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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.

Monday Musings: Tritonic to be the Spring King?

1 March 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

I was speaking to Micky Hammond a couple of weeks ago and he declared: “Winter has finished!”. I thought maybe he was rather precipitous as there were still great drifts of snow around much of the North of England and points further on, but he must have had divine inspiration from somewhere, writes Tony Stafford.

Often the Kempton Saturday meeting in late February has offered better ground than anywhere else for ages and as such provided a nice lead-in for Cheltenham Festival runners. February 27 2021 proved no exception.

Through this most depressing of winters, denied visits to the racecourse and resigned to watching horses slogging through the mud day after day on television, Kempton’s jumps track always provides the kindest of surfaces. No wonder Nicky Henderson opposed plans for its closure so vigorously.

On Saturday the three-mile handicap chase, which has had many identities, but was staged under the Close Brothers banner this year, was run in five minutes 51 seconds, one second FASTER than standard time.

Clondaw Castle was the meritorious winner. Trained by Tom George and ridden by Jonathan Burke, he led home a field of 17. Runner-up Erick Le Rouge, a 33-1 shot, had been successful on similarly fast ground at the corresponding meeting two years ago in a handicap hurdle while on that same card, Southfield Spirit, a faller when favourite for the Close Brothers, won the Grade 2 Dovecote Novices’ Hurdle for Paul Nicholls.

Micky must have been slightly irritated at the accuracy of his prediction as he chose the same weekend for the return to hurdling of stable star Cornerstone Lad in the National Spirit Hurdle at Fontwell yesterday. The ground had dried out appreciably there too and Cornerstone Lad, a proper mud-lark, was pulled up.

I always loved the late February meeting at Kempton which used to be a two-day affair on the Friday and Saturday. I know my memory plays tricks these days but I definitely remember one year (not sure which one) when at least half a dozen of the Kempton winners (and possibly a couple more) went on to success at the Cheltenham Festival.

The Adonis Hurdle will always be a favourite and its annual arrival unfailingly reminds me of the 2007 renewal which led to a 14-year connection with Raymond Tooth. Sadly Raymond’s association with racing has for now been curtailed but I will always be grateful to Punjabi and to Derek Hatter and Brod Munro-Wilson whose input that day hastened the union.

Few winners of the race, which in 2007 and 2008 provided Nicky Henderson with the 2009 and 2010 (Binocular) Champion Hurdle winners, were more impressive than Saturday’s ten-length Adonis victor Tritonic, a fifth Adonis score for Alan King, equalling Henderson’s tally.

Tritonic, a 99-rated Flat racer, had been more workmanlike than spectacular in the Ascot mud five weeks earlier when a strong-finishing one-length victor from the Gary Moore-trained Casa Loupi. That horse, a far inferior performer on the level but still a tough campaigner, was again the main rival on Saturday.

Coming to the last flight it appeared that there would probably be only a slightly wider margin between them but once over the obstacle, Tritonic took off and sprinted away up the run-in in the manner of a Goshen in an easing-down ten-length exhibition.

Cheltenham has a habit of fooling us with its ground and many times I’ve been in a less than successful going prediction business, certainly not in the Hammond league anyway. At various Cheltenham preview nights I’ve suggested it will be impossible for it to be anything but soft and it often wasn’t. I don’t think it matters for Tritonic, who is down to 7-2 for the juvenile championship.

I feel I have to change my Triumph allegiance, with French Aseel showing no sign of a second run having transferred into the Willie Mullins team. Gordon Elliott still has a strong grip on the race with 2-1 shot Zanahiyr and third-best Quilixios (6-1) but he is making all the wrong headlines after the picture of him talking on the phone while sitting on a dead horse on his gallop started doing the rounds. Both the Irish authorities and the BHA are understandably on the Elliott case.

In these more sensitive times in terms of animal welfare it is little wonder that social media has been so much on this matter. I’ve been told that the belated release of the grotesque image many months after it was captured last summer is because of the ire of a scorned former paramour of the trainer! Whatever the truth of that, it’s a great story. As Mr Bolger instructed when I first contacted him back in the 1980’s: “No names!”

In those days in Ireland you never knew who was listening in. Nowadays there’s always someone taking a picture and it has an ever-ready target audience. No doubt in no time at all there will be a million “likes” of which 999,000 of them will be utter “dislikes”.

Anyway, I digress. Tritonic is a reminder of Alan King’s talent as a jumps trainer which to some extent has been slightly eroded in the public understanding because of his equal facility on the Flat. Considering he doesn’t have easy access to the top pedigrees but instead needs to develop his own talent, that success is even more meritorious.

Tritonic was a case in point. Bred by Kirsten Rausing, he was originally sold as a foal at Tatts December sale for 14,000gns to Tony O’Callaghan’s Tally Ho Stud. Eighteen months later at the lesser of the two Tatts Breeze-ups, with the benefit of the Tally Ho expertise, he realised almost a 300% increase at 55k.

He might not have seemed the obvious “breezer” in pedigree terms. He was by the German Derby winner – by 11 lengths! – Sea The Moon who won four of five career starts with his only defeat coming as a 2-1 on shot in his last run in the Grosser Preis von Baden. The four-year-old winner there, Ivanhowe, was later a multiple Group 1 winner in Australia.

King didn’t waste any time with his May purchase. Tritonic had his first start in July as an unconsidered 50-1 outsider for a Haydock 7f novice race and, bar taking a false step in the closing stages, could have been even nearer than fourth place, less than a length behind the winner.

He built on that with wins at Ffos Las in August and Newbury in September and was only a 6-1 chance when fifth to Max Vega in the Group 3 Zetland Stakes over 10 furlongs at Newmarket in October. Placed in four of his five attempts – including first time out at Royal Ascot – in good-class handicaps as a three-year-old, he had the benefit of experience without being over-raced. So when the trainer turned Tritonic to hurdling he already looked the finished article.

With two Triumph Hurdle winners, Penzance and Katchit - who as a five-year-old followed up in the Champion Hurdle - to his credit, King certainly knows what’s needed and, after welcoming his winner on Saturday, there was only one race on his mind.

Another of the Kempton winners that interests me is Cape Gentleman who travelled over from Ireland to win the Dovecote Hurdle in determined style after a tussle with the Dan Skelton-trained Calico, a decent horse in Germany before making an easy winning UK debut at Ludlow.

Cape Gentleman started out in the Nicolas Clement stable after being sourced as a yearling at Arqana’s Deauville sale by the trainer and his sales associate Tina Rau for €20k. After three runs and one win he was back at the company’s Saint-Cloud venue where Emmet Mullins bought him for €80k on behalf of owner Margaret O’Rourke.

It’s uncanny that Tritonic and Cape Gentleman had such similar increases in value between sales and are rated 1lb apart on the Flat: second time out for Mullins in the Irish Cesarewitch at The Curragh last September Cape Gentleman showed tremendous stamina and determination to win by a couple of lengths in a field of 20 after which his mark was increased from 85 to 100.

First time over hurdles he won well at Punchestown but then, in Grade 1 company over two and three-quarter miles at Leopardstown’s Dublin Festival three weeks ago, he was pulled up. That he could recover from those exertions and put in such a good performance within such a short time and back at two miles is testimony both to the horse’s constitution and his trainer’s skill.

Cape Gentleman has two Cheltenham engagements and is a 25-1 chance for both. With the run guarantee in many places, I reckon there will be worse each-way shots at considerably shorter odds on the day. Just two weeks to go.

I’d actually been asked to go to a friend’s house to do an on-the-day hosting of one of the days at the Festival for some of his pals who play for a Premier League team and love their racing. That was great at any rate until spoil-sport Mrs S pointed out that it was still illegal – and no doubt one of the lads would live stream the event, ensuring big fines all round. I had regretfully to decline.

- TS

Monday Musings: Saudi Success for Mishriff

22 February 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

In the latter half of last week’s missive I took you back to June 1989, writes Tony Stafford. Today I’m going another year, all but two days, and the eve of day one of Royal Ascot. The feature and only Group 1 event of the day, and in those days carrying more than double the prizemoney of the Group 2 Queen Anne and Prince of Wales’s Stakes on that afternoon, was the St James’s Palace Stakes.

I’d gone on the Monday evening down to Holland Park Road in leafy West London with trainer Geoff Huffer and I remember there was much discussion about whether Persian Heights, whom Geoff trained for Prince Yazid Saud (son of King Saud, the Ruler of Saudi Arabia in the late 1950’s and early 1960’s) should take his place in the field.

Until checking back I’d forgotten the reason for what was in effect a summit meeting as it entailed something of a gamble. Persian Heights had made his seasonal reappearance as recently as the previous Wednesday at Newbury, when he won a conditions race by an easy four lengths.

Obviously it was going to be a risk and I’m not quite sure why I was there, but there I was. Also in the house that evening was Tony Nerses, nowadays the brains behind Kuwaiti Imad Al Sagar’s bloodstock interests, but in those days the secretary for Prince Yazid.

Mr Sagar, with his then partner Saleh Al Homaizi, also a Kuwaiti, won the 2007 Derby with Authorized, trained by Peter Chapple-Hyam; and that victory has provided Tony with a great advertising vehicle. Whenever his boss has a non-home-bred winner, it’s always accompanied with “purchase Authorized by Tony Nerses”.

At some time later that evening, mid-discussion, Geoff and I crossed the road to another of the grand houses in that select enclave – God knows what they would be worth now! I did look, you wouldn’t want to know!

There we met one of Prince Yazid’s fellow Saudi Arabian Royal family members, Prince Abdul Rahman Abdullah Faisal, and blow me down when on Saturday night his horse Mishriff, trained by John Gosden and ridden by 21-year-old David Egan, exceeded all previous expectations by winning the world’s most valuable race, the Saudi Cup, from the American-trained second favourite Charlatan, in turn ridden by one of the world’s most celebrated and successful jockeys, Mike Smith.

I’m delighted for the Prince who goes sometimes as Prince A A Faisal but more often as plain – well not so plain, just look at the Garrards of London-made all-gold trophy that’s almost as tall as its recipient – Prince Faisal. At home he needs the initials, there’s a bit of competition for that first name among the family.

They were all friends and indeed relatives with the late Prince Ahmed bin Salman (late son of the present King Salman) of Thoroughbred Corporation fame. He won the 1999 Derby with Oath, four Triple Crown races in two successive years without managing to get all three together as well as umpteen other major races around the world.

Even before 1988, when they were very young men, Yazid and Ahmed were partners together in several good horses, often high-class sprinters trained by Bill O’Gorman running precisely in those two first names.

Well to cut a circuitous route slightly shorter, the decision was made. Persian Heights ran and won comfortably and, while never really graduating any further in his own career, he did leave an indelible mark on the thoroughbred breeding world by being the sire of the great stayer Persian Punch.

Winner of 20 of his 63 career starts for trainer David Elsworth and owner Jeff Smith, only four times did he step below stakes class and he won on all those four occasions. Sixteen stakes wins is right up there and I know from experience that Mr Elsworth never likes to worry about winning a small race when a tilt at a much bigger target is in his sights.

I bought Prince Yazid a few horses after my own first trip to Saudi Arabia in the late 1990’s to race in France where he was based at that time and I later lost touch. I know on returning home, he was in charge of arrangements for the Hajj where Muslim pilgrims travel to the Holy City of Mecca, a journey they are required to make at least once in their lives.

Prince Faisal meanwhile was breeding some top-class horses to run in his purple, grey epaulettes colours from his prolific broodmare Rafha, winner of the 1990 Prix de Diane for Henry Cecil. The best was easily Invincible Spirit, a sprint-bred son of Green Desert who won seven of 17 starts for John Dunlop but turned into a phenomenal stallion for the Irish National Stud.

Initially standing at a cost of €10k, as his accomplishments increased so did his fee and, at its height from 2016-9, he commanded an investment of €120,000. Down to €100k last year it has taken another little trim to €80k, but his shareholders who took the initial risk won’t be complaining. After all that’s not bad for a 24-year-old!

Kodiac, his half-brother by top Classic sire Danehill, didn’t measure up as a racehorse. I met the Prince at Newmarket on a July Saturday in 2003 and we had a cup of tea together before his colt’s juvenile debut. He was optimistic before the race and was happy afterwards about his third place finish.

Four wins came from his 24 career starts, none in stakes, but Tony O’Callaghan, the shrewd boss of Tally Ho Stud, bought him and quickly turned him into the world’s most consistent and prolific sire of two-year-olds. His fee, originally €5,000, has been at a high of €65,000 for the last three breeding seasons and the now 20-year-old shows no sign of slowing down as neither does Tony.

It was remarkable that the Prince was so astute to secure the services of the then 20-year-old David Egan as early as he did in his career. Egan travelled to Riyadh for the meeting last year when Mishriff, on his three-year-old debut, finished second in the inaugural Saudi Derby.

Mishriff then returned to Europe and won a Listed race at Newmarket under Egan, but wins in the French Derby and a Group 2 at Deauville were unavailable to the jockey with the Covid travel ban in place. Ioritz Mendizabal and then Frankie Dettori were the happy recipients of Egan’s misfortune. He ran his only disappointing race, again with Dettori in the saddle, when unplaced behind Addeybb at the Champions meeting at Ascot in October on what Gosden has described as the worst ground at any UK meeting he can recall.

Saturday’s victory, on his first run since – this time Dettori was on an unplaced stable-companion – carried the astronomic winner’s prize of £7.29 million, so a nice windfall in percentage terms for Mr Gosden – whose handling of this home-bred colt has been masterful – and Egan. His opportunistic and unflustered riding has to be taken in the context of the opposition and importance of the day. How proud his father John, in the crowd and still a potent jockey in his 50’s, must have been.

Mr Sagar was in Riyadh for the weekend as was Hollie Doyle principally to ride his gelding Extra Elusive – who seemed not to enjoy the dirt surface – in the big race. To show in just how high regard she is held, she got the ride on the Willie Mullins-trained eight-year-old mare True Self in a ten and a half furlong turf race and they won comfortably. Hollie’s share of the £439k first prize will keep partner Tom Marquand happy down in Sydney while he waits out his quarantine.

While the top two were from the upper end of racing’s hierarchy – the runner-up was a $700,000 dollar buy and ran for Bob Baffert - the third horse home has a much more proletarian heritage.

The five-year-old Great Scot was originally prepared for sale by Rachael and Richard Kempster of Kinsale Farm near Oswestry, Shropshire, and was led out unsold as a yearling for 2,500gns at the mixed Ascot sale. The Kempsters also got a less than brilliant result at the same venue when offering some disappointing Raymond Tooth horses also raised on their farm.

Unlike them Great Scot went on to race for a syndicate of owners – the Empire States Partnership and was originally trained by Tom Dascombe. Seeing the names involved at the time of that yearling sale, I suspect some footballers possibly associated with Michael Owen, who owns Dascombe’s stables, might have been involved.

He won four of 11 races, getting up to a rating of 111, so I expect they got a nice windfall when passing him on. Next time he appeared it was in last year’s Saudi Cup where he finished only 12^th of 14 at 100/1 running off the boat as it were.

The latter part of last year was much more fruitful with wins by 12 lengths and then three lengths before a four-length success in a £78k Listed race last month.

Intriguingly – I hinted there was a Prince Faisal or two – Great Scot is owned by Prince Faisal Bin Khalid (so son of a previous King) and trained by Abdullah Mushrif. Confused? You will be. When the Empire State Partnership people realise that yesterday’s run, still at 66-1 despite the three spectacular wins, earned this Prince £1,459,000 they will no doubt take a moment from watching the football on telly. As for the Kempsters, who run a very nice efficient farm where Punjabi has spent his retirement, they can congratulate themselves for their part in the story.

On the domestic front, Saturday also featured the reincarnation of Goshen, incidentally a son of Authorized, in Wincanton’s Kingwell Hurdle. Beaten three times since his last-flight fall in the 2020 Triumph Hurdle and in those defeats, showing little sign that he was still a smart performer, he slaughtered his field by 22 lengths, surely ending Song For Someone’s Champion Hurdle hopes.

More interestingly, as the ground dries out will the connections of Honeysuckle, so impressive last weekend at Leopardstown, start to think that maybe the mares’ race over an extra half mile will provide less of a gamble. Faster ground and two miles suits Goshen and almost certainly Epatante. Decisions, decisions!

Monday Musings: Of Coups and Separation

15 February 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The Hollie Doyle/ Tom Marquand bubble will be stretched by a few thousand miles for the next two months, writes Tony Stafford. While Hollie contemplates a trip to Saudi Arabia for that kingdom’s big race, the multi-million-dollar Saudi Cup at the end of the month, fiancé Tom is bound for a return trip to Australia where he had such spectacular rewards last year.

It is fair to say that twin Group 1 wins on the William Haggas-trained Addeybb ‘down under’ instantly propelled him into the top echelon of Flat-race jockeys. Understandable, then, that he is prepared to spend the next two months – thereby missing the start of the 2021 turf season – on those lucrative shores.

The circumstances will be different though this year, as they will be for every UK resident not managing to secure an overseas “pass” in these days of limited air travel.

You need a valid reason for going but I‘m sure even the strictest enforcer of the rules will have agreed that travelling over to ride in races for a percentage of million-pound pots every few weeks is justifiable. Marquand will this time have to spend two weeks at the start of the trip stuck in a hotel room living off room service and, no doubt, Zoom calls to his beloved at the other side of the World.

Covid-19 first assailed, briefly relaxed its grip, and then re-established itself in Australia, where the discovery of a cluster of cases in a quarantine hotel in Melbourne which had been latterly free of the virus caused the removal of spectators from the Australian Open tennis championships halfway through a match on the main court towards the end of last week.

Luckily, Tom is bound not for Melbourne but Sydney where he had 30 wins during last year’s Autumn Carnival. Parting will be such sweet sorrow for the Golden Couple of horse racing but a few more big pots will help them hopefully on their way to getting a joint mortgage!

The two-week “house arrest” it seems will feature an exercise bike to keep the fitness up although if there are two better-prepared jockeys in the UK weighing rooms these days than Doyle and Marquand I would be surprised.

Hollie’s principal employer, apart from the plum job she got last year with Imad Al Sagar, for whom she will be riding in Saudi Arabia, is Archie Watson. The Lambourn trainer has provided her with 115 wins from the 548 mounts she has had for his stable.

Watson and Doyle teamed up for the Group 1 win of Glen Shiel in the Qipco Champion Sprint at Ascot in October when it took all the rider’s strength to get him home from the equally-gallant veteran Brando in a desperate finish.

Watson, I was surprised to note on looking through his stats this morning, actually had quite a slip in numerical terms of winners between 2019 (133) and the comparatively-modest 70 last year, although quality – rather than the quantity that made his reputation – was the stable’s new focus. Now he faces an even quieter spell after antibodies of the highly-contagious EVA (equine viral arteritis) were discovered in one of his horses.

Watson has imposed an immediate halt on having any runners from his stable for the foreseeable future and is working closely with the BHA to ensure the outbreak is confined so as not to spread it through the racing community.

Jump racing’s recent hiatus with the ravages of one of the more aggressive winters of recent memory looks likely to get a reprieve for the rest of this week. Exeter managed half a card (no chases) yesterday but it is full speed ahead today at Warwick where the featured Kingmaker Chase pits the Skeltons’ highly-regarded front-runner Allmankind against Cheddleton and Sky Pirate.

It will be great to see horses of that class aiming to secure their places in Cheltenham Festival’s Arkle Trophy. I have in the back of my mind that Chaddleton, trained by Jennie Candlish, might be value at 6-1 in a four-horse race where the ground is sure to be very testing even at two miles.

I trust you will forgive what, by necessity, is a less comprehensive view of matters racing but there can rarely have been in the seven years or so that we’ve been going in this place – except of course from mid-March to May 31 last year! –so little of note happening on a racecourse .

As they say, even reminiscing about the past is not what it was, although uncannily on the morning that the last piece was landing in the inboxes of my correspondents and on this site, the events of June 10^th 1989 were to be spookily rekindled.

Referring back to a planned four-timer for horses trained by Peter Hudson at the privately-owned Linkslade Stables of Al Deera Bloodstock Holdings – now Willie Muir’s base – following last week’s two-out-of-three attempted coup, I also had to recall that time a failed final leg.

By all accounts one of the architects of the Scottish-initiated bet would have won between £2 and £3 million had the third leg won. That’s the widely-touted figure and of course I have no intention of pointing a finger anywhere! But bad luck anyway, if that’s what it was.

What I can say with some accuracy is that Pharaoh’s Delight’s failure to win Leicester’s Sports Mercury Maiden Fillies’ Stakes at 8.45 p.m. on that Saturday evening some 32 years earlier cost the owner of the horses the best part of £250k – although getting the money from the 300 shops covered by Danny, Kevin, Paul, Lennie and my dad would not have been easy.

When it came to collecting the cash, my then 69-year-old father left those duties to his dog trainer, Paul Philpott, and Paul’s boyhood Homerton mate Roland, known as Boo, who for many years has been a noted collector of racing memorabilia.

Boo, who upscaled to Hertford years ago, has so much stuff, largely racecards and the like that he has had to take a lock-up to house it all. Recently he was asked to vacate the rented space as the owner had a better use for it and, while going through some of his collectibles from the 1980’s, came across the very Leicester racecard which I now have in front of me.

Pharaoh’s Delight was ridden by Pat Eddery that night and she had worked well at home although David Dineley, who had ridden her in work before the race, is still adamant more than 30 years on that he reckoned at the time she would need the run.

That wasn’t the trainer’s view and the now Norfolk-based garden designer was of the opinion she had the best chance of the quartet. The other three won well enough (at 11-2, 3-1 and 8-11) so £10k that had been placed in a variety of bets but the majority as Yankees, was shaping up to be a proper coup.

The plot thickened when Pat returned to the weighing room after her sixth place – “dwelt, headway halfway, eased when beaten final furlong”, said the close-up in the year-old Racing Post. Pat told George Hill - there as I couldn’t attend that night: “Bad luck, she’ll win at Royal Ascot.” She did, by just the six lengths in the Windsor Castle Stakes; and, for good measure, she won the Princess Margaret Stakes (Group 2) at Ascot and then the Heinz 57 Phoenix Stakes (Group 1) at Phoenix Park on her next two starts.

I wonder where Gallahers Cross, the beaten third leg of last week’s much grander coup at Musselburgh when shortened to 4-5 favourite, will run next. If what happened to Pharaoh’s Delight is anything to go by, the Daragh Bourke gelding, having his first race for more than a year, will bolt up next time – but that will be much too late! I expect they’ll see him coming!

Monday Musings: Willie Mullings and A Plot Awry

8 February 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The Dublin Racing Festival, two days of the best jump racing in Ireland and perfectly placed five weeks before Cheltenham to offer definitive clues about the likely destination of many of its major prizes, did its job this weekend, writes Tony Stafford.

It also made the more than considerable likelihood that Willie Mullins will see off Gordon Elliott as champion trainer once again in their homeland into a formality. Fifteen races, mostly Graded and bolstered by some very valuable and fiercely contested handicaps, were framed. Mullins won nine of them, four of seven on Saturday and five from eight yesterday.

Elliott won one, in his juvenile hurdle niche where he still has the stranglehold on Triumph Hurdle calculations after Mullins decided that he needed to give French Aseel a little more time to settle into the stable routine. Ruby Walsh, the most brilliant race reader (Flat and jumps to be fair) I’ve yet to encounter on television let us in on that secret when discussing the Elliott winner Quilixios, who has supplanted French Aseel as second favourite at 6-1 behind his unbeaten stable-companion Zanahiyr, a 5-2 chance.

But elsewhere at least three Mullins Cheltenham candidates cemented their claims on major prizes next month. Last year’s Albert Bartlett Hurdle winner, Monkfish, maintained his unblemished record over fences in the 2m 5.5f novice and is now an 11/10 shot for the Festival (RSA as was) Novices’ Chase over 3m1f. If you think he’ll go instead in the shorter Marsh Chase you can have 7/1. Don’t take it because he won’t!

Saturday’s bumper winner, Kilcruit, bred by Willie Mullins’ mother, is now the 6-4 favourite for the Festival Bumper after a 12-length romp under the breeder’s grandson Patrick in Saturday’s Grade 2 event. The only problem with taking that 6-4 is that there are sure to be other Mullins runners in the race; but they will need to be good to beat this one.

Incidentally, when he made his debut at Clonmel last season, Kilcruit was actually beaten, and at the time was trained by Willie’s brother and the rider’s uncle Tony, who had such a spectacular summer with the staying German-bred mare Princess Zoe, winner of the Group 1 Prix Du Cadran at Longchamp last autumn.

Kilcruit turned up in Willie’s string for his seasonal debut at Navan in December where he won by almost ten lengths and, up in grade, had even more real estate and a good deal of extra goodwill to spare over Saturday’s rivals.

A third certain Festival favourite will be yesterday’s easy novice hurdle winner, Appreciate It, now only 7/4 for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. All three of these will have been heavily linked in multiple bets but the bookmakers are far less likely to be wrong-footed by these as they clearly were over the weekend by a very well-planned and almost as well-executed three-horse bet that could easily have repercussions for the far-sighted originators, or unscrupulous conspirators, according to where you stand.

Late on Saturday night, bookmakers, among whom Bet Victor have come forward to declare their hand, were assailed online by punters all wanting to back three horses, I would imagine in singles and linked multiples.

In Saturday night’s early betting they were all outsiders with only one – the middle leg, Blowing Dixie, at Southwell – having any realistic credentials according to yesterday’s Racing Post analyses.

Anyway, the three horses were firstly Fire Away, a 20/1 chance in the newspaper’s betting but double that the night before. In his last runs in Ireland he had been 7^th of 15, beaten 38 lengths at 20/1; 14^th of 25, beaten 25 lengths at 66/1; 8^th of 11, beaten 26 lengths at 16/1; 6^th of 8, beaten 39 lengths at 8/1; and PU of 16 at 8/1.

Those runs in Ireland took place between November 19^th 2019 and March 2^nd 2020. Transferred to Daragh Bourke’s Scottish stable he had three runs in late summer. They were 10^th of 15, beaten 51 lengths at 50/1; 7th of 10, beaten 61 lengths at 20/1; and, last time out on September 16^th, he started 50/1 and pulled up in a field of 11. Over the period his rating had fallen from an initial mark of 116 to 98.

Yesterday he was making his debut for a new stable, having joined Laura Morgan’s team near Melton Mowbray from Bourke only 11 days before the race. “He had two horses for sale and I originally had a different one in mind but chose him. I’m delighted I did,” she told Racing TV, understandably as he won the race unchallenged by 18 lengths at even money!

Leg two, Blowing Dixie, had won four races at Southwell, all of them over a mile and a half when trained by Jane Chapple-Hyam but, even so, for an 80-rated four-year-old Fibresand specialist to realise as much as £50k at last year’s July Sales at Newmarket might seem rather surprising.

Fetch it he did and, switched to the ultra-shrewd Iain Jardine, Blowing Dixie began a busy autumn schedule running six times between early September and late November. His card reads 7^th of 7, beaten 25 lengths at 80/1; 8^th of 9, beaten 22 lengths at 66/1; 7^th of 8, beaten 28 lengths at 10/1; 10^th of 13, beaten 21 lengths at 66/1; 5^th of 6, beaten 16 lengths at 66/1; and finally 8^th of 9, beaten 25 lengths at 17/2.

Starting for Jardine on a mark of 80, by yesterday he was down 15lb to 65. A 12/1 shot in the Racing Post, he started 4/6 and won by an easy two and a half lengths. His most obvious market rival, Drew Breeze, winner of two of his previous three races, started slowly and was never nearer than fifth of the eight runners, beaten 16 lengths at 13/8.

Daragh Bourke also figured in the third member of the overnight triumvirate. A former £260,000 buy from Tattersalls Cheltenham sale in 2017 after winning an Irish point and Galway bumper, Gallahers Cross didn’t win for Nicky Henderson and was sold on for £40k.

Between June 2019 and January last year he ran five times for Bourke beginning with an 8th of 9, beaten 48 lengths at 7/1, when the gloss of the decent placed Henderson form had not properly worn off. Next came an 8^th of 10, beaten 62 lengths at 20/1; 11^th of 12, beaten 54 lengths at 28/1; 7^th of 7, beaten 39 lengths at 16/1; and, finally, last month, 7^th of 8, beaten 50 lengths at 9/1. This time the official reaction to the string of poor performances was a reduction from 115 to 90.

So it is possible, even on the scantiest of scrutiny, to discern a pattern. Each of the three horses had a series of very poor runs from their respective (two, close together) bases in Scotland in the latter half of last year, and all three dropped just over a stone in the ratings and suddenly found form enough on the home gallops to persuade certain people to want to back them, and all on the same day.

The only thing that went wrong – possibly denying winning trebles into the thousands of odds against – was that Gallahers Cross, a 4-5 shot at the off, could finish only fourth of the seven runners, behind an all-the-way Paul Nicholls top-weight winner, Get The Appeal. Like Gallahers Cross, Get The Appeal is a son of Getaway.

As someone who set up a multiple bet many years ago which foundered at the final leg of four (when a future – two runs later! – Group 1 winner ridden by a multiple champion jockey finished unplaced), I can sympathise with those who thought their big pay day had come. On the other hand, any one of them whom I happen to know who didn’t bother to let me in on it – serves you right! But then, as with our try all those years ago that involved physically covering 300 betting shops, rather than pushing a few buttons on computers, two out of three isn’t bad.

Finally, it just remains to question how can any horse beat Honeysuckle in the Champion Hurdle after Saturday’s romp in the Irish Champion, a victory far more emphatic than last year’s? Tough, with plenty of stamina and unbeaten in one point-to-point and ten runs under Rules, surely the Henry De Bromhead mare can give Rachael Blackmore the distinction of being the first woman to win the Champion Hurdle. Sorry Epatante, unless Nico can contrive to make this a speed rather than a stamina test, her crown definitely looks to rest precariously on her head.

As Liverpool FC are finding, it’s one thing to win a championship, quite another successfully to defend it.

Monday Musings: Taxing Matters Pre-Cheltenham

1 February 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

It was good to see that Denise Coates, boss and joint founder of Bet 365, was still smiling (ish!) in the picture accompanying the story that she is once again the highest taxpayer in the UK, writes Tony Stafford. Not just the leader, but the Stoke-on-Trent based magnate has more than doubled her 2018-19 payment to HMRC of £276million. This time round it was a mind-boggling £573 million.

Fred Done of Betfred fame by comparison is a well-beaten third – behind distiller Glenn Gordon – on £191 million, showing if ever we doubted it that there’s generally only one side of the betting argument you want to be on and that’s not the punters’.

Talking of punters, many of the more successful ones – a large number of whom are paying subscribers on this site – complain these two firms are very selective about what bets and how much of them they care to accept liability.

Both are massive companies, especially Bet 365, even if their support of Stoke City FC hasn’t been over-successful in terms of results – I’d be amazed if their fans didn’t encourage Denise to open up her purse-strings an inch or two for today’s Deadline Day.

As its regular TV advertisements pronounce, they have 53 million customers around the world. Paddy Power/Betfair, the main domestic (Irish and UK) elements, along with Skybet, in Flutter.com, claim to have 13 million customers world-wide.

The Flutter.com site explains that their business, based in Dublin, obviously the home of Paddy Power (some of whose ads I love, much more than the exaggerated Cockney delivery of actor Ray Winstone – maybe he can’t help himself) is in five divisions.

Division I is Paddy Power/Betfair. Division 2 is TSG which includes the Stars Group containing Poker Stars. Division 3 is Sky Betting and another television stalwart, Jeff Stelling, is currently exhorting viewers to join the half a million customers that are accepting their policy of agreeing deposit limits in the admirable aim of protecting punters’ finances.

Their Division 4 embraces Australia’s major companies Sportsbet and Easybet while in the US Division 5 is earmarked as a major growth area. There, Flutter.com embraces Fanduel, FoxBet, the race broadcast company TVG, Poker Stars, and Betfair. They are concentrating on “online retail sports and online gaming and poker”. They claim to be the leading online sportsbook and casino operator in the rapidly expanding US market.

So that’s Flutter.com with its millions of clients and no doubt Paddy Power, as the instigator of it all, has to pay a few Euro in his homeland to satisfy the authorities while clearly having financial obligations on this side of the water, too. Whatever the story, his very public face deserves to be the focal point for the sort of astonishingly questionable treatment of one of Betfair Sportsbook’s regular customers I learned about over the past week or so. No doubt, many others have similar tales to relate.

On Friday January 22, this customer, a former racecourse bookmaker, requested £100 each way at SP, on Bullion Boss, trained by Nicky Richards in a race at Musselburgh. He finished second at 3-1 favourite. Betfair Sportsbook was only prepared to lay him £3 each way.

On Friday at Doncaster he requested a £200 win bet on Donladd, again at SP. Donladd finished second at 8-1. The would-be customer was offered £1.25 win at SP.

Yesterday he wanted to back Escaria Ten, a chaser trained by Gordon Elliott for the three-mile novice chase at Naas for which the gelding was the morning third favourite in an eight-horse field. He asked for £150 each way at SP. They offered £4.67 each way.

Further, on the same horse ante-post in the National Hunt Novice Chase at the Cheltenham Festival, for which the gelding was priced up in their non-runner no bet market at 16-1, he again requested £150 each-way. He was offered 63p each-way!

Escaria Ten ran a very good race, finishing a closing runner-up to all-the-way winner Eklat De Rire and Rachael Blackmore, but ahead of his own stable-companion and the narrow favourite, Pencilfulloflead.

Judged on this performance you would have to say Escaria Ten has many of the credentials for staying the extra six furlongs of the Cheltenham race. No doubt Betfair Sportsbook will be thinking of trimming those odds. If my informer contacts them again, maybe they will increase his ante-post bet to £1 each-way, although whether they will be prepared to take on the extra risk is another question!

A month ago, I marvelled at the debut hurdles performance of the Ellemarie Holden-trained French Aseel, a son of French Fifteen who beat 17 others at Leopardstown by 22 lengths and upwards. Predictably the Holden family seized the chance to take a profit on a horse they’d acquired at Arqana last summer for €62k.

He now resides in Willie Mullins’ stable and will probably take his next step towards the Triumph Hurdle at the Dublin Festival fixture back at Leopardstown next weekend. A 6-1 chance at present, if French Aseel can beat the current market leader, Zanahiyr, in what is always a decent trial, he will surely go to the Festival as the hot favourite.

Naas provided a clue yesterday when the Dermot Weld-trained Coltor, who was runner-up on their respective debuts but by a margin that could easily have been increased a good deal had Denis O’Regan wished, won the juvenile hurdle from 17 rivals. As with all similar races at the major Irish tracks, the race was full of classy graduates from some of the top Irish Flat-race stables.

One big Cheltenham question was answered in the affirmative by Shishkin in the Lightning Chase at Doncaster on Saturday. The narrow winner of a very competitive Supreme Novice Hurdle last year, from Abracadabas, stable-companion Chantry House, and Asterion Forlonge, Shishkin had been sent straight over fences, echoing the previous Nicky Henderson pattern with Altior five years earlier, indeed in the same Kempton race.

An easy debut win and an equally facile follow up also at the Sunbury course sent him on his way and, although faced with only three opponents on Saturday, they were all decent animals. He was a 1-7 shot which seemed skinny enough but the way in which he asserted and drew clear after halfway was reminiscent of his eminent predecessor, almost making those odds look generous.

Now firmly odds on for the Arkle at the Festival he will be most people’s banker of the meeting, if such a thing still exists, and deservedly so.

The most valuable prize on offer in Europe over the weekend was not for a flat or jumps race but the €1 million total prize for what by my calculation was the 100^th running of the Prix d’Amerique, trotting’s biggest race of the year in Vincennes, Paris.

Begun in 1920, it was halted for only two years during the early phase of World War 2 and its history is littered with many famous names. In the years before all-weather racing started – so pre-1990 – there was an attempt to educate the UK betting public in the winter to bet on French trotting.

I well recall Vincennes race programmes being published in The Sporting Life newspaper as winters in those days could be more severe than now, although this one is having a good go at following their example.

In the years coming up to 1990 I remember the name Ourasi, winner of three in a row, 1986-8, plus 1990 to make it a record fourth win, around the time that Conrad Allen was cheering home the first winner of the all-weather era at Lingfield Park. [I was delighted that his Little Eva, owned by Simon Lockyer, won at Lingfield for him on Friday and she could be one to follow in the coming weeks.]

Yesterday’s Prix d’Amerique’s winner, despite another 18-horse field, was never in doubt. A six-year-old, Face Time Bourbon had won last year’s big race and was a 4-6 chance to follow up. In almost Shishkin mode he went comfortably for home in the 2700-metre race at the entrance to the home straight and was never troubled in picking up the €450,000 first prize.

Now a winner of 19 of his 21 races – he was second in the other two – he was the automatic choice for most punters in France in the race which attracts even more betting revenue every year than the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. A son of another dual winner, Ready Cash, Face Time Bourbon is still an entire, so the demand for his services – trotting horses are usually artificially inseminated and often race on while their sperm is harvested– will be immense.

- TS

Monday Musings: Two Major Contenders from Left Field

25 January 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

At the age of 25 back in 1978 Kim Bailey took over the training licence from his father Ken at their family farm in Brackley, Northamptonshire, with the experience of having learnt his trade from three training greats, Humphrey Cottrill, Tim Forster and Fred Rimell, writes Tony Stafford. In 1995 he enjoyed the almost unthinkable achievement of winning both the Champion Hurdle, with the novice Alderbrook, and the Gold Cup with Master Oats.

Until Saturday they had been the only Grade 1 wins on his card. Now, 26 years later and in his 43^rd year as a trainer, the still-boyish Bailey, greatly to his own surprise, can refer back to a wonderful performance by the nine-year-old, First Flow. After an end-to-end battle he emphatically saw off reigning Champion Two-Mile Chaser Politologue in Ascot’s Clarence House Chase.

Kim Bailey has, over the years, gone through a number of transformations and training locations as well as a major domestic upheaval and a Henry Cecil-like slump. That must have caused this consummate horseman to question whether he should continue to pursue his career.

Throughout, Bailey has always had the respect of his fellow professionals, even in the darkest days. The same was true of course for the future Sir Henry before the arrival of Frankel and the subsequent great loyalty – hardly surprising one might say – of Prince Khalid Abdullah. The recent passing of Prince Khalid could have significant implications for the future of many of the present-day’s leading Flat-race trainers.

Bailey’s own darkest years came in the first decade of the present century when in the four seasons between 2004 and 2008 he won respectively only six, six, nine and finally three races. Those three in 2007-8 came from 131 runs and produced earnings of a little over £29,000. Nowadays he characteristically has one of the higher strike rates, operating at close to 18%. Less than three per cent must have given him kittens!

The Racing Post statistics for each trainer includes a section at the bottom entitled Big Races Won. Between March 2002 and November 2012, a full decade, none of the Bailey winners qualified for entry in that section.

In more recent times, he has built up his business again at a modern farm in Andoversford, 15 minutes or so from Cheltenham. A great adherent to modern technology, he was moving around his snow-covered 70-strong yard on Sunday morning, reflecting by video on the previous afternoon’s exploits by one of three chasers that could be lining up in the top races at Prestbury Park in six weeks’ time.

As he progressed with his commentary, all the time he was sharing the credit, principally to David Bass, whose opportunist ride on First Flow he described as “one of the best rides I’ve ever seen”. Also earning his gratitude were various key members of his staff. If ever there was a benevolent boss, it is Kim Bailey, who stresses that any success achieved by Thornfield Farm is very much a team effort.

That attitude will undoubtedly bring loyalty from the staff and he certainly has managed to keep a number of owners, among them First Flow’s, Tony Solomons, with him over many years. “Tony was one of my first owners all those years ago and I’m so happy for him. First Flow was not an expensive buy and he’s done so well for us,” says Bailey.

He certainly has. Saturday’s win for First Flow was his sixth in succession and his tenth in all from only 16 races over obstacles. The race was worth a few bob short of £60k and represented a nice early birthday present for his owner.

Tony rarely has more than a couple of horses in training but the retired banker also had tremendous success in recent years with the staying Flat handicapper, Nearly Caught. That smart gelding, trained by Hughie Morrison, won nine races and was placed 15 times.

His last win, as an eight-year-old, came on his final appearance when he easily won a Newmarket Listed race from an official rating of 107. That was his fourth Listed win, to which he could add a Group 2 victory at Deauville as a six-year-old. All of his five stakes wins and eight places came in his final three seasons’ racing.

While Bailey had some sparse years where major races were concerned, that could not be said of 2020 when he earned seven entries in that category. First Flow is joined by Imperial Aura and Vinndication as fellow high-class performers and Bailey hopes all three will make it to the Festival.

He regards Vinndication as a potential Gold Cup candidate. The eight-year-old is still lightly-raced and although he has yet to win going left-handed, he ran a blinder when only two lengths behind Cyrname in the Charlie Hall Chase at Wetherby when starting out the present campaign at the end of October.

Bailey aimed him at the Ladbroke (ex-Hennessy) Handicap Chase at Newbury the following month and the gelding was still very much in contention when unseating David Bass five fences out (his only non-completion) under a big weight. The trainer hopes he will be able to prepare him in time to participate.

Until Imperial Aura’s unexpected early exit from his Kempton Grade 2 target a couple of weeks back he had been carrying all before him, adding two nice wins to his Cheltenham Festival novice handicap chase victory in March. Another eight-year-old, like his two stablemates he also has an enviable win ratio, seven from 12.

Nothing succeeds like success. From the dark days Bailey has now put together seven highly rewarding seasons, all bar last term’s 32 (for obvious Covid) reasons bringing between 43 and 61 wins and at least £400k in earnings.

With £450,000 already this term and more than three months to go, he could even get close to the £696,000 of the extraordinary Master Oats/ Alderbrook campaign when he had 72 wins from 312 runs, especially if things work out at the Festival.

It is hard not to be excited by First Flow, but one other horse produced an even more eye-opening performance the same afternoon. The Venetia Williams-trained and Rich Ricci-owned Royale Pagaille turned the Peter Marsh Chase at Haydock Park into a rout and must be followed over a cliff for the rest of the season and beyond.

This race has had a proud heritage since its inception in 1981, with its early winners including the three Cheltenham Gold Cup victors, Little Owl, Bregawn and The Thinker. Jodami made it four a decade later, while its best recent champion has been Bristol De Mai, also a three-time winner of the Grade 1 Betfair Chase over the same course and distance.

Royale Pagaille was bought as an experienced four-year-old by French agent Guy Petit out of the Francois Nicolle yard in November 2018 at Arcana for €70k. He had won one of ten starts, a minor hurdle race at Pau, although he did have plenty of experience over fences after that victory.

Sent To Venetia, it was more than a year before he saw a British racecourse and his two runs last season before racing was summarily curtailed were hardly earth-shattering. First, in a two-runner Chepstow novice chase he found the 150-rated Vision Des Flos predictably too good, trailing home almost ten lengths behind. Then, in a three-runner chase at Huntingdon he was miles behind the lower-rated pair Equus Secretus (Ben Pauling) and Lies About Milan (Fergal O’Brien) who fought out a close finish over the near three-mile trip. Those performances gave little inkling of what was to come.

Hence when Royale Pagaille reappeared for this season at Haydock on December 2, the son of Blue Bresil was the 11/1 outsider in a four-runner novice chase over two miles and five furlongs. He confounded those odds, very easily coming from the back to draw clear of the Kim Bailey-trained favourite Espoir De Romay, who carried a 5lb winner’s penalty.

After that, on the second day of Kempton’s big Christmas meeting, his winning margin of just over three lengths might not have been extravagant, but the style of the victory off his revised mark of 140 was such that the chase handicapper raised him 16lb to 156.

At no stage on Saturday did it appear likely that Royale Pagaille would have any difficulty in defying his new mark, travelling and jumping with utter authority. Conceding 20lb to the proven staying handicappers Just Your Type and Potters Legend, he was already a long way clear of the pair at the last fence in the heavy ground and it seemed as though Tom Scudamore could have doubled the eventual victory margin of 16 lengths over Potters Legend had he wished.

That suggests to me the chase assessors will struggle to keep his new mark below 170 and at the present rate of progress, further improvement could easily be forthcoming. That already takes him right into the top echelon of chasers. For the record, in its 41-year history the Peter Marsh Chase has never been won by a horse younger than seven, Royale Pagaille’s age.

Bookmakers are quoting Royale Pagaille for four races at the Festival, but if he was mine I would find it difficult to disregard the big one. There are many instances of trainers thinking their emerging horses are not quite ready but with the number of pitfalls that can assail them, those delaying plans often prove fruitless with the horses never actually making it to a later Gold Cup. And this one already has eleven chase starts to his name, so is hardly an inexperienced novice.

I’m suggesting you take the 12-1 (unless you can get better) for the Blue Riband of the meeting. If you prefer to be safe, he is 8-1 non-runner no bet.

Monday Musings: It’s Jumping, but largely Flat…

18 January 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Eight weeks tomorrow and the Cheltenham Festival 2021 will start as late as it can be, and almost a week later than last year. So it will be more than a year since I last went racing and, by the look of things, a good while longer than that yet, writes Tony Stafford.

My guess is that, once the vaccines start working and the latest stay-home admonitions get through people’s mindsets, the numbers affected – and more pointedly dying – will begin to come down.

A few of my friends have already had the call and I shouldn’t be far off, but the risk is that you get a rogue message from one of the ever-mushrooming scammers to invite you to an appointment. The clue is that they add: “but could you please send us your details”.

A few of those who have already been seen will have known scallywags and con-artists from London’s West End in the 1960’s and 70’s but they will tell you that the old-style villains never targeted the sort of people that seem to be most in today’s roll-call of victims. As this year-long agony continues I’m becoming totally sickened by the nastiness of modern-day life and how much the internet has helped it along.

Even a year ago, there was nothing like the feeling of today. But then we were actively trying to anticipate what might happen at the Festival. Now the trials come along and there’s no atmosphere. Nick Luck or Luke Harvey might be on track to say what they think and the odd trainer or jockey offers an opinion, but it’s all getting so homogeneous – so drab.

It was sad that David Thompson died recently, leaving his widow Patricia to try to enjoy the successes of the Cheveley Park Stud jumps horses in Ireland. Envoi Allen of course is the biggest star, and yesterday at Punchestown he maintained his 100% career record with another bloodless win in a beginners’ chase where Asterion Forlonge was supposed to pose a question.

One of the major Willie Mullins hopes for the future, this fourth to Shishkin (and in the same ownership as that one) in the Supreme Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham last March had fallen on his second chase start when odds-on at Limerick on St Stephen’s Day and repeated the error as early as yesterday’s opening fence.

That left Gordon Elliott’s seven-year-old to jog round at his leisure and complete an unblemished ten-race record under Rules to go with another in a point-to-point after which winning debut the Thompsons paid an eye-watering £400,000 for him.

If you needed to know just how unrealistic prices for the most promising jumping-bred horses can be, Envoi Allen’s ten wins still leave him just about £60k short of the owners getting their purchase money back, never mind training fees. That figure includes his two Cheltenham Festival successes, the first in the 2019 Champion Bumper, where he beat Blue Sari, Thyme Hill, Abacadabras and The Glancing Queen, smart horses all with the last trio having won nice races this season.

I was about to say “already”, but even after an unusually slow start at the beginning of July owing to Covid we’re nearly two-thirds of the way through the campaign.

Saturday’s racing was entertaining enough – especially if you like horses stopping dead in the mud – but one horse that certainly did not was the Pam Sly-owned, trained- and bred-filly Eileendover who ran away with the Alan Swinbank Mares’ Open Listed Bumper at Market Rasen.

It was a day for the senior and distinguished ladies of the Turf. Pam, a sprightly 77, has run a mixed yard near Peterborough for many years and will always be known as the owner, trainer and breeder of Speciosa, winner of the 2006 1,000 Guineas.

She told Nick Luck after Saturday’s win she was never tempted to sell Speciosa despite the riches that would have bought, and Eileendover is a grand-daughter of the giant killer of her time. While it’s a long chalk from a Listed mares’ bumper to a Group 1 Flat race, her three wins have been way out of the ordinary.

I don’t know whether she shocked her trainer first time out – if she didn’t, I trust they had a nice touch! - but after making the short trip to Huntingdon for her debut she was allowed to start at 28/1 in a junior bumper over the “short” mile and three-quarters. She actually outran those odds, not just in terms of winning, but in numbers too, scoring by 29 lengths, almost unheard of in a 14-runner race.

That said, seven years earlier, an unraced three-year-old came down for the same race for his debut, bred by Ray Tooth but running in trainer Mark Brisbourne’s colours as the true owner didn’t want to be embarrassed. He won by 12 lengths and at 25/1. I seem to remember nobody had a killing that day either – I might have had a tenner on it and drinks with the directors were nice!

Next stop for Eileendover was Wetherby where, down by another furlong for a second junior bumper, she now had only 16 lengths to spare but at least the punters were more clued up as she started at 1-3!

On Saturday, as the only four-year-old in the field, she might have confounded a few punters as the much-publicised first UK runner for Willie Mullins since Brexit was signed and sealed; his mare, Grangee, was preferred to the Sly filly in the morning market before strong support for the domestic runner ensured Eileendover went off clear favourite by race time.

So it proved as Paul O’Brien allowed her to track Grangee while outsiders cut out the pace, and when the main rival moved, O’Brien went with her, but very wide trying to avoid any interruption to the run. Momentarily, he had to switch a shade inside but then the daughter of Canford Cliffs gathered momentum and Grangee was soon in trouble.

At the finish it wasn’t the Irish raider but the Jedd O’Keeffe-trained Newcastle and Wetherby unbeaten mare Miss Lamb, a 22-1 shot, who followed her home most closely, still more than six lengths behind the winner but eight in front of Grangee.

Another interesting element is that Miss Lamb is also a home-bred and, indeed, by one of the doyens of the Northern turf. Miss Sally (born Sarah Elizabeth) Hall, niece of the legendary Sam Hall and a distinguished trainer in her own right at Middleham, celebrated her 82^nd birthday yesterday. She first took out a licence in 1969 and held it until 2016 with her last winners the previous summer. Just the 47 years!

Miss Lamb is under the care of Jedd O’Keeffe, a former assistant to Micky Hammond before starting out on his own in 2000. Hammond incidentally runs his star hurdler Cornerstone Lad over fences at Ayr today after his second at Haydock on debut last month. He has one horse to beat this afternoon!

Eileendover is primarily Flat-bred and it will probably be most unlikely that she ever runs over jumps, but the series of junior bumpers gives an ideal opportunity for later-developing horses with stamina to run at a realistic level rather than try to get their three runs for handicapping with all the pitfalls that can entail.

Smaller trainers can fall foul of the “schooling in public” regulation, an inexact science which rarely seems to be much of a concern to the major yards. At least this way round they can get valuable experience into their charges and Alan Swinbank was one of the most successful in that respect.

Basically a businessman, he turned to training in North Yorkshire when he had the benefit of learning from former trainer Bill Haigh, his long-time assistant. Swinbank’s greatest triumph came with the purchase for 3,000gns of the Dr Devious gelding Collier Hill, bred by George Strawbridge but unraced with John Gosden in his days of training for the Sangster interests at Manton.

He won first time in his only bumper then, after qualifying for handicaps and starting off with a mark of 58, Collier Hill won 15 of 45 career starts (including one from four over jumps in a single spell). He earned a total of £2.3 million, largely through his wins overseas which culminated with Group 1’s in Canada and Sha Tin, his last two career starts late in 2006. He also won the Irish St Leger as a seven-year-old the previous year.

Two of the better UK-trained bumper performers of the past couple of years have been Roger Teal’s Ocean Wind and Hughie Morrison’s mare, Urban Artist. Ocean Wind, a Godolphin chuck-out, also won that same Huntingdon race 12 months before Eileendover but by only a narrow margin and the third horse that day, Audacity, turned the form around with him when they met again at the Cheltenham December meeting. [The second horse, Makthecat, is now in the ownership of a geegeez syndicate – Ed.]

But Ocean Wind then won a hot Newbury Listed bumper and although only sixth in the Festival bumper, has won three of his four “proper” Flat races and has quickly moved to a mark of 104. Valuable long-distance handicaps on the Flat rather than jumping beckon for this likeable money-spinner.

There are parallels, too, with Morrison’s mare Urban Artist, whose path to the Flat from bumpers was scouted a decade earlier by her dam, Cill Rialaig. She had won her bumper first time at Exeter, a race the trainer tries to target every year with his home-breds, before graduating to a Royal Ascot handicap win as a six-year-old.

That is Urban Artist’s age now and with three Flat wins from five on her record, she is likely to be in direct competition with her contemporary Ocean Wind in 2021. Expect to see them both in the Ebor next August at York.

Another that may join them once her initially unsuccessful switch to jumping – Urban Artist had one indifferent try, too – is the geegeez syndicate-owned mare Coquelicot, at present recovering from a minor wind-op. Matt Bisogno always believed that this five-year-old half-sister to Ebor winner and Melbourne Cup runner-up Heartbreak City was more a potential staying Flat-racer than a jumper for the future and her first three tries at the winter game seem to suggest that will prove to be the case.

On the level, though, she deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as the last pair and Eileendover as she also won three in a row to end her 2019-20 season, culminating in an easy victory in a competitive Listed race at Kempton. With the jumpers’ bumpers liable to be around for a while in the present dreadful weather, hopefully she will soon be ready to pick one off and I’m sure the owners and clued-up trainer Anthony Honeyball will be on high alert!

Monday Musings: Trainer Titles

11 January 2021/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The frost relented at three of Paul Nicholls’ most productive racecourses on Saturday morning and the 11-times champion National Hunt trainer took heavy toll with a remarkable seven winners, writes Tony Stafford. Kempton, Chepstow and above all Wincanton are the three.

At the same time he was emphatically (albeit inwardly) announcing that his re-building of stable strength back to that of its heyday when Kauto Star and Denman were in their pomp, has been fully achieved.

I was half aware of somebody being quoted on the television last night – definitely not in my favourite French-language and subtitled detective show Spiral on BBC4. It was: “Men can lie, women can lie, but numbers can’t!” The numbers are there for all to see in the 2020-21 jump trainers’ championship.

The Nicholls decline, if you could call it that, was characterised last season by a first failure in 19 to reach 100 wins, when 96 victories from 445 runs brought total UK prizemoney of £2.34million. Nicky Henderson, his sole realistic challenger over the past decade, won his fifth title and third of the last four with 118 winners and £2.54million in prizemoney.

That said, the normal post-Cheltenham section of the campaign with its handsome prizemoney levels especially at Aintree, Sandown’s finals day, and the Ayr Scottish Grand National meeting distorted the figures. Nicholls’ routine century would have been assured and the relatively close money margin for Henderson could easily have been bridged.

Henderson’s first interruption of a near-Martin Pipe-like monopoly for Nicholls since his first title in 2005-6 came in 2012-13, 27 years after his own first Trainers’ Championship in 1985-6. Henderson, now 70, lacks nothing in energy and horse-power but the die is already cast for 2020-21.

While Nicholls has been serenely proceeding towards title number 12 with already 107 victories and £1.46m in money won, Henderson is languishing on less than half the monetary rewards with £673K and just over half the winners, 57 from 268 runs, both well down on his normal schedule.

Considering the jumps season didn’t begin until July 1, Nicholls’s pace has been remarkable but so too has Dan Skelton’s 74 wins and £823k from 408 runs even allowing for the fact that his customary summer starting splurge has been abandoned – for the better – with some potential stars in the pot.

Lower down, some interesting names follow and Evan Williams, after his emotional capturing of the re-scheduled Coral Welsh Grand National with the heavily-backed and well-named in the circumstances favourite, Secret Reprieve, just edged over the half-million mark from only 30 wins.

Williams was talking up the prospects of Secret Reprieve’s tackling a Grand National at Aintree and he will be hoping on Tuesday morning to see the Ruckers’ seven-year-old getting a few pounds more than his present mark of 142 – he was able to run on Saturday off 8lb lower after his previous win. Secret Reprieve would probably make it into the top 40 with 142 but 145 makes it a certainty - if Covid doesn’t intervene again.

The next three trainers in the list, all within a winner or two of getting over the half-million are Messrs O’Neill, Fergal O’Brien and Twiston-Davies. Fergal’s consistent form has brought him to 70 compared to a previous best of 63 and with expansion firmly in place, a first century is the aim and seemingly a realistic one with three months to go, subject to acts of God, God forbid!

Nicholls’ Saturday seven-timer was also a contributor to another multi-winning performance on the day. Daryl Jacob must have gone to Wincanton confident of winning the opener on Ben Pauling’s highly-regarded Malinello but found Nicholls’ Flash Collonges, one of two Harry Skelton winners for his former boss, much too good.

I’ve no doubt that when that one lost he didn’t expect to win on five of his remaining six mounts.

The Nicholls winner for Jacob was Capeland, a 6-1 shot in the second most valuable race of the day there, the two-and-a-half-mile handicap chase and the jockey also won races for Robert Walford, Alan King, Pauling and Milton Harris.

Within that quintet, he collected the big race, the re-staged Dipper Novices Chase, just a three-runner affair, on Messire Des Obeaux, where Alan King’s gelding shocked odds-on Protektorat in a rare reverse for the Skeltons in recent times. Both Flash Collonges and Messire Des Obeaux are sons of the late-lamented Saddler Maker.

Jacob’s five-timer worked out at a massive 3275-1. Nicholls’ septet, while not quite his best - he’s had an eight-in-a-day before now – amounts to more than treble that at 10,418-1. Of course to get the latter up, you’d need to navigate the 11 losers that besmirched his record. Jacob has surged onto 39 wins for the season but the title-holder Brian Hughes, with 90, looks to have a strong grip on his trophy, currently having 15 and 19 in hand of the two Harrys, Cobden and Skelton.

It’s very unusual in the depths of winter that Ireland suffers more than the UK, but there has been a flurry of abandonments across the Irish Sea with frost as the principal factor. Whatever happened to the milder west winds picking up moisture as they sweep across the Atlantic?

The perennial struggle at the top of the table there between Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott is as compelling as ever. Usually at this point in the season Elliott has been ahead but this time it’s the other way round.

Mullins has already gone past the century with 104 wins from only 326 runs to earn €2.18m at a spectacular 32% strike rate. An impressive 76 of the 162 individual horses he’s run since racing resumed have won.

Elliott is only around €70k behind Mullins in winnings but it has taken 125 wins from a bumper exactly 800 runs – almost double both Nicholls’ and Skelton’s number and treble Henderson’s – to get that close. Equally he has needed 292 horses, 90 of which have won, to make it that far.

Mullins is having his normal effect on the jockeys’ title race. Since Ruby Walsh’s retirement Paul Townend has been in pole position, but third-placed Henry de Bromhead’s 69 victories have given a big boost to Rachael Blackmore, his stable jockey.

Townend leads on 69, all but five for the Closutton trainer, but is far from secure for another title as Blackmore’s 46 wins for her boss have been supplemented by another 19 from outside rides making the deficit only four.

Talking of jockeys, the 2021 Flat championship will be very interesting given Oisin Murphy starts the year under a three-month ban imposed by the French authorities. He managed to get it reduced from the original six months on appeal and while it doesn’t interfere with the championship which starts in May, or the first phase of turf racing or indeed anything after March 11, it could still have an effect on his confidence.

No need to go into how he got the trace of drugs in his system. In these perilous times I wonder how many people contracting Covid, like my mate Steve Gilbey who said it was the most frightening experience of his life, know where they caught it. He says maybe it was Christmas shopping in Sainsburys.

Steve, a one-time repo man and night club bouncer before his more acceptable roles as a bodyguard and then Ray Tooth’s much-valued right-hand man, has seen and heard of many friends and some family members who haven’t managed to stave off the effects of the virus. I pray – as does Ray – that he’ll get through, just as I do that my son, his wife and their son, whose symptoms are less severe, will all recover soon.

Back to Flat jockeys, though, and as I said it could be a pivotal year. One Whatsapp I received just the other day made very interesting reading. It claimed that Ben Curtis would be joining Mark Johnston as stable jockey. Now confirmed as true, his odds of 10/1 for the title have plummeted to 3/1.

Mark’s most active jockeys, Joe Fanning and Franny Norton, both celebrated their 50^th birthdays last year. Norton is the older by eight weeks, his birthday coming on July 27 to Fanning’s on September 24^th (the same as my son incidentally!).

Between them they rode 56% of Johnston’s winners and 55% of the stable’s runners. Fanning was the busier – well, he’s younger, it makes sense! – with 50 wins from exactly 400 rides in 2020. Old-man Franny was only 75% as busy but just as tidy with his 45 from 300 rides. No other jockey achieved more than the 15 wins of P J McDonald. Then came William Buick and Silvestre De Sousa with ten each. Curtis had six wins from 35 rides for the stable.

Their longevity says much for their iron constitutions but even more for the amazing loyalty of the trainer. Had he not kept them on, riding many of the yard’s best horses as well as the majority of the lesser performers, they would probably have retired a while ago.

A second compelling item on the same Whatsapp message concerned Paul Mulrennan who it seems might be getting closer to a connection with Karl Burke. Interesting? Not many!

Monday Musings: Christmas Racing Roundup

28 December 2020/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Yes, it was brilliant stuff for the first two days of Christmas at Kempton, Wetherby and Leopardstown, not to mention the other venues that none of us could go to, writes Tony Stafford. Shock results abounded in the big races and over two days at Kempton, Dan and Harry Skelton had the type of magical 48 hours that professional racing people can normally only dream about.

Five big wins from only nine runners including the convincing Nube Negra, who started out life as a non-achieving Spanish-bred (nought from seven) at Madrid’s La Zarzuela racecourse and now easily humbled an admittedly sluggish Altior in the Desert Orchid Chase.

What with Nicky Henderson also left to try to explain to himself and presumably owner JP McManus (and for that matter me!) how Epatante could be beaten so emphatically in the Christmas Hurdle, not this time by a Skelton runner but Evan Williams’ Silver Streak, a hard-working seven-year-old, it was a rum old do for Team Seven Barrows.

Epatante, in winning this race a year ago, had Silver Streak five lengths behind and that margin had swelled to a dozen lengths in the Champion Hurdle in which Silver Streak was only sixth.

Williams’ runner met another classy Henderson mare in Verdana Blue on his reappearance over Saturday’s track back in October and was not troubled to overturn that odds-on chance. Then his third meeting with Epatante, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle, ended abruptly when Not So Sleepy jinked himself out of the race at the first flight and carried out Silver Streak at the next.

Evan quickly salved his frustration at a wasted 655-mile round trip from his stables in the Vale Of Glamorgan by taking him to Cheltenham a fortnight later when he was only a neck behind another improver, Song For Someone.

Then it was Kempton and another big step forward although whether he can win a Champion Hurdle will depend on further progress from the son of Dark Angel.

Obviously the biggest excitement was Bryony Frost doing over Kempton’s fences what Hollie Doyle has been achieving on racecourses everywhere throughout 2020 by becoming the first female rider to win the King George Chase on her inseparable partner, Frodon.

She already has a Cheltenham Festival win – a fair exchange for Hollie’s Royal Ascot success in the summer - and now on yet another rag, not just a 20-1 shot but Paul Nicholls’ third string, she humbled his dual previous winner Clan Des Obeaux into third, while much-vaunted Cyrname (my fancy) was out of petrol by halfway and pulled up a long way out.

It was left to Waiting Patiently to finish second but Bryony controlled the pace from the start on Frodon and the tried and trusted partnership never looked remotely in trouble.

Who’s to say that Frodon, always a great jumper, could not stretch out to the full distance of the Gold Cup? Many of its winners have gone there with the question of stamina unresolved. It usually comes down to the quality of the jumping and Frodon has few peers in that regard. The only difference from the Thursday two years ago is that if he goes there, it will not be a repeat same-day dream double with Paisley Park.

Looking further afield, I would not be surprised if another Skelton horse, Shan Blue, who saw off The Big Breakaway in the Kauto Star Novices Chase, didn’t one day win a Gold Cup. He had been very impressive in his first two chases, both at Wetherby, in the second of them outclassing the very tough and talented staying mare Snow Leopardess by 16 easy lengths.

Again on Saturday he was always in control against main market rival The Big Breakaway whose jumping of fences was far less secure. The pair had met before when in fourth and sixth respectively behind the still-unbeaten Envoi Allen in the Ballymore Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham in March when Shan Blue was the loser of their private battle.

It’s great to see the Skeltons doing what Dan, and for that matter Harry and their extraordinary father Nick, had always planned. The dozens of summer jumping winners have been sacrificed for the development of horses that can challenge for the top prizes from a showpiece training facility. It’s just a pity we couldn’t all be there to enjoy their move into the very top echelon of the profession.

As ever, Christmas racing in Ireland provided some brilliant sport and high-class winners, again with the top names to the fore. Willie Mullins is far more accustomed to multiple wins at major fixtures and he matched Skelton’s feat with his own quintet over the first two days of the Leopardstown meeting, but from many more runners – he needed 21 to reach the landmark.

If everything had been as intended, the score would have been six as the Irish Racing TV producers emphasised before the finale. “Imagine what the other trainers must be thinking. Willie’s had three winners already today and he says his one on the bumper is the banker”. And so it looked when son Patrick sent 4/11 shot Reality Cheque clear in the short straight.

But there are no certainties in racing and Patrick, Willie and the horse’s connections were left to mourn the loss of their exciting prospect who broke down a furlong from home.

Before I go on to my final offering, and as you can guess, yes there is a Raymond Tooth element to it, I must return to the Desert Orchid Chase and Nube Negra. The race was delayed for several minutes when Sceau Royal, the majority choice beforehand to challenge the favourite, needed to have some remedial work by the farrier and then made a summarily early exit from the race itself, falling at the fifth.

If you get a chance, try to watch the video of the race. If you scan back a long way behind the surviving runners as they enter the last half-mile of the race, you will pick out the riderless Sceau Royal miles behind.

Astonishingly, by the line he was bombing up the outside, powering past Altior and almost catching the winner – and Alan King’s superstar will have gone back to Barbary Castle thinking how unlucky he was to get up. As he goes onto the gallop in the morning he’ll be telling his equine companions: “I was at least a furlong behind and would have got them in another stride. I’ll be a certainty wherever the boss takes me next time!” He probably will.

And, finally, to the opening race on yesterday’s Leopardstown card, an 18-runner juvenile hurdle. There were contenders from some of the best stables and, of those that finished in places from second to eighth inclusive, all bar two were at no longer odds than 6/1. As they say, all the right ones were there.

Coltor, 6-1 and rated 86 on the Flat and trained by Dermot Weld, who only ever bothers with nice horses over jumps, was second. Third was the Jessica Harrington-trained 9-2 shot Ilmig, a Galileo gelding who won his maiden second time out at Navan in late October for Aidan O’Brien. This was his third jumps run after a good debut second but an odds-on flop next time.

Henry De Bromhead introduced a well-regarded Golden Horn gelding they’d picked up from the summer sales for £34k, a little more than 10% of the 300 grand the Highclere Stud product fetched in Tattersalls Book 1 sale in October 2018. He was sufficiently well-fancied to go off at 5/1.

Joseph O’Brien usually has serious contenders in juvenile hurdles and he supplied the fifth, Flying Scotsman, the McManus-owned dual Galway winner from this summer. Rated 87, he’s another Galileo and was an 11/2 shot after a couple of okay tries over jumps.

Charlie Bassett, Noel Meade’s Lawman gelding, finished sixth. He is a non-winner in ten Flat races, but with four seconds and three thirds good enough to acquire a rating of 80. He was a 16-1 shot on his third jumps start having been fourth at Fairyhouse two weeks earlier. Seventh came the only true interloper, Denise Foster’s 125-1 chance Ahaziah who made the most of the experience gained from two previous runs.

He was ahead of the Willie Mullins-trained and 77-rated Dark Voyager, another 5/1 shot. The highest-rated of them all was a second Aidan O’Brien graduate, Iberia. This horse was still rated in the low 100’s by the time he left to join Coolmore’s main vet John Halley’s small but shrewd team. He ran in the Irish Derby this year and competed in high-class juvenile races in 2019. Naturally he is another son of Galileo.

Are you bored yet? Well I think if you make time for another look at the videos from yesterday, take note of another newcomer, French Aseel, a son of Raymond’s smart Group 1 winner, French Fifteen. Sold after his Group 1 success to Qatari interests but remaining in Nicolas Clement’s stable, he finished a close second to Camelot in the 2012 2000 Guineas.

French Aseel won once in nine starts in France for a minor stable, never racing beyond a mile and even concluding his career in a six and a half furlong race after which Paul Holden bought him for €62,000 at Arqana’s July horses in training sale in Deauville.

A 22-1 chance in yesterday’s Racing Post betting, word clearly got around and the Ellemarie Holden-trained gelding was down to 7-2 favourite by the off.

French Aseel set off behind a 150-1 outsider, racing easily in second until moving smoothly ahead coming to the end of the back straight. Denis O’Regan kept him to his narrow advantage all around the long bend and approaching the straight he started to edge further clear.

O’Regan gradually allowed his mount to stretch the margin as they approached the normal final hurdle which, owing to the low sun, would not be jumped on either circuit.

As they passed it, O’Regan still had a firm grip on the son of French Fifteen – there I said it again! – and soon after they went past the flight, still needing only minimal encouragement, he had a look behind and could hardly have believed the gap. This had stretched to 22 lengths by the finish! Honestly you have to look to see it. I have a few times and still can’t believe it.

I wonder how long it will take before black and white hoops become green and yellow? For information purposes only, the extended distances were 22 lengths, 6, 3.5 and 5.5 (to Mr McManus’s Flying Scotsman). If JP hasn’t bought French Aseel yet - he should!

- TS

Monday Musings: of Hollie, Paisley and Sleepy

21 December 2020/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

So Hollie Doyle finished third in the new-look BBC Sports Personality of the Year 2020 showing that technology can mix with the old-style modesty and courtesy which Ms Doyle, Jordan Henderson and Stuart Broad showed by bothering to turn up on a Sunday night in Manchester, writes Tony Stafford.

Henderson, the genuinely-likeable captain of Liverpool FC, team of the year and whose manager Jurgen Klopp was coach of the year, finished second and favourite Lewis Hamilton won for the second time having been successful six years ago. Standing next to a Christmas tree – “I didn’t decorate it!” he said, Hamilton was presumably at home in Monte Carlo rather than Stevenage. Ronnie O’Sullivan and Tyson Fury didn’t show up either.

Seven world driving championships in overwhelmingly the best car proved too high a hill to climb even for Liverpool’s first winning captain in the life of the Premier League and an unassuming 24-year-old who rode her first Group winners in her eighth year as a jockey only this summer.

It had been quantity rather than quality until her recruitment by Tony Nerses to ride for his boss Imad Al Sagar and it was her win on Sagar’s Extra Elusive in the Group 3 Winter Hill Stakes, the fourth of a record five winners on a single day for her as recently as August 29 at Windsor that propelled her into the public perception.

It was a nice, albeit forlorn, idea to think she could supplant the well-established front-runners for the SPOTY award. At least the belated campaign put a few quid in the bookmakers’ coffers and a nice boost for British Telecom, although I’m sure the BBC will take a chunk of the phone receipts to help pay their quartet of highly remunerated presenters.

What Hollie will need now to be competitive in this rarefied arena is a step up, a job like stable jockey to John Gosden – move over Frankie, your time is up, maybe? Then she can ride steering jobs in Group races around the big tracks and leave the travelling to the gaffs to stack up the numbers to her fiancé, Mr Marquand! Alternatively, in true “promising debut, should win next time” racing tradition, she could even win it, as long as she gets her first championship in the meantime.

While all the talk around racing circles concerned the possible win against the odds of Hollie and the implications of Tier 4 for those of us in the now most contagious part of the country, Ascot provided two wonderful examples of talented hurdlers coming back from adversity.

The new normal won’t make much difference to me, for although I did make it to Newmarket on Thursday morning and actually saw a couple of horses, since March I’ve pretty much stayed at home. Others around where we live are not so compliant.

Later on Thursday evening, police cars swarmed past our block as they sought out the actual venue where hundreds of people, reckoned to be mainly in the 20-30 age bracket, were having an illicit drinking party. Helicopters were right overhead for at least an hour. Wasn’t us, guv’nor!

The Paisley Park story and its connection to his owner Andrew Gemmill was one of the strongest themes of the 2018-9 jumps season. The Emma Lavelle-trained hurdler went unbeaten through a five-race campaign triumphing emphatically in the Stayers’ Hurdle at Cheltenham, all the time accompanied by pictures of his enthusiastic owner who, as is well documented, has been blind from birth.

As a result, when at the track he relies on race commentaries and insights from his friends as to how his horses are going. It must have been a dreadful shock at Cheltenham this March when, with a second consecutive championship and another unblemished season in the offing, he first realised something unusual was happening. Where normally he would hear, “Paisley Park is starting to improve”, instead his star made no impression between the last two flights and finished a very tired seventh.

Initially all the stable representative could tell the stewards, understandably like the owner and many thousands of his supporters around the country wanting an explanation of what did go wrong, was he had lost two shoes during the run; but, soon after, a heart issue was discovered.

While such a finding might be alarming, it would at least be enough to explain what happened and probably why. Emma Lavelle went back to the beginning with Paisley Park after the shock had been accepted and, to her and her staff’s credit, she had him ready for the Grade 2 Ladbrokes Long Distance Hurdle at Newbury, the race in which he began his previous campaign.

Whereas 2019 brought a five-length win over Thistlecrack, new contenders lined up, understandably sensing a chink in the previously impenetrable armour, making it double the field size of the previous renewal. As well as Lisnagar Oscar, the horse that now it seems may have “borrowed” rather than taken his crown, there were a number of regulars on the staying circuit but, more tellingly, two of the new generation at the top level in McFabulous, who started favourite and Thyme Hill.

McFabulous proved unable to beat Paisley Park, but the latter in turn was unable to match the speed between the last two jumps by Philip Hobbs’ Thyme Hill. One of the best novices of his generation he was unluckily beaten out of the frame in the Albert Bartlett Novice Hurdle a year after his close third to Envoi Allen (still unbeaten and frankly untroubled) in the Festival Bumper of 2019.

Thyme Hill was getting 3lb from the old champion at Newbury and made the most of it, winning by a length and a half but Paisley Park was staying on very well at the finish. When they renewed rivalry on Saturday in the Long Walk Hurdle, a race Paisley Park won two years ago, this Grade 1 was a level-weight affair. Understandably, Thyme Hill, better off, and very much the progressive animal, was favourite to maintain his edge.

If Andrew had been nervous at any stage in the 2020 Stayers’ Hurdle, I’d hate to have been the one to tell him, apart from commentator Simon Holt, what his chances were. Until they were well into the straight Holt didn’t have the best of news to report.

After suffering some interference on the bend, he was in an unpromising sixth place coming to two out as Aidan Coleman guided him to the wide outside. By now Thyme Hill was going up to challenge Younevercall and Roksana. Holt said: Paisley Park is under pressure, who is responding, in sixth. At the last he said, “Only three lengths back is Paisley Park, still staying”, and then after the last, “Paisley Park is storming home and he’s got him. He’s pulled it out of the fire!” Thirty or more seconds of agony turned to ecstasy for the owner.

And that’s exactly what it was, a champion showing all his best abilities when everything seemed to be against him, not least his first experience of truly heavy going. After this the regaining of his Cheltenham Festival title must be a strong possibility.

The second back from – if not the dead, then certainly from adversity – was provided by Not So Sleepy, who also made a return win on the track; but, whereas Paisley Park’s first Long Walk was two years ago, Not So Sleepy had been the wide-margin winner of the concluding Betfair Exchange Trophy only last December.

Previously, Not So Sleepy had finished a creditable fourth in the Cesarewitch behind the Willie Mullins-trained Stratum and then won off what at the time looked a gift jumping mark of 122 at the November meeting on the Royal course. A 5lb rise never appeared enough to stop him on his return for the Betfair Handicap Hurdle and he duly romped home by nine lengths as the 9-2 favourite.

Trainer Hughie Morrison, who has managed the one-time Dee Stakes (more than once a precursor to Derby success) winner through seven full campaigns and 49 races, aimed higher after that. The Betfair Hurdle itself at Newbury in February was the plan despite a further, this-time restrictive, hike of 17lb.

Several false starts meant a farcical melee on the outside where Tom O’Brien lined him up in that handicap and, thereafter, he was never in contention. Morrison then took him to the Champion Hurdle and again false starts and interference at the gate precluded against his showing his merits.

So to post-lockdown and a Flat return at Pontefract in late September where he was a ridiculously-easy winner of a two-mile handicap off 94. The 4lb rise which followed in this year’s Cesarewitch could not prevent a repeat fourth place, this time to another Mullins ‘job’, Great White Shark, a six-year-old mare lined up for the purpose and a ridiculously-easy winner under Jason Watson.

Graham Lee set off at the front of the 34-strong line-up and Not So Sleepy did nothing to suggest his powers had declined. Less positive were my feelings after his abortive challenge for the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle last month when he jinked and jettisoned Paddy Brennan at the first flight of the race won so impressively by Epatante.

Lastly to Ascot at the weekend, off 2lb lower than in the “real” Betfair in February and, inexplicably with hindsight, Not So Sleepy was allowed to start at 20-1. I, like many others, was fooled by the trio of hurdles mishaps and temporarily forgetful of his Ascot hurdles and solid Flat form. Fortunately, some less short-sighted members and a few pals reading the From The Stables newsletter I edit every day, kept the faith and profited accordingly.

‘Twas ever thus, don’t do as I do, do as I say, or vice versa!

- TS

Monday Musings: The Mogul Blueprint

14 December 2020/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Getting up early is more of a bind in these dark winter mornings but there was a point to it yesterday with the multi-million-pound offerings on Hong Kong’s day of the year, writes Tony Stafford. The Vase (mile and a half) and the Cup (ten furlongs) were, as usual, the highlights and, while Magical couldn’t quite get there in the Cup – instead finishing a close and as ever valiant – third, Ryan Moore and Mogul did the business for Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore when turning the Vase into a rout.

The son of Galileo (who else) and the equally-sought-after broodmare Shastaye had three lengths to spare over smart local and odds-on shot, Exultant, a 13-time winner, 11 since leaving Ireland’s shores as a Mick Halford-trained three-year-old.

It is almost uncanny how much Mogul’s career is echoing that of his stable predecessor Highland Reel and there can be little doubt that health and fitness permitting, the former will be the most obvious successor to the latter’s role as a world-wide Group 1-collecting money-machine.

Highland Reel stayed in training for four seasons, winning twice at two and three times at three, culminating in, guess what, a nice win from the previous year’s Andre Fabre-trained winner Flintshire in the 2015 Hong Kong Vase. Two years later he won it again, with a close second in the intervening season. Four campaigns brought him seven wins and easily the highest-ever earnings for a son of Galileo, more than £7.5 million.

Mogul, like Highland Reel, won twice at two, but whereas Highland Reel had already tucked away his three runs – a second and two wins: a maiden and then the Group 2 Vintage Stakes at Glorious Goodwood by the end of July – Mogul didn’t start his career until mid-August; but the pattern was similar. He was second on debut, won a maiden, and then third time out was odds-on and a fluent winner of a Group 2 on the Irish Champion Stakes undercard.

The one divergence from the matching juvenile programmes was that Mogul was lined up for one extra race, the Group 1 Vertem Futurity at Doncaster. In all likelihood that race’s postponement for almost a week because Doncaster had become waterlogged was not in Mogul’s favour. It was switched to the all-weather Tapeta track at Newcastle and Mogul, ridden by Donnacha O’Brien with Moore engaged at the Breeders’ Cup, finished fourth to Kameko. He had been as close as disputing second coming home but got the worst of a three-horse Coolmore photo for that place, behind Innisfree and Year Of The Tiger, two clearly inferior animals.

Neither horse managed to win a Classic. Highland Reel had three goes - a close sixth in the French 2,000 Guineas, second to New Bay in the Prix Du Jockey Club, and fifth to Jack Hobbs in the Irish Derby. So it was a full year without a win when he made his second trip to Glorious Goodwood and collected the Gordon Stakes, another Group 2 en route to a more exhausting test of his temperament for long-haul travelling when landing the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes on the turf at Arlington Park, Chicago. Two more non-wins followed before that first Hong Kong Vase at the end of the year.

Mogul’s Classic aspirations were also just as frustrating. O’Brien admitted not having him anywhere near ready after an early training setback and amidst all the Covid-19 upheavals, when he turned up at Royal Ascot for the King Edward VII Stakes which preceded the delayed-until-July Derby rather than the usual way around. He still seemed a little under-cooked when, as Ryan Moore’s ride at Epsom, he was one of the fast finishers that failed to get anywhere near stablemate Serpentine and the other always-prominent outsiders in that mystifying Classic. After that, in precisely the same way as Highland Reel, much better was to follow.

Mogul, too, went to Goodwood and won a very strong Gordon Stakes and then, after finishing third in the Great Voltigeur at York, as at Ascot behind Pyledriver, he also went overseas (but not as far as Highland Reel) to pick up his first Group 1 in the Grand Prix de Paris. That day he impressively overturned Derby form with Serpentine.

Then followed a modest fifth, three places and two lengths behind Magical when very fast ground and the tight Keeneland track were not ideal, especially after a slow start, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf. Yesterday’s exhilarating performance though means he’s probably a few pounds higher in class terms than Highland Reel was at the same stage.

As a full-brother to Japan it was never a shock that Mogul should cost a fortune as a yearling, although 3.4million guineas might have been rather more than the boys expected to pay. When the pair’s full-sister showed up at this year’s Tattersall’s October Book 1 sale, again there would be few possible buyers. Once again M V Magnier put in the closing bid for Coolmore and amazingly for a filly, it matched the price of her illustrious older brother.

As I said at the top, Mogul, with five wins, is a good way along the road to becoming a latter-day clone of Highland Reel, but probably with pretensions to being higher-class. That said, Highland Reel won a Coronation Cup, a King George and a Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, three races of the highest international prestige, along with those overseas victories, so he won’t be easily out-performed. I get the feeling, though, that Mogul is that little bit classier and possibly a more obvious higher-end stallion prospect for the future, so whether he’ll be allowed to go on racing for quite as long might be another question.

It was interesting to hear that Aidan O’Brien would be delighted if the amazing Magical was to be kept in training for yet another year in 2021. She may never have beaten Enable in their multiple tilts on the track over the past three years but she did get a verdict over the 2020 Horse of the Year Ghaiyyath in the Irish Champion Stakes back in September, the only horse to beat the Charlie Appleby star in the calendar year. She is still poised close to £5m in earnings, needing another £125,000 to reach that mark after 12 wins (six at Group 1) and ten second or third places in a 28-race career.

There was some high-grade jumping at Cheltenham over the two previous days but it was a source of great irritation that Saturday’s big race, the Unibet International Hurdle, was reduced by three hurdles to only five. This Grade 2 event was widely seen as the first real test of Goshen’s chance of wresting the Champion Hurdle from the mare Epatante since his unfortunate last-flight fall with the Triumph Hurdle at his mercy back in March.

It’s not a secret that in mid-December as if by a fluke the sun happens to make an appearance, that it will be low in the sky by 3 p.m., the time of this race. Bizarrely, there was one more hurdle race run after the Unibet and with the sun by now setting, this had a full complement of hurdles.

In the big race though they had to plot a serpentine route through and between the hurdles and fences, twice down and then twice up a hill. Last time round, a group of nine without only Goshen, who was never travelling or jumping, set off with only a few lengths between them. By now Jamie Moore had already eased off Goshen allowing him to coast past the post.

The winner was yet another for Tom Symonds. The Hereford-based handler’s ex-French gelding Song For Someone maintained his progress to win for the sixth time in 12 starts, with another five placed efforts to boot. There will be worse-value 20-1 shots, his price in Champion Hurdle ante-post lists, than this Flat-bred five-year-old son of Medicean.

Symonds had gone through a lean spell after an initial bright start to his training career. He had 22 winners in the third of his ten seasons, but had got nowhere near that number in the following six campaigns, having previously been joint assistant trainer – with Ben Pauling – to Nicky Henderson.

They were in those roles at the time of the Punjabi/ Binocular rivalry within Seven Barrows: when the two lined up in the 2009 Champion, Tom was on the Punjabi side in opposition to Ben and Corky Brown, the revered head lad, both of whom favoured Binocular. Both sides were to enjoy their Champion Hurdle winner and, overall, even Punjabi’s biggest fans (like who?) will have to admit that Binocular probably shaded it. It’s great that, with 20 wins already and a renaissance since former trainer David Dennis moved across to join forces (and provide additional equine ammunition) with Tom at the start of the season, he’s definitely going places.

There was a feasible explanation after the race for Goshen’s disappointing effort as he was found to have finished with an irregular heartbeat. He won’t be the first horse – Sprinter Sacre for example – to have that medical issue to overcome. While that great chaser was to rise again pretty much back to his absolute best, Gary Moore and Goshen’s owners will always have the thought that any physical weakness in a horse is an extra worry especially with championship races in mind.

- TS

Monday Musings: Trying Times

7 December 2020/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Suddenly it’s all back – for some of us anyway, writes Tony Stafford. Ice rinks – yes, I have to be aware of those! – football stadia and racecourses can now have participants and visitors, within strict limits of course. My mate Scott was able – after some manoeuvring – to take up his annual quest to Sandown Park for the Tingle Creek meeting.

He chose to get from deepest Essex (well Shenfield) to Esher by public transport and the hourly service from Waterloo was a bind as inevitably train times were synchronised not to gel with races. It was a proper full day’s excursion and not without its difficulties as well as cost.

It was £30 for his grandstand ticket and as someone who with his pals, especially at Cheltenham, his version of some people’s pilgrimage to Mecca or Lourdes, will normally sprinkle his race viewing with imbibing. The rules for alcohol consumption on racecourses just as in hostelries in tier 2 are equally as strict. “I fancied a pint,” relates Scott, “So I went to the food outlet where drinks can only be bought to accompany a meal. There was no lager on draught so for a pint it had to be two half-pint bottles at £5.20 each alongside pasty, chips, mushy peas and gravy for £8.50. Almost £20 a shot and if I’d wanted another pint it would have been same again, as I couldn’t have got them without a second meal.

“One friend, who went there on Friday, had three pints, so three lots of pasty, chips, mushy peas and gravy. I’m not sure if he made it back again on Saturday!” said Scott.

Winner-finding was difficult from the outset and, like many punters on the day, the pleasure of getting back racing had its less enjoyable moments. Scott can at least rest assured that his day would not have been anywhere near as frustrating as Nicky Henderson’s. The multi-champion trainer must have had misgivings when deciding to withdraw Altior from the big race the night before because of the testing ground, but he still went to the track with three short-priced favourites at Sandown as well as his Gold Cup hope Santini returning to action in a Grade 2 chase at Aintree.

Sandown’s litany of shocks started early. Pars in the Middleham Park colours was 7/4 on to defy the penalty earned by his debut win in a €15k Dieppe juvenile hurdle back in March, but was a well-beaten fourth behind three more French-breds, led home by Fergal O’Brien’s Elham Valley, who won readily.

Surely there were to be no mistakes in the next, a National Hunt novice hurdle in which Grand Mogul, twice a winner, faced three rivals, two of them newcomers, and started 2/11. Nico De Boinville had him in the first two from the start and he had seemed to have got the better of Pride of Pemberthy, the only one of the other trio to have raced previously, when the Gary Moore-trained Golden Boy Grey, another French-bred, suddenly arrived at the last galloping all over him. Golden Boy Grey went on to win by nine lengths in the style of a fair performer, whatever reasons could be found for the favourite’s tame acceptance of his fate from the last flight.

With no runner in the Tingle Creek, Nicky would have been able to switch his attentions to Aintree for Santini’s first appearance since going under by only a neck to repeat Gold Cup winner Al Boum Photo back in March.

He did have a former God Cup winner in Native River to beat and in having a couple of lengths in hand of him was creditable enough first time back. Less easy to swallow must have been his failure to beat 16-1 shot Lake View Lad, ridden by champion Brian Hughes and trained in Scotland by Nick Alexander. Lake View Lad was receiving 6lb on Saturday and was 12lb wrong at the weights with the 172-rated favourite. The winner, a ten-year-old who carries the Trevor Hemmings colours, must inevitably come into focus for a Grand National challenge after this.

The National fences were in use twice on Saturday and seemed to be back to a much more formidable status in both the William Hill-sponsored Becher and Grand Sefton Handicap Chases. Henderson’s Might Bite, who was second in Native River’s 2017 Gold Cup, has only occasionally shown anything like that level since and he appeared to have a clear dislike of the obstacles which led to an early pulling up by Jeremiah McGrath. So it was left to Sandown’s finale, a valuable handicap hurdle, if Henderson was going to salvage a spot of consolation from a dreadful day.

The punters, including Scott by all accounts, went in with both feet on 6-4 shot Mister Coffee, an alarmingly-easy winner of his last race over course and distance a month earlier and raised 10lb for this tough handicap hurdle. His late run never looked like matching that of in-form Benson, who completed a hat-trick for himself and an across-the-card double for Dr Richard Newland. The doctor’s love affair with the Aintree fences had continued a few minutes earlier with the 20-1 success of Beau Bay under Charlie Hammond in the Grand Sefton.

The Sandown race had been shaped by the predictably-fast pace set in the early stages by Totterdown, twice a course and distance winner, but reckoned by the Fergal O’Brien stable to be at the limit of his handicap potential. His mark will need to come down, and two earlier tries this year over fences have not revealed a similar level of talent in that discipline.

That reverse did nothing to take the gloss off a memorable day for this stable. Just a year since he moved from his original premises rented from his former boss Nigel Twiston-Davies, O’Brien’s progress is such that he is needing to take temporary use of a 30-box barn at Graeme McPherson’s stables while development of his own base continues – “it’s like a muddy building site at the moment”, says Fergal’s assistant and partner, Sally Randell.

Earlier they were celebrating Elham Valley’s win, yet another example of how they improve horses from elsewhere. Beautifully-schooled for this debut, the 70-odd rated Flat performer came smoothly through under Paddy Brennan to bring the stable tally to 63 for the season. “That equals our best score set last year,” says Sally. With five months of the season to go, a first century must be in the offing, not wishing to jinx it, of course.

There can only have been one highlight of the day, though, the unchallenged victory of the David Pipe-trained Vieux Lion Rouge in the Becher Chase over three and a quarter miles and 21 fences of the Grand National course. Now an 11-year-old, Vieux Lion Rouge won on his first try in the race four years ago, by which time he’d already run in the previous April’s Grand National won by Rule The World.

Opportunities for tackling Aintree’s National fences don’t come very often. It’s feasible, but very rare for a horse to run twice at a Grand National meeting, needing a run either in the Topham or Foxhunters as well as the big race. Back in 1977 Churchtown Boy won the Topham on the Thursday and then finished runner-up as Red Rum completed his third and final Grand National victory, to which he could add two second places in between the second and third wins.

Vieux Lion Rouge, owned by Professor Caroline Tisdall and John Gent, has run nine times around the Grand National course – it would have been ten without a break, no doubt, had the 2020 Grand National been run. Twice the big race has needed to have one of its 30 fences omitted for safety reasons, so Vieux Lion Rouge has navigated safely over an almost-unimaginable total of 223 fences without mishap. The one blemish on his safe jumping career was an unseat of Tom Scudamore three fences out one day at Chepstow when he was still in with a chance of winning. Two pulled ups also slightly mar his otherwise excellent completion record in all races.

Considering he must now be regarded as an Aintree specialist, the fact that he has won 11 of his 27 other races, between bumpers, hurdles and chases, as well as the two around the big fences, speaks volumes for his versatility, talent and the trainer’s skill. Tom Scudamore must have been livid to have been on the Pipe’s stable’s apparently better-fancied Ramses De Teillee on Saturday, a 13-2 shot against the 12-1 SP of the winner. That made it still only eight times in the gelding’s long career that Scudamore had not partnered him. That also included his first Grand National challenge back in 2016 when James Reveley was in the saddle. Tom has been on the gelding on all his other Aintree excursions.

For a few years I’d been thinking that Aintree had become relatively soft, something that the old timers regularly trot out. That wasn’t the case on Saturday, possibly with the testing ground contributing to the potential for errors and fatigue. That this old boy could canter round behind but in touch with a very strong field, go to the front easily by the second-last fence and draw 24 lengths clear up the run-in was a marvellous display and brilliant advertisement for the talents of David Pipe and of course a certain older member of the family who still keeps careful watch on events equine down in Somerset.

- TS

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