to beat Aso, Two For Gold and Definitly Red without ever letting them close in a level-weights race.

If the handicapper had the option of re-assessing Cloth Cap he would have added 14lb and it is rare for such a situation to occur in a Grand National. Added to that ingredient, he is the most fluent and accurate of jumpers and one that enjoys making the running. It is easy to imagine his delivering an exciting all-the-way success with nothing ever getting near him.

It almost suggests a similar race to the first of the Red Rum trio of wins almost half a century ago. For all but the last 25 yards, top-weight and two-mile champion Crisp made the running at a fast pace under 12st top-weight, nothing ever looking like challenging. Then, coming back on the course with an apparently unassailable lead, his stamina ran out while Rummy barreled relentlessly on.

At the end of that decade, Alverton, winner two weeks previously of the Cheltenham Gold Cup under Jonjo O’Neill, was 6-1 favourite. He fell and was killed at Becher’s second time round. That fence is probably one of the few “traps” of nowadays and not until the field has rounded the bend soon after it has been negotiated will trainers and owners start to relax, replacing trepidation with optimism.

Jonjo had to wait 31 years to enjoy full consolation for that awful Alverton moment, when Don’t Push It under A P McCoy won the 2010 race for J P McManus. Victory for Cloth Cap and his owner, Grand National specialist Trevor Hemmings who has won the race three times, would rank even higher I would imagine.

Despite the recent paucity of authentic fallers there is always the propensity at Aintree for horses being taken out of the race through no fault of their own. The first fence is an obvious focal point with the possibility of a too-fast start, although the shorter run-up to the initial obstacle has taken some of the steam out of that.

The first big ditch at three and Becher’s first time (six) are then crucial, but after the next hairpin at Valentine’s (eighth) apart from another ditch halfway down the back, the horses can get into a rhythm and their jockeys start to plan a race.

It’s possible to come from a long way back at that point as long as the horse takes to the fences. We always think of the once-jumped Chair, the biggest fence in the field at number 15 and just in front of the usually packed enclosures, as terrifying. Quite often it seems the field can safely jump it, possibly because by then the horses have their eye in and fatigue is not yet an issue. Luckily, that fence is jumped only once, along with the water that follows virtually level with the winning line.

Anyway, by now we should be starting to hope that our fancy – or more realistically around the country the short-list most once-a-year punters like to start with – may still be in contention. All that remains is another two miles and the first 14 fences all over again, but at least the field will have thinned out somewhat by the time of second Becher’s.

I’ve not yet mentioned any other than Cloth Cap, who could win, and Vieux Lion Rouge who almost certainly cannot, but I think I may have come up with two slightly funny ones and a third for good measure away from the main contenders.

Firstly, I have a feeling that Anibale Fly could have been a long-term plot for this race by arch-planner Tony Martin. The 2019 Gold Cup runner-up to Al Boum Photo, he was strongly supported for that National and did very well, finishing fifth, around 16 lengths behind Tiger Roll in his second win, conceding 5lb and carrying top-weight.

He didn’t beat another horse in three chases when returning to action last season, only getting in the frame on his last appearance when third in a hurdle race. The Martin/ McManus 11-year-old was off the track for a year until his reappearance in a Grade 3 at Fairyhouse in late February where he trailed around in a five-runner field. You can bet if he turns up on Saturday he’ll be fully primed and he’s come down a fair bit in the weights.

Much lower down, I think I might have landed on what in retrospect might prove the cleverest plot of all. When Blaklion was bought for £300,000 in 2019 as a potential future Grand National winner for owner Darren Yates, he was sent originally to Philip Kirby.

Blaklion, who was bred by Mary, wife of Hughie Morrison, had tried twice already at the big race for his original trainer Nigel Twiston-Davies. In 2017 he went clear three fences out but tired into fourth up the run-in. The following year, conceding 11lb to Tiger Roll, he was again one of the main fancies but was brought down at the first fence. In between, the gelding had won the Becher Chase of 2017 from a big field in a hack canter.

Now he is with Dan Skelton who gave the 12-year-old plenty of time to recover from an autumn setback, bringing him back for two conditioning runs over recent weeks. His chance this year is probably most accurately reflected by his 50-1 odds, but in a year which could end up as a title-winning one for Harry Skelton, why should not Blaklion replicate his contemporary Vieux Lion Rouge’s love of Aintree?

Blaklion has the feather-weight of 10st 2lb to carry on Saturday. A chip on him, another on Anibale Fly, and a last one to make it a veterans’ trio with Nicky Richards’ Takingrisks. His last win at Doncaster was something of a shock (40-1!) but featured the same runner up (Aye Right) as Cloth Cap at Kelso.

I think I’ll mix the three of them with the favourite in multiples and back all three each-way singly. Good luck and I bet, like me, you wish you could be there! Still, fingers crossed it won’t be long before we all can. See you at Royal Ascot, maybe?

Monday Musings: Hope for the future, and Cope from the past

29 March 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Five a.m. on the second day of BST and I was still uncertain what to write about. It was tempting to go along with the thought that John Gosden, 70, on his own was never as potent a trainer as he has become with the addition of son Thady, 25, as joint-licence-holder, writes Tony Stafford.

Five Saturday wins on the second day of their newly-shared role at Clarehaven Stables followed a first-day victory with Coronet’s sister Regent at Lingfield on Friday. But not just any old wins. Two in the first two races at Kempton for Rab Havlin; Haqeeqy at Doncaster in the Unibet Lincoln on the opening day of the 2021 turf Flat season; oh, and £4 million quid’s worth with two easy wins on World Cup day at Meydan.

Races like the Cambridgeshire over the past few years have become almost cannon-fodder for Gosden and the way he is able to go into major handicaps with horses still in the embryonic stage sets him apart.

Lord North, one of the father-and-son team’s two Meydan winners, had been rated 98 when winning the 2019 Cambridgeshire but he has long since graduated to Group races and before Saturday was 25lb higher. Even that figure looks likely to get another hike tomorrow after a cantering win coming from last to first under Frankie Dettori on Saturday in the Dubai Turf over nine furlongs.

The Italian had to share Dubai’s riding riches with David Egan, who won on Mishriff in the Dubai Sheema Classic. The horse, winner of the lavishly-endowed Saudi Cup last month, brought his career earnings beyond £10million when holding on from two Japanese five-year-old mares.

Egan is clearly a young rider with a big future, though 7lb claimer Benoit de la Sayette could have the ultimate career, not that it’s ever easy to predict on such scant evidence. But for a rider having his first ever ride on turf to come through and win the Lincoln so easily and cheekily on Haqeeqy, with a late swoop after Brunch appeared to have pinched it, was unusual to say the least.

“Benny And The Jets”, as I have to call him – it’s the only way to remember the name – has already won nine races from 30-odd rides adding to one from one last year. I can’t remember another claiming apprentice of such promise being attached to the Gosden yard. [Gosden has not had an apprentice for 30 years, so no failing memory. Ed.]

Haqeeqy’s win was poignant for John Gosden as he is owned by Sheikha Hissa, daughter of Hamdan Al Maktoum, the colossus of the turf, as owner and especially breeder, who died last week aged 75. His death must have left a pall over Dubai World Cup night when sadly his colours, now racing as the Shadwell Estate Co, did not enjoy much luck.

Godolphin did win two, including the World Cup in which the Michael Stidham-trained Mystic Guide justified favouritism with another easy win for American stables in this valuable dirt race. Earlier, the same colours had a last-to-first win with the gelding Rebel’s Romance, who gave Charlie Appleby a first UAE Derby success. He is set to challenge for the Kentucky Derby, a race Sheikh Mohammed has long coveted.

Xxxx

Anyway, here I am, having not wanted to major writing about Saturday because I’ve been waiting for a couple of weeks for a suitable time to talk about a most remarkable – for me anyway – little publication that George Hill sent me as an antidote to lockdown.

It’s the 1950 version of Cope’s Racegoer’s Encyclopædia – with the “a” and “e” on the cover properly diphthonged – and it’s a remarkable insight into how racing was conducted in those days. The book was published from the immediate post-war years to the early 1960’s.

Alfred Cope, one of the major bookmakers at the time, pens two of many interesting articles. The first is why he goes racing, the second how his off-course mainly postal and telephone business was conducted. That was more than half a century before the Internet came to enrich or diminish our lives, depending on your viewpoint.

Cope talks about regular racegoers coming to the end of each season with energies spent, yet by the time that Lincoln’s Carholme racecourse – long lost to the sport, but written about on these pages back yon - rolled around for the start of the Flat season, “people were looking up train times and booking hotels with renewed energy”.

Of course that was a quarter-century before the advent of all-weather racing, so Flat horses that didn’t get on the track by November, had an almost five-month wait. It wasn’t easy for the tracks either, for example Chester and Goodwood, now both racing throughout the Flat-racing year were each restricted to a single four-day fixture, Chester in May and Goodwood in July.

During 1949 racecourses had to survive under the iniquity of Entertainment Tax. Epsom’s Managing Director at the time, Mr C J L Langlands, wrote in a letter to a newspaper that of every £1,000 taken at the gate, £458 (at 45.8%) was paid in Entertainment Tax, £403 in rates and after lesser amounts for Profits and Income Tax, £69 was retained by the Epsom Grand Stand Association Ltd.

Admission costs have always been high in the UK compared with say France or the US but even £50 or even more for some of the bigger meetings today represents a bargain compared with the post-war years.

In 1950, the average weekly wage was around £2. Cope writes about the normal cost to go in Tattersalls enclosures was 30 bob - £1.50! When I was a kid in the 50’s we always went in the Silver Ring.

Two articles that most attracted my attention were one discussing the likely apprentices to watch out for as the 1950 season approached, along with another assessing the potential Classic horses of that year. Palestine, beaten in the 1949 Middle Park Stakes, had been the overwhelming favourite until then. The following spring, as a 4-1 shot, he did indeed win for the Aga Khan, grandfather of the present Aga, narrowly from Prince Simon, who then was beaten in another close finish to the Derby.

Also there was an intriguing re-printing of the memoirs of the great trainer from the previous Century, John Porter. He minutely chronicles the life of the great Ormonde, easily the best horse of his – and most other – times and unbeaten winner of 15 races including the Triple Crown in 1886.

Porter retells not just his races, but the gallops on the way including his work opponents and the weights carried as he approached his first race in the late summer of 1885. He relates that, as a young horse, Ormonde developed splints under both fore-knees which prevented him flexing them properly. “The growths were however dispersed by applications of Ossidine, a preparation I have always found to be the best remedy for bony excrescences.” So now you know.

Everything about his three years on the track and the gallops was related in atomic detail, including the awful day leading up to the St Leger when he first gave signs on the Kingsclere gallops of the wind infirmity which was eventually to curtail his racing career and blight his disappointing time at stud.

By the end of his three-race four-year-old season Porter was dealing with a “roarer”, who was so badly afflicted that “On foggy mornings you could hear him half a mile away before you could ever see him”. He did sire a Derby winner in Orme from a small initial crop but was bought soon after to stand in Argentina. For several years, with fertility declining almost to nothing, he moved back and forth to England and had a number of ownership changes.

At last in May 1904, Ormonde’s last owner, the American William Macdonough, thought it humane to have him put to sleep and this happened with the help of chloroform. He was buried at Menlo Park but as any schoolboy or schoolgirl that has visited the National History Museum in London would tell you, his carcass was exhumed and his skeleton re-constructed to stand proudly in Kensington.

The article about apprentices was most interesting. Written by Ainslie Hanson of the Sporting Life, and entitled “Looking for another Gordon <Richards, winner of 26 Flat-race titles> among Apprentices”, it says “Raymond Reader and Billy Snaith show exceptional ability.”

Snaith, who died two years ago, aged 91, did indeed do well, riding many winners for the Queen. He will always be remembered by Willie Snaith Road in his adopted home town (he was Gateshead-born) which is one of the main arteries in Newmarket.

The next talented young man mentioned was Emmanuel Mercer, elder brother to Joe, and already coming to the end of his apprenticeship which in those days was a strictly-tied seven-year process. Manny Mercer, father of Caroline (wife of Pat) Eddery, was to die in a fall before a race at Ascot a few years later having been kicked in the head at the start when one of the leading jockeys of his time.

Nine apprentices are mentioned as having the potential of possibly becoming a champion jockey, but Reader is the one the writer has no hesitation in naming his apprentice of the year.

Then later he describes among the nine, one schoolboy who “still weighs less than five stone, but who rode a couple of outstanding races towards the end of that season”. In one, riding an outsider he beat Doug Smith, the regular runner-up to Richards in the title race, in a thrilling finish.

It was only in the August of the previous year that this son of Keith, a successful Flat and jumps jockey turned trainer, and grandson of Ernie, a dual Grand National-winning jockey, had his first winner, The Chase at Haydock Park. He is of course Lester Piggott and at the time of that first win he was just 12 years old.

The two wins referred to in this article also came before his 14^th birthday and by the time he was 18, he had already ridden Never Say Die to win the first of his nine Derbys. I can still hardly believe that he asked me to travel with him on both his first two days riding after his release from prison.

Beaten a short head at Leicester in the first race on Monday October 15, 1990, he also rode future Cheltenham Festival winner Balasani for my friend Mark Smith. They were unplaced and Balasani was to move to Martin Pipe soon after from John Jenkins.

I was tasked to bring the car round for a quick getaway after his last ride but, naturally struggling to move back the seat after 7st wet-through Bryn Crossley had driven up, and then failing to hear the Mercedes’ very quiet engine, I missed the appointment by enough time for Lester to be besieged by the media!

Then on the Tuesday, flying down to Badminton and from there by taxi to Chepstow, the great comeback was put in motion when Nicholas, trained by wife Susan for Danzig’s owner Henryk De Kwiatkowski, won a small race. This first win came aged 54, and was an event we celebrated that night in a first-person piece in the Daily Telegraph.

The following month Lester rode Vincent O’Brien’s Royal Academy to an amazing late-finishing triumph in the Breeders’ Cup Mile, a week short of his 55^th birthday and exhibiting all the strength shown over more than 40 years. Lester happily is still around, and that little brown-covered and rather shabby book has many more secrets for me to unfold as we hopefully get back to normal after this awful twelve months.

If you fancy getting hold of a copy, I noticed one for that year, and most others, available on eBay, George’s full-time job these days.

Monday Musings: So Many Questions

22 March 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

As one trainer told me on Saturday morning: “It’s just a question of money”, as he explained his view of the Irish domination of the 2021 Cheltenham Festival, writes Tony Stafford. They’ve dominated a few but never like this.

Just a quick look at the last two years reveals that the home team had ten wins and 36 places (up to fourth) last year and a paltry five wins and 41 places last week. So there was a similar number in the principal placings year on year, still making for an inglorious 41% especially as we comprised 60% of the runners, 238 to Ireland’s 163 over the four days.

The win figures are obviously much more worrying with 82% of the first prizes going back across the Irish Sea. Of course the proceeds of a fair number of these, such as the trio of Cheveley Park Stud winners, will be crossing back into their UK coffers.

But my concerned informant on Saturday was not only regarding the money owners are prepared to pay to buy the best stores. As he said, “usually everyone knows well beforehand which the most promising horses are. They are lined up to win a point impressively and then go to the sales immediately afterwards generally going for hundreds of thousands of Euro”.

He was even more irritated that owners who have stayed with their UK trainers get such a poor reward for winning races. He said: “If an owner wins three 0-100 races in a season with a horse, he cannot get back much more than half a year’s training fees. That mustn’t be allowed to continue,” he said.

“A comparable level of race in Ireland is usually worth roughly double and even more so in France. It’s getting to the stage that more and more of what we thought of as good middle-of-the-road and very loyal owners are either packing up altogether or jumping ship and sending their horses to Ireland.”

When Cheveley Park, who for so long have been the biggest domestic owner-breeders in the UK for Flat racing, decided to target jumping, that aspect was stark enough. Their blueprint was to pay to access the most admired stock and send those horses to the best Irish trainers, targeting the lucrative top end of the market where, even in the UK, Grade 1 jump races are worth winning.

Gordon Elliott had been their principal trainer, but Henry De Bromhead and Willie Mullins were also on their team so when that picture was released onto the internet, it was easy to understand Mrs Thompson’s actions. She after all owned a Grand National winner [Party Politics] and is a noted horse-lover.

Whereas Envoi Allen fell last week, thereby losing his career 100% record, Quilixios (De Bromhead) and the bumper horse Sir Gerhard (Mullins) duly won for their new trainers. They each showcased the talents of Rachael Blackmore, no longer merely the best woman rider the sport has seen but champion rider at Cheltenham 2021 with the additional accolade of being the first female jockey to ride a Champion Hurdle winner.

And what a winner! Honeysuckle’s demolition of her field, including the dethroning of Epatante was one of several exceptional performances, usually for Irish horses. Then again if you win 23 of 28 it’s a fair bet that the most impressive winners will have been in your team.

Quilixios, so dominant in the Triumph Hurdle, beat his former stablemate and the race favourite Zanahiyr into a disappointing fourth. Denise Foster did get her name on three Cheltenham winners including the peerless Tiger Roll, who was collecting his fifth Cheltenham Festival race when turning over last year’s winner Easysland in the Cross-Country.

Given the way he won, owner Michael O’Leary would be excused for wishing he hadn’t withdrawn his dual Grand National winner from this year’s race. It seems to me his irrational complaint at the handicapper’s idea of his horse’s ability was shown to be misguided by a superb performance.

Grand National handicapper Martin Greenwood had given Tiger Roll a rating of 170 (including a small premium for his Aintree excellence) in this year’s race. After his 18-length demolition of the French favourite, who has a UK mark of 167, Greenwood could have argued Tiger Roll to be thrown in on 170.

The Sneezy Foster issue is causing the Irish racecourse experts on Racing TV some delicate problems. I’m sure I heard the other day that the “Denise Foster stable has won this race <can’t remember the number> many times.” She amassed 13 winners in a fortnight home and away also including the ridiculously easy handicap scorer Mount Ida who was tailed off to halfway, hardly jumped a fence properly yet won the Kim Muir by six lengths in a canter.

The same was true of The Shunter who never really looked to be galloping or jumping properly yet just as comfortably collected a £100,000 bonus for Emmet Mullins after adding the Paddy Power Plate to his Kelso Graded hurdle win 12 days earlier.

That was a shrewd piece of work by Mullins as had The Shunter won a chase in the lead up to the Festival, of course he would have incurred a penalty [not that that would have necessarily stopped him, Ed.].

Nine of the 28 races at the meeting are handicaps. On the first day only two Irish runners lined up for the Ultima Chase and neither got in the placings in a 16-runner affair left to the home team and won by Sue Smith’s veteran Vintage Clouds at 28-1.

Half the 22-runner Boodles Handicap Hurdle were Irish, including the 80-1 Noel Meade-trained winner Jeff Kidder. Another big-priced success was the all-the-way five-length Coral Cup victory of 33-1 chance Heaven Help Us, the understandable sentiment for trainers of the 19 UK runners in a 26-horse field who toiled in vain from the off.

The Johnny Henderson Chase brought a brief respite from the handicap onslaught when Entoucas, one of seven invaders in a field of 19, could manage only second to Jonjo O’Neill’s Sky Pirate after horlicksing the second last. Maybe Joseph O’Brien should ask for some respite if his horse travels over for Aintree!

There were five Irish among 21 contesting the three-mile Pertemps Handicap Hurdle on Thursday. Three of them made the first four with Mrs Milner another to brush away the opposition ahead of Mrs Foster’s The Bosses Oscar. That was just the aperitif to the dominant displays later that day of Mount Ida and The Shunter, both of whom were backed as if defeat was unimaginable. So it proved each time.

Day four we had two of the most difficult races, the County Hurdle where 16 of the 25 were Irish-trained. The Belfast Bullet (33-1) led home yet another one-two ahead of Petit Mouchoir, Peter Fahy getting the better of the ex-Gordon Elliott runner.

Finally we had the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle. Willie Mullins, second-best to De Bromhead all week when his rival added a Gold Cup 1-2 with Minella Indo and A Plus Tard to his Champion Hurdle success, needed to win to wrest the leading trainer at the meeting title from him.

All week I’d been waiting for Gentleman De Mee for this race. A French import with scant and questionable form, Mullins had only allowed him one winning run and the guess was there would be plenty more to come. A glance at this horse’s ownership – a certain J P McManus – was the deal clincher and as he set off at the head of his field the 4-1 favourite had to be the one.

But was it? Most of the way round as the leader looked less than comfortable, a certain Galopin Des Champs, trained by, oh dear, Willie Mullins!, was tracking him going so smoothly. That morning I’d had a call from my friend Steve Gilbey saying he met an Irishman the day before. “He gets some good stuff and he says that Mullins will win the last, but not with the favourite”, which I’d already told him I thought would win.

He said: “it ran behind Appreciate It last time and would have been much nearer than he finished but for making a mistake two hurdles out.” Appreciate It, blimey, I wish I had.

As Gentleman De Mee dropped away, there on the inside was Galopin Des Champs, who cantered into the lead up the hill. As well as denying Henry De B, he also foiled the week’s second attempted bonus by Dan Skelton’s Langer Dan, the brave runner-up.

Steve was straight on the phone afterwards: “Hope you backed it!” In the immortal words of punters who don’t listen to pearls of wisdom from random Irishmen at Cheltenham-time: “Only small”.

Seriously though, seven winners from nine handicaps suggests that something is going wrong somewhere. They don’t just win, they win pulling carts. Great if like Steve you hear about the right one. I’m sure the top trainers over here will be asking some questions about what seems almost like a series of very valuable open goals.

When their horses win ordinary handicaps, say in heavy ground, here they can often be raised by 10lb or even more. It seems the idea of handicapping in the UK is to be punitive in the hope of preventing multiple wins. That reality, coupled with that very obvious lack of prizemoney makes it all so soul-destroying.

Then you get the Irish coming to Cheltenham and many of their handicappers are getting in with what are obviously much more competitive marks.

Something clearly needs to be done.

Monday Musings: And the Seven Dwarfs

15 March 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

In previous years – the last 50 of them anyway – I would have been spending the last couple of weeks building up for Cheltenham, not always to attend every day as for the first half of that time anyway I was required in the Telegraph office in Fleet Street, writes Tony Stafford.

This time round, after 365 days without visiting any track, I’ve been engrossed in solving a 500-piece jigsaw puzzle and last night I counted exactly 100 almost identical remaining pieces to be placed. Instead of heralding the imminent Spring Equinox and the pushing forward of the clocks I’ve remained in my pre-second Covid-19 jab no man’s land. The target of Newmarket’s Craven meeting is the possible time for my return to the real world.

I wonder if it’s any different for pensioners in Ireland, as in the case of 67-year-old Mrs Denise Foster as she’s officially referred to, the new holder of the trainer’s licence at Cullentra House Stables.

During last week, the BHA was reportedly requesting further clarification about how that stable’s operations would be conducted subsequent to Gordon Elliott’s six-month suspension. No doubt those questions have been answered satisfactorily by the Irish authorities as her six declared runners were duly accepted at Sunday’s 48-hour stage.

There seems to have been little discernible change in the domestic operation. Elliott had seven wins (including a last-day four-timer) from 31 runners in his final week and Foster won five of 25 in her first. Each licence holder’s wins came predominately with favourites (of which there are always plenty) with the odd double-figure winner for good measure.

Denise won’t be anywhere near Cheltenham this week with the short time available to make the necessary Covid-related arrangements being cited as the reason. Elliott will not be there either, nor (voluntarily) will he attend race meetings or points in his home country for the period of the ban.

He’s not the only banned trainer with a new man holding the licence. Charles Byrnes, whose own six-month sabbatical has started after one of his horses was found to have had a non-permitted drug in his post-race sample in Ireland - also twice in the UK, has found a new man in William O’Doherty to take over.

They instantly clicked when Thosedaysaregone won a qualified riders’ Flat handicap at Dundalk on March 5. The winning rider was a certain Mr P Byrnes, no doubt a relative of the “resting” trainer and a sibling of Cathal, the assistant trainer implicated in the team’s dereliction of duty – viz leaving the horse unattended while having lunch with his dad before the race in question at Tramore.

Interestingly, that was O’Donoghue’s only Flat-race runner in Ireland for at least five years and he has hardly been keeping the Irish racing secretariat too busy with his jumpers either. This season he has been unsuccessful with any of his four runners and it was a similar case with his 13 contenders the previous season.

He took the previous year off, runners-wise, possibly too busy celebrating after the heady heights of a winner from only two starters in 2017-18, but that was his sole success from a total 68 jumps runs in the last ten years.

His time with the Byrnes licence is already ending and a new man is on the block in the shape of Robbie (R P) Burns, whom Charles Byrnes relates had ridden for him in the past.

Auld acquaintance clearly has not been forgotten then in the case of the latter-day Rabbie who has been just as sparing with runners as O’Doherty. Over jumps his latest came in the 2018-19 season with six non-winners, repeating the results from seven and two starters the previous two seasons.

In all, three winners have come from 53 jumps runs in the past decade. On the Flat in Ireland between 2007 and 2018 he has had a total of 95 runs – none for the past three years to date - with no wins.

Three runners in the UK, once each in 2009, 2016 and the following year brought a winner at Wolverhampton on the middle occasion. Burns sent over the modest handicapper Abrahams Blessing, an eight-year-old owned by Mrs Dianne Burns and ridden by Silvestre De Sousa for a two-mile handicap but it proved a bitter-sweet occasion as he collapsed and died after the race.

Wolverhampton’s management might have felt, in the words of one of the Scottish Bard’s contemporaries and fellow poet and songwriter “Will Ye No Come back again”. I thought that was another Burns song but it was penned by Caroline Oliphant, Lady Nairne, whose family were noted supporters of Bonny Prince Charlie.

This R P Burns takes over the operation of his near-namesake, and son Cathal Byrnes has been confirmed in his existing role as the assistant. Meanwhile Charles Byrnes is allowed to go to the races and even lead up his horses. You might think, given the limited experience and scant success of the initial and present incumbent that Charles Byrnes is probably still very much the governor as must be Gordon Elliott.

The old “saddled the winner” cliché has long been a factual rarity with trainers only going racing nowadays when it suits with television coverage as it is. In the case of Denise Foster at Cheltenham anyway such a phrase will not be valid but don’t be surprised should it still be trundled out in customary lazy hack fashion.

Training by zoom has to be the next step on from these post-suspension fudges and in homage, not to the far from lovable The Three Stooges of pre-war film fame, but the Seven Dwarfs, I will attempt to try to find out how Gordon Elliott came to settle on Mrs Sneezy Foster.

Clearly previous training experience might be seen as an advantage but who’s to say that when it came to “Bashful”, had Matt Chapman made the cut, I’m sure he could have persuasively argued the toss even with the crusty old gentlemen that run Irish racing.

“Doc”, in the Disney film the boss of the vertically-challenged septet and the man who kept all the others up to the mark, could only be Dr Richard Newland. On further consideration, though, in the midst of the pandemic, the former GP and, like Elliott, a Grand National-winning trainer, was probably needed elsewhere and over-qualified anyway.

Two candidates for “Dopey” but unfortunately nobody seems to know the whereabouts of first choice Mahmood Al Zarooni. A more up-to-date candidate, French-based Andrea Marcialis, is unavailable as he is in the midst of an ever-lengthening ban as the 30-odd instances of doping his horses continue to be worked through by the French turf authorities.

“Grumpy” has to be Sir Michael Stoute. He certainly was that day when I tried to interview him after a winner, saying on our first encounter that I was Tony Stafford of the Daily Telegraph. “Tony Stafford of The Racehorse you mean. And Greville Starkey was NOT playing statues on that horse <from memory I think Greenhill God> - you have to ride him like that!” I think he still regards me with a funny look more than 45 years later and almost as long since that publication went to the wall. Not my fault – the latter anyway!

“Happy” is the ever-smiling except when thinking John Berry as long as he can wear shorts in midwinter and wellington boots. The latter appendage would fit well in Ireland in winter but the shorts might be less welcome in an 80-strong yard. Maybe some of the staff might not be able to concentrate seeing those knees at that time of the morning. Head shots only if he’s training remotely!

There were many more candidates for “Sleepy” on either side of the Irish Sea – viz any jockey fortunate enough to afford a driver on their many miles (especially over here) up and down the country. But then most of them know too much so watch out!

So it came to number seven and that was “Sneezy”. For Gordon and presumably the authority, it was the perfect match as she was already a trainer and was called Sneezy – perfect, so job done! I hope she enjoys remotely “saddling” her runners and it would be surprising if she didn’t end the week with at least one Cheltenham winner on her CV. It’s not very likely that she will have one next year, but if she wants something to fill any spare time she has when she stops training 300 horses I can send her my jigsaw as long as I complete it before the Craven meeting.

As I agonised all Sunday night – a short one admittedly – I had planned to go into old-school Telegraph mode and trot out my idea of the winners of the 28 races. I did that on a zoom call for a friend and one of his pals the other night but I’ve thrown away the notes.

I am pleased that Royale Pagaille goes for Gold Cup on Friday and stay with him and Venetia Williams. I’ve fancied each of the three main contenders in turn for the Champion Hurdle but as Honeysuckle was limited to the sole entry at a relatively early stage I take her to dominate the race and be a landmark victory for Rachael Blackmore.

But my bet of the week – one I’m irritated to see has been backed down to 12-1 – is the Olly Greenall-trained Homme Public in the Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle tomorrow. Young Greenall has had a great season, while Olly’s father Peter, Lord Daresbury, was a brilliant amateur rider in his day and he part-owns the French import.

He was a neck behind the favourite on his second and final run in France for Francois Nicolle and having bolted up at Market Rasen last time, would be an important winner for his up-and-coming trainer.

Monday Musings: Crime and Punishment

8 March 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Sometime between Monday and Friday last week they got together and decided “Gordon’s not really a bad fella, so let’s not be too hard on him”, writes Tony Stafford. You could discern it in the columns of the Racing Post by his day-to-day journalist pals on the racecourse in Ireland as the original abhorrence to first seeing ‘that photo’ was gradually tempered into the “he isn’t really like that” version of the man.

So, by Friday, when the case was finally heard by the IHRB, everyone was patting himself on the back and saying a year ban, suspended for six months was “fair” and had “compassionate undertones”. By the weekend we heard Denise ‘Sneezy’ Foster, 67, who lives down the road and “has known Elliott for many years” was taking over the licence.

Apparently “she’s a legend” and has had ten winners – six Flat and four jumps – over the last five years from her small stable close to Elliott’s Cullentra House yard. If that qualifies her to run a stable which still had the mechanism to continue operations last week, sending out seven winners from 26 runners, including an up-yours four-timer last Monday at Punchestown, is another question.

The enormity of the operation in Co Meath, in the centre of the country, is mind-boggling especially in the context that its boss could often make do with Mrs Thatcher-like amounts of sleep after long sessions of partying and still be ready for the fray at dawn every morning.

It’s time to consider a few numbers. In the latest season, which of course was delayed by the onset of Covid19, Elliott has run 321 individual horses in Ireland. Today at Leopardstown he will send out (remotely I trust) the last six before handing over responsibility to Sneezy, taking his number of runners for the season beyond the 1,000 mark.

They have yielded 155 wins and earned €2.855 million. Over the past five years, 891 Irish wins have brought more than €20 million, only slightly less than the €24 million of his great rival Willie Mullins who this season, from fewer than half the runs, has 139 wins from 183 individual horses. Then there are the training fees on top. Who’ll be getting them?

I was intrigued by the six months suspended part of the IHRB ruling. What would cause its implementation? Would it require a similar offence to be committed in the interim six months? And if there is another similar historical photo in the ether showing him on a different stricken horse would that be the only situation in which the extra six months would take effect?

So let’s be honest. It’s six months from tomorrow taking him to September 8 and, while he does miss Cheltenham, Aintree and the big spring Irish Festival at Punchestown, from that point on, Galway apart, it’s something of a quiet off-season time for the top jumps stables in Ireland.

When Nicky Henderson got his three-month ban in 2011 that ran from July to October and barely ruffled his feathers in practical terms. While unable to go into the stables during that period, he continued to live in the main house and the horses were paraded on the lawn in front of his lounge picture window each morning. Off from July to October when he never has much going on, he was back in time for the first meetings at Kempton. Do the words ‘carve’ and ‘up’ come to mind either side of the Irish Sea?

Elliott will be in situ during his suspension and, while he voluntarily stated he would neither go to any race meeting or point-to-point fixture during the course of the suspension, no doubt he could still offer advice to the new boss.

We like to think that the concept of a punishment suitable to fit the crime is still valid. But when you consider how easy in modern society it is for an unwise word to be regarded as of an offensive nature and enough to earn a prison sentence, the Elliott picture becomes clouded. For a couple of days, outrage was universal around the world and racing’s always delicate position with its vociferous opponents was perilous.

Penalties in horse racing can be draconian. Look, for example, at the case of Charles Byrnes, an acknowledged touch-merchant whose six-month ban for “inexcusable behaviour” and negligence surrounding the running of Viking Hoard at Tramore In October 2018 was confirmed at an appeal last month.

The horse, a drifter from 4-1 to 8-1 before the race, stopped suddenly with seven furlongs to run. He had been laid heavily on Betfair that day and on two further occasions when Byrnes sent him over to race in the UK.

Each time substantial five-figure bets were placed by a third party on Betfair and no connection to Byrnes has been established. The negligence case on the Tramore run was based on the decision of Byrnes and his son to leave the horse unattended for 20 to 25 minutes when they went for their lunch. It was obviously the “suspicious drift” and the big lay bets that alerted Betfair who routinely share such information with the authorities.

Returning to Mr Elliott, such was the disgust at the photo that on the 6pm BBC news last Monday evening, in the headlines, after the news of Covid and the rest, they turned to sport. The first and only headline item was that picture. I think Elliott was very fortunate that he didn’t get the full year the committee suggested it meted out.

Nicky Henderson’s three-month summer sojourn didn’t harm his career – if anything it had more negatives for his then two assistants Tom Symonds and Ben Pauling when they left to start their own training businesses.

So suggestions that Elliott will be in any way harmed by his own gentle sabbatical are probably over-stating the potential impact. Gigginstown, his biggest supporter, quickly stood firmly behind him and they are no longer recruiting from the point-to-point field, so he’s not missing as much there either.

Meanwhile, an inexperienced amateur rider felt the wrath of an Irish stewards’ panel at Leopardstown yesterday. Young Aaron Fahey, riding the newcomer Lake Winnipesaukee in the concluding bumper, was carried to the front of the field by his hard-pulling mount after four furlongs when the saddle slipped.

The horse continued going easily miles clear of the field until turning for home when he took the wrong course, going to the outside of a rail. Fahey, who has ridden three winners from 11 rides this season, told the stewards he was very tired and unable fully to control the horse which his father trains. They ruled him “negligent” and banned him for 14 days.

Clearly, it’s not what you do: it’s who you are.

Denise Foster won’t be going to Cheltenham with the Cullentra House horses, but never mind Sneezy, nor am I. Neither will French Aseel, who has had a setback – good job I switched Triumph horses to Tritonic (cough) - but then Sneezy still has some left in that race even after the Cheveley Park contingent jumped ship.

At last count her new stable has 111 total entries at the Festival many with multiple targets. I’m sure while she won’t be there she’ll be checking that Weatherbys have the correct bank details to send her the trainer’s percentages, which must come to a nice few quid.

One race she will have to watch closely is the Martin Pipe Conditional Jockeys’ Handicap Hurdle on the final day. Of the stable’s 34 last-day entries, a dozen are in the race Elliott loves to win in homage to the time he spent at Pond House in his formative years before becoming a trainer.

Another Cheltenham absentee will be Alan Spence who will have no runners at the meeting with On The Blind Side waiting for Aintree. One race he will have in his sights before then, though, is the Dubai World Cup.

Spence part-owned and bred Salute The Soldier, who won four of 14 races when trained by Clive Cox, only once finishing out of the frame. The partners were elated when he was sold at the end of his four-year-old career for 380,000gns after reaching a BHA handicap mark of 104.

Bahraini owner-trainer Fawzi Nass was the buyer and, transferred to his Dubai Carnival stable, the gelding won twice at up to Grade 3 level in his first season there. This time round it has been two wins from three runs for the six-year-old, first a Group 2 and then on Super Saturday last weekend he made all to win Round 3 of the Al Maktoum Challenge, his first at Group 1 level.

I tried in vain looking on the Emirates Racing Authority site to see whether there’s a breeder’s prize for the winner. With $12 million to go round there ought to be and I’m sure Alan would have been checking even as his great favourite went over the line on Saturday. If not, he and former co-owning partner Mr Hargreaves might ask Fawzi for a hand-out should the Soldier beat off the American dirt stars on March 27 at Meydan.

Membership Login