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Monday Musings: Early Payout for Skelton

11 January 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

I’m sure I’ve gone over this ground a time or two before but last week’s irritating cold weather snap has inevitably slowed down the workings of this ancient brain, writes Tony Stafford. I intend to show, in the manner of a Paddy Power early payout when a team goes two goals up, that Dan Skelton has already won the 2025/26 British Jump Trainers’ Championship.

Many thought he would win it last time round, but Willie Mullins sent a flotilla of his best horses to Sandown on the final day of last season and ended up foiling him by almost £200k – Mullins’ £3,570k to Skelton’s £3,377k. It seems emphatic, but until Mullins had that near clean sweep of the lavish £1 million Grand National prize – his 1-2-3 collecting £800k and 5^th and 7^th another £60k – he wasn’t seemingly even contemplating a challenge.

Of course, Mullins is good at making up lost ground in the second half of the season, which is pretty much where we are now, as his rival Gordon Ellliott would frustratingly testify.

Before yesterday at home Mullins was reasonably in touch with Elliott, whose 275 individual horses had clocked up €3,150k from 134 wins and numerous places. Mullins’ individual 228 had notched 106 wins and €2,289k. Elliott’s best of €4,744k in 2023/24 compares unfavourably with Mullins’ peak of €7,299 in 2022/23. Willie’s haul last season was €6,028k, almost exactly €2 million more than his rival.

In the UK though, it will take not just a herculean effort to target the big prizes, in some part to the detriment of looking after business at home, for him even to begin to look a danger to Skelton.

The nearest four players behind Dan are multiple champions Paul Nicholls in second and Nicky Henderson in fifth, with in between the fast-progressing Olly Murphy and Ben Pauling. Nicholls at £1,116k, Murphy and Pauling are both above the £1 million mark, but even then, hopelessly out of touch with Skelton. I don’t remember anything so one-sided ever before.

With the most lucrative part of the season still to come, Skelton, on £2,470k, is already around 65% of the way to last year’s personal best return. Mullins is trailing more than £2 million behind him after the Irish champion’s so-far meagre return of £278k from four winning horses.

Unless he matches or exceeds last year’s Grand National Trifecta, it’s hard to see where he can begin to stem the tide of the Warwickshire onslaught, which has already produced 111 wins for the season. Only once before has he exceeded 200, in the days a few years back when he targeted summer jumping. That’s no longer on the agenda – it’s class and quality over quantity these days.

Saturday’s impressive performance at Kempton under a 10lb penalty from Precious Man could well be significant as the big 4yo prizes come along.

This second win for the team after he was snapped up from under the noses of the Mullins/Kirk buying partnership from France last summer puts him firmly in as a challenger to the no-doubt formidable array of Mullins juveniles from the same source that will be in the Triumph Hurdle line-up in eight weeks’ time.

The Skeltons have targeted the three days of the Winter Racing Festival at Windsor and Ascot over the coming weekend for a concerted aim at solidifying their already commanding lead.

Windsor on Friday offers seven races worth a total of £415k and Skelton has a dozen entered in five of those contests. Ascot on Saturday and then back to Windsor for Sunday, there are similar cards with almost precisely the same amount of cash to be won – in all £1.25 million for the 21 races.

I always loved going jumping at Windsor in the old days, particularly enjoying the New Year’s Day Hurdle which was a serious trial for the Champion Hurdle. I was unsure whether last season’s initial go at jumping after so many years away from the Calendar was a success, but any gremlins with the track seemed to have been ironed out when they staged the first fixture of the 2025/26 season in late November. I’m looking forward to a midwinter feast this weekend.

The promised ease in the weather over the coming days will ensure a strong entry for all those races and the Skelton runners will face determined opposition throughout the weekend. It’s hard to escape the feeling though that Dan and jockey brother Harry have elevated themselves onto a higher plane, their defeats at the hands of Mullins merely doubling their resolve.

I was very sad to hear the news of problems at Chelmsford City racecourse, struggling with a serious loss on the past financial year leading to a reported delay in full payment of staff on the days leading up to Christmas.

Chelmsford isn’t everyone’s favourite track, but it’s handy to get to for racegoers in East London in particular and all over Essex. The grandstand might be facing the “wrong way” and unless you go along to the winning line and combine that with watching on the big screen, much of what happens around the circuit can be hard, actually impossible, to follow.

Trainers from Newmarket love its proximity, just down the M11, but those around Lambourn can be subjected to harrowing journeys when the M4, M25 and the M11 North are playing up, sometimes all at once!

With only a single way in, it was always tricky for the track when it hosted well-attended (sometimes up to even 30,000) music events, but when Justin Timberlake appeared last summer the whole thing ground to a halt after his performance with cars stuck in the car park for hours and the adjacent road connecting the City of Chelmsford to the A120 similarly blocked for ages.

That brought a severe sanction on the number of people that would be allowed at any fixture, 10,000 I believe, effectively stifling the wonderful work done by Neil Graham and his staff. I’ve known Neil since he trained out of the yard in Newmarket adjacent to the Tattersalls sales paddocks, when he had horses in the yard for the Thoroughbred Corporation.

He knows his stuff and is a very nice man to boot. I hope Chelmsford’s troubles will soon be sorted. They’ve fought back before and hopefully will do so again. I always enjoy going there and wish I’d been free to go yesterday, but late additions to the schedule aren’t always easy.

It’s a place where horses can build up impressive winning sequences and my pal Mick Godderidge, a shareholder in the now six-year-old Carlton, saw the horse win six times from seven runs at the track between December 2024 and last September for James Owen. No doubt he’ll add to that tally over this winter.

- TS

Monday Musings: Top Jockeys

5 January 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Much has been made in recent days about the 21^st Century record that Billy Loughnane snatched from the grasp of Kieren Fallon on the final day of 2025, writes Tony Stafford. His single winner, the classy Enemy from the Ian Williams stable, won a £15k first prize at Southwell on Thursday which put Loughnane on 222 for the calendar year, exceeding Fallon’s best, set in 2003.

Fallon won the jockeys’ title six times, the final one in that year when 207 of the wins came in the prescribed period of the championship. The sextet was interrupted midway through in 2000 by Kevin Darley.

Billy would have had a more arduous task to secure the record at the tender age of 19 had Oisin Murphy bothered to stay in the UK for the conclusion of the 2024 season. Murphy and I had a chat at York’s Ebor meeting that August when I suggested that at his then rate of progress, he could even have bettered the record of Sir Gordon Richards, who collected 269 wins in 1947. That was the 20^th of Gordon’s 26 championships.

Oisin decided not to stay in the UK, instead chasing the big prizes available to the top riders around the world. He still ended the year with 217. His best to date is 220 in 2019.

Richards missed out on the title three times, to Tommy Weston 100 years ago, Freddie Fox in 1930 and Harry Wragg in 1941. He achieved a lifetime ambition by finally ending his Derby hoodoo in that Coronation year on Pinza. He then broke his pelvis in a fall in the Sandown Park paddock the following summer and retired with 4,870 career wins to his credit. He subsequently enjoyed solid success as a trainer when Lady Beaverbrook was his most important client.

In more recent times, only AP McCoy, of course over jumps, has managed anything comparable, with 20 consecutive titles. His first was as a conditional rider in 1995/96 when based with Toby Balding, whose brother Ian, trainer of Mill Reef, sadly died last week.

AP’s last title came in 2014/15. He habitually broke the 200-winner mark each season, with a peak of 289, thereby considerably exceeding Richards’ best, in 2001/02. The latest champion, Sean Bowen, seems to have been made in McCoy’s single-minded mould. Riding for the prolific and upwardly mobile Olly Murphy, he looks to have a winner-providing source to match McCoy’s supply-line from Martin Pipe.

Bowen apparently sees “no reason why I couldn’t get to 300.” A little boastful maybe, but he won last season’s championship with ease with 180 wins and is already on 170 with almost a full four months to go – that’s 30-odd per month. He won’t want many cold spells to hinder that aim though.

Not an instant success, unlike McCoy and Loughnane, Sean Bowen has been developing his skills for around a decade, initially on now-retired father Peter’s horses. Peter has been succeeded with the licence by another son, Mickey, but is also the first port of call for many other top trainers, in addition to Olly Murphy.

Loughnane also got his riding education with a training father, Mark Loughnane, who normally sends out around 40 winners a year. Billy’s progress has been meteoric, going from six when first allowed to ride as as a 16-year-old in 2022, to 130, 162 and now 222.

Kieren Fallon has been able to watch the young man at close quarters as the former champion is a regular rider at Charlie Appleby’s yard, as is Loughnane. The teenager is the jockey of choice when Appleby needs an alternative when William Buick is otherwise engaged, usually at the main meeting of the day.

It’s a numbers game of course. To get to 222, Loughnane leant heavily on his boss George Boughey – 100 wins in 2025 – and gives great credit for his progress. In all he had 1,321 rides in 2025. Only twice did Kieren Fallon have more than 1,000 rides: 1,055 in his last title winning year and 1,109 for 200 in the following season.

Fallon describes Loughnane as “a guaranteed future champion that does all the right things.” Since the BHA restricted jockeys to riding at a single meeting in 2020 – I had thought it was longer ago than that – to help curb the spread of Covid 19, jockeys might have a quieter life, but the big numbers are less easy to be achieved.

Luke (have saddle will travel) Morris five times rode more than 1,500 horses in a year and despite the one-meeting restriction, he has still maintained at least 1,000 every campaign since 2010.

Fallon is also delighted his son Cieren is developing nicely, helped by a connection with William Haggas. He rode 136 winners despite having not much more than half of Loughnane’s rides (721 last year). Haggas has given him a Group 1 winner in Montassib and the other two victories for him at the top level have been for Roger Teal with his stable star, the sprinter Oxted.

I had a nice day out on Saturday, leaving at an unconscionable hour to make the first race at Lingfield, and I wasn’t the only one. The owners’ room has around 25 big round tables, each with eight chairs and for the entire afternoon most were fully occupied, alongside some very decent food and a well-stocked and easily accessible bar.

Multiple ownership and friends thereof made for a terrific buzz and young Fallon had rides for both his previous Group 1 providers. I was there to represent the owners of recent Southwell winner Florida Suite, only allowed to take her chance after a good deal of agonising by her trainer.

“I think the track might be too sharp – she looked more of a stayer when she won at Southwell – and I’m not sure if the blinkers will work again.” Cieren was more hopeful, but as she toiled home last of six having drifted like a barge, as they say, Fallon reckons Newcastle would be more to her liking. A winning Starman filly, would you want to risk another poor run when a convenient sale is close at hand?

Fallon partnered the Roger Teal newcomer Pangbourne later and that youngster showed some promise for the future. The always-cheerful Roger had already won the opener with All Too Beautiful, completing a hat-trick under Jack Mitchell. That followed a dead-heat for first time handicapper Three Socks On at Chelmsford the previous day.

With so much ice to clear from my car windows before setting off for Lingfield, I was more than a little surprised when Sandown survived the winter snap to provide jumps action that same day. Those frost sheets do pay their way, although Wincanton and already cancelled Newcastle confirm them to be fallible.

Back in the owners’ room at Lingfield, the atmosphere was great. As was mentioned last week, crowds at the race meetings around Christmas and the New Year were very good. To some extent the rather idiosyncratic scheduling of Premier League matches probably didn’t hurt in that regard.

I’m now going to speak a foreign language where the Editor is concerned. [Qué? – Ed.] I stayed awake until late listening to our much-maligned cricketers making a bold riposte in Sydney, only condescending to close my eyes when an accursed thunderstorm ended play early.

Matt no doubt had been annoyed when Arsenal beat Bournemouth on Saturday night. Bournemouth could have scored at least five if things had gone their way. They didn’t. Sorry boss!

- TS

Monday Musings: On Legacies…

29 December 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Amid all the thrilling performances over the Christmas period so far, I cannot shake from my consciousness Ben Pauling’s Mambonumberfive, writes Tony Stafford. I must confess I hated the song of that name when it was popular – maybe I’ll be a bit more charitable after Kempton on Saturday.

Using times as a guide to merit in jump racing is never foolproof, but when successive races on the same card, distance and discipline are concerned, you have a chance of getting a reasonable line to the form.

On Saturday at Kempton – shamefully destined soon to be another housing estate it seems – both Ben Pauling’s Mambonumberfive in the Wayward Lad Novices Chase and Dan Skelton’s Thistle Ask, top-weight in the Desert Orchid Handicap Chase, both Grade 2 events, immediately afterwards were easy winners. The time of the former at 4.47 seconds faster than the standard for the two miles at Kempton, was 0.42 seconds better than Thistle Art’s demolition job in the handicap.

Dan Skelton is considering the Queen Mother Champion Chase for his eight-year-old, winner of five of six chases, the last four all by at least a margin of seven lengths since Skelton took him over from the retired James Ewart this season. He won off 115 first time for Dan and was already up to 146 on Saturday, with a hike guaranteed well into the 150’s when the new ratings come out tomorrow.

This was a race where the pace was unrelenting – three horses goading each other at the front until Harry Skelton pushed the button and sent Thistle Ask away from the rest of the seven-horse field. He seemed to be quickening throughout the race, gathering pace once more as they approached the first of three fences in the straight.

Thistle Ask will be a nine-year-old if he lines up for the Champion Chase, but you need to have an attacking mindset if you want to see off Willie Mullins.

Despite all this, Ben Pauling, a day on from the emotion of The Jukebox Man, Harry Redknapp and all that, unearthed a chaser I contend of equal potential to his stable star.

When Mambonumberfive went through the Arqana sale ring last year for €450k, the obvious question about the three-year-old’s qualification for such a lofty price was, “how?”

He had been unable to win in three tries in juvenile hurdles at Auteuil for French jumps training ace Francois Nicolle with the final effort in June 2024, a month before his sale, being a second to Double-Green homebred Raffles Dolce Vita.

That horse has failed to win again in seven tries, latterly when switched to Ireland. His latest effort was a fourth of six to Gordon Elliott’s Romeo Coolio, beaten 31 lengths, at Fairyhouse late last month. His chance was mirrored by the starting price, 125/1!

While his stock plummeted, Mambonumberfive has flourished under Pauling, initially in three tries over hurdles, winning the second, a Grade 2 novice at Kempton, then switching as a four-year-old to chasing this autumn.

A horse of impressive size and scope, he immediately took to this new role, winning with a sustained finishing effort at Aintree and trumping that with a comfortable two-length defeat of Mighty Bandit at Newbury.

From novice handicaps, Ben switched him to this weight-for-age Grade 2 race against his elders. Five runners here and for most of the two miles Ben Jones allowed him to sit at the back, with a couple of slight errors confirming that position.

Then, as they turned for home, you could see him making quick progress, and by the second last he had got to the front. From the final fence he was travelling so well that he had put seven lengths between himself and runner-up Hansard, a solid performer for Gary and Josh Moore. From last place four from home to seven lengths clear and careering away at the line. All as a four-year-old, although he will be five on Thursday!

You’d have to give him a chance in the Arkle Chase at Cheltenham as he clearly handles going left-handed as well as Saturday’s romp the other way round, but it might be less certain that Cheltenham would suit him as well as Aintree with the long straight there to get him organised for that charge to the line.

The amazing elements for me about Saturday were less that he was quicker than a possible Queen Mother contender having loitered at the back of his field for so long, against the sustained gallop of Thistle Ask’s race, but that he could manage it with so little previous experience of chasing behind him.

If his enormous talent was evident, his stablemate The Jukebox Man exhibited the one attribute that apart from natural ability is most elusive in racehorses, courage and determination not to be beaten.

I well remember how in 2009 when Punjabi won his Champion Hurdle for Raymond Tooth and Nicky Henderson, he was in the middle of a three-horse thrust up the Cheltenham hill between Celestial Halo and Binocular, grittily holding on to the narrow lead he and Barry Geraghty had taken at the final flight.

Here, though, The Jukebox Man did even better as he was overtaken by last year’s King George VI Chase winner Banbridge at that point in the race. It seemed inevitable that he would succumb to that Joseph O’Brien horse’s speed from the last and that of the joint favourites, Willie Mullins’ Gaelic Warrior and Nicky Henderson’s Jango Baie who were also bang there; but he would have none of it.

As four horses strained for the line, suddenly in the dying strides, The Jukebox Man, in the middle under Ben Jones, had his head down at the crucial time, winning by noses from Banbridge and Gaelic Warrior with Jango Baie half a length away. It was a race that racing needed and if you listened to the ITV commentators, a win in the Harry Redknapp colours that was “great for racing”.

It was great for Harry Redknapp and the two Bens certainly, but here was a man in his late 70s, however well known to the public, winning a race. Would his win inspire young racegoers to take more of an interest in the sport? That seems fanciful. Big days, be they at Kempton and Chepstow, where we got a great home win for the Rebecca Curtis/Sean Bowen horse Haiti Couleurs in the Coral Welsh Grand National, inevitably engender great enthusiasm for the young people that attend.

I remember last autumn suggesting that Champions Day at Ascot had many more younger attendees than I’d ever recalled at any meeting, something Grand National winning rider Graham Thorner also noticed that day. Getting them to come back for say, an all-weather card at Kempton, is another matter. I wonder who would get their many all-weather fixtures if the sale did go through.

Kempton was one of the many tracks near London, including Newmarket, my dad took me to from about the age of eight. I’d become much more interested in racing by 1961 at age 15. I recall one Easter we watched the Kempton Guineas trials from the stand at the top of the straight, where they now keep the course equipment.

The horse he’d backed in the 1000 Trial was in front passing us and I was shocked when it didn’t make the frame. That was three from home, though, and a long way out for a mile race! Even so, I thought I knew a bit more about the game than he did – not that ever in my life I’ve matched his facility for successful punting for small stakes.

One day in my teens, I had brought a girl friend to the flat in the afternoon with both my parents out at work, expecting a clear couple of hours. We were in the early throes of getting involved when I heard the front door opening. With a face like thunder, he took one look at the slight clothing disarray, went into his bedroom and within minutes had gone out again.

When mum arrived from work, she told me he went to Kempton, no doubt on the Fallowfield & Britten coach from Clapton Pond <Prince Monolulu, the famed so-called tipster who peed on my shoe at the halfway stop on the way to Newmarket one time, would always be on board>. When he came home, the girlfriend long gone, again I was greeted with a frosty silence as my mum looked on sympathetically.

The following night he went to Hackney dogs, his regular venue while I continued my apprenticeship in punting by going off with my mates to my favoured Thursday night track, Clapton. Slightly closer to home I always got back before him, and the difference in mood was soon evident.

He said, “I went to Kempton last night and had the Tote Treble <a regular bet in the second, fourth and sixth races of ten shillings, 50p in those days>. It Paid £98.18 shillings. Then tonight I had the Trifecta <first three home> at the dogs. It paid £123,15s,3d. <12 pence to the shilling>” He was always a lucky punter and couldn’t wait to tell me, whatever his feelings otherwise.

I never found out what happened to his last bet – he dropped dead in the William Hill betting shop (now closed) at Hackney Wick, 100 yards from his house and the ticket was never found. He was 82 and left me the heritage of Arsenal, cricket at the Oval and racing. What more did an eight-year-old need to set him up for life?

- TS

Monday Musings: Things Just Grand in Yorkshire

22 December 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

When you are a grandson of the great show jumper Harvey Smith, what do you do other than become an international show jumper, like your father Steven Smith before you?, writes Tony Stafford. As Yorkshire as they come, Harvey was showjumping’s equivalent to another blunt speaking but highly talented man of his county, in his case from cricket in the middle of last century, Fred Trueman, in the days when both sports got plentiful live coverage on the BBC.

Add the surname Parkinson – remember the chat-show legend? – and the county theme continues. But if you want some historic nomenclature from horseracing, how about your parents call you Joel, recalling the Classic winning owner-breeders Jim and Stanhope, whose family made its money from gold mines in South Africa.

For those of more tender years, Harvey was as famous for a single V-sign to the judges after he won the 1971 British Show Jumping Derby as anything else. They withheld the £2,000 prizemoney for the “obscene gesture” which Harvey explained was merely a homage to Winston Churchill’s wartime victory salute. When Fred was asked by 13-year-old me as the players milled about in front of the pavilion on a rain-ruined day at I think Valentines Park, Ilford, “Please Mr Trueman, can I have your autograph?” “Fook off sooon!”

Twenty years later, standing in for Jonathan Powell doing the People weekly racing article, I was invited to sit in Fred’s seat. I declined.

It was to surprise in many quarters when Harvey joined with wife Sue to set up a training stable at High Eldwick, near Bingley in West Yorkshire. They opened for business in time for the 1989/90 season and, for the next 36 winters, Sue Smith was a regular winner of major races – mostly chases. The highlight of course was the victory of Auroras Encore in the 2013 Grand National.

For the past few years, her young relative Joel acted as her assistant before she had notched a single winner at the point in her final solo season when the joint training agreement came into play. Sue had gone from a peak of 70 wins at one stage to more modest high teens returns in her two final campaigns in sole charge.

The benefit of the new arrangement where, as in several other well-publicised partnerships, the younger element takes increasingly more prominence, was soon evident. Last season, the pair added 27 to Sue’s solo single and, after the weekend, with four wins in the last 14 days, they have already collected 22 and are within a jot of matching that season’s improved prizemoney tally.

Why the preamble? I’m getting to it. A horse trained by Joel Parkinson and Sue Smith was backed as if defeat was out of the question on Saturday and won accordingly. The race, the Tommy Whittle Handicap Chase at Haydock Park, is a three-mile contest named in honour of one of Haydock’s chairmen.

It was inaugurated in 1982 and among its first dozen winners were northern-trained Cheltenham Gold Cup heroes Little Owl, Forgive ‘N Forget and The Thinker, along with the phenomenal grey One Man. Sue Smith won the 2004 race with Chives, ridden by Dominic Elsworth.

It’s now a 0-145, so the likelihood of its ever offering a hand-up to another Gold Cup winner – they tend to be rated in the high 170s – is remote, except possibly in the case of Saturday’s extraordinary winner.

If ever a chase of this fame – however slightly tarnished the Tommy Whittle might be by that upper limit of 145 – has been won by a horse that had never previously won any race, I’d need someone with better historical records to remind me.

Six-year-old Grand Geste had been bought by Harvey Smith for £13,000 at the Goffs UK Spring sale in 2022. Before Saturday, he had run 11 times without winning, in two bumpers, seven hurdle races and a couple of chases.

On Saturday he was 2lb out of the handicap, so running off 119 in a 12-runner race which featured Nicky Richards’ previous Tommy Whittle winner Famous Bridge. That rival was never in contention as Danny McMenamin sent Grand Geste to the front from the off, jumping with amazing alacrity and agility.

There’s something about a front-running, bold-jumping grey horse – Desert Orchid? – and while it might be premature to talk about these two horses in the same breath, come a couple of years down the line, the relevance of Saturday will have been reinforced many times over, I’m sure.

A six-year-old as I mentioned, he is one of five of that age to win the race, more common nowadays with its being an event for emerging talents rather than established stars that have gone beyond the upper limit bracket.

Yet, in a way, Grand Geste should have probably been operating off far more advantageous marks – to begin with at least. Many shrewd handicap trainers who know how to play the system would describe as “unfortunate” on the one hand or “idiotic” more likely the day at Carlisle when Grand Geste narrowly failed to record a 200/1 win in his final novice hurdle race before collecting a handicap mark.

That day, the grey entered the uphill run-in with two lengths to spare over the field, but Sean Bowen on Olly Murphy’s Barlavento conjured one of his flying and all-action finishes to foil the grey, who in the process probably added 30lb to what would otherwise have been his opening mark.

He operated decently enough last season, with a couple of third places in a light campaign, but when he returned to Carlisle for a first run over fences, he got within four lengths of Ben Pauling’s useful performer The Jukebox Kid. Next was a narrow defeat at Newcastle, caught late on by Alcedo, trained by Venetia Williams.

Here though, in his first race beyond three miles, from start to finish all that remained in the mind was the vision of that exuberant jumping and the six-and-a-half-length winning margin that Danny could have stretched if needed. Expect maybe 14lb or even a little more to be lumped on the 119 he ran off when the new ratings come out tomorrow. If anything, on present evidence, Parkinson/Smith will be saying, “the more the merrier” and “handicapper, bring it on!”

The way he galloped all the way to the line, something like the Peter Marsh Chase back at Haydock next month would be ideal. Sue Smith has won it five times, but Grand Geste needs to go up even more than the harshest assessor could contrive to get in the weights. Mr Vango, one of the favourites for next year’s Grand National won it last year off 140 – and he was bottom weight! Who says he couldn’t win it from 10lb wrong? The trainers and the market are unlikely to be bothered at all.

Talking of Mr Vango, he came back to action this month and just failed in a thrilling tussle to win the Becher Chase over the Aintree Grand National fences. I can picture Grand Geste going over those before long, too.

Mr Vango was done on the line by Ben Pauling’s Twig and I remember when Twig got his first handicap mark a few years back, Ben was bemoaning the fact that he had started off with a far higher figure than was necessary.

After two unplaced runs from Ben’s yard, he switched to point-to-pointing, winning six times, all for stable owner Mrs Georgia Morgan and ridden each time by Georgia’s son Beau. Before rejoining Pauling from the Matthew Hampton yard, he added a comfortable hunter-chase win at Warwick. Had he run three times rather than two in that initial spell, he would already have had a mark and running in that hunter chase might have been avoided. As it was, he started off with 132.

That Ben could win to date nine times, three over hurdles and six chases, with him from that difficult starting point, shows that if the talent is there, the wins will follow given the abilities of trainer and rider.

On a lower level, on Saturday I was talking to Hughie Morrison about a filly of his that was lining up for a third run later at Wolverhampton. He said she had been working much better of late and that he expected her to run a decent race, despite the massive morning odds.

She still started at 40/1 but ran nicely all the way, only beaten by a once-raced Godolphin filly ridden by Billy Loughnane.

Hughie expected that this home-bred daughter of St Mark’s Basilica, for the Arbib partnership, would “blow” a potential favourable mark, but for such owners showing something on the racecourse, especially a two-year-old filly, transcends such trivialities.

Judging by the smooth way she travelled around the inside at Dunstall Park, and remained well ahead of the rest of the field, suggests she won’t be too far off in another fillies’ maiden, especially if Charlie Appleby suffers a touch of heat stroke during his winter sojourn in Dubai and forgets to enter against her.

Hughie got a result just over half an hour later when nursery winner Tinsel provided an apt moment for the Christmas season. With no racing after today until Boxing Day, he can sit back and enjoy the festivities.

I would like to wish all my readers a lovely holiday season. I’m happy that, as you may have noticed, the days are getting longer at last! Roll on Royal Ascot.

Mentioning Ascot, I must drop in a line about Sir Johnny Weatherby, the late Queen’s representative at the Royal course for many years. It was as much a shock to learn that that he was 66 when he died as that he had passed away at all. Many who knew him much better than I did have spoken so highly of him. His loss will be sorely felt throughout the racing world, but especially at the family firm, Racing’s secretaries, that carries his name. Nice man.

Monday Musings: Hong Kong Rising

15 December 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

At a time when interest rates for savers seem woefully low, especially if those savers enjoy having a bet, there must have been people enviously looking across to Sha Tin racecourse early yesterday, writes Tony Stafford. They were calculating what they might win on the Dream Double.

Yes, here was the chance to couple Hong Kong’s two international-class stars. Ka Ying Rising, the world’s best sprinter fresh from winning the £3.46 million Everest in Australia (and a cheeky domestic Group 2 in between), with Romantic Warrior, winner of 19 of his 25 turf starts. They both won, of course, and I can reveal that the safe-as-houses double would have realised £15.50 profit for every £100 staked.

There were few alarms during either race as Ya King Rising (1/20) pulled almost four lengths clear of his field under Aussie Zac Purton to mop up the £1.613m to the winner Longines Hong Kong Sprint over six furlongs. Three races later 1/10 shot Romantic Warrior and regular New Zealand-born partner James McDonald was as efficient as usual running almost two lengths clear of the field for the £2.304m Hong Kong Cup over ten furlongs.

So a 15.5% yield with a little less than two hours between the races for the racing-mad Hong Kong public to work out their expected profits. A handsome windfall indeed for the mathematicians who could translate it to 180% in a day while the present interest rates worldwide equate to nearer 0.01% per day.

Of course, all that is nonsense. They have to win! Romantic Warrior paid 11 HK dollars for a 10 dollar win bet and understandably, only 10.10 dollars, that’s 100/1 on, for a place.

Ka Ying Rising also paid 100/1 on for a place as he sped home for win number 17 of 19 starts, the last 16 in a row. Indeed, his two reverses came in races two and three in January last year, by a nose then a short head!

He is now on £11.7 million for those wins, a figure dwarfed by Romantic Warrior’s £24.3 million after the latest windfall yesterday. That son of Acclamation is a testimony to the veteran UK-based sire and an encouragement to a friend about to go into a partnership with trainer Roger Varian in a yearling by the stallion.

Ka Ying Rising’s win bet, in arithmetical terms, depending on how close to the off it was placed – let’s say within a couple of minutes – took 67.70 seconds to come to fruition. So 5HK dollars’ profit (from the 100 HK dollars stake) in three minutes equates to a rate of 100% in an hour. The snag? You need to find another 19 certainties to maintain that rate.

https://youtu.be/30tScLujPP8?si=VN7Vsd-Sq5aKIecz

It is extraordinary how consistent these two champions have become. Romantic Warrior lost little of his sheen with two defeats early this year, both at the hooves of Japanese-trained horses. First, he was collared late on by subsequent Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Forever Young in the £8 million to the winner Saudi Cup in Riyadh; then Soul Rush denied him, again on the line, in the Dubai Turf on World Cup night at Meydan in March.

Trainer C S (Danny) Shum gave him an eight-month break after Meydan, and he returned with an easy win on his home course last month. Had he won the other two races where he was so narrowly denied, his earnings would have been boosted by another £7,720k, thus a mind-bending £31.5 million!

Both horses are geldings, Romantic Warrior a seven-year-old and Ka Ying Rising two years younger. They are the best examples of the Hong Kong Jockey Club recruitment system in Europe, Australia and the United Stakes, principally confined to geldings, that has proved the blueprint to success.

Further east, Japan’s racing culture produces horses, like these two Hong Kong examples, capable of mixing it with the best that Europe and the US can muster. There, though, it is with a vast preponderance of entire horses that stay effectively in training for many years yet continue to run at a high level.

In all, seven Japanese geldings travelled across to contest the four international races, and their connections will have been delighted with a couple of second places. Soul Rush, avoiding Romantic Warrior this time, didn’t have the chance to confirm that win last spring, switching instead to the Mile race. He was denied by half a length by another local winner, Voyage Bubble, a second victory after Ka Ying Rising for Purton.

Harry Eustace’s Docklands was a creditable fourth here, but the Lion In Winter and Ryan Moore were never in contention and finished only eleventh.

Bellagio Opera also did extremely well for Japan, following home Romantic Warrior in second place and collecting more than £800k as a result. Only a five-year-old, he can be expected to be back again for the big races – probably in Riyadh in February and on World Cup day in Dubai the following month.

Harry Eustace has been enjoying a wonderful time over the past 13 months or so with Docklands, who apart from unexpectedly winning the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, has also performed well in Japan, Australia and Hong Kong, to where this was a second visit.

This trip will have given him time to catch up with brother David, who after a spell as joint trainer with Ciaron Maher in Australia, now operates under his sole proprietorship in Hong Kong.

David Eustace had a nice handicap win early on the card, whereas at the other end of the day, Hollie Doyle came very close to adding to her HK tally, finishing second in the finale on Drombeg Banner. She, Richard Kingscote, David Probert and longer-standing Hong Kong resident Harry Bentley, have a tough time getting on the right horses in this tight community.

The one major race that did evade the home team was the 1m4f Vase won by the Andre Fabre-trained Sosie, for the Wertheimer brothers. Sosie had been a strong fancy for the Arc where he was a fast-finishing third and that form ensured he would start favourite here.

In the event, the first five places went to the Europeans: Marco Botti’s Giavellotto, ridden by another recent UK export Andrei Atzeni, maintained his high level of form in second ahead of Goliath, Joseph O’Brien’s Al Riffa and Aidan’s Los Angeles.

Back in the UK, Saturday’s most valuable prize was the one-time Massey-Ferguson Gold Cup, the companion race in those days to the month-earlier Mackeson Gold Cup. It was very nice that a race of this stature was chosen as the vehicle for the Support the Hunt Family Fund, with Gold Cup Handicap Chase added for good measure.

Everyone has heard of the awful tragedy that John and his family endured, with his wife and two daughters killed in a pointless, brutal attack in their home just as John was driving back from his commentating duties at Lingfield that afternoon.

I bumped into John and his surviving daughter Amy the other day and for the umpteenth time wondered how they can keep control of their emotions as they appear to.

The race was something of a fairy tale, with Sean Bowen making all the running on a 33/1 shot for trainer Faye Bramley. Glengouly was 5lb out of the handicap, hence the big price despite the riding arrangements, and his history tells another tale.

After three wins during a busy career with Willie Mullins and an unseat when tiring a long way into the 2024 Grand National, he came up for sale in this May’s Tatts online sale, changing hands for 16,000gns.

He started off in his new yard with some modest efforts and then a wind op, but gradually things got better, yet hardly well enough to collect such a big prize. No wonder Sean Bowen reckons he can win 300 races this season, if he can have such a transforming effect on what might have appeared a tired old veteran. We never thought Tony McCoy’s best would ever be under threat, but Sean reckons otherwise. So far, it’s 155 and counting!

Dan Skelton didn’t win that one but collected another 13 during the past fortnight including a late double on the Cheltenham card. Harry looked especially good and he obviously gets a special kick coming up the hill first at Prestbury Park. Maybe he’ll think of a new celebration if that happens at the Festival. Perhaps standing up on the saddle as he crosses the line first after one of those minutely targeted handicaps?

- TS

Monday Musings: A Grey Area

8 December 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

A week ago, when talking to Nicky Richards in the morning when he had sent three horses to Ayr – he won in the afternoon with 4/1 on shot Upon Tweed - we had a quick chat about one of his other runners, writes Tony Stafford. Red Cadillac had narrowly won his previous race at Carlisle and as a result he was carrying 11st13lb in this £4k to the winner handicap hurdle.

“I expect our horse will run well, that is unless Gordon Elliott’s boys are coming with their betting boots on”. Like three other runners on the day, King Gris was to be ridden by Sean Bowen. Running off 73, therefore in receipt of 25lb from Nicky’s horse, King Gris, owned by the Sette A Milano Syndicate, was 5lb wrong, as his official mark was a bargain-basement 68!

By the time of the race at 2.45 p.m., as the Editor and I were just about on the dessert course at the Horserace Writers and Photographers Association lunch in London, Elliott and the champion jockey already had two wins on the board. At the off, King Gris, 5/2 against at one point in the morning, was 11/4 on and won comfortably doing only what was needed by Bowen to land the odds.

The official margin, which could clearly have been extended if Bowen (and no doubt Elliott) had wished, was two lengths. After that in the seven-horse affair over the minimum trip it was 7 lengths, 6½, 9½, 3¾ and half a length. Strung out like washing on the line as the pre-race market suggested they would be.

Probably struggling to keep a straight face afterwards speaking to Racing TV, Gordon Elliott said, “It was nip and tuck going to the last, but King Gris won which is the most important thing, and he has a good attitude. That was a low-grade race but hopefully he'll be able to win a couple more.” No doubt! Richards’ guess is that he could be a 120 horse.

Red Cadillac, of course, was second and having done his best against what clearly were virtually impossible odds, his connections are going to have to pay a price. As Richards said yesterday, “No doubt after this he’ll go up in Tuesday’s new ratings and from there it will be harder for us to find another race with him.”

Reflecting yesterday morning in response to my reminding him of the event, he said, “There’s been hell on about it. I’ve had calls about it, but I think the BHA are to blame for allowing such a situation to arise.

“This was a Class 5, 0-100 race. During Covid, the rules were changed to prevent Irish stables having runners in races over here at Class 5. That has since been rescinded, but why I’ve no idea. We struggle enough to beat their horses in the top races – look at what Il Etait Temps did to Jonbon and co at Sandown. If we must contend with apparent set-ups like King Gris, what chance do we have?”

So, how did King Gris, a former Irish pointer with a very close third as the best of three runs on his card for owner-trainer Denis Paul Murphy, manage to arrive at a jumps rating of 68, equating to a flat mark in the early/mid 20s?

A short time after that promising pointing third I referred to, King Gris was gelded and it was only a few weeks later that he turned out in a hurdle race at Bangor under the auspices of Merseyside trainer Patrick Morris. He was a 25/1 shot, reflecting that point-to-point effort just a couple of months earlier but finished ninth of ten and was beaten a mammoth 90 lengths.

Next came Morris’s local track Aintree, where King Gris was fifth of six, beaten 63 lengths at 150/1. The final qualifying effort was at Cartmel. There, starting 250/1, and ridden as at Aintree by Charlie Todd, he was last of nine finishers. Job done – three runs from April 24 to May 28.

That was the last we saw of him until Monday a week ago.

The most intriguing element of the story must surely be why he was sent to Morris after the gelding operation if he was eventually destined for one of the top Irish jumping yards. Indeed, the stable that is second only to the magical Willie Mullins.

Morris has been training since 2002 with runners on the flat since 2004 and, apart from two blanks during that time, he has been a regular winner. In 2025 he boasts a decent strike-rate with 14 winners, a tally beaten only three times with the peak of 19 coming in 2011.

Coincidentally, the day of King Gris’ Ayr coup, Morris had a winner later on at Wolverhampton, then one the following day at Newcastle, and another on Saturday back at Dunstall Park. No reason then not to send a horse to Morris? Maybe, but here’s another coincidence. The trainer has run only two individual horses over jumps last season and this. They are King Gris and the useful chaser Royal Deeside who has won twice this term.

The coincidence? Morris’s last jump runners before King Gris and Royal Deeside had been as long ago as in 2011, the time of his best flat season. In all, before 2024/25 he sent out a total of 29 sporadic runners over the quarter-century for a single jumping success.

If you want a strike-rate at the other end of the scale, how about Sara Bradstock, widow of Mark Bradstock and daughter of my long-term Daily Telegraph colleague John Oaksey. After the Bradstocks’ Mr Vango won a 3m6f chase in testing ground at Exeter two seasons back by 50 lengths, I thought he would knock the Irish off their collective perches at Cheltenham in the National Hunt Chase.

That proved beyond him at that stage, but last winter he went unbeaten through a forensically chosen three-race campaign, culminating with success in the Midlands Grand National over four and a quarter miles at Uttoxeter, a couple of weeks before the Grand National.

Mr Vango will now have the big race on his agenda next March, having come through a trial go over the big-race fences in Saturday’s Becher Chase (3m2f). Having looked beaten and running off top weight of 12st, from a peg 32lb higher than when winning that race at Exeter and 9lb higher than Uttoxeter, he was as unlucky a loser as you can find.

That said, in Twig he met an equally determined and deserving runner from the Ben Pauling stable, ridden as usual by Beau Morgan, son of Twig’s owner.

Twig had been my long-priced nap for the 2025 Grand National and, in running tenth of the 34, was the second home-trained finisher intruding on the Irish juggernaut’s private carving up of the £1 million prizemoney. With Ben saying he “wouldn’t swop him”, for some reason I preferred to look elsewhere for my best bet on Saturday and grimaced as the close-up showed his head down with his rival’s up to get the better of a wonderful finish.

Every time Sara sends out a runner under Rules, I think back to all those years when her father and I comprised the Sunday Telegraph writing team at the Grand National.

While John was crafting his wonderful words for the larger, later editions in terms of readership, I was the “sprinter” charged with doing the fast version of events for the Irish, Scottish and Northern readership.

We operated from a house across the road from the track, with a phone in every room and shared with Brough Scott and others those facilities in Chasandi, the home of a very nice Scouser family. No phones in the track, no computers to put the words together, just a disembodied telephonist taking your words back in Fleet Street to send on to the printers.

One of the top writers at the time was Christopher Poole, a giant, genial, rotund chap who worked for the London Evening Standard. If you thought our system in today’s world would be considered tortuous, Chris had to relate his to his own travelling telephonist, Max, who would then repeat the words back to Fleet Street! If Mr Vango does beat all those Irish stars next spring, even I won’t be able to resist a tear or two remembering John and quite a few others too.

- TS

Monday Musings: Woof No More

1 December 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Lots of us thought he was a dog! As the series of second places built up to four, many people including me were quick to brand the Francis-Henri Graffard-trained four-year-old Calandagan ungenuine – at the very least a gelding that perhaps didn’t try as hard as he should, writes Tony Stafford.

For a while his biggest claim to fame was that as a gelding, he wasn’t qualified to run in his home country’s greatest race, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe. Graffard and regular stable jockey Mickael Barzalona won that this year anyway with the year-younger Daryz, like Calandagan a home-bred from the late Aga Khan’s studs.

Their owner died earlier this year, so missed one of the most glorious chapters of his lifetime as an owner-breeder. Calandagan’s rise to being officially the top racehorse in the world gained a fitting gilding to that accolade when he became the first overseas winner of the Japan Cup for 20 years at Tokyo racecourse yesterday.

The last one was Luca Cumani-trained and Frankie Dettori-ridden Alkaased, whose winning time of 2 minutes 22.1 seconds in 2005 was then the record time for the race. That succumbed only once in the intervening years, to the great Almond Eye, but her figure was trimmed again as Calandagan rallied to wrest victory close to the line from the home-trained favourite Masquerade Ball in the 17-runner affair.

His time for the 12 furlongs was 2 minutes 20.3 seconds, more than three seconds faster than Found recorded in the quickest-ever Arc for the Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore team in 2016. Just think of it, yesterday’s winner averaged fewer than 12 seconds per furlong (11.67 to be precise) over a mile-and-a-half: not much below sprinting pace!

Thus, after that quartet of second places, it is now four Group One victories in a row - and how - for Calandagan, following the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud in June; the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in July; and the Champion Stakes, easily from Ombudsman, again at Ascot in October. Some hound!

https://youtu.be/L5sUW79JlQo?si=hvrngEGBpFCWBQZ0

It took a battling performance from the winner, and the exciting thing for international racing is that the son of Gleneagles – whose 2026 fee has remained at €20k for the forthcoming season - will almost certainly remain in training with the expectation of boosting his already lavish earnings figure.

Yesterday’s version carried a first prize of £2.6 million, but under the race conditions, the King George was one of several incentivised qualifying races which brought an invitation to the race and a £2.3 million bonus for any horse that followed by winning the Japan Cup.

No doubt that possibility had been insured and equally the fact that it had been 20 years since an overseas horse had won, the unlikely eventuality had been largely discounted. Even though he was the best horse in the world on ratings Calandagan was only second best in the market at 11/4. He won’t be as big as that for any race that Graffard chooses to point him at any time soon.

For a Coolmore team still having to adjust to losing their number one Galileo replacement, Wootton Bassett, who died in the early autumn while on his off-season stint in Australia, Gleneagles’ son’s exploits are a reminder that Coolmore is far from a one-sire outfit.

They are almost embarrassingly well-stocked with top-class new sires that entered stud this year and several other high-class performers from the 2025 Classic season that have followed them on.

Mickael Barzalona had to overcome his compatriot Christophe-Patrice Lemaire on the favourite and the pair passed the finish two and a half lengths ahead of third-placed Danon Decile. Lemaire has been riding in the biggest races in Japan combined with his domestic duties for many years and has won the Cup four times, starting with Vodka (2009).

He won twice on Almond Eye (2018, in that record time, and 2020) and also partnered the exceptional Japanese champion Equinox two years ago. Ryan Moore and Oisin Murphy are other top riders to have won the race in recent years, but the last French-trained horse to win was Le Glorieux way back in 1987.

Barzalona has come a long way from that day at the Derby when he started celebrating before passing the line to win for Andre Fabre on Pour Moi in the Michael Tabor colours. That was probably just youthful exuberance, and he has proved himself a top-flight international pilot with increasing regularity since, like a slow-maturing French red wine.

A year after Pour Moi, Brian Meehan booked Barzalona to ride Ray Tooth’s Catfish in the Vodafone Dash on Derby Day and the rather headstrong filly probably lost all chance when her saddle slipped as they left the stalls. Far from making her usual fast start, she was always fighting a lost cause it seemed, with her jockey rather precariously perched.

She rallied to such good effect that she was flying home in third, not much more than a length behind the John Best-trained Stone Of Folca. Stone of Folca won the five-furlong sprint in a time of 53.69 seconds, then and still a record for an electronically timed five-furlong race. How close must Catfish have gone to being the world record holder!

Coincidentally, I was with Raymond and his long-time right-hand man Steve Gilbey on Friday celebrating Steve’s landmark 70th birthday. He certainly doesn’t look it! We love going to the Mandarin Kitchen next to Queensway Station and the food as ever was first class. The talk quickly turned to Constitution Hill’s comeback run in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle the following afternoon and, rather ungraciously, I suggested I thought he would fall.

Nicky Henderson has a wonderful record in the race with nine wins starting from 2001 with Landing Light. His second was Ray’s Punjabi in 2008 when the race was switched to Wetherby while Constitution Hill won it as a five-year-old in 2022, by 12 lengths from smart stable-companion Epatante.

That superb mare was again in second when Constitution Hill won the Christmas Hurdle by 17 lengths next time and had future champion State Man seven lengths adrift when winning his single Champion Hurdle in March 2023.

I was at a Cheltenham Preview on a Saturday evening in March in Central London this year, feeling obliged from the floor to suggest that I reckoned Constitution Hill was the best hurdler I’d ever seen, so why are we even discussing it? Lydia Hislop, one of the panel experts on the evening, was far less sure, citing that his jumping had become much less secure.

Of course, Constitution Hill fell when still in contention four from home on the big day and then State Man, poised for a follow-up to his 2024 success, fell at the last when five lengths clear. It was left to the mare Golden Ace, trained in the West Country by Jeremy Scott, to come through and seize the prize.

Rarely can a winner have been received with such scant praise, but Scott persevered, sending her over to Punchestown where she put in another brave show to follow home State Man for a further lucrative payday as Constitution Hill laboured home a remote fifth.

Runner-up when an odds-on shot and undercooked at Kempton on her return in the autumn, Golden Ace turned up once more in the Fighting Fifth with Jeremy going against the market, this time she was a 22/1 shot. Again, she benefited from others’ failings, Constitution Hill coming down as early as the second flight at Newcastle, and then his market rival, Dan Skelton’s The New Lion having to be rousted when narrowly ahead and falling two from home.

From there, it must be a cakewalk we reckoned for Willie Mullins’ hitherto unbeaten Anzadam, but after being brought with a smooth run by Paul Townend, he was a bit untidy at the last. Meanwhile, Golden Ace under Lorcan Williams, kept going in her usual fashion to win by one and a half lengths with the other outsider Nemean Lion getting within a neck of the runner-up at the line.

It’s hard to get rid of pre-conceptions but to say Golden Ace has been lucky in collecting both of her big prizes is to perhaps forget that this was her seventh win (plus three places) in her 11 starts over hurdles. The hurdles are there to jump and for some reason all the signs from Constitution Hill to his trainer that he was a different horse this year meant nowt. He seemingly restricts his errors to the racecourse.

I was surprised when he went to Punchestown last spring after the Champion Hurdle debacle. I would not be shocked if Nicky and owner Michael Buckley decided to finish him off now before that wonderful career is tarnished further. [Rumour is that he might run on the flat - Ed.]

Over at Newbury, it didn’t take long for Dan Skelton to wipe away the disappointment of The New Lion’s defeat in the Fighting Fifth. Two weeks earlier he had seen a long-laid plan come to fruition when his nine-year-old mare Panic Attack ran away with the Paddy Power Gold Cup over two and a half miles at Cheltenham.

Now, going up six furlongs in distance and carrying a 4lb penalty, she was theoretically 3lb well in after being raised 7lb for Cheltenham. With Dan’s brother Harry riding at Newcastle, 3lb claimer Tristan Durrell took over the reins and the mare skipped easily clear to pick up the £142k first prize. Come on Willie, wake up, Dan might soon be out of sight!

Just as keen on the cuisine of the Mandarin Kitchen are Maurice Manasseh and son David, who were both in Ireland yesterday for the comeback run back over hurdles of part-owner David’s Ballyburn, whose season over fences proved such an anti-climax last winter.

He returned for the Mullins team in the Hatton’s Grace Hurdle and although he didn’t quite prevent previous dual winner Teahupoo’s getting home for the hat-trick, in another stride he would have done. David can look forward to another Cheltenham Festival win, this time in the three-mile championship! He is only a 2/1 shot, but on the day that might look generous.

- TS

Monday Musings: It’s Hard to Wait

24 November 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

When you happen to be 78 years of age and own a racehorse that not only is the best you’ve ever had but also could be a future steeplechase champion, it’s hard not to be impatient, writes Tony Stafford. It must have been excruciating for Harry Redknapp to have to wait 331 days for his hitherto unbeaten young chaser The Jukebox Man to make his reappearance over the weekend after injury kept him away from last March’s big spring festivals.

The year before, The Jukebox Man and his trainer Ben Pauling had tried valiantly to keep the Irish at bay with second places at both Cheltenham and Aintree. He got to within a head of the Gordon Elliott-trained Stellar Story – no relation Wilf! – at Cheltenham, then was five and a half lengths behind Mullins’ Dancing City at Aintree, but more than seven lengths ahead of third-placed Cherie D’Am for Dan Skelton.

The two novice chases he contested last winter were comfortably annexed. First, he dropped to 2m4f for a Grade 2 at Newbury and beat Alan King’s Masaccio a couple of lengths before winning Kempton’s big Christmas novice chase, the three-mile Kauto Star with another similarly controlled performance.

So now it was Haydock and an Intermediate Chase over an intermediate distance of 2m5.5f, but that track takes plenty of stamina and jumping prowess. Again, the margin was modest, once more a couple of lengths, but Ben Jones always had everything under control and the Greenall/Guerrerio-trained and J P McManus-owned Iroko is no ordinary horse to brush aside.

His last run before Saturday was a few miles west along the East Lancs Road at Aintree where he started as the 13/2 favourite for the Grand National and finished a creditable fourth. Iroko predictably kept galloping all the way to the line under Jonjo junior’s urgings on Saturday but never looked like getting to the winner.

The King George, which would be a Boxing Day return to Kempton for Harry’s horse, is the hope but as a former much-respected manager of Tottenham Hotspur and other football clubs, he knows well that injuries to man or horse can happen at any time.

He was talking with friends about his increased involvement in racing on Champions Day at Ascot last month. And it was clear that it was fingers crossed that nothing would go wrong before Haydock. It didn’t, and now there’s no doubt this Poplar-born phenomenon has no wish to slow down, kept solid by his 58-year marriage to Sandra.

There must be something about a working-class upbringing in that part of East London that instils permanency. <I started life a few miles north of there at Hackney Wick in the early days after World War 2>. My mate Harry Taylor beat me by a few months, half a mile away and he celebrated an 80^th birthday bash with friends and his lovely family on Saturday afternoon.

Organised as ever, I’d lost the original invitation but checked with him on Saturday morning. “Yes, it’s Northwick Park Golf Course.” Rain made the journey tortuous but once I got to the place, near Harrow in West London, my phone’s Maps feature sent me to a golf venue of sorts. I went inside, asked at reception where was the party and I was directed to a room hosting an Indian wedding! The food smelled great, but I thought I’d better persevere.

Harry had me going around in circles up and down the roads around the massive Northwick Park Hospital, once saying “I know where you are!” and I was just about to give best when his grandson Connor called on Harry’s phone. “It’s at a different golf club, near where we live in Harpenden <that’s Hertfordshire!>. You should make it in an hour!” I did and loved the Englebert Humperdinck tribute guy. If only school mate Tony Peters (my exact birth twin, formerly known as Zahl) had been there; he’s been doing unwitting tributes to the singer for years!

A much more venerable son of that part of East London is 92-year-old Bill Gredley, who while still very active with flat-racing home-bred horses from his well-established operation at Stetchworth Park Stud in Newmarket, has also developed a formidable jumps team. Almost everything nowadays is in training with James Owen. Tim Gredley, Bill’s son, after a spell riding as he modestly says, “Rolls Royces in point-to-points, I didn’t need to be much good!” is back with his first love and is hoping to get into the Great Britain show-jumping team for the next Olympics.

A much better-known veteran of show jumping obviously has a major connection with the foremost UK jumps training operation. Nick Skelton, for decades one of the best show jumping riders in the world and winner of a gold medal at the London Olympics in 2012, was at the time finalising plans for his sons’ burgeoning enterprise in Warwickshire.

That has become extremely powerful and their Grey Dawning, the impressive winner of Haydock’s Betfair Gold Cup an hour or so after The Jukebox Man’s romp, looks very over-priced to me at 16/1 for the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Day after day, illustrations of the skills of three recent champion jockeys, in order Harry Skelton, Harry Cobden and the latest Sean Bowen are offered to an admiring public. All three can be devastating, especially when riding waiting races, to the extent they often don’t get involved in their winning races until many in the stands have probably already given up. Grey Dawning on Saturday just breezed up (to coin a cliché) to last year’s winner Royale Pagaille, drew alongside and then won with a fair amount in hand. How much, you’d have to ask Harry?

This performance will have added to the Redknapp/Pauling team’s confidence in The Jukebox Man as runner-up Iroko had been second to the Skelton horse in his pre-National warm-up at Kelso last March.

Royale Pagaille also took plenty of beating as a horse with four Haydock wins. Before you say that surely as an 11-year-old his powers might be fading, that’s not to understand Venetia Williams’ training, especially of her experienced chasers.

In Horses In Training 2025, her 79-strong stable had 18 horses aged ten or older and another 22 age eight or nine. Don’t be shocked if the softer ground we’re getting heralds a characteristic midwinter bonanza for the Hereford handler.

Talking of venerable phenomena, Willie Mullins, having been putting his feet up over in Ireland after his killer pounce on the Breeders’ Cup, eased back into action with a nice little Euro 88k for the Morgiana Hurdle at Punchestown.

It wasn’t that surprising an outcome. Lossiemouth, in making it eight Grade 1 wins in her career, started 5/1 on for the four-horse affair. The one surprise was that the nine-length runner-up, collecting €28k was not the second favourite and Mullins second string Irancy in the McManus colours, but Glen Kiln, a 28/1 shot trained by David Harry Kelly. Some turn for him!

Lossiemouth is around 3/1 for the Champion Hurdle but we’re waiting to see what Nicky Henderson and Constitution Hill will have to say about that in Newcastle’s Fighting Fifth Hurdle on Saturday.

Mullins also won the beginners’ chase on the Punchestown card with odds-on Kitzbuhel, running for the first time since he put eight grand into the Mullins coffers for his third place on the final day of the season at Sandown last April. The way Dan Skelton’s going, though, I doubt there will be as much in it at the finish this time around between the respective powerhouses of the UK and Ireland – or even that the result will be the same way around.

- TS

Monday Musings: Just Like That, Cooper’s Back

17 November 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

In this game it’s never too late, writes Tony Stafford. As the rain poured down rendering Saturday’s Cheltenham card in jeopardy after an awful drowning Friday, one Irish trainer was firmly keeping his fingers crossed that the much-vaunted drainage system of Prestbury Park would pass muster.

It did, enabling both the Saturday and Sunday cards to proceed, indeed in slightly less testing ground conditions than expected. While overall the meeting was a glittering triumph for the Dan Skelton yard, it will forever live in the memory of Tom Cooper, a veteran journeyman Irish trainer with 37 years in the game as a licence holder.

Suppose you had been training horses for that length of time and had reached double figures only twice, it would obviously have been something of a struggle, as it is for so many trainers. Overall, those 37 campaigns have yielded 121 wins with just the two from 12 individual horses this year. That was Tom Cooper’s story before Saturday, but two days at Cheltenham over the weekend have pushed away a lot of that endless toil.

Tom was undeniably best known for a while as the father of Bryan Cooper, who in his late teens and early 20s was one of the fastest rising stars of the Irish weighing room. He had the privilege, earned by precocious skill, to ride many top horses including Don Cossack, Apple’s Jade and the 15-length 2016 Triumph Hurdle winner, Our Conor.

In that season of 2015/16, he won 94 races in Ireland, his best score, and his mounts earned more than €2.2 million. His career entered a gradual slowdown before he retired from the saddle at the age of 30 in March 2023.

Tom Cooper had sent horses across to England in 30 of those 37 seasons, winning twice from 50 runs in all. Back home his 12 individual runners in 2025/26 had picked up two first prizes earning a total of €25k.

It’s funny how luck can turn on such a knife-edge. As the crowds left Cheltenham last night, Tom Cooper had not only doubled his entire UK career win score but exceeded his Irish earnings for the season to date by notching two wins from his only UK runners of the year so far.

I say so far advisedly, as both Saturday’s successful 4yo filly Celestial Tune and yesterday’s gelding Saint Clovis are guaranteed to be back for more. Saturday’s winner cost €80k at Tattersalls Ireland in the summer of last year, the bid signed for by Bryan Cooper. She was one of the two Tom Cooper winners in Ireland this season, by nine-and-a-half lengths at Listowel in late September.

Saint Clovis was much more modestly priced at €22k, but the style of his win will have had those big-money operators swirling around. Easy Cheltenham Listed bumper winners do not grow on trees, and such are the resources of those owners at the top of the game, it sometimes can appear that their money does. Expect Tom and probably Bryan’s phones to start ringing – no doubt they already have – though owner Andrew Brooks likely has enough pennies to fend off all but the most tempting of suitors.

Cooper junior also signed the ticket for his father’s other winner this season: the filly Amen Kate was successful at 3/1 on for a Galway maiden hurdle last time out. When Celestial Tune followed up the win on home soil with that taking success on Saturday under Sean Bowen, she was paying a healthy compliment to one of Saint Clovis’s yesterday opponents.

He had finished second in a big field behind Gavin Cromwell’s Bud Fox, so it was understandable with the close at hand endorsement, that he should lead the market.

But it fell to another UK champion jockey, this time Harry Cobden, who sent the Cooper four-year-old to the front, never to be headed. The near five-length margin was being stretched all the way to the line. Bud Fox looked to be galloping all over the winner turning for home, but he ran out of puff up the hill and had to be content with third. Maybe something is not quite right with the Cromwell horses just now, their score of 1 from 51 in the past fortnight – and three from 107 in the last 30 days – miles down on longer-term strike rates.

Saint Clovis is regally bred by jumping standards. His sire Clovis De Berlais was a high-class performer in France and sired Friday’s last-race winner French Emperor. That five-year-old put in a massive performance under top-weight for Somerset trainer Nicky Martin and the Bradley Partnership.

When people take a view on a purchase at the sales aiming at resubmitting their buy at a future auction, there is often a salutary lesson to be learned. But Sam Haggas, son of William and Maureen, has inherited some very positive genes from his parents (not to mention grandfather Lester Piggott) as his recent exploits in the New Zealand sales ring bear out.

Last January he joined with two pals, Adam Potts of BBA Ireland and Barry Donoghue’s BMD Bloodstock, to buy a colt by the dual hemisphere sire Hello Youmzain. It was before the stallion became champion New Zealand first season sire, and he also had an excellent year with his progeny in Europe.

The trio paid NZ $90k and after a very fast 200-metre breeze at the Ready To Run sale, received an eye-watering NZ $700k. He was bought to race in Hong Kong.

You’ve probably noticed that there hasn’t been any flat racing for a few days but that hasn’t stopped Karl Burke or George Scott from adding to their already impressive 2025 records.

Burke supplied the favourite and winner, the seven-year-old gelding Royal Champion, to collect the £480,000 first prize for the £1 million Bahrain International Trophy on Friday over ten furlongs, ridden by James Doyle. Joseph O’Brien’s Galen (Dylan Browne McMonagle) and Charlie Appleby’s Military Order (William Buick) followed him home, also for some chunky place money.

Scott clocked up a best 43 wins in the UK but expanded his overseas challenges to such an extent that he won eight notable prizes, the most prestigious being the Prix du Cadran with Caballo de Mar at Longchamp and last weekend’s Group 1 in Munich, the Grosser Allianz Preis von Bayern, with Bay City Roller.

The latter, a three-year-old, had been sent across to Longchamp for three important races this summer/autumn but had to be content with place money each time. That clearly was a disappointment after his unbeaten sequence in a trio of juvenile starts, but the seven-length victory in Munich has brought its reward with a stallion job next year.

Finally, I am most disappointed that I cannot fulfil a long-planned visit to Plumpton today. The course’s owner, Peter Savill, is dedicating the meeting to his late daughter Charlotte who died at the tragically young age of 22 having suffered uncomplainingly with fibrolamellar liver cancer.

Peter explains that FLC is one of many lesser known but highly aggressive cancers mainly affecting young people that get little attention from major pharma companies. It leaves families and generous sponsors to provide support.

The day is aimed to bring attention to the disease and even if, like me, you could not manage to get to Plumpton for its early start today, you can call the team at Plumpton on 01273 890383 to donate.

- TS

Monday Musings: Jamie’s Quiet Ascent

10 November 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The jump campaign 2025/26 began half a year and a few days ago but traditionalists, among the trainers especially, still regard the season proper as having begun authentically only at the Chepstow two-day fixture last month, writes Tony Stafford.

The season’s climax (or anti-climax if your name is Skelton) at Sandown late in April merely confirmed what we knew already. If Willie Mullins targets a potential achievement, he has the resources to bring it home. On that last day he sidestepped the first two races on the Sandown card but won three of the other five and broke doughty Dan’s heart once more.

As Gordon Elliott found several times in their domestic battles in Ireland, it didn’t matter how much of a prizemoney advantage he held over Mullins coming to the engine-room of the Irish season, Willie had the tools to do the job – and in style.

It’s worth re-living that final day. Having ignored the opening two races, both incidentally won by Gary and Josh Moore, Mullins’ subsequent hat-trick included the top prize, the £99k to the winner Celebration Chase where South African-owned Il Etait Temps overcame a year’s absence to humble erstwhile two-mile champ Jonbon, with Willie’s Energumene in third place for good measure. Back in home action at Clonmel in midweek, Il Etait Temps had a stroll round for €35k to set his season off in style.

Surprisingly perhaps, the Bet 365 (formerly Whitbread Gold Cup) didn’t fall to any of his ten of the 19 runners. It defiantly went to the Olly Murphy/Sean Bowen team with Resplendent Grey, staving off the first four of the Mullins horde, in so doing signalling both of their positions at the very top of the UK jumps hierarchy.

Murphy was one of 14 domestic trainers supplying 30 of the 51 runners in those five races contested by Mullins; and Willie had the other 20! In all he picked up £287k of the £530k available on the day – or 55%. If Dan still leads his 69-year-old rival going into the final day next year, maybe he can employ a bulldozer to dig up the course overnight. Then, no doubt, they will just switch the fixture to Kempton!

It might still only be the end of the “phoney” phase of the campaign, but Dan Skelton has already sent out 154 individual horses. Between them 46 have collected 57 wins and £888k in prizemoney. I said it was “phoney”, as remembering Armistice Sunday yesterday, when in early 1940 the bombs hadn’t yet started falling on London in what was known as the phoney war.

I’ll tell you how phoney the jumps season has been. Mullins has had just two jump runners here in Britain since he mopped up all that money back in April. Winter Fog, eighth in the Cesarewitch last month, went on to Wetherby for the Grade 2 staying hurdle on Charlie Hall Chase Day and was fourth of five, collecting a paltry £3,650 for his exertions. At Cheltenham, in between those two excursions, Chart Topper pulled up in a Pertemps qualifier.

Anyway, enough of that old suff. Not entirely, as the main thesis of my article – took a while coming, Ed! - as it relates to a chance comment on Sky Sports Racing that, “Dan Skelton is the ‘target’ trainer par excellence”. He’s pretty good, of course, habitually winning those Cheltenham Festival handicap hurdles especially from under the noses of the Irish handicap-doctored brigade.

But I would nominate another UK trainer, Jamie Snowden, as having honed the skill of making long-range plans for his horses. Before starting training in Lambourn in season 2008/09 he was a top-class amateur connected to the Nicky Henderson stable and a regular winner of the Sandown Military races following and during an army career.

On Saturday at Aintree his Colonel Harry returned after ten months off the track to win the Grand Sefton Chase with a patient ride from Gavin Sheehan, reminiscent, to me anyway, of Graham Lee’s wonderful victory for Ginger McCain in the 2004 Grand National on Amberleigh House.

He has inevitably the Coral Gold Cup in three weeks at Newbury as his immediate ambition. The way Colonel Harry finished off Saturday’s race suggests he will have a great chance to win another “Hennessy” as the trainer still calls the race following his victory two years ago with Datsalrightgino.

It took a few years for Snowden to get going as a trainer but single figures became 19 at the fourth attempt and the progress has been steady and impressive since then. After a few seasons in the high 40s he made a significant jump to 62 last term.

That was achieved at a healthy 21 per cent, comfortably better than Skelton (19%) and Mullins (18%) and his prizemoney peaked at £807k. Already he has won 38 races this season from only 130 runs, with 23 individual scores from a mere 57 horses to have run before yesterday.

He’s operating at an almost unthinkable 29 per cent so far this campaign with another 66 runners in the places 2^nd to 4^th – making it 104 of 130 in the first four.

Snowden has an exhaustive programme of sourcing and developing young horses. He is very mindful of pedigrees and, after deciding and securing horses, he often leaves sales purchases to learn their job for a year in Ireland before bringing them across. His is a stable that deservedly has made it onto the top table in the UK. Watch out – he is only getting better which he had already been doing superbly for years.

The 2025 flat race season ended in something of a whimper at Doncaster on Saturday. It’s nobody’s fault, but for a start there were few enough top riders still around, many taking a holiday after their exertions at the Breeders’ Cup – the season for title purposes ending with British Champions Day at Ascot in mid-October – while others are getting ready for lucrative winter work in Dubai and elsewhere.

It can take a while to get going on the demanding Hong Kong circuit – well two tracks anyway. David Probert and Richard Kingscote, who rode a close 2^nd at Sha Tin yesterday, are yet to get off the mark after being there for a while. Not so Hollie Doyle who made an instant impact with an all-the-way winner on the first day of her contract there on a 20/1 shot on Wednesday.

Yesterday she had two second places, both outrunning their outsider odds and with rides in almost every race, you can see she will soon be a fan favourite in the former colony.

Back home, the star turn at Doncaster was undoubtedly Billy Loughnane, although he couldn’t add to his tally of 180 wins. But that, and his runner-up spot in the Jockeys’ Championship behind the remarkable Oisin Murphy, tells the now four-times champion that any lapse in his sometimes questionable concentration is sure to be readily punished.

Such is Loughnane’s momentum, in only his third full season, he could well hit the 200-winner mark after an initial six in 2022, 130 in 2023 and 162 last year. He seems unstoppable, getting rides for many top stables, notably Godolphin. His following is such that level-stakes bets on all his mounts in 2025 has shown a loss of 306 points – indicating that despite his above average ability, his mounts are routinely overbet.

Another young rider already making an impact is Toby Moore, 17, on the way with three wins (two for Charlie Appleby) from his first 20 mounts. Ryan Moore’s son must be a big candidate for next year’s apprentices’ title, if any bookmaker is brave enough to offer a price.

- TS

Monday Musings: Divided

3 November 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

There are different opinions as to whether it was Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw who suggested England and America were two nations divided by a common language, writes Tony Stafford. Once again over 14 races at the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar, California, horse racing was the common theme, but American dirt is as foreign to European trainers as their own turf seems to be to the Americans.

All weekend, European horses mopped up where they ought to have done but among the stream of fantastic performances in either discipline, I have to nominate Willie Mullins and his extraordinary achievement in winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf with Ethical Diamond.

I never stop hearing from my friend Maurice Manasseh that his son David, who owns half of the top hurdler Ballyburn, swears by anything Willie Mullins tells him. Indeed, if he’d phoned that morning to say he’d walked across the Irish Sea rather than catch a plane to come to Cheltenham, he probably would have believed that too.

I’m sure that the Heffernan family, two of whose members that own Ethical Diamond would also believe that and anything else you told them about Ireland’s greatest jump trainer. His achievements even outdo those of Vincent O’Brien for the few years the great man and former incumbent at Ballydoyle bothered with the winter game.

In May 2022 at Arqana sales, Mullins and his talent spotter Harold Kirk paid €260k for the 11-times-raced Absurde from the stable of Carlos Laffon-Parias on behalf of the same Heffernan-based syndicate that was to own Ethical Diamond.

Within three months the then five-year-old had easily won a novice hurdle then was second to his star stable-companion Vauban in the Copper Horse Handicap at Royal Ascot. Unplaced then at the Galway Festival in a novice hurdle, he beat the high-class stayer Sweet William for the Ebor Handicap and its £300k prize at York.

The following year, 14 months after the other inspired purchase, the magical duo shelled out 320,000gns at Tattersalls July sale for the three-year-old Ethical Diamond a couple of weeks after he had broken his maiden at the third attempt for trainer Michael Wiliam O’Meara.

It took a little longer for him to match the achievement of Absurde, indeed he finished 51 lengths adrift of stable companion Majborough in the 2024 Triumph Hurdle on his third attempt in juvenile hurdles for Mullins. Yet after one run back on the flat, he was backed down to 7/4 for a handicap at Royal Ascot.

He didn’t win that day under Ryan Moore, but he put that to rights again under Ryan at 3/1 this June, and I remember David (and Maurice) telling anyone who would listen that “he’s a certainty”. Ryan was committed to riding a Coolmore horse in the Ebor, so William Buick stepped in and Ethical Diamond gave him an armchair ride in achieving that eye-watering double within two years for trainer and owners.

Moore, no doubt still bemoaning his luck at missing all the rides for Coolmore at the meeting – one winner from the top-class juvenile Gstaad was their return – will probably have been amazed by the performance of his former partner. The same will have gone for William Buick, especially as when he and Rebel’s Romance shot clear in the straight in the attempt to win the Turf race for the third time, it was the horse he’d ridden in the Ebor only a couple of months earlier that denied him.

I mentioned earlier the two nations that are divided by a common language. The otherwise well clued-up main US television experts dismissed the Ebor as “not even a Stakes race”. No boys, it’s just the most valuable handicap in Europe. Also, Jessica Harrington, one of whose former inmates is now being trained in the US, might not have been delighted to learn it “had been trained in England”.

While he has made a habit of winning flat-race races like the Cesarewitch and Ascot Stakes along with the Queen Alexandra Stakes, also at Ascot, Willie is still regarded as a jumps trainer per se. Not now though and I’m sure that while many UK trainers admired his achievement on Saturday, with his first runner at a Breeders’ Cup at the age of 69, they will be dreading his name appearing in many more of our valuable handicaps from now on.

The 28/1 winner was ridden with great confidence, coming from the widest draw of all by Dylan Browne McMonagle, the newly crowned, youthful and very articulate Irish champion jockey, who has been a mainstay of Joseph O’Brien’s team for a few years now.

Meanwhile Mullins and the two Heffernan boys were quickly out to San Diego airport to fly to Australia where Absurde runs in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. There’s no reason why the £2.2million prize there should be beyond this versatile performer who has a County Hurdle win at Cheltenham on his dance card.

Kerrin McEvoy, who spent time with Godolphin in the UK, comfortably manages his 8st6lb weight. Vauban, now with Gai Waterhouse and her training partner Adrian Bott, is also in the 24-runner field in the race that stops the nation.

I thought the win of Forever Young for his Japanese connections in the $7 million Classic was tremendous, not just for the result but the fact that the same three horses filled the first three places as they did a year ago.

Then, Forever Young had finished third behind fellow three-year-olds Sierra Leone and Fierceness. Here he overtook Fierceness coming to the last furlong and held off the strong and expected late finish from Sierra Leone. As he had also been only narrowly denied by Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone (nose and the same) in the Kentucky Derby on his earlier US sortie, this was due reward for trainer Yoshito Yahagi, who in 2021 had given Japan two other Breeders’ Cup wins on the same Del Mar track.

The alteration to the programme which has brought the Classic from its place as the climax of the card to having three more races to follow isn’t to everyone’s taste. The last of them, the Filly and Mare Turf, went to the pin up boys of French racing, Francis-Henri Graffard and Mickael Barzalona.

They had teamed up to win the Arc last month with Daryz and the Champion Stakes at Ascot two weekends ago with Calandagan. Now they struck again here with the filly Gezora, winner of the French Oaks in the summer but unplaced in unfavourably soft ground and from a very difficult draw when partnered by Tom Marquand in the Arc. She had been the morning line favourite on Saturday but drifted alarmingly in the market on the race, starting at a rewarding 9/1 as she ran down She Feels Pretty in the last half-furlong, winning by half a length.

She Feels Pretty will travel straight across to Kentucky where she will be offered for sale. Having already collected more than £2 million from eight wins and three second places in only 13 runs, She Feels Pretty will be on most of the big players’ sights.

It was good to see a smart ride by William Buick and a brilliant tactical plan by Charlie Appleby pay off with an easy, drawing-away win for 2024 2,000 Guineas victor Notable Speech in the Mile turf race. He was unluckily beaten a neck behind Diego Velazquez in the Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville in the summer.

Sam Sangster and the National Stud where Sangster’s shrewd acquisition will stand as a stallion next year will be delighted to advertise him as having beaten Classic winner Notable Speech in a Group 1 race. Sam won’t be bothered at all that had William Buick got him out of a tangle a couple of strides earlier, that crucial Group 1 win probably would not have happened.

- TS

Monday Musings: Plus Ca Change

27 October 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, writes Tony Stafford. Save an accent or two – if cedillas and circumflex accents can be found on my keyboard, they’ve escaped me so far – but you get my drift. And I’m not going to lead off with Futurity win number 12 and an eighth British flat-race trainer’s title for Aidan O’Brien either.

It’s 25 years since my The Daily Telegraph Pocket Racing Guide, with the secondary title of the Inside Track on Horseracing, was published by Collins Willow, with a much-valued foreword by Henry Cecil.

Back then I took the opportunity to select three figures who I thought had been fundamental in making a major impact on the sport at the end of the 1990s. In bookmaking, it was Victor Chandler, who is no longer associated with the BetVictor brand that he developed.

Victor was far-sighted in transferring his business to Gibraltar, offering a cut-price betting tax rate of three per cent along with free telephone calls to his UK clients, rather than the nine per-cent prevailing at the time in the UK. Now, it seems, the desperate Rachel from accounts, Chancellor of the Exchequer, wants to bring back a tax on all betting on racing, off-course and on.

Then I picked Lord Hartington, who four years later inherited the title, Duke of Devonshire. ”Stoker” as he is universally known, was the man who presided over the transfer of racing power from the Jockey Club to the British Horseracing Board (now Authority), and as I suggested, was one of the trio that helped drag the sport from the 19^th into the 21^st Century.

Why plus ca change, then? Well number three was Peter Savill, then the recently appointed boss of the fledgling BHB, whom I described all those years ago as “much-criticised but highly independent … and the ideal man to preside over the technological revolution.”

Savill’s premise at the time was that racing needed to receive a greater share of betting revenue. Twenty-five years on, the issue remains the same and the news this weekend that Savill, along with UK racing’s most winning trainer Mark Johnston, have both joined the board of the Racehorse Owners Association, promises to shake things up.

He says he joined the board, on Johnston’s suggestion, as he felt it would give him more influence than he has managed to achieve with his own Professional Racing Association. He said that racecourses’ attitude seemed to be: “You’re not part of the industry.” “Well now we are!”

Savill, who ran the BHB for six years, promises to be unashamedly “strident”, a word often attributed to him as he enters his new role. The owner of Plumpton racecourse and a horse owner for many years, with a good few of them with Mark Johnston, he’s never been frightened of shaking a few trees, so the other disparate strands of racing’s establishment might well have a serious standard-bearer to line up alongside.

Peter’s aim remains the same: increasing prizemoney and he has firm ideas on how to move towards that ambition. I wish him well and have no doubt that he and co-new boy Mark of the 5,000 plus wins and the “Always Trying” slogan, will never give up in helping achieve their admirable objectives.

Okay, so now to Aidan O’Brien. It was salutary that only two UK-trained horses contested the final Group 1 race of the UK season at Doncaster on Saturday and even more so when those two had already been left toiling and trailing after the two-furlong mark.

The Futurity has now been won by O’Brien for his Coolmore partners in 12 of the last 27 years. This time, the one-two-three of Hawk Mountain, Action and Benvenuto Cellini pushed him comfortably over the £8 million plus earnings which put him £800k clear of the persistent Andrew Balding, The latter would have provided one possibly more dangerous challenger in Item, but unsuitably testing ground caused his absence.

Hawk Mountain was promoted immediately after to 8/1 favouritism for the Derby next June, supplanting Benvenuto Cellini, but with so many smart staying types in his stable, it seems foolish to want to commit to backing any of them at this stage.

To illustrate that point, the winner Hawk Mountain was one of 37 juveniles (25 colts) listed in the O’Brien team of juveniles to be sired by their recently deceased champion stallion Wootton Bassett. Second and third are among ten by Frankel in that list. Frankel, unbeaten in his 14 races for Sir Henry Cecil, is of course a son of the peerless Galileo who died three years ago. No wonder the team has been keen to acquire progeny from that Juddmonte stallion.

So then it was off to France yesterday and Saint-Cloud where the two feature races, both Group 1 contests for two-year-olds, were the target. The Criterium International and Criterium de Saint-Cloud, over one mile and one and a quarter miles respectively, each had multiple O’Brien runners. Also each carried a winner’s prize equivalent to £118k.

Unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico, the mount of Christophe Soumillon, started the short-priced favourite in the International following his easy success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on Arc Day. He lived up to that with a comfortable success, by almost two lengths from Jean-Claude Rouget’s Campasite. It almost goes without saying that he is another by Wootton Bassett and will be a contender for next year’s 2,000 Guineas.

As I mentioned earlier, it might be foolish to move too soon in Derby betting. One at least as convincing contender must be Pierre Bonnard. The recent Zetland Stakes winner over 1m2f at Newmarket had the proven stamina to win the Criterium de Saint-Cloud over the same trip and showed it along with a great finishing burst to draw easily clear. A double then for Belgian rider Soumillon, at his best on his normal hunting ground.

While O’Brien has more than £8 million earnings when top in the UK and Euro 7m in his home country, yesterday’s double keeps him in a clear third behind Francis-Henri Graffard and Fabre with more than £4.5 million in France – thus in total around £20 million in Europe’s three main racing nations.

Earlier the Prix Perth went to a less fashionable UK-based team, that of trainer David Loughnane and jockey Laura Pearson. The Shropshire-based handler’s five-year-old mare Sparks Fly, a non-winner previously in 2025 but successful at this Parisian track last November, won this Group 3 race very easily from the Andre Fabre-trained favourite. Sparks Fly clearly loves it when the mud flies!

Incidentally, if you would love to own a colt by Wootton Bassett, there are five slated on the first day of Tattersalls October Horses in Training sale, due to be offered today. They are Choir Boy (lot 87), Grafton Street (91), Ex Animo (226), Estoublon (229) and Genealogy (293).

The highest-rated in the draft are Mount Kilimanjaro (by Siyouni), lot 300, rated 110 and Shackleton, a staying son of Camelot (296) who is officially rated 108. If you are planning a trip there to try to buy one of these, remember withdrawals are possible up until time of sale.

With some opportunities later in the year beckoning in the Far East, O’Brien is limbering up with a potent force for the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar on Friday and Saturday this week. I’m sure the Editor has given you plenty of his thoughts to excuse my not delving into matters too deeply, but such as Precise, True Love, Gstaad, Minnie Hauk, The Lion In Winter and Bedtime Story offer lots of potential to say the least.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Five and a Six Away from Ascot

20 October 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

On a day when Ascot’s Champions Day supplied winners at 200/1 and 100/1 for home stables, two of Ireland’s biggest yards were at it elsewhere, writes Tony Stafford. It came as little surprise when Aidan O’Brien had the first five and then mercifully allowed someone else to get on the scoresheet before making it six on the day back home at Leopardstown.

With several multiple opportunities through the card, it wasn’t easy to identify which would be the better, notably in the fifth, the Group 3 Killavullan Stakes. This went to 13/8 second-best Dorset in the Derrick Smith silks, after getting first run on the Michael Tabor colours on 6/4 favourite Daytona, clear of the rest and much to the mirth of the two gentlemen concerned back at Ascot.

I doubt whether even they or their trainer would have been able to predict all six beforehand. If they had, it was around a 1,150/1 six-timer, eclipsing the 200/1 longest-ever Group 1 winning starting price recorded by the Richard Fahey-trained Powerful Glory back at Ascot. His victory in the Qipco Champion Sprint owed much to a Jamie Spencer masterclass amid the whoops and disbelieving on the straight course at Ascot where his age-old skills never dim.

Two races later I did venture into the paddock, when many of the connections stay to view their race on the big screen, to watch the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes. Horse racing can bring emotion far removed from everyday life and I swear I saw more than one very emotional woman and at least half a dozen men unashamedly crying as Charlie Hills’ Cicero’s Gift returned to unsaddle.

It was a day of days for owners Rosehill Racing and even jockey Jason Watson was wiping away a tear or two as he brought the unconsidered five-year-old back having edged out the big guns. Behind, a revived The Lion In Winter led home Alakazi and Docklands, with the disappointing pair Field Of Gold and Rosallion next home.

No doubt emotion in the entire Hills family was the order of the day just short of four months after Charlie’s father Barry, such a genius of a trainer, died at the age of 88. I snatched a few words with Barry’s widow and Charlie’s mum Penny earlier in the day. Afterwards I recalled one day driving down Fulham Palace Road in West London a decade or more prior, passing Charing Cross Hospital where Barry was being treated for cancer and seeing Penny on her way out having visited him, as she did every day during his illnesses.

She looked great on Saturday and I’m sure she felt that her son, often under-valued by ultra-critical people in racing – not always the kindest of arenas – had gone a long way to silencing his critics. After all, hadn’t he also won the Grade 2 Woodford Stakes at Keeneland two weeks earlier with the nine-year-old Khaadem, partnered by Frankie Dettori? That Fitri Hay-owned sprinter had won the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee at Royal Ascot both in 2023 and last year. You don’t keep top-class horses going that long into a career without having a real talent for the job.

Frankie no doubt would have been keeping an eye on matters at Ascot on the 29^th anniversary of his unique seven-race through-the-card feat. I saw Gary Wiltshire at Chelmsford on Thursday night and he’s still dining out on how he lost £2 million laying the last winner of that septet. I won’t ever forget it either, having to write an extra chapter for the book Year in The Life Of Frankie Dettori, ready to go as it was then.

Gary’s latest book detailing those days is a steady seller, and I hope Victor Thompson’s Eighty Years in the Fast Lane, also published by Weatherbys will get a nice response. I helped Victor and his partner Gina Coulson put it together, and the final piece in the puzzle came with Nick Luck’s stylish and heart-warming foreword last week. Publication should be at the end of this month.

If ever I write another book of my own, the title ought to be “I digress” (!), because almost the most unlikely eventuality of all those remarkable Saturday feats was occurring over in the US at Far Hills racecourse in New Jersey.

Gordon Elliott might have been bullied almost into submission in the top races over the years by Willie Mullins, but he certainly knows how to pick his spots. He sent a team of horses to the US’s biggest day of jump racing in both prestige and money terms on Saturday and won five, including their Champion Hurdle and Grand National.

Jack Kennedy, happily recovered from his latest injury, rode four of them, giving way to Danny Gilligan on Coutach in the £72k to the winner Champion Hurdle. Pride of place goes to the last of the quintet, Zanahiyr, an Aga Khan-bred son of Nathaniel, Enable’s sire. Nathaniel, at the age of 17, has been making enough of a revival to stand at an increased £20k at Newsells Park Stud. Graham Smith-Bernal, Newsells’ owner, was still bubbling over another sales triumph (3.6 million gns) even though only second of the pile at Tattersalls Book 1 for a son of Frankel, sold of course to Amo Racing.

Zanahiyr collected £120k for his neck success over fellow Irishman, the Gavin Cromwell-trained Ballysax Hank. He’s another versatile type having won the Summer Plate at Market Rasen (a race won the previous year by geegeez syndicate horse, Sure Touch, which also followed up there this week) and collected a 1m6f flat race on home turf before his trip to New Jersey.

Cromwell had fulfilled a long ambition when sending out Stumptown, a regular in good handicap chases, to win the Velka Pardubicka over the fearsome obstacles at Pardubice, Czech Republic, the previous weekend.

In all, Elliott’s five pulled in a total of £300,000. It’s to his credit that he’s come through the dark days and the ban that followed that infamous photo with ever more energy and operational dexterity.

Judged on recent events Elliott, Cromwell and Joseph O’Brien will be ever more visible going for the top UK prizes this winter when the home defence, with one or two exceptions, might struggle to withstand them – never forgetting the imperious Willie Mullins.

I hear a whisper that the champ already has earmarked the horses he intends to line up for the five Grade 1 races that were the fixture for so many years for the opening day at Cheltenham’s Festival meeting next March. One of the stable’s most ardent followers was bemoaning the rearrangement of the four-day programme that as he says dilutes the top races through the week. Maybe it’s a response by bookmakers sick of having their pants down and bottoms smacked every year by Wearisome Willie!

I digressed and did so again. What a day. We saw a proper middle-distance champion in the French gelding Calandagan, too speedy for the rest and ridden with great tactical awareness by Mickael Barzalona, two weeks on from his Arc de Triomphe win on Daryz. An early test of that form was Kalpana’s easy repeat win in Saturday’s Champion Filly and Mare race, soon clear in the straight and never tested in repelling a late thrust from Estrange. That striking grey ran a blinder considering the unsuitably fast ground.

John Gosden seemed more pleased to have ended the three-race tussle with Delacroix (who finished fourth) on the credit side, two-to-one, than worry about Osbudsman’s being beaten by the French raider who, like Daryz, is trained by Francis-Henri Graffard.

In that race I was astonished that Delacroix hadn’t finished in front of outsider Almaqam, trained by Ed Walker, especially as my vantage point was as near to level with the winning line as it can get. Certainly, it’s better than from the Royal Box fifty yards further down the straight!

Again, there was chat about Christophe Soumillon, even after winning the Two-Year-Old Conditions race on Mission Control for the Coolmore team and O’Brien. In the big one, he was ahead of both Calandagan and William Buick on Ombudsman turning for home but then was swamped by a pincer movement from behind, immediately losing his nice pitch. I doubt he would have troubled the winner, but he might have been in another close fight with the Gosden horse had he kept out of trouble. Most of us thought he ought to have done better in the finish for third too, but I’ve talked about his coming unstuck in photos before.

Then again, having had a chip each way (forget which of my old-time friends used to say that!) on Karl Burke’s Holloway Boy in the closing Balmoral Handicap, the one handicap on the day, my eyes again deceived me. I knew Crown of Oaks had won to give yet another big handicap to William Haggas but was sure Holloway Boy, in his first run since Meydan in April, was a narrow outright second.

Once more, I was wrong, the dead-heat announcement being a further surprise. Talking of Holloway Boy he, like the fifth-placed favourite Native Warrior, is trained by Karl Burke, one trainer inexorably moving up the ladder.

A reflection of that is how he’s now winning races overseas, too. Yesterday in the Group 2 Prix du Conseil de Paris at Longchamp he reversed Balmoral Handicap fortunes with Haggas, Convergent getting the better of his rival’s Dubai Honour by a neck.

Native Warrior was one of five Wathnan Racing runners on the day, from four different stables, all ridden by James Doyle. His is a fantastic job and one that can only get better as the owners and Richard Brown extend their tentacles.

There are still a few rungs to go before Karl Burke makes the top three in his peer group. After Saturday’s skirmishes, when O’Brien, Andrew Balding and the Gosdens each had one winner, it’s status quo in the UK trainers’ title race, with Aidan now guaranteed another triumph. If he wins the Futurity at Doncaster on Saturday, he’ll nudge over £8million in prize money.

Finally, after a day with more to mention than space warrants, on the way out I bumped into old pal Graham Thorner, former trainer and Grand National winning rider. I suggested that Ascot remains unique in that it attracts massive crowds for all its dates and that I’d never seen so many young people at a race meeting before. He agreed. Whatever Ascot’s blueprint for success, they should make sure they pass it on to less successful venues.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Ces for the Home Team

13 October 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

I recently wrote about the sad decline in the attraction to trainers of Newmarket’s Cambridgeshire Handicap, run two weeks ago with a first prize of £90k, writes Tony Stafford. On a track where they could easily accommodate 35 horses and room for five or six London buses in between up the straight it looked a mundane affair at best.

They even used to run a consolation race (for much less money) for a few years not so long ago and while never having the relevance of the Chester Cup or Northumberland Plate consolations, it at least gave a run to people who had prepared their horses for the big race and missed out. While admiring the performance of its top-weighted winner Boiling Point for Karl Burke last month, the 2025 race was a tame and wholly domestic affair.

Of course, when it came to the Cesarewitch on Saturday, for a similar first prize, the Irish were interested – sending out ten of their mainly second-division stayers, but where was the feasible home defence going to come from?

In all, only 19 went into the stalls for the race that, as my friend Maurice Manasseh, half a century on from John Oaksey, reminded us, “It begins in Cambridgeshire and finishes in Suffolk”. One of those racing homilies I never tire of hearing.

Accustomed over the years to seeing a massive line-up way over there, a mile along the A14 just behind the service station, this year’s contingent went the reverse way all the 2m2f of it in dribs and drabs. It used to be a stream, and you wondered how they could survive four-and-a-half miles.

I’m sure it’s the smallest field for at least in my consciousness. I restricted myself to going back until 2019 – Wikipedia doesn’t list the size of field, but while there were a couple of near misses with 24 last year and 21 plus two non-runners on the day in 2022, otherwise it has been invariably 30-plus, certainly since 2019 in any case. [Certainly since at least 1997 – Ed.]

That 2019 race went to Willie Mullins with his star hurdler Stratum and was worth 217 grand to Midas-touch owner Tony Bloom. How can a race with this amazing history have declined by more than half in money terms in just six short years?

Part of that irrelevance, no doubt, reflects the enormous strides made by its Irish counterpart, run two weeks earlier with a full 30-horse field. That race carried a first prize of more than 300k whether you count it in £ or Euro.

Ours was a mere pittance in contrast but was well enough patronised by Joseph O’Brien and previous winners Willie and Emmet Mullins, Charles Byrnes as well as Tony Martin. He, apart from doing the job with Leg Spinner in 2007 also had a hand (at least) in the win of his sister Cathy O’Leary with Alphonse Le Grande last year while he was serving a ban – but not one severe enough to stop him celebrating afterwards on the winner’s rostrum.

The Irish on Saturday were 2^nd,3^rd, 5^th, 6^th, 8^th, 9^th and 10^th from their ten representatives, while winner Beylerbeyi, fourth placed Divine Comedy (Harry Eustace) and seventh home Belgravian (Andrew Balding) did at least intrude on the invaders’ expected party. Certainly, the watchers around me were astounded that neither Willie Mullins nor Joseph O’Brien had the winner.

But such is the power of their two stables in flat race staying contests that between them they supplied 14 of the 30 starters at the Curragh two weeks previously including winner Puturhandstogether for O’Brien in the J P McManus colours. I doubt a 4lb penalty would have stopped him off 86 on Saturday (including the penalty) if he hadn’t had bigger fish to fry.

And so to the winner. I saw Ian Willims for a few minutes before he saddled Beylerbeyi for the race. I had been amazed that his five-year-old was as short as 7/1 for a race of this calibre and suggested his handling of the gelding had been remarkable, but he said, “We’ve got to see if he stays yet.”

Until July, I had Beylerbeyi firmly pitched as a middle-range miler; indeed apart from two unsuccessful runs in novice hurdles at the end of last year the longest trip he had ever encountered was one mile one and a half furlongs around Wolverhampton.

Williams loves acquiring chuck-outs from top French stables, most notably Francis-Henri Graffard – not a bad place to buy from – and Beylerbeyi, although a winner first-time at two, from four runs for Jean-Claude Rouget’s top yard, was picked up for only €7k and knocked down to Williams.

Like many trainers, he finds it harder to get his horses’ ratings to drop even after a series of unsuccessful runs, so he put the horse in the care of less-fashionable Patrick Morris, and the adverse effect happened, 13lb off for four defeats, upon which he entered the Williams team proper.

It took 11 runs starting from and ending on 62 before Beylerbeyi’s initial victory – point taken! – in June last year over seven furlongs at Wolverhampton. Within weeks that had transformed into a hat-trick with victories over seven again and then a mile at Doncaster. Three more runs preceded one further win, in the outing over the extended nine furlongs I mentioned earlier, back at Dunstall Park.

He was still racing at around a mile when he reappeared this year and then, in July, he was third when tried over one mile two and a half furlongs at York. Then it was another hat-trick, all upped to 1m4f. You would still hardly regard that as sufficient evidence for eyeing the Cesarewitch and its 2m2f slog.

Beylerbeyi is by Invincible Spirit, sire of many high-class sprinters and milers, and I doubt his breeders Al Shaqab Racing would have predicted a race like Saturday’s as on their radar. But the sire does have a good win percentage with the smaller group of his progeny that have tried 1m6f and above. When Ian moved him up to 1m6f, he finished strongly when second at the Doncaster St Leger meeting and then was an eye-catching third at Newbury.

But here he was, running over half a mile further than ever before, no wonder the trainer’s apparent uncertainty. Beylerbeyi broke slowly and Billy Loughnane held him up last of the entire field for much of the trip. He moved him out just as Hughie Morrison’s Caprelo had started his run a couple of lengths ahead of him on the outside and, when that opponent’s promise quickly evaporated, Beylerbeyi simply got stronger.

Caprelo’s rider Tyler Heard had been instructed to sit in the pack and hold on to his mount. He told Hughie afterwards, “They seemed to be going so slow; I was worried they would get away from me”. Morrison pointed out yesterday morning that in fact this was the fastest race on the day compared with standard times on a day when the Dewhurst and two other Group races for two-year-olds were contested. I can further tell Hughie that this was the second-fastest Cesarewitch of this century!

So just when the Irish hordes, headed by Joseph’s Dawn Rising with a run timed to perfection it seemed by Oisin Murphy, and Willie’s Bunting (William Buick), whose transit was troubled, seemed to have it between them, along came Beylerbeyi.

Loughnane, on the outside of what promised to be a three- or even four-horse conclusion, utilised the speed that won Beylerbeyi so many races at around a mile and he was soon clear, going away from his field at the finish.

With such races as the Chester Cup and Ascot Stakes among Williams’ favourites and both on his palmarès, expect Beylerbeyi to be aimed at those and maybe more ambitious targets next year. One regret Williams might have is that he didn’t give the five-year-old a third jumps run. His mark might even have been lower than he’ll get after tomorrow’s re-think.

Loughnane has 106 wins in the portion of the year that decides the Jockeys’ Champion with Oisin Murphy way out in front on 140 and guaranteed to collect his prize on Saturday at Ascot. Over the whole year, Loughnane has a remarkable 167 victories. Still only 19, he is destined for many jockeys’ titles of his own.

One former champion, Ryan Moore, has had to sit out a good portion of the important autumn this year as the number one for Coolmore. In his stead Christophe Soumillon hasn’t been received with universal joy by some of the people around the team.

His success in France last weekend was enough to quell some of the criticism, but now back on UK soil and despite big wins on fast-improving and now 1,000 Guineas favourite Precise on Friday and unbeaten Pierre Bonnard, impressive in beating stablemate Endorsement in the 10-furlong Zetland Stakes the following day, the chatter continued.

One said, “He’s okay with steering jobs or in France, but I reckon he’s been beaten in seven photo-finishes on Coolmore horses since York.”

The 44-year-old’s riding of Gstaad in the Dewhurst Stakes, the race that probably would have had the Aidan O’Brien colt in pole position for the 2,000 Guineas next May had he won, also drew criticism.

While James Doyle on the Andrew Balding-trained 25/1 chance Gewan raced prominently throughout the seven furlongs, Soumillon allowed Gstaad to drift back into centre-pack in the middle of the race and had several positions looking for gaps before getting into second in the last furlong. He was beaten by three-parts of a length.

A contemplative and solitary Ryan surveyed the paddock before the race, and I would love a penny for his thoughts on how it panned out. It did make a £350,000 difference in the gap between the two protagonists for the trainers’ title. O’Brien still holds a £630k lead over Balding, but a round million would have felt more secure going into a mouth-watering British Champions Day at Ascot next Saturday.

At least, with the weather set fair, we should have unusually decent ground for this fixture when if Delacroix, on his final appearance, should win the Champion Stakes it will all be done and dusted.

- TS

Monday Musings: Daryz Makes it the Aga’s Arc

6 October 2025/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Ten furlongs (and a little bit) on fast ground at York is a world away from a mile and a half in very soft going at Longchamp in October, writes Tony Stafford. Run in a fast time – yesterday’s Qatar Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was the only race among a string of Group 1’s to better the standard – identifies it as a very good version of the race, certainly as far as the first two home were concerned.

The going might explain in part Daryz’s elevation from last of six as a 14/1 shot at York to winning the Arc at slightly bigger odds. In doing so, he collected more than £2 million for the Aga Khan studs. Sadly, Prince Karim, who died in early February this year, never lived to see his colt, a son of champion 2,000 Guineas, Derby and Arc winner Sea The Stars on the racetrack.

https://youtu.be/poLX14qVTA8?si=6MWEOQdjr4vIwOfK

Daryz only made his debut in early April and trainer Francis-Henri Graffard guided him gently through the grades before York, via two conditions events, then a Listed race and a Group 2, before sending him overseas for the first time.

There was an obvious feeling of shock when he flopped in the Juddmonte, but Daryz restored confidence with a narrow defeat in the Group 3 Prix du Prince d’Orange over ten furlongs of Sunday’s course three weeks ago. Just a neck behind Japan’s Croix Du Nord, his was very much a try-out for yesterday, and the form turnaround – 11 lengths – was a stark reminder of how the top French trainers have always used the racing calendar to their advantage.

Daryz would undoubtedly have been at much shorter odds bar the flood of money on the Pari-Mutuel for the three Japanese runners. Two, Croix Du Nord and Alohi Alii, were out with the washing in 14^th and 16th of the 17 starters, while Byzantine Dream, supported down to 7/1 second favourite, could do no better than fifth.

So far, we haven’t mentioned the favourite, unreasonably so as Minnie Hauk ran an astounding race, beaten only a neck by the Mickael Barzalona-ridden winner having been in the front four throughout. When Christophe Soumillon took her to the front, it looked like being a Coolmore/Aidan O’Brien treble on the day, but Daryz proved just too strong.

As the colt and filly fought out the finish, it was admirable that they stretched more than five lengths ahead of their field. With such as the Juddmonte one/two Ombudsman and Delacroix absent, as well as unqualified-by-the-conditions star geldings including Calandagan and Goliath, it wasn’t the race of earlier vintages when EVERYTHING used to turn up.

Having been a fan of racing well before Sea Bird II’s 1965 Derby and Arc demolition jobs, I’ll never forget his day in Paris when he cantered over such as Reliance, Diatome and further back the top-class American colt Tom Rolfe.

Big money is to be earned with less sweat for connections and horses alike these days, though, and no doubt the Japanese will be regretting putting so much energy into their continuing luckless quest to win the race. They do far better on Dubai World Cup Day and yesterday’s valiant trio should be ready in time for that.

As the records describe him, Aga Khan IV won the race four times between 1982 and 2008 with Akiyda, Derby winner Sinndar, Dalakhani and the brilliant mare Zarkava.

His father, Prince Aly Khan, married to the actress Rita Hayworth and destined to an early passing via a fatal car crash, enjoyed success in 1959 with Saint Crespin. And his father, Aga Khan III, won the race which was founded in 1920 with Migoli in 1948 and Nuccio four years later.

Talking about the Arc soon afterwards Barzalona explained how he needed to make the most of his good draw. Soumillon on Minnie Hauk (drawn 1) was fast away and Barzalona slotted the winner, exiting stall two, in just handy. It’s always seemed weird to me that over longer distances it happens, but the draw did make a big difference in this race. The highest drawn of the first four home was Marco Botti’s Giavellotto, (drawn five) just behind third-placed Sosie (stall three) in fourth.

You would imagine that the winner, unraced at two, would have plenty to gain from staying in training, and might be aimed at a rare Arc double next year. I would love to see Minnie Hauk, a daughter of Frankel, continue too. One obvious stud route for her was closed when Wootton Bassett came to his untimely end in Australia last month.

It seems a date next month at the Breeders’ Cup has not been ruled out. Yesterday was only her fifth race of the year and seventh in all, so she has hardly been over raced. I’m pretty sure the ever-combative owners would be all for it.

Incidentally, Wootton Bassett had two winners on the Sunday card, both from mares by Galileo. Having already picked up the Qatar Prix Marcel Bousac with Diamond Necklace, O’Brien, Soumillon and the Coolmore partners added the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere for two-year-old colts with Puerto Rico.

Last weekend at Newmarket, on remarking to Michael Tabor that True Love had done well to retain her form through a long season in winning the Cheveley Park Stakes, he replied, “That’s what Aidan does.”

He could have used the same phrase to describe the progress of the Lagardere winner. He was beaten twice in maidens; another couple of times in Curragh Group 2 races before finishing 4^th in the Keeneland Phoenix Stakes (Group 1) a couple of places behind True Love.

He broke his maiden at the sixth time of asking at Doncaster last month and improved again markedly on that with an all-the-way emphatic success here. Last year’s winner of the race, stable-companion Camille Pissarro, went on to victory in this year’s Prix du Jockey Club and was retired after getting injured when 4^th to another stablemate, Delacroix, in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes.

The second win from that Wootton Bassett-Galileo nick was the Christopher Head-trained Maranoa Charlie in the Prix de la Foret. The three-year-old had been extremely unlucky when third at York and showed his true colours here.

There had been a few mutterings that Soumillon’s spell as temporary replacement for Ryan Moore had not been a success, but the contra view was that he would come into his own on the French tracks. His masterful judgment of pace coming from the back on Diamond Necklace was a typical French ride from the Yves Saint-Martin era, never getting involved until coming with a smooth run down the outside. Those 8/1 odds for Newmarket next spring might shrink a fair bit over the winter.

Unusually, yesterday wasn’t a great day for UK trainers, who drew a blank. One who did play a part in a piece of racing history, however, was Amy Murphy. Now happily settled in Chantilly, she had been among the back-up team behind Asfoora’s first ever win for an Australian-trained horse in France.

Asfoora’s trainer Henry Dwyer was rather sheepish as he related how if it hadn’t been for Ms Murphy and a very quick Uber driver, the mare would not have been allowed to race.

Instead of taking Asfoora’s passport to the track, he brought the one for a horse he’d bought at the Arqana Arc Eve sale on Saturday. Amy sorted the driver and the correct passport arrived with a minute and a half to spare.

It didn’t take Asfoora quite that long to beat her 16 rivals in the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp under a very confident Oisin Murphy. She came through to challenge outsider Jawwal in the last furlong, winning by a comfortable half-length in 56.39 sec. The seven-year-old isn’t regarded as the best sprinter in Australia but she’s more than good enough to beat the cream of Europe’s speed merchants.

It was sad that Peter Charalambous’s Apollo One found so much trouble in the six furlongs of Ascot’s John Guest Racing Bengough Stakes on Saturday, more than enough to prevent a follow-up from last year’s triumph. Stopped in his run repeatedly, he stretched out gamely to the line, making up several lengths in the last furlong, but missed out by a rapidly diminishing short head to Mick Appleby’s Annaf.

Winning group races is never easy, but this was one that slipped through his owner-trainer-breeder’s fingers. It made the difference of £30k and prevented the seven-year-old (that’s right, another one) from getting neatly onto career earnings of almost exactly half a million quid. I’m sure it’s only delayed.

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