Monday Musings: Wokism

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There was a race at Thirsk on Friday which has given me at least a double pause for thought, although the first of them was barely a pause, just a momentary operational stalls malfunction which brought a ridiculous decision from the course stewards, writes Tony Stafford. Indeed the worst in the history of racing in this and probably any other country.

The 4.35 race was a handicap over 1m4f. Post-race, the stewards stuck their heads together and were satisfied that the berth occupied by the grey, Red Force One, had opened after the others, and declared the horse a non-runner. Presumably they came to that conclusion at least in part as he would not have qualified for any prize money, which he didn’t, finishing tailed off.

I had reason to look at the race a couple of times, still having no clue that anything had been amiss. As the stalls opened, you could see the grey horse was a stride or so behind the others at the outset, ambled along for the first 20 strides easily into the leading group and after a furlong was right in the hunt.

Flat racers probably go around 30 strides to a furlong, so somewhere near 360 strides in a mile and a half race. Thus, if he was inconvenienced at all by the blink of an eye slower exit, it represented one of the 360 strides of the race – 0.28% of the full distance. No wonder he was a non-runner!

Would the stewards still have declared him thus if he had won the £5k plus first prize or even been placed? Wokism, or rather Jokism. Racing is going to the dogs if we have people like these administering the Rules in this way.

The race itself threw up a winner for my great friend Wilf Storey, 85 I believe and still going strong, or rather, strongish, given that the stable strength at Grange Farm stables, Muggleswick is down to a handful. But the team with granddaughter Siobhan Doolan also to the fore, had five wins last year and now two this season, both with the ex-Charlie Fellowes filly Idyllic, from just 13 runs.

I went to see the then three-year-old after Siobhan had successfully bid 9,000gns for her at Newmarket’s HIT sale last backend. Once a winner for Fellowes from ten runs after her 62k yearling purchase, she is by Bated Breath, who stands at £8,000 at Juddmonte, so was hardly excessively priced when Siobhan pounced.

But here comes my bone of contention. She was ridden with rare judgment, strength and skill by the 3lb claiming Paula Muir, who after Friday has ten more wins to go before she loses her claim. If you seem to think Scots lass Paula has been around for a while still to be claiming, you would be right.

In the two years 2018 and 2019 she rode first 22 winners from 216 rides and then 15 from 257. So far this year, she has had the grand total of 13 rides. That’s right, 13, coincidentally the same number as Wilf has sent out with the same horse providing both successes. And ten of those have been for Wilf, who also contributed five of last year’s seven victories, although she did have a more credible 82 rides in 2024.

Chatting to Wilf after the win, he said, “I can’t understand it. Here’s a girl who had had more than 1,000 career rides and now 85 wins. She does a light weight, and she’s really strong and can claim 3lb, yet she can’t get a ride.”

Wilf told me she rides out for Kevin Ryan. “I understand it’s usually on the difficult ones, or those two-year-olds coming up for a first run. She gets a fair bit of knocking about and told me she might pack it all in at the end of the season.”

Investigating this apparent statistical oddity I found that, apart from the ten rides for Storey, she has had one each for another Durham handler in David Thompson - a horse that won its previous race but was 4th of eight when she rode it and did not keep the mount next time, Barry Murtagh and Ryan. Murtagh put her on a 150/1 chance which ran entirely to expectations finishing last of 15 while Kevin Ryan entrusted her with a 50/1 debutant that again didn’t confound the betting market in last of eight.

Before Saturday, Ryan had sent out 40 winners this year from 308 runners, with 33 individual winners from the 94 horses he had raced. You might have thought he could have found her a ride or two more with chances of doing something. A win for his powerful stable would undoubtedly give Paula’s career that little bit of help she needs to help push her back into the limelight.

Every horse she rides gets a proper go as you will see if you watch the video of Friday’s win. Having got Idyllic back on terms with the favourite Ancient Myth, ridden by Mark Winn (ten wins from 138 rides this year) for David O’Meara, that had swept past her at the furlong pole, she pushed her mount back on terms and, confidently with hands and heels, took control for a comfortable neck win.

As I said, watch the race and tell me why she shouldn’t be riding every day of the week rather than the twice a month of 2025. It was planned for her to renew her acquaintance with last year’s dual winner Edgewater Drive at Ayr today, but the ground has dried up too much for him.

Back to Idyllic. Having raced at 1m3f in her previous three races, Idyllic was now up another furlong at Thirsk. Somehow the Wilf Storey horses, especially the females, over the many years of his career and our friendship, always seemed to become more stamina oriented as they developed. It will not shock me to see Idyllic winning over even two miles later in the year.

**

Admittedly, the five-runner field that divvied up the best part of £1.5 million for the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot on Saturday, did comprise a field of Group 1 horses. But it left a sour taste that 2023 St Leger winner Continuous – tailed off after playing a significant role in the majority of the race - could cop forty grand for last place as the Aidan O’Brien second-string. It was £110k for a below-par Jan Brueghel, Coolmore’s number one, in fourth. It would be understandable if most racegoers found that to be money hardly well spent.

Ascot’s Nick Smith did his best to justify this 20% rise from last year’s figure which meant that Francis-Henri Graffard, who won both races, last year with 25/1 shot Goliath and now with 11/10 favourite Calandagan, is well over £1.5 million in stable earnings from the two victories.

The obvious rejoinder to Smith’s case was the standing still in money of many other races around Ascot from top to bottom level. This race is the jewel in the course’s crown, but it is no coincidence, that neither winner will ever be on show in their own country’s biggest event, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe in October, from which geldings are excluded.

One who will presumably have booked her place having finished runner-up only a length behind the winner is the Andrew Balding-trained filly, four-year-old Kalpana, who looked sure to win when Oisin Murphy sent her past the one-paced Jan Brueghel. He, with Continuous, did not help Rebels Romance’s cause as the second string raced on leader Jan Brueghel’s girth until the action heated up in the straight.

Ascot is legion for trouble in running up its short straight even in small fields. That seems absurd given the wide expanse of the track – two handicaps on Saturday were scheduled to field 22-runner races and there were little noticeable hard-luck stories in them. At the Royal meeting, some handicaps accommodate 32 runners. The Godolphin horse was the one that was hamstrung as Kalpana sneaked through between horses and Calandagan came widest of all after lobbing along in last place for the first ten furlongs of the race.

Calandagan clearly found Ascot an easier track to handle than Epsom where Jan Brueghel beat him narrowly in the Coronation Cup. If he didn’t already have it with a series of previous near-misses at the top level, it was cemented that day at Epsom in which he earned the reputation among many (including me) of being a little wimpish.

There was no sign of a wimp from him now though, as he followed up an easy Group 1 score in France last time by reeling in Kalpana, unlike those Thirsk stewards the day before. The BHA should announce an investigation and with seemingly no possible argument to the contrary, turf out the culprits!

- TS

Monday Musings: Deception

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There are funny camera angles for close finishes on a number of tracks, but until the past week or so, I’d never put Newmarket’s July Course into that category, writes Tony Stafford. Then, three times at least, as the horses flashed over the line, the apparent leader in the race to the line, was usurped by a horse or horses racing nearer the stands side.

It happened when the horse I was cheering for, William Knight’s Royal Velvet, had control of her two closest rivals in the final strides before the conclusion in a race the week before last. What happened next, the shot actually on the line, told a totally different story.

The same thing transpired on Friday when the £1.9 million yearling, Charlie Appleby debutant Distant Storm, appeared to have been outdone (on his outside) by Aidan O’Brien’s fellow newcomer Constitution River, but again the online camera left us in no doubt.

Then again on Saturday, in the Bunbury Cup, a 13-runner affair rather than the usual maximum 20, resolved in favour of William Haggas’ More Thunder, who also had a narrow margin to spare. We’ve often mused how often William Haggas goes into big-money handicaps with short-priced favourites. More Thunder was a 6/5 shot in a race where they often go maybe 6/1 the field.

That he should so narrowly get the better of the Ian Williams-trained Aalto, a 40/1 outsider, means no doubt the rise in his mark can be if not minimal, too little to prevent a follow up in another big money handicap.

Williams, also, is a terrific target trainer and he certainly had his eye on the money on offer this last week. His Oneforthegutter picked up Friday’s big prize, the bet365 Trophy over 1m6f, having judiciously employed stablemate Dancing In Paris, runner-up previously in the Northumberland Plate, to ensure a strong gallop.

William Knight isn’t slow to learn. Just a week after Royal Velvet’s near miss he brought out Suzy Hartley’s four-year-old filly again and this time William Buick kept the stands side route for her challenge, again looking less emphatic in the running than at the conclusion.

After being on the conventional side of the track on Friday, I switched to the marquee side – something of an oasis – on Saturday and the ‘on the eye’ view offered no confusion at all. Buick was well in control on Royal Velvet throughout the last half-furlong.

Talking about in control, Buick and his principal employer Charlie Appleby had a meeting to savour, with three apiece on each of the first two days and a concluding double on Saturday, meaning the jockey had three trebles.

The O’Brien / Appleby and Ryan Moore / Buick battles also came down in favour of the home team when Superlative Stakes favourite Italy was easily upstaged by Saba River, both colts coming on after comfortable debut wins.

It was always going to be Italy, in the race where we first saw the true potential of City of Troy two years ago, that would be favourite to justify his status; but Saba River got the stands run while his rival was pushed into the middle of the course. More surprising perhaps than the result was the 6/1 starting price of the winner, who was less than half that price in the morning.

The future progress of the two principals on those two juvenile events on successive days will be something to savour for the rest of the year.

It’s probably a little unkind to leave mention of the July Cup to this stage of the article, so apologies for Richard Hughes not to register the trainer’s first Group 1 win courtesy of the hard-working and obviously talented No Half Measures in the Pat Gallagher colours to confound his 66/1 starting price. The winner’s rating of 105 was 13lb below that of favourite – and last year’s 2,000 Guineas winer – Notable Speech, but he didn’t ever look like joining in the Godolphin win spree.

Ratings and handicap form are too often taken literally when assessing the top sprints, but with around 3lb to the length at 5f and 6f, any minor interruption to a horse’s progress can bring apparent no-hopers into the argument.

Given a peach of a ride by veteran Neil Callan, who said he was amazed how well he was going coming to the last furlong, No Half Measures had to pounce on Mick Appleby’s Big Mojo, a worthy successor to the stable’s Big Evs, and just outstayed his rival.

Pondering the race afterwards, Mick was anything but depressed. “I’m sure if it had been 5f or today’s trip over a less testing course, I’ve no doubt Big Mojo would have won. He’ll be very hard to beat in the Nunthorpe next month.”

As I said earlier, I watched the early races, though not the July Cup, from the other side of the track and counted in excess of 40 strides across the full width. Of course, with its busy summer programme, the track is divided in two but is still more than wide enough. For some reason though, in bigger fields they seem to cluster up and cause each other unnecessary difficulties as the action hots up.

Richard Hughes was a brilliant rider at the top level and while his training career until Saturday has had fewer top-end triumphs, it has been one of unfussed steady progression.

From his third season, in 2017, Hughesie has never fallen below 41 wins, and six times he has been between 50 and last year’s highest figure of 64. The big prize on Saturday pushed him comfortably over the £1 million prizemoney figure for the first time and it’s now four years in a row that he has set new personal scores in that regard.

It is very likely that at his present strike rate, the tally of 42 wins could reach 65 and bring another personal best for this man who, as the son of Dessie Hughes, the long term top Irish jump jockey and then trainer, he therefore was bred for the top.

It was fitting that Neil Callan, whose young son Jack has already ridden 16 winners, would be the vehicle to give Hughes his first Group 1 win. They also teamed up with Richard’s best previous win with Calling The Wild in the 2023 Northumberland Plate.

The three (so far) 2025 heatwaves have brought fitness difficulties for trainers at home in getting their horses onto grass gallops and facing fast ground at most tracks. Most years, trainers have been up in arms when rain has fallen on watered tracks causing wildly different conditions than were anticipated beforehand.

Among the moans about ground being too firm, there was always a strand of complaint, usually drowned out by the majority, saying that the fast ground horses that undoubtedly do exist, were being victimised.

At least this summer the fast-ground horses can enjoy a rare time when opportunities abound. Anyone with a garden – unless you have a hosepipe ban – will tell you that when you water your lawn, later the same afternoon it will have dried out again.

Similarly, if your horse is in the last race at a track where they have put some water on and you don’t want it too firm, hard luck. My already mentioned walk across the July Course posted as “watered, good to firm”, revealed a healthy cushion of grass. Some trainers I’ve been speaking to of late have been surprised to find that some of the horses they had marked down as needing soft ground, surprisingly have won races on firm. Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it, as they used to say.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Star Is Born

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A star is born. That’s right, another from that dastardly Aidan O’Brien nursery, especially if your name is Gosden anyway, writes Tony Stafford. I noticed John, the elder of that father-son combine, bravely smiling straight after his hotpot Ombudsman had been mugged close to home by Ryan Moore and Delacroix in the 50th edition of the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park on Saturday.

Coral had done a splendid promo job, obliterating the previous 90 years’ existence of a race that has always been the province of Classic-standard horses. You wouldn’t get Doncaster, for example, minimising the St Leger’s two centuries’ plus existence for the minor detail of this year’s sponsor.

The racecard on Saturday listed previous winners, from Wollow in 1976 to City Of Troy last year, and that caused me to a momentary – “he wasn’t”.

Surely Wollow I thought was earlier than that, but no of course it was Wollow’s sire, Wolver Hollow, both colts trained by Henry Cecil, that had won the race in 1969. The 1976 champion, Italian-owned, was ridden by Frankie’s father, Gianfranco.

As me and my friend Dick McGinn, who sadly died of cancer a few years ago in Australia after emigrating there, waited at home to see the superb mare Park Top we thought would win that 1969 race, when along came Wolver Hollow and Lester Piggott to give the future Sir Henry his first big win. It was also my final losing bet as a single man – at that stage!

Everyone, including my parents, were already in place as best man Dick and I quickly left the house and sprinted down to St John-at-Hackney Church for my wedding. On arrival, as he searched his pockets for the ring, we learnt that the bridal car was on its third circuit! Sorry dear, better late than never!

I got rather excited last week about a ride in a handicap chase at Uttoxeter. Many were equally enthralled by Ryan Moore’s performance on Delacroix, whose chance coming to the furlong pole looked so remote that one exchange punter managed to secure £2 at 330/1!

But the last furlong at Sandown can seem almost as far as not-yet-forgotten Towcester where a ten-length lead over the last fence wouldn’t guarantee success up its Himalaya-like gradient. Sandown isn’t so steep, but when they’ve gone a solid pace and set out for home early enough, as William Buick did on impressive Royal Ascot winner Ombudsman, that can often be a recipe for disappointment.

While not disagreeing with the general view of Ryan’s latest Group 1 masterclass, he did have a more than willing ally in Delacroix. Neither jockey nor trainer seemed to have expected the sudden burst of speed he unleashed from 150 yards out, when coming from last in what seemed like a flash.

He certainly did flash home, passing all five opponents, including Classic winners Ruling Court (Charlie Appleby, 2,000 Guineas), and his stablemate Camille Pissarro (Prix du Jockey Club) in that final half-furlong. His display in the winner’s enclosure when he promised either to trample or squeeze into the rails anyone silly enough to get on the smaller than usual line in the winner’s photo, suggested he had the energy to have gone round again.

Reduced to an onlooker in the Derby after a troubled run as the race panned into another O’Brien/Coolmore colt in Lambourn’s favour - and that horse lost nothing in reputation by following up at the Curragh – now the more lucrative ten-furlong route for a future stallion is wide open for Delacroix.

The Gosdens and their other big owning connection, Juddmonte, could have taken Irish Guineas and superb St James’s Palace winner Field Of Gold to the Sandown race, but that superb grey colt is firmly on target and odds-on for the Sussex Stakes next month at Goodwood.

Then it will be off to York for the Juddmonte should all go to plan close to the Solent and another of those long sponsorships, at York, where the Juddmonte International will have a massive place in their affections. Watch out, that’s where they will undoubtedly be encountering Delacroix.

Who knows? Just a year on from City Of Troy’s disappointing showing in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, by November time, Delacroix might have forced his way into earning a similar challenge and finally win the race for O’Brien. It’s 25 years if you can believe it since the Iron Horse, Aidan’s 2000 Coral-Eclipse winner Giant’s Causeway, agonisingly failed by only a neck to hold off Tiznow at Churchill Downs.

These days, the old “keeping themselves to their own” breeding policy between Coolmore and Godolphin is no more. According to my chosen source of record, Delacroix is one of ten produce of Godolphin’s prime stallion Dubawi among the Ballydoyle three-year-old division and there are also 13 juveniles. His dam is the champion international miler Tepin, making him a fantastic out cross for all those Galileo mares.

Delacroix’s success will make this autumn’s auctions for his yearlings even more a competition between the two prime powers in racing, although of course Godolphin has all the home-breds of Dubawi it wants.

To counterbalance that, Coolmore’s star, the 300k a pop Wootton Bassett has five representatives among Charlie Appleby’s team of juveniles, but none of the Classic generation. The former French-based sire hadn’t yet announced his true talent before switching to Ireland for the 2022 breeding season.

Meanwhile, the principal Godolphin buying team of Anthony Stroud and David Loder will equally be scanning the sales to see which of the Wootton Bassetts is to be targeted. Loder, I heard from Charlie Appleby on Saturday, has had some successful surgery on his eyes and he’ll be seeing them coming, according to Charlie, from a mile off!

Sandown otherwise had a nice, varied programme backing up the big race and it was only by a neck that William Knight’s nine-year-old Sir Busker failed to match Delacroix’s last to first effort with a flying second at 22/1 in the finale. In his case there were seven horses to pass from last place a furlong from home, but as Brandon Wilkie brought him wide with that rattling finish, they were just foiled by the James Tate-trained Flying Frontier, whose trainer was quizzed afterwards.

Stewards habitually want to know why horses run better than expected, perform worse than expected or are beaten favourites. That’s racing, gents or ladies. I know that Kennet Valley Thoroughbreds’ syndicate owners of Sir Busker have had seven wins including at Royal Ascot, from 58 runs and 660k in earnings.

His later career was hampered by a freak injury when turf flicked up into an eye at Meydan but he came back as bravely as ever and can be a force in these handicaps for a while longer. I would hope the handicapper refrains from raising his mark above 100 once more, but sentiment isn’t much part of their make-up.

Dubawi is also the sire of another of Saturday’s winners, the Richard Hannon-trained Classic, running in the colours of Mrs Julie Wood. He won a £63k handicap in great style earlier on the card, making all under Sean Levey.

Mrs Wood normally recruits her horses in foal sales, but made an exception with Classic, sold as a yearling by Newsells Park Stud for 260,000gns, a price she would never expect to pay for a foal. On the way he won on Saturday there will be much more to come from him.

- TS

Monday Musings: Only The Bold

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I know we’re only halfway through the year; halfway indeed through the decade and barely a quarter into the 21st Century, but I think I’ve just seen the ride of said 100 years, writes Tony Stafford. If you reckon you see one better the other side of 2050, don’t bother try telling me about it, I’ll no longer be here troubling anyone.

My candidate for this purely unbiased accolade was not on show riding the Irish Derby winner – indeed at time of starting this article, the Classic was more than an hour away from being run. I could have a cup of tea and a piece of cake after presenting my case and before sitting down to watch the main event.

The big one here from three jumps only cards – all to the west of the country – was the bet365 Summer Handicap Chase over 3m2f and 20 (to start with) obstacles. Uttoxeter, at 143 miles, was the nearest to London, Ffos Las is 212 miles and Cartmel in the Lake District is 269 miles, for whatever that useless statistic may be worth!

Sometimes it’s only when you’ve backed the recipient of such a ride, especially when the horse comes from out of the clouds as it were, that the degree of amazement is even noticed. I watched Only The Bold, mostly with minimal expectation during the running, purely as it had been my top bet (not supported by cash, I’m afraid) for my From The Stables line in the William Hill Radio Naps table (and, more importantly, for subscribers of a service with the same name, our dear editor being one of the directors).

The horse, a ten-year-old, was having its third run for the Jamie Snowden stable, having shown plenty earlier in its career but suffering from a lack of confidence which brought three consecutive pulled up runs most recently for David Pipe. It happens to the best of them and, sometimes, a change of yard can often be enough to remedy things.

First time for Snowden, Only The Bold was moving well when a mistake halted his progress at Ludlow – resulting in a fourth consecutive “P” on his form line.

But Jamie took heart from that and even more when he rattled home fast but too late into third at Aintree in May. Another two furlongs yesterday and a mark very much down on his peak figure of a couple of years ago meant the near 40 grand first prize had to come to the shrewd Jamie’s notice.

Fifteen horses lined up, soon to be reduced by one from an unseated, and as the leaders - including the Fergal O’Brien-trained Manothepeople - ensured a fast pace, Gavin Sheehan on Only The Bold never looked especially comfortable.

His horse showed little fluency in his jumping and after the first half circuit was firmly among the tailenders. The proximity for a while of the unseated horse didn’t appear to be helping and that might have been why Sheehan took him to the wide outside.

They were in the back three for most of the way, with the jockey manoeuvring widest of all on each of the pretty sharp left-hand bends. I wouldn’t be surprised if one of the many new winner-finding formulae available on the internet hasn’t physically tracked the paths of all the runners (it has - Ed.). I guess he would have gone much the furthest but enjoyed the clearest run thanks to Gavin’s steering.

Four from home at Uttoxeter isn’t all that far out, but Only The Bold was still last and on the outside. Then Gavin got going, and on each of the bends you could see his mount running past a few. Coming to two out the Irish-trained Digby had eased past Manothepeople and was still going well and looking impregnable.

A few lengths behind, Only The Bold was being gently switched inside and at the last fence he was within half a length of the not-stopping leader. Now, I was already expecting the miracle to happen, and indeed it did, the Snowden runner showing the better speed while at the same time stopping yet another Irish invader pilfering a hefty chunk of our prize money.

I say pilfering advisedly. Two runs prior Digby had been brought across to Bangor on the back of some ordinary home form and, supported from 40/1 to 22/1, bolted home, a run that brought a question from the stewards. It was accepted after trainer Dermot McLoughlin cited the longer trip as the reason for the improvement.

A win at home over hurdles in between would have boosted expectations and, apart from Only The Bold’s tenacity, Sheehan’s in-race flexibility, and Snowden’s rejuvenation of an apparently lost cause, they would have been on another 16/1 triumph as well as a nice haul of cash.

If you don’t believe me how unlikely it was until the last fence, have a look at the film, but I’m not bothered either way. Eighteen-to-one winners are like rocking horse’s teeth! [26.0 Betfair Starting Price, traded at 140 in running!]

Next, I’m bringing in an event that was run a few minutes after the Irish Derby as up at Cartmel one trainer listed as having only 18 horses in her care in this year’s Horses in Training book, made it two big-race wins on successive days, one in either discipline.

Dianne Sayer and her assistant, the former jumping amateur rider and daughter of the trainer, Emma, were understandably delighted when their Savrola stayed on too strongly for his opponents to win the two-mile Northumberland Vase, consolation race on the flat to the time-honoured Plate, won by Andrew Balding’s Spirit Mixer.

The Vase carried a big cash upgrade from last year and was worth equal to the prize won by Only The Bold at Uttoxeter. Then, yesterday, the Sayers’ Charlie Uberalles went down to Cartmel and took the Oakmere Homes Handicap Chase and its £22k pot, fending off a trio of well-fancied Irish raiders in the process.

At least there was a numerically strong team from the UK vying for the main prizes in the Irish Derby but, predictably, Ryan Moore and Lambourn landed the odds and added to the horse’s Betfred Derby victory at Epsom.

Lambourn did not make all at the Curragh this time; indeed he was unable to as he was challenged on his inside from the early stages by Richard Kingscote on Sir Dinadan, very much the Ralph Beckett stable’s second string as far as the market was concerned. He kept a ridden Lambourn company until well into the straight when the favourite took over. If we had expected him to draw away from that point we were mistaken, as a later challenge came but not from any of the beaten Epsom contenders, rather from much closer to home.

Serious Contender, another of the Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore contingent, was reappearing only ten days after he was beaten from a mark of 92 in one of the Royal Ascot three-year-old handicaps, and he gave favourite backers a serious fright. One trainer I was speaking to last week was suggesting that finishing even tenth in that mile and a half race or in the Britannia over a mile at the fixture meant you were probably a good way ahead of your handicap mark.

William Haggas, not afraid to run Group 1 horses in handicaps, won the race with Merchant off 90. He went up to 103 last Tuesday and, with his nearest victim then getting so close to the Derby winner in the Irish Derby, he’ll get another jump. I doubt Haggas or the owners, one of Highclere’s syndicates, will mind. If a deal hasn’t already been done, he’ll be on his way before long for a nice few quid.

The last 50 yards or so of the Irish Derby was extraordinary. As the winner edged away from his stablemate, it was only then that Lazy Griff, under William Buick got running for Charlie Johnston and Middleham Park Racing, losing one spot on his Epsom runner-up position. He again had the better of Epsom third Tennessee Stud by a neck while Sir Dinadan was another neck away fifth and Green Impact a nose back in sixth.

That last gasp effort made a €100k difference to the Middleham Park shareholders, but up front another one-two in an Irish Derby brought a heady €950k to the home team. It was O’Brien’s 17th Irish Derby victory, his first coming in 1997. Surely no top-level race anywhere in the world can ever have been so dominated by one stable over such a length of time.

- TS

Monday Musings: Debut Trouble and Double Bubble

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Having cringed five days earlier at the sparse crowds on the Hill at Epsom for Saturday’s Derby, I would have thought taking care of potential money-spending clients would be at the forefront of all racecourses’ actions nowadays, writes Tony Stafford.

Yet on Thursday at Newbury, where there was a 1.30 start, for some reason the course management decreed that until 12.30 they (probably regarded as the enemy until that moment) would not pass.

It could be of course that racecourses’ race day insurance might not kick in until an hour before the first race; but if that’s right, then it’s something they ought to address.

Luckily the owners’ car park is but a stone’s throw from the entrance to the very posh owners’ facility, so once denied admission at 11.50 – I got there quicker than expected as the long-standing and lengthy 50 m.p.h. stretches on the northern part of the M25 and also some more on the M4 had magically disappeared since the start of my house arrest for the previous three weeks.

“Great”, I thought, “that’s plenty of time to get a cup of coffee and study the card.” The horse I’d come to watch wasn’t in until the second race at 2.05 so I might even take advantage of the lunch that’s offered, although with everyone going in at the same time, it would be a bit of a scramble.

One hot choice, pork sausages, so any one unable to partake on religious grounds, would be left with the cold buffet. No such restrictions for me and the sausages were great. I digress.

At 11.50, the promised rain was coming down nicely enough to turn the going from good to firm to good, good to soft in places, allowing the trainer’s assistant associated with “our” horse, a 120k debutant, another possible factor to add to the legion of pre- and post-race book of excuses for a first outing.

After a couple of minutes standing behind the gaggle of already almost-drowning pensioners that comprise many midweek attendees, I had a brainwave, following a couple of others with rudimentary knowledge of the track. “There’s a bar in the hotel, and if that’s no good, there’s always the Lodge”, they offered. The Lodge is where stable lads can stay overnight.

No go at the hotel and around the corner we were very welcome to go into the Lodge, but on race days their bar isn’t open. I slunk back to sit in the car for half an hour.

By the time I did return to the entrance somebody must have taken mercy on the drowned veterans and a few were already in the bar, including my old mate Mike “Chunky” Allen, a fixture at Newbury and Windsor especially, who surprised me with the announcement that it was 20 years since he had left British Airways from his job as Cabin Services Director.

He always used to tell me about all the people in racing he’d managed to get upgrades from coach to first over many years and, from memory, Paul Webber was one of his regular beneficiaries.

I was going on a long-distance trip with my then wife sometime in the 1990s, to the US if I recall. He told me the name of the man who would be CSD on the flight and said: “When you go into the plane, ask for him. I’ve told him about you and he’ll put you in Business Class at a minimum or with luck, First Class.”

Come the day, with my wife saying don’t be silly, we’ll sit in our seats, I wasn’t for turning. The man was standing at the point where passengers would turn left or right. I asked whether he was our man. He said: “Yes”. I said: “Oh good, Mike Allen told me you would look after us.” He gave me a quizzical look and said: “Mike Allen? Never heard of him!” We turned right with one embarrassed husband and an “I told you so” companion.

Last Thursday, I retold the tale with Mike and a witness and Chunky said, “That’s right, I only worked with him for 38 years!”

I thought it would be only fair to buy him what he was drinking as his small house white wine was soon to disappear at the bottom of his tiny glass. I ordered the same again and a non-alcoholic beer for me. I had a longish drive home so you can’t be too careful these days - £12. Good job he didn’t have a large one!

In a field of eight, of course “our horse” was the one doing all the shouting in the pre-parade and, by the time we went into the paddock proper and met the assistant trainer, he added to that obvious negative news with, “Not only that but he’s got his old man out.” A more prosaic description than the coy “rather colty” version beloved of broadcast paddock commentators, you might say.

This juvenile had been, we understood, very forward from day one, had done plenty of galloping and a video of his last piece of work was most encouraging. It’s not my horse, but I attempted to keep the conversation as light as possible as there was, apart from my friend, another partner and his father there. I said, “I saw that gallop, he looked good, unless he was working with a tree.”

Anyway the eight eventually set off on the six and a half furlongs of Newbury and he was slowly away, then dropped further back immediately. On return after the race, his jockey said, “I’d gone 20 yards and he started shouting and it wasn’t until the last furlong that he seemed to get the hang of things.”

He advised patience at least to see his next run as he did keep on well up to the line, improving the distance behind the other two stragglers if not his actual position. Trainer’s assistant said the jockey couldn’t pull him up for ages after the line, so that’s a comfort and I had already taken that reassurance on the eye first time round. I hope my friend and the other owners get some enjoyment. Promise on the gallops can so quickly evaporate with one or two poor displays on the track.

*

I know it’s Royal Ascot this week. I am going to manage only three days, but the early morning work I do for the revamped From The Stables service where around 20 trainers offer their thoughts to me every day means it’s going to be hellish if the roads are difficult.

On Saturday, there were initially 30 horses (in the end quite a few came out) to wade through to find a nap which would appear in the William Hill Radio Naps table.

In the five years I’ve been doing the job – pushed my way when the Editor of this site recommended me when asked his opinion of who might fill a vacancy – we’ve won the competition three times (out of ten goes combined, for the NH and Flat seasons).

Doing my regular call around on Saturday, I spoke to Roger Teal. I very much fancied his horse Hucklesbrook at York as I had done a few weeks earlier at Leicester where he won at 9/1. That day, I forgot to email the tip through and was given a 2/7 shot from the regular substitute provider when mine is a no-show for any reason.

Anyway, Roger told me he was in a rush as his horsebox had broken down on the way and he was waiting for a replacement to bring the horse to run in the valuable featured three-year-old sprint, worth £64k to the winner.

All was well, Hucklesbrook getting there safely and then, ridden by Joanna Mason, winning very authoritatively at 16/1. Roger Teal is a much-underrated trainer (although in fairness, so many of them are). I would love him to win the Queen Anne Stakes, the meeting curtain-raiser of a wonderful Tuesday card, with Dancing Gemini.

To have a 16/1 nap go in was great, but under a new regime instigated only last month and containing an inflex of talented trainers, we now offer a nap, next best and third choice along with an each-way outsider.

The NB, Ben Brookhouse’s My Dream World, had earlier won the Queen Mother Cup for lady amateur riders at 4/1 so an 84/1 double was in place. It is now no longer a secret that winning rider Megan Jordan, partnering a 13th career winner, weighs six cases and two bottles of champagne. At around £50 a pop that’s three and a half grand’s worth. Good for her.

I was getting excited after Hucklesbrook, but then the third choice, Jamie Snowden’s 9/4 shot Hope Rising, turned round just as her field was sent off for a novice hurdle at Uttoxeter, losing a good ten lengths according to the course commentator.

Gavin Sheehan soon got her rolling and she quickly went through the field and into the lead. Jumping well, she seemed to be going better than the hot favourite in the race, but those earlier exertions taxed her stamina and she had to be content with an honourable second place. That treble would have been 272/1!

Later, the day’s each-way outsider, Hughie Morrison’s Mighty Real, a 12/1 shot at Leicester, came with a dangerous-looking run but had to be content with third of eight. If, a word we use too often in racing and I suppose in life generally, things had gone right, it would have been somewhere close to a 3,600/1 payout. Of course, I didn’t have a penny on, but I’m glad to say, plenty of the members did!

You can take a three week trial of From The Stables, using the coupon code ‘geegeez’, here.

 

Monday Musings: Aidan’s Hat-Trick Heroics

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So Aidan and the boys won the Betfred-sponsored Coronation Cup, Oaks and Derby last weekend, picking up around £1.5 million in the process, writes Tony Stafford. Lambourn, the well-backed third favourite on Derby Day, far out-performed his much more talked-about stable companions The Lion In Winter and short-priced favourite Delacroix in almost a repetition of Serpentine’s all-the-way easy victory under Emmet McNamara at the height of Covid five years ago.

Ryan Moore had selected Delacroix from the gang of trials winners rather than Chester Vase hero Lambourn and, in retrospect, it was maybe a little strange as Aidan always sends his best candidates to Chester, its timing best suiting Epsom.

People may question the suitability of a one-mile always-turning circuit as a recipe for revealing Epsom Classic talent, but I know Henry Cecil always reckoned that a big horse would be fine around the Roodeye if he was well-balanced. Lambourn certainly is.

He was picked up almost by default by Wayne Lordan, the apparent third string – Colin Keane, the regular Irish champion was on Dante flop The Lion In Winter. But the stamina Lambourn showed in winning the Chester Vase (just beyond 1m4f) last month convinced Wayne to go hard in the first furlong out of the stalls – to wake his mount up as much as anything – as he knew, unlike many in the field, his mount would not fail through lack of staying power.

Auguste Rodin (2023) and City Of Troy last year were fully expected winners but two other runnings in the last decade have gone to perceived third or higher strings. Wings Of Eagle, the fifth choice in terms of expectations in 2017 was a 40/1 shot when Padraig Beggy guided him home.

Beggy has been rarely seen since on the racecourse, but he did return to Epsom two years later to partner outsider Sovereign as a pacemaker in the Derby and finished tenth. He then rode him as a 25/1 outsider in the Irish Derby and won it!

McNamara might not have seen much riding action after Serpentine’s triumph, but it’s hardly surprising as he had been combining his riding with studying at Griffith College, Dublin. He graduated from there in 2018 with first-class honours in accountancy and finance in 2018 and works in that capacity in the Coolmore operation. Talk about top-class staff!

Moved across to Ballydoyle when David Wachman, John Magnier’s son-in-law, stopped training to take a behind the scenes role in the Coolmore machine, Lordan was third string to Ryan Moore and Seamie Heffernan until that veteran left the team a couple of years or so ago.

Lordan, one of those outdated characters, a true lightweight, had a serious injury during the 2023 Irish Derby which took eight months to overcome. As he said after Saturday’s triumph, he has a wonderful job. It was only a neck that denied him the Oaks-Derby double when Moore’s mount Minnie Hauk just edged out he and Whirl after another flawless front-running ride around Epsom’s tricky 1m4f course the previous afternoon, showing what jewels are available to the Coolmore number two on which to demonstrate his skills.

The modest Mr Lordan affirmed that he will have been in for work at 7 a.m. as usual yesterday and after no drunken celebratory stupor. Like the trainer he’s a teetotaller.

Aidan O’Brien has now won the Derby and Oaks eleven times each and, for good measure, ten Coronation Cups after Friday’s determined triumph for Jan Brueghel over the odds-on French four-year-old Calandagan. The Francis-Henri Graffard-trained horse was adding to his string of half-hearted second places (now four in a row) behind a typically tough O’Brien stayer.

In all, it’s 47 UK Classics from the 139 that have been contested since his first winning attempt in the 1,000 Guineas in 1998. That’s around 33 per cent. At least everyone else has been able to share the remaining two-thirds although, as time goes on, the dominance if anything is strengthening.

Aidan’s 22 Epsom Classics have all come this century, thus 22 of the 52 to have been run, or 42%! When Michael Tabor and Mrs Sue Magnier add their joint win with the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi, they are on 12.

To add to the winner, Coolmore’s partners also own Tennessee Stud, who finished fast from off the pace for the Joseph O’Brien stable. This son of Wootton Bassett was bred by Joseph’s mother Anne-Marie. Wootton Bassett has been the runaway star of the Coolmore firmament of late and his fee for this year was raised to an almost unthinkable €300k.

But even at that lofty price, in this Derby line-up he wasn’t the most expensive of the 14 sires (New Bay, Ghaiyyath, Sea The Stars and Frankel were doubly represented). Juddmonte’s Frankel’s fee is £350k. Dubawi, with one runner yesterday, has the same fee for his services at Darley Stud.

Every November the stud fees for Coolmore’s stallions are made public. I was shocked in 2023 that Australia, the 2014 Derby and Irish Derby winner and a son of another outstanding Epsom hero in the peerless Galileo, had his fee for 2024 reduced to €17,500. If potential clients needed any further encouragement, his dam is the Oaks winner Ouija Board.

I mentioned it to one of Coolmore’s stallion sales team at the time, who said it reflected his lack of popularity, probably because his progeny often needed time. He added that the only people that seemed to have confidence in him still were Aidan and Anne-Marie who sent a good number of mares to him.

Checking on my facts, I was further stunned that the 2025 fee was down to ten grand (Euro, about £8,400). Aidan and Anne-Marie sure know their stuff. It’s not too late for Australia to start going back towards the €50k at which he began his stallion career. Note, for example, that he is still at Coolmore while others have been sent elsewhere due to the hard-nosed realism that characterises the stud’s management. Of the 20 published stallion figures for flat race rather than jumps sires, only one was listed at a lower figure.

Watching from home due to entirely foreseen but inescapable circumstances, I was momentarily fooled into thinking that Lester Piggott had come back to ride in the Derby in the second running after his death. As the horses walked around, I noticed just how similar Rossa Ryan carries himself on a horse. When you get the chance, have a look. No doubt he’ll win the race one day, but the Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras never looked in with a chance.

One fact that certainly didn’t fool me was the dispiriting sight of the sparsely populated Hill. Every first Saturday in May, in Louisville, Kentucky, upwards of 100,000 squeeze in, a tradition in US racing that goes back to the days of the famed War Admiral/Seabiscuit match race at Pimlico in November 1938, where upstart Seabiscuit met his regally bred Kentucky Derby-winning rival and humbled him.

When I used to go to Epsom with my dad in the 1960s, there were more people there during the three-day (now one) Spring meeting in April than deigned to turn up on Saturday.

All the years I used to go there when with the Daily Telegraph, I arrived for breakfast in the old lads’ canteen, waiting for a glimpse of a few of the contenders having a leg shake in the morning, and the crowd was already building up. Many scores of buses lined the straight and the Hill was packed. On Saturday there was a sprinkling of people and even Ollie Bell and former England hockey goalie Sam Quek couldn’t disguise the fact that there was enough room for kids to play impromptu football matches.

Apparently, the Jockey Club, who run Epsom, is considering how to deal with the problem. The remedy is simple. Charge a tenner for cars and allow free admission. Then people will begin to flock back, find it an enjoyable experience and one that will develop as the years go on. I’ve never been so embarrassed. Derby Day once was a great British tradition. For most of our much-changed society, it’s an irrelevance. Thank goodness ITV think it’s worth making the effort.

Many say switching from Wednesday was a big mistake but, since Covid, it seems so few people these days have physically to GO to work, that simplification is a red herring.

It’s not as if there’s loads of competition from other sports at this time of year. On Saturday, England played a World Cup qualifying match against Andorra. Who? Our brave boys, rated number four in the world, hammered the opposition (rated 173 – I didn’t know there were that many countries) by a single goal to nil. Some of them are on £300k a week. Worth every penny I’d say.

- TS

Monday Musings: Camille

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All those Derby trials wins will have come to nought if a Ballydoyle colt doesn’t win next Saturday’s Betfred-sponsored 12-furlong skirting of Epsom Downs, writes Tony Stafford. Never mind Epsom, Aidan O’Brien and his Coolmore backers have turned winning French colts’ Classics this year into an art form.

At least, when future French turfistes look back at the record books, they will maybe delude themselves that the title Mrs Susan Magnier, stored away for further use in the copious Coolmore blue-chip name bank, had been for French-owned and trained Classic winners. But, no, Henri Matisse and Camille Pissarro, respective winners of the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French 2,000 Guineas) and yesterday’s Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) are just two more Aidan O’Brien examples of the right horse in the right race.

The human Pissarro, born in the (now US-owned) Vigin Islands but soon living in France, started life four decades the earlier of the pair and went through various stages of Impressionism. He died right at the start of the 20th Century (1903).

Matisse, a draughtsman as much as a painter, survived from 1869 into the middle of the last century. Great artists both, great names for a Classic winner, especially those staged in the land of their distinction.

Just as in the Poulains, Ryan Moore gave yesterday’s winner an exemplary ride. Camille Pissarro had made his own impression as he finished third with a strong finish over the mile at Longchamp while Ryan swept home in front on Henri Matisse. Henri will be staying at a mile at Royal Ascot in the St James’s Palace Stakes, and no doubt a clash with Irish 2,000 winner Fields Of Gold, in a fortnight.

I heard someone say yesterday watching the coverage that Aidan reckons the Prix du Jockey Club is more a race for milers than authentic 12-furlong Derby horses, thus none of the trial winners was in yesterday’s line-up.

Two Ballydoyle colts were in the 16-strong field though and it is always easy to earmark outsiders from the stable as cannon fodder if they are there to control the pace. That was the perceived lot of Trinity College, not such a massive 'rag' considering the make-up of the race – at 24/1.

He was quickly away under Wayne Lordan but wasn’t allowed to have it all his own way as Bowmark, the second string working on behalf of the Gosdens’ number one (Detain) and ridden by Tom Marquand, was busily doing his half-spoiler role for the horse that came home a close sixth in that busy end to the French 2,000.

Ryan, from stall one, was always in a lovely clear spot on the rail, a couple of lengths behind the leaders and nowhere near as far back as his mount had been in the mile race. His most dangerous (and probably only) moment came when he needed to scoot past Trinity College, a Dubawi colt running in the colours of Derrick Smith’s son Paul, best known hitherto for the St Leger winner Kingston Hill. Not much room, but he found what there was.

Paul will have loved to be involved so closely in the action here and Trinity College added to his already sterling service in the race by staying on for fourth and 70 grand which Paul shares with the usual suspects. They were behind Cualificar (Godolphin, Andre Fabre and William Buick) and Detain, ridden by Christophe Soumillon.

Wootton Bassett added further lustre to the riches provided to Coolmore Stud with this latest Classic success and he also sired the third home, running in the Abdullah colours of Field Of Gold.

With £708k available to the winner, trainers and owners with horses in the big field outside the main placings would be excused for looking further down the list. They would find, if they didn’t know already, that French money may be generous and with premiums for French-breds doubly so, but they only go down to fifth place, that 35k going to a horse from the Graffard stable.

As to the premium qualification, only the runner-up, a son of Lope De Vega running for Godolphin, was French-bred and that entitled connections to an extra £100k or so.

An unsatisfactory day for the French then – shame after the Fellowes/Shoemark affair and Shes Pretty in the 1,000. Sadly, Charlie’s Luther, fourth in their 2,000 was on the outside all the way and dropped out of the lucrative places this time.

And so to Epsom. I was talking to someone close to the stable a week or so ago and his slant on the ease in the Derby market of The Lion In Winter was explained away as “He goes to France”. They don’t always get it right.

Once backed back into favouritism after the initial shock of that Dante Stakes sixth place when he didn’t run too badly under a less than full-on Ryan Moore finish, he is now available at 6/1 and you never know how much transformation Aidan could have wrought in the short time since.

Everyone now assumes Ryan will be on the Leopardstown trial winner Delacroix, but while he looked very good that day, the opposition in a five-horse affair (two O’Brien tailenders) was hardly extremely testing. Ruling Court, the 2,000 Guineas winner, and the Dante winner Pride Of Arras complete the quartet at the top of the betting.

I was very impressed with the way the Beckett three-year-old creamed through the field on the far rail and the Ackroyd family horse would make a nice change in the way of such as Sir Percy in leaving the race of the season to a smaller owner.

My first fleeting experience of the man who was by 2025 to have an authentic Derby prospect, a year after his Arc win with Bluestocking and with a yard with close to 200 horses in his care, came approaching a quarter century earlier; in fact it might have been even longer ago.

Ralph had just arrived as a pupil assistant to David Loder, who at the time was the king of the well-prepared first-time-out two-year-old. Ralph used to smilingly and good-naturedly amble his way around Sefton Lodge stables, in the manner of a youthful Pride And Prejudice aristocrat, but it seemed his casual style didn’t cut too much ice with 100 miles an hour Master Loder.

I seem to recall just one comment made by his then employer. “Lazy bugger!” All that time afterwards, the mature Ralph still seems to lope his way pleasantly around, and when he does agree to an interview, it’s still the same languid delivery. We’re not all the same, thankfully.

And now after what one might have regarded as an inauspicious start, Ralph Beckett is truly part of the powerhouse of English training.

- TS

Monday Musings: Pity Kieran

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Until a day or so after the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket, my mind briefly projected back 39 years to the 1986 Derby early in June at Epsom, writes Tony Stafford. The Khalid Abdullah-owned Dancing Brave was the hot favourite for the race having won the Guineas easily but, after turning Tattenham Corner, virtually last on the wide outside under Greville Starkey, his long run up the middle of the track never looked like wresting the prize, and he finished second.

Shahrastani (HH the Aga Khan, Michael Stoute and Walter Swinburn) was the beneficiary of Starkey’s over-confidence. From that point, nobody believed the two horses were in the same parish in terms of ability, not even when Shahrastani won the Irish Derby by eight lengths later that month.

When Dancing Brave turned out next time in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown, Starkey shot himself in the foot and lost the mount on the best horse in the world. After Dancing Brave came out on top, reversing the form with Shahrastani, the jockey turned and gestured to the grandstands (and probably intending the press box) in a manner that suggested HE was the man.

The publicity-shy Prince Khalid and trainer Guy Harwood clearly did not enjoy the histrionics and immediately switched horses in midstream as it were, leaving Pat Eddery to step into Greville’s misguided shoes. Pat was on Dancing Brave for the rest of his illustrious career, which culminated in an eighth win in ten career starts in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, again coming from a Starkey-like position way out of his ground to beat Bering and Shahrastani.

Neither Prince Karim Aga Khan, who died this year, nor Prince Khalid is with us now but their long-established bloodstock empires remain largely undiminished by the inevitable family transition. Both have been heavily involved in the 2025 Guineas Classics of the three major European racing countries, which culminated in Ireland this weekend.

Aga Khan IV, who died this year aged 88, still seems to cast a hypnotic spell over the racing administrators in France where the bulk of the operation’s horses are housed.

How else could the authorities that demoted Charlie Fellowes’ Shes Perfect from the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches have had their cockeyed verdict maintained by the French appeals system. Fellowes and jockey Kieran Shoemark both said they were received and treated very well when they travelled over to state their case.

As if one was needed. As I said somewhere before, it was a case of legalised thieving.

Shoemark was thus suffering a third career-shattering setback within a week and a half of Classic action on and off the track. My initial mention above of Dancing Brave and Greville Starkey is apt enough but could have been more so. Both Dancing Brave and the 2025 beaten 2,000 Guineas favourite Field Of Gold sported the Abdullah silks.

John Gosden so obviously blamed Shoemark, but I doubt the jockey, who had ridden Field Of Gold in all his previous starts and accepted blame for the defeat, would have expected such summary justice. How many jockeys have been guilty of a similar blunder but kept their jobs? Obviously, having never won a 2,000 Guineas meant defeat hurt him badly, but as they say… That’s racing BJ.

It must have been so galling for Shoemark to have sat and watched as Ireland’s habitual champion jockey Colin Keane stepped in to perform the steering job in Saturday’s Irish 2,000 Guineas and win as he liked. Roy Keane or even the legendary Clapton-based dog trainer of the 1960s, 20 stone Paddy Keane, could have won on him!

That was one instance when the error was obvious. But Big Johnny Gosden sacked him for a misjudgement. At least Starkey got a second go and if he’d done a Ryan Moore or William Buick and just professionally went over the line with maybe a tiny hint of a smile, all probably would have been well.

Shoemark’s sacking denied me a more concrete excuse for drumming up the earlier Abdullah superstar story. Colin Keane didn’t err by over-celebrating as Field Of Gold won Saturday’s Irish 2,000 Guineas in a common canter. Why do they say a common canter, by the way? Canters like the one exhibited by the son of Kingman are anything but common.

*

If I can digress to an element of my extensive recent use of NHS facilities, I hope nobody is offended. I had an MRI scan on my brain recently and when the results eventually came through, I jumped for joy.

Further interpretation revealed all the individual complicated areas were “unremarkable”. To think I once considered myself contrastingly remarkable in that area. The bottom line is that I’m not suffering from Alzheimer’s! Hurrah.

*

Sunday’s results affirmed that when Aidan O’Brien claims to be a couple of weeks behind, he’s not kidding. Look at the 1,000 Guineas result from Newmarket where his top-class 2yo of 2024, Lake Victoria, had finished only sixth. Yet here she started odds-on against several of the fillies that finished ahead of her, suggesting we would get a different result.

So it proved, Ryan Moore bringing Lake Victoria to challenge a furlong out and then easing clear for a margin of a little more than two lengths. That was a third win for his upwardly mobile team on the day at the Curragh. Earlier, the juvenile Albert Einstein won the Marble Hill Stakes and was inserted as favourite for Royal Ascot’s Coventry Stakes, while Los Angeles, brave winner of the Tattersalls Gold Cup (Group 1) will have a host of options to choose from.

But enough of Aidan and his 11th Irish 1,000 win. I was inclined to think it would have been a few more. Returning to Mr Gosden (now augmented by son Thaddeus), the stable’s long-standing number two rider Robert Havlin, conjured a win from the air at Goodwood a few minutes after the Classic success when hot favourite French Master Houdini-ed his way along the rail to nick the 1m6f handicap.

No hint was given by the joint trainers, nor expected by their faithful servant, that he might be in line for some star rides. The 2004 Directory of the Turf – I like to keep up to date – lists his address as Manton House, where Gosden was the trainer for Robert Sangster at the time.

Havlin moved with him as the back-up man in the next few years and at the age of 51 is one of the senior riders in the weighing room.

His situation – nice enough as he picked up a couple of grand for that ride the other day – reminds me of a time in the mid-1970’s when the Racing Editor at the DT, Robert Glendinning, was coming up to retirement age.

He had served during the war in a unit where Kingsley Wright, an irascible gentleman, was an officer. Blow me down, Kingsley was the sports editor when I came to the racing desk and Bob, who had no compunction about telling US what to do, used to behave as though they were still Captain and non-commissioned officer (if that, I never found out).

Both were Yorkshiremen, as was Noel Blunt, who had been a redcap (the hated Military Police) in his conscription time and had climbed the pole to be deputy racing editor, to the extent he would sit in Bob’s chair on Bob’s day off.

We used to go to a pub called the Albion for Sunday lunch as did lots of people from the St Paul’s Church Choir, so in need were they of the gargantuan portions. My shifts didn’t always work for me to have lunch, but Noel’s did and he used to buttonhole the boss whenever he could, considering there were always sports journalists from the Daily Mail and Daily Express hanging on every word.

So Bob is retiring, and one Sunday Noel plucked up the courage to ask the question he’d been agonising over for months. “What’s happening when Bob retires, Kingsley?” Kingsley: – I wasn’t there, but I know what his movements would have been – says, taking off his glasses and leaving them next to his pint: “Noel, your present position is assured.”  Still the most ingenious put-down line I’ve heard. Later that day, Noel announced that he wouldn’t be going to the Albion any more. “It’s no longer value-for-money.”

Soon after, we heard a guy was coming down from the Manchester office to take the job, Kingsley’s son Chris, whose favourite times of the day were when he took his breaks in the local hostelries. Within weeks Noel was off to the Sporting Life! Who says nepotism is dead?

There is no question that sitting in as number two has been full value to Havlin. No doubt Kingsley’s response would have been Big John’s answer if at any time over the last 20 years Rab had had the cheek to ask that question.

  • TS

Monday Musings: Hegemony

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A friend asked me the other day, “If a bookmaker offered you even money about Aidan O’Brien winning the Derby this year, would you take it?”, writes Tony Stafford.

The question arose after the pre-York blanket dominance in the trials at Chester, Lingfield and Leopardstown and before the possibly temporary reputation tarnishing of The Lion In Winter, that one in the ruck behind Ralph Beckett’s Pride Of Arras in the Dante Stakes.

Amazingly, in view of the ease of the Ackroyd family’s horse’s victory on the Knavesmire, The Lion In Winter has hardened back in price after an initial ease by the bookmakers. In some places he’s a shorter price than his York conqueror.

Michael Tabor had suggested the day before that The Lion In Winter was running later in the piece than is normal for returning Derby candidates from the Ballydoyle stable but then, on June 7, the Derby is as late as it can be for a first Saturday in the month.

Anyway, the latest ante-post prices for the big race list the Leopardstown trial winner Delacroix as favourite at 5/2 ahead of Godolphin’s 2,000 Guineas hero Ruling Court (4/1), emphasised by trainer Charlie Appleby during York as firmly on target for Epsom Downs.

But after him and the two Dante protagonists, three of the next four are from the Coolmore team and their joint odds take out 66% so appreciably more than the requisite 50% for even money. And that’s not all their potential runners which, as we said last week, do not preclude an O’Brien win at long odds.

I was minutely involved with the win of Oath in 1999 and for me that seems not so long ago, recalling embarrassingly cavorting next to the unsaddling enclosure with his lad after his win for the Sir Henry Cecil stable and the Thoroughbred Corporation of Prince Ahmed Salman. It’s salutary to remember that Aidan hadn’t even won the race by that time.

Now he has – and how – with ten of the last 24 (or 42%) falling to him. Interestingly, until he starts getting different owners in the yard, he still won’t match either Sue (wife of John) Magnier and Tabor who have 11 thanks to the win of the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi in 2011 on top of Aidan’s ten.

By last year, they had all exceeded the nine of Lester Piggott, the foremost Derby jockey of all time. Piggott’s skill at riding the difficult Epsom track was only exceeded by the powers of persuasion he used to get on a feasible candidate when he didn’t have a retained ride (and sometimes when he did!) through his long career.

As I write on this Sunday morning, there are still 20 days remaining before the Derby and you can add another three since the Dante. In normal circumstances, 23 days between runs is rarely regarded as inadequate time to recover from the early exertions and build on that for an improved display next time.

Last year, City Of Troy had 28 days between an abject performance in the 2,000 Guineas and his dominating display in the Derby. What’s a few days when they are being managed by a genius? In the meantime, Delacroix is a solid enough flag-bearer having won as I said last week the significant Leopardstown Trial in such authoritative manner.

A closer look reveals O’Brien’s first two Derby wins in successive years, Galileo and High Chaparral, were the second and third of his 17 wins in the former Derrinstown, now Leopardstown, Derby Trial (talk about hegemony – it’s more like annihilation of his training colleagues). No Derby winner has come from the race since, although Dylan Thomas in 2006 won the Irish Derby and later the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe.

Another superb winner of the race was subsequent peerless stayer Yeats who was scratched from the 2004 Derby for which he was the hot favourite at the time through injury a few days before. Four Gold Cup wins in succession guaranteed his place in racing folklore and was the crowning achievement for David and Diane Nagle’s Barronstown Stud, never mind its being responsible for 29 winners of 44 Classic or Group 1 races around the world.

All in all, I say to my friend, therefore, on the stats alone, evens would be a good price, if anyone would be daring enough to offer it. I do have a sneaking feeling though that Pride Of Arras, with only two –  both winning – career runs behind him, may have at least the potential improvement of the hitherto harder-worked Delacroix or even The Lion In Winter.

Then we always have the debate about which horse is the more likely to have progressed and will stretch out even further for trying 1m4f around Epsom. Usually, the class horses keep going and all the worries about stamina every year are dispelled in the two minutes and 40 seconds or thereabouts. Few, if any, of the O’Brien runners in the Derby have failed through lack of stamina. Normally, class tells.

The Coolmore boys like a little insurance and while they weren’t intimately involved in ownership at the business end of the 2,000 Guineas, it didn’t upset them too much that the Godolphin winner Ruling court is by their US-based stallion Justify, sire of course of last year’s Derby hero City Of Troy.

The 2025 Kentucky Derby a couple of weeks ago was a setback for Journalism, a horse they had bought into with a view of his standing as a stallion in their Ashford Stud in Kentucky alongside Justify and their other Triple crown winner American Pharoah when he retires from racing for the Michael McCarthy stable.

He had been outstayed at Churchill Downs by Godolphin homebred Sovereignty, but that horse was immediately declared an absentee from the next leg of the Triple Crown, the half a furlong shorter Preakness Stakes run at Pimlico last Saturday evening.

In his absence, Journalism, understandably, was the even-money favourite to get his name on the Classic honours board and, after a bit of a barging match, got up close home by half a length from Gosger.

In the old days, any interference in races in the US brought instant and inevitable disqualification. Not so now it seems, yet in France, as in everything else in that country, they have their own standards. I’ve had a few looks at the disqualification of Charlie Fellowes’ Shes Perfect after their 1,000 Guineas last weekend and declare it as legalised thieving.

Interference to Zarigana was negligible and Kieran Shoemark on the original winner was blameless, instantly correcting her leftward drift by changing his whip into his left hand. Zarigana did have a tiny inconvenience, mainly from the horse in the sandwich between the two fillies, and probably suffered the most difficulty when Mickael Barzalona dropped his whip a furlong from home. His negligence was rewarded with a promoted Classic winner. Shameful.

That coming eight days after Shoemark’s being outmanoeuvred in the 2,000 Guineas by William Buick on Ruling Court was a double kick in the teeth for the rider. Worse came in between, a public dressing-down by John Gosden, saying he and son Thady would now be choosing “best available” for their horses not already committed to retained owner arrangements.

The first painful effect of that came on Saturday in the Lockinge Stakes. Lead Artist, on his favoured fast ground, turned around Sandown form to edge out Dancing Gemini by a neck over the straight mile. In eight previous races, Shoemark had been in the saddle. Here he was supplanted on the Juddmonte-owned four-year-old by Oisin Murphy. Some transgressions are treated more leniently than others. Is that what two-tier justice is about?

The winner’s prize was £226k. Generally, jockeys receive around 8.5% of the winner’s prize, so I reckon Kieran’s ejection has already cost him £20k and the embarrassment that goes with it. That John Gosden! Some man!

- TS

Monday Musings: When You’re Luck’s Out…

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I haven’t seen a proper replay of the French 1,000 Guineas finish - after that stewards’ enquiry I can’t be bothered to call it by its actual name, writes Tony Stafford. It’s hard not to be sorry for trainer Charlie Fellowes, his group of owners known as Basher Watts Racing 2 and jockey Kieran Shoemark, the team associated with Shes Perfect.

Sky Sports Racing elected to show the entirety of the 4.10 race from Plumpton, a series final hurdle race for inexperienced riders, with the big race (4.05 at Longchamp) showing commentary-free in a small right-hand corner of the screen. They played it after showing a re-run of the finish of the Plumpton race – maybe they were frightened that Peter Savill might get the needle if they went over to a Classic while it was actually being run?

After going over the line narrowly in first, the local stewards turned the verdict over in favour of Zarigana, running in the colours of the late Aga Khan. Everyone will be commiserating with Shoemark after the abrupt sacking as number one for the Gosden team following his fast-finishing second place on Field Of Gold in the previous weekend’s 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket.

A quick riposte on the next available weekend would have been a massive boost for him, but my own sympathies are at least as much directed to the owners who paid €50k for the Sioux Nation filly (out of a Galileo mare, no less) at Arqana’s May Breeze-Up a year ago. It was at that auction that Ruling Court, the horse that denied Field Of Gold and Shoemark, went through the ring 18 lots later for €2.3 million.

It would have been a remarkable Classic double on the same day for the sales company. Fellowes had fancied his chances of avenging a neck defeat by Zarigana in the Prix De La Grotte (Group 3), over the same course and distance last month.

In that context her price of 18/1 about Shes Perfect against the 4/5 of the favourite was a real aberration. Sadly, the stewards decided to allow yet another Classic win for those famous Aga Khan colours, denying Charlie Fellowes a crowning glory to his training career.

Immediately after the race, the jubilant owners, all booted and suited alike, were probably working out what each of them would be collecting from the £269k first prize. Their sights and no doubt their excitement was modulated with just over 100 grand to divvy up for second.

With 4th, 6th, 11th and 13th in the fillies’ Classic, Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore had a fleeting opportunity to see how the other half lives.

Leading into the Newmarket Guineas weekend, the story going around was that the Ballydoyle horses were a couple of weeks behind where the trainer would have liked and the single runner in both the 2,000 and 1,000 finished out of the frame.

Things move swiftly though in the pre-Derby and Oaks segment of the season and, since last weekend, O’Brien has won three Derby/Oaks trials at Chester; the Derby and Oaks trials at Lingfield on Saturday and Leopardstown’s time-honoured eliminator yesterday too.

To those manoeuvring performances, there was the more meaningful one-three in the French 2,000 Guineas that immediately preceded the fillies’ race. Here, Moore on Henry Matisse got the better of Andrew Balding’s Jonquil with Camille Pissarro a fast-finishing third after a crazy early gallop.

Fellowes did well here too. He had also given Luther a bright chance beforehand, conceding that a wide draw didn’t help. He flew down the outside for fourth, a short neck behind the O’Brien second string, again under Shoemark.

That sequence of O’Brien winners inevitably will have the York bookmakers dreading what to expect from the one talking horse of the spring among Coolmore’s Derby candidates. The Lion In Winter, who had the 2,000 Guineas hero Ruling Court back in third place when they met in last year’s Acomb Stakes over seven furlongs of the course in August is primed for his re-introduction in the Dante Stakes.

It was in this race 12 months ago that we saw a Derby-level performance by William Haggas’s Economics, but he reckoned the colt was too immature for the Derby at that stage of his development, and he duly sidestepped the Classic.

There will not be any similar reservations this time I’m sure, especially if the Lion In Winter can cope with Ruling Court’s stablemate, unbeaten supplementary entry Alpine Trail, who made his tally three from three in the Newmarket Stakes at the Guineas meeting.

Now it’s ten and a half furlongs, a trip more commensurate with The Lion In Winter’s pedigree. He is by Sea The Stars, unbeaten champion and Derby winner in 2009 from a staying female family, with the broodmare sire Lope De Vega also a good stamina influence. I can’t see why they are questioning his stamina – but every year of course they do!

He too was a sales buy, from Goffs Orby Book 1 in September 2023. The only surprise apart from his having ability, is that he cost a relatively modest €375,000. Some may say, a cup of tea. This game gets you thinking that way sometimes.

To list the Derby bit-part players for Aidan – a wise enough policy granted the wins within the past ten years of 40/1 shot Wings Of Eagles and Serpentine, 25/1 in the “Covid” Derby. I wonder whether Boris Johnson ought to have sponsored it. Serpentine was sold to Australia after a dull end to his Ballydoyle career and has run 16 times there for one win. His last run on January 1, was one of his worst, 14th of 15 in a Group 2 handicap. Not all the Williams acquisitions turn to gold.

Delacroix, impressive in an admittedly thin Cashel Palace Hotel Derby Trial Group 3 over ten furlongs at Leopardstown is sure to be in the Epsom line-up. The race has had several titles over the years, but the finest of them was when Golden Fleece beat Assert in the 1982 edition before Golden Fleece won the Derby so stylishly and Assert the French and Irish Derbys.

Both carried the Robert Sangster colours, Golden Fleece trained by Vincent O’Brien and Assert by his son David.

I had a particular interest in that race as fourth was Duke Of Dollis, who had the unfortunate task of taking the pair on twice for two places, previously when third in the Ballysax Stakes.

He ended up coming over to the UK and, trained by David Elsworth, turned up in a seller at Windsor. In those days it wasn’t regarded as de rigeur to claim horses, so I sent my deputy Adrian Hunt to do the dirty work.

Elsie wasn’t delighted but to his credit Adrian was always one to keep things close to his chest – unlike me! Sent to Roddy Armytage, Marcus’s father and a very good trainer, he recorded a hat-trick over hurdles for a team of very nice people who we managed to put together as a syndicate.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Classic Weekend for Godolphin

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All those years ago when Sheikh Mohammed came across to the UK for the first time intent on buying a few racehorses, I doubt it would have entered his mind how his involvement in the worldwide racing industry would develop, writes Tony Stafford. More so, that in 2025, with himself nowadays a rare visitor to this country, he could ever have a UK/US quadruple big-race triumph over one weekend as he just did.

On Friday, he won the Kentucky Oaks, for three-year-old fillies at Churchill Downs; on Saturday the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket and the Kentucky Derby at Churchill; and yesterday the 1,000 Guineas back at HQ.

Equally, I doubt whether it even occurred to him that almost half a century on, he would have progressed from the number three of four horse-racing mad sons of the Dubai Ruler Sheikh Rashid. But first, his eldest brother Sheikh Maktoum died, and he had already supplanted next-in-line (by mutual agreement we believe) the more recently deceased Sheikh Hamdan, to become the Emirate’s undisputed boss.

The racing set-up he initially organised had as its principal advisors Robert Acton, John Ferguson and Simon Crisford. The horses were in top UK stables, such as (Sir) Henry Cecil, who trained Oh So Sharp to the filly equivalent of the Triple Crown (1,000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger) in 1985, a full 40 years ago. The last colt’s Triple Crown came from Vincent O’Brien’s Nijinsky eight years earlier.

It was around the time of Oh So Sharp when I experienced my close and personal moment in a car driven by the late Richard Casey, a superb jumps trainer but at the time the man who used to prepare the (Sir) Michael Stoute horses before they went into training.

John Leat was then the Sheikh’s inseparable (in the UK) personal assistant. He and I were with the other three gentlemen while we two conducted an impromptu interview in Richard’s car at Dullingham near Newmarket. The one phrase I remember from the conversation was, “People expect to build a breeding operation in five to ten years. I’m not sure you could do it in less than 30!”

For years, the development was patchy, for all the good horses they raced, often bought by Acton and Stroud, later by Ferguson. Acton and Stroud moved aside in a significant shake-up as, much later, did Ferguson, while Crisford turned to training with great success, now in concert with son Ed.

Now though, Stroud and another of the Sheikh’s former trainers, David Loder, is back at the helm of buying at auction while Simon Crisford is never too far away from the deliberations, so much so that he maintains a big satellite winter team in Dubai along with his powerful Newmarket yard.

Of course, the advent of Godolphin at around the turn of the century with local Dubaian Saeed bin Suroor taking centre stage coincided with a big explosion of success. Even when the very popular Saeed was seemingly demoted to a secondary role with the emergence of Mahmood al Zarooni, he kept smiling and continued to be the polite, readily accessible man he remains today.

I was pleased that in yesterday’s 1,000 Guineas, when interviewed beforehand, bin Suroor reckoned his filly Elwateen, a once raced 22/1 shot running for the first time on grass, would go well. She finished fourth and, considering her inexperience, the future looks bright.

The al Zarooni years ended abruptly with the finding of non-permitted substances in several of his horses. His Encke, which won the St Leger in 2012 and thereby denied the Aidan O’Brien-trained Camelot the Triple Crown after that one had already taken the 2,000 Guineas and Derby, was one of them, but his test ironically was clear when his St Leger sample was later analysed.

Al Zarooni’s banishment was the opening that led to Charlie Appleby’s promotion, and how he has taken it with both hands. Ruling Court’s win from the tactically outsmarted runner-up and short-price Gosden-trained favourite Field Of Gold and Kieran Shoemark was followed yesterday with another HQ masterclass by Buick on Desert Flower in the 1,000 Guineas.

In her case, it didn’t take a seven-figure auction bid to secure the daughter of 2,000 Guineas winner Night Of Thunder. She was a homebred and while there was no fluke about the result, the runner-up Flight almost ‘did a Night Of Thunder’, drifting from one side to the other, although contrastingly to Desert Flower’s sire, out to the right to join the main pack rather than the other way round.

I thought for a while she looked to have the race won, so easily did she go past the pacemaker on her wing, but she seemed to get lonely, hence the drift to seek the company of her companions.

Flight is trained by the emerging Ollie Sangster whose other runner, Simmering, stayed on to be third. It looked a very strong field beforehand and there is no reason to believe these fillies will not prove that to be the case time after time as the season progresses.

As I mentioned above, 40 years on from that meeting at Dullingham, a scan through the Charlie Appleby team of 225 reveals that having been sustained for so long in the unequal fight with Coolmore over the past two Galileo-blessed decades, by their champion Dubawi, newer stallions are moving in to help level up the playing field.

Well to the fore in Charlie’s list are former Horse Of The Year Gaiyyath, the top juvenile Pinatubo, Blue Point, and freshman sire Space Blues.

And yet, despite those new ‘home team’ blood lines, Saturday’s convincing winner of the 2,000 Guineas, Ruling Court, was a son of Justify, who stands at Coolmore’s US arm, Ashford stud in Kentucky. He twice eluded the attentions of the Coolmore team at auctions. Sold originally to the ultra-shrewd former jump jockey Norman Williamson for $150k at Keeneland in September 2023, he so impressed the attendees at the Arqana May breeze-up sale the following May that he changed hands for €2,300,000. Nice one Norman!

Scanning through the team, Ruling Court was the sole three-year-old Justify although three more colts by City Of Troy’s sire are among 110 juveniles. Wootton Bassett (300k a pop at Coolmore this year) also illustrates the more pragmatic approach by the present Godolphin management, with six. The first of them to run, Rising Power (€600k at Goffs Orby Book 1 last autumn) made a winning start yesterday at Newmarket, the final leg of an Appleby/Buick treble.

Friday’s Kentucky Oaks heroine, Good Cheer, mirrors Desert Flower as she is also unbeaten, in her case seven from seven, the latest three this year. She was also favourite (7/5) and came wide on the home bend to run past a quartet battling on the lead with extreme ease. Brad Cox has been very patient with her, moving her gradually up the grades. She has been favourite every time, and Friday’s winning margin of two and a quarter lengths was the narrowest, if you can say that about an overwhelming superiority. She too is a homebred, by Medaglia d’Oro.

It was closer in the Kentucky Derby. Sovereignty, a son of 22-year-old stallion Into Mischief, trained by veteran Bill Mott, won by one and a half lengths with a big stretch run to deny the favourite Journalism on a soupy track after heavy rain fell all day. The Coolmore team has made several shrewd in training deals in the US in recent years into careers like Justify’s. Journalism has also been the subject of an arrangement with his present owners to stand him at stud at Ashford when he retires. He has something to put right then over the rest of the season, while nearer to home evidence suggests the Coolmore runners from Ballydoyle seem to be a couple of weeks short of peak.

One that stayed in Ireland this weekend was The Lion In Winter, winner of last year’s seven-furlong Acomb Stakes at York when even-money shot Ruling Court suffered his only defeat in third. He is expected to turn out for the Dante Stakes. His owners will be hoping that the team quickly moves into top speed. Interestingly, The Lion In Winter is the 7/2 favourite for the Betfred Derby with Ruling Court next best at 4/1. More exciting times ahead.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Glory Trail

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Amid all the excitements supplied by the multi-century teams of Willie Mullins, Gary and Josh Moore and Olly Murphy, not to mention Dan Skelton, on Sandown’s National Hunt season finale, one name stood out as swimming against the tide, writes Tony Stafford.

Imagine you’ve been in the UK for just short of three years and built up a team from nothing into the 60’s at a new base in Newmarket, understandingly vacated at the end of 2024 by Newmarket doyen William Jarvis.

A score of one in his feet-finding debut campaign in late 2022, was followed by 16 and then 37 last year. Dylan Cunha, the South African Group 1 trainer in his home country and a pilot in his spare time almost, is already on 12 in the fledgling 2025 season.

But he was merely an intruder between the big boys’ free-for-all on Saturday with the only jumper he has in his yard. It’s a shame in fact that he did try the capable but inconsistent flat handicapper Ace Rothstein in one race over hurdles at Kempton in the 2023/24 season as his story in terms of jumping success would be even more remarkable.

The Ace proved more like a Joker on his hurdling appearance and is no longer part of the Phantom House Stables team, but one horse who is, Mahons Glory, has been showing that affable Dylan could train the stable cat if there were a suitable race in the Calendar.

A few weeks ago, as I mentioned here before, my friend Malcolm Caine organised a ticket for me at an upmarket Central London venue a few days before the Cheltenham Festival. It was enjoyable and quite amusing when shortly after those mostly perplexing races in Gloucestershire were concluded, Malcolm called. He said: “I took a note of every horse the panel mentioned on the day and none of them won!” I’ll take his word for it and in case you didn’t catch the roll-call last time, I’ll leave it out for now.

When you attend such an event, it’s Hobson’s Choice whom your immediate fellow-guests are. In my case it was a very nice chap called Seamus, not Irish except by pedigree. He said he and two other pals who were further around to his right were owners with Dylan Cunha.

He, and obviously they, were still buzzing from the victory at Leicester the previous day of Mahons Glory, a nine-year-old horse they had previously in training with Patrick Neville.

He had lost his form and become erratic, especially at the start, so they entered him for the January Online sale at Tattersalls – and he was unsold at 900gns. <I wonder if I’d have persuaded one of my pals to bid a grand whether they would have let him go?>.

Anyway, nobody did, and as owners with interests in a few horses with Dylan they suggested sending the 130-rated chaser to him. Quite a left-field idea, but an inspired one as it turns out.

At Leicester, as Seamus told me at the Preview, they were anxious at the start but Mahons Glory jumped off alertly under Lee Edwards, went to the front, and despite the tendency to jump to his left, he did so with rare exuberance and was never in danger of defeat, beating the Dan Skelton-trained Major Fortune by three-quarters of a length at a rewarding 16/1.

Dylan found a less taxing race for his following run, a three-horse affair at Stratford, this time going left-handed and again he made all, this time with The Wolf, in the stable of another of Saturday’s stars, Olly Murphy, and ridden by Sean Bowen a well-beaten second.

On Saturday, just another 3lb higher, Mahons Glory was again among the outsiders, but you wouldn’t have known it. In the morning, I had my regular pre-race chat with Dylan and he suggested Sandown’s track and fences would be to his liking. He loved the seven in a line down the back straight and it was only when he came to the Pond, three from home, that the tendency to jump left took its toll.

Shrewdly, Caoilin Quinn, already in the winner’s circle in the opener with 20/1 top-weight Give It To Me Oj in the novice handicap hurdle final, kept Mark Of Gold tight to the inside, and those wayward left-hand leaps, where Sandown’s finish edges to the right, were doubly costly to the front-runner.

Mark Of Gold got to the front before the last and looked sure to draw away but Edwards got Mahons Glory running again and was reducing the arrears all the way to the line, going under by less than a length.

On a day where some of the participants would have cost around £500k and even more, a 900gns chuck-out trained by a man with his sole proper jumper nearly stole the limelight.

Just for the record, when discussing his four other runners on the day, he singled out the previously unsuccessful Waistcoat in a handicap at Leicester as his pick. Reasoning that if Joe Leavy could hold on to him behind what he thought would be a headlong gallop, he could come through to win. He proved exactly right – at 8/1!

I was speaking to some people earlier in the week and one or two suggested that if Willie Mullins duly caught and passed Dan Skelton as the numbers in the right races suggested he must, he might be the object of booing from the Sandown crowd.

Anything but. His genial nature and refusal to claim victory even after South African-owned Il Etait Temps came from a long way back to swamp Jonbon for speed in the bet365 Celebration Chase with its £99k to the winner – he also picked up 18 grand for 3rd with Energumene – sealed the deal. Not a bad effort first time back in a Grade 1 with a top rival to catch, Jonbon losing for the first time away from Cheltenham.

But no, life today is all about winning and if you have overwhelming tools with which to achieve it, good for you. Mullins has worked for many years to build up such a superiority in Ireland, even over Gordon Elliott, and the fact he can come here as a late-season afterthought to beat the best of whatever we have to offer, has its obvious merits too. Especially to the sports fans of the 2020s!

Not even a Foinavon moment, say at the Pond fence, which Dan Skelton might have dreamt about, or indeed a void race as we’ve been encountering rather more often of late, would have mattered. Second to fifth behind the Olly Murphy/ Sean Bowen representative Resplendent Grey in the bet365 Gold Cup built up the lead almost to 200k, and the last race win where his Jump Allen saw off Dan’s Mostly Sunny lent an inevitable footnote to the season.

There was a television interview with Jump Allen’s rider, Harry Cobden, who reckoned that Bowen would be champion jockey for the next ten years, reasoning that he and Harry Skelton, the only other obvious contenders, according to him, were otherwise engaged – mopping up the massive prize money Skelton collected in this first season of the David Power Cup for points gained in big races.

Maybe it would have been wise for Cobden to keep his mouth shut. After his tour de force bringing home Resplendent Grey from a seemingly losing position behind Mullins’ Rachael Blackmore-ridden Lombron from the final fence, more big race rides will be coming his way from major stables.

*

With the two Guineas races coming up next weekend, it was salutary that Aidan O’Brien, seemingly out of form, nipped in with a Navan favourites hat-trick on Saturday, via Charles Darwin, impressively in the six-furlong maiden, Whistlejacket in the Listed three-year-old sprint, and Kyprios in his regular season-opener in the 1m6f Vintage Crop Stakes.

Watch out John and Thady. If you thought the 2,000 was at the mercy of Field Of Gold, Aidan’s Twain will have been tuned to the minute. Big John’s first 2,000 win is no gimme!

Monday Musings: One for the Little Guys

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Over the years, ARC hasn’t been everyone in racing’s ideal role model for running racecourses, but it’s hard not to applaud its commitment to the Good Friday All Weather Championships, now happily settled at Newcastle from its original home at Lingfield Park, writes Tony Stafford.

The prize money is stupendous for the types of races, and as Ollie Sangster mused after his Tuco Salamanca finished fast into fourth (but would have been second in a couple more strides in his race), “That stopped him winning almost £40k instead of which we got £9k. The win prize of near 80 grand was what you would expect to get for winning a Group 2,” he said.

Tuco Salamanca, who finished full of running under P J Macdonald having been dropped right out, then encountered the interference that is all so frequent on Newcastle’s straight mile. The jockeys can change course up that straight mile from meeting to meeting, although the stands side is usually king.

I started at Newcastle rather than talk about the scintillating display of the Gosdens’ big grey colt Field Of Gold, who sprinted clear having not had the greatest of runs through to win the Craven Stakes in a canter. The O’Brien 2000 Guineas hopes were conspicuous by their absence, but this was exactly what a trial was meant to be – get rid of the wishful-thinkers and leave the Classics to the big boys. Field Of Gold could well be the horse that ends John Gosden’s blank in the first Classic race of the year. If he wins, no doubt son Thady will be taking the credit – “you were rubbish dad, till I came to help you out!” – he might have said when and if it wins.

Having started out almost two decades after Gosden, Aidan O’Brien had won ten of the 27 2,000 Guineas' since his first in 1998. No doubt one or two might be coming across from Ballydoyle, but Twain, who is the shortest price of the Coolmore contingent, will need to be smart.

His credentials are solid. Pedigree-wise he’s by Wootton Bassett, transformed from a smart stallion in France to an elite one in Co Tipperary. His 2025 fee has been increased from €200k to €300k on the back of sensational results from his stock over the past two years and now he’s getting many of Coolmore’s best mares to mate with. Twain is out of a Montjeu mare and is already a Group 1 winner, at Saint-Cloud last autumn, following a six-length debut maiden win at Leopardstown. It seems he’ll be Ryan Moore’s ride.

Ryan is well used to winning races worth the mere trifle of 77 grand, but when the four-year-old filly Heavenly Heather crossed the line first under diminutive Amie Waugh in the Bet MGM  Fillies’ and Mares’ Championship Handicap at Newcastle on Friday, to my mind she was recording one of the biggest surprise results in the history of UK flat racing.

The 200/1 quote wasn’t the only clue. Here was a filly rated a measly 57 taking on a well-tried eight-year-old mare, Aramis Grey, who is on 92, and putting her in her place. It was no wonder that the local stewards felt minded to stick their collective oar in and try to dent the occasion for the winning trainer Tracy Waggott, based over the county border in Spennymoor, Co Durham. Understandably, her explanation, that she didn’t have any idea how the filly improved so much, was accepted and the right outcome.

Heavenly Heather was 17lb “wrong” at the weights but that made no difference as, despite getting a little bit of interference on the way through, she and her locally based rider did not falter.

Amie, although able to ride comfortably at 7st9lb, had honed her skill in point-to-points in the north of England. She won 24, so often having to carry the saddle with its lead back to weigh in with four stone dead weight. No wonder, like all jockeys, she is so strong.

Then she turned amateur on the flat before in 2021, taking out an apprentices’ licence as a 31-year-old and starting with a 5lb claim. She’s getting near to losing her 3lb now. This was her first win of 2025, and it will have set her up for a worry-free year financially. She still helps her father Simon when she can with his team of jumpers, mostly self-owned at Morpeth up the road from Gosforth Park.

Tracy Waggott is the daughter of the well-respected late jumps trainer Norman. He barely had a runner on the flat – the last I think was in 1998 – but Tracy has turned around the stable’s priorities, doing very well training horses on the level and massively improving facilities at their farm.

It’s sad that, because of the way our handicappers think, Heavenly Heather is likely to get a right old tanking in tomorrow’s revised ratings. But in mitigation, apart from a single run when she got unbalanced at Redcar 11 days before the win and her first outing since Jan 2, all her other runs had been at Gosforth Park, three at seven furlongs and once at a mile.

So she was running at home from home, and for all it’s a straight course, as I indicated above, trouble is easily encountered. The ability to handle the track with its uphill finish is paramount. She ran home gamely, but if the handicapper dealing with seven-furlong form takes it as it stands, she’ll be going up to 80 which will be a shame. Why not make it say 70 and give her a chance, as even that would be a test in different circumstances.

*

Now let’s deal with this week’s main event. That Willie Mullins isn’t much good, is he? After his one-two in the Scottish Grand National, Willie's eight runners at Cheltenham last week had to be content with a sprinkling of places, and the much-publicised raid on Peter Savill’s cash at Plumpton yesterday boiled down to a single race. True, he had four shots of winning the day’s best prize and duly clicked with another one-two courtesy of Absurde and Daddy Long Legs. That’s £55k in the locker!

Of course, he likes to make a drama out of it, so next Saturday at Sandown – where he had another dream day last year with one-threes in both the featured bet365 Gold Cup and the Select Hurdle which put £170k into his coffers, enough to flatten Dan Skelton’s claims - he'll bid to get up in the shadows of the seasonal post.

Over the interim, sentiment seems to have been moving towards Skelton, and he will have plenty of runners next Saturday, too. But if Mullins can bring to the table such stars as last year’s bet365 Gold Cup pair Minella Cocooner and Nick Rockett (where do I know that name from?) and, in the Select Hurdle, Impaire Et Passe and Sir Gerhard, no wonder the boys in Warwickshire are on tenterhooks again.

Finally, it was lovely to meet up with Nick Craven in the Weatherbys box at Newmarket where they were sponsoring the opening race on Tuesday and Wednesday. Nick is a man of many talents but if he was responsible for the catering [he wasn't - Ed.], he’s no Gordon Ramsey as his chicken on skewers were tougher than little Amie Waugh.

As to Tattersalls sales, it was on Wednesday that Kia Joorabchian arrived in the box during racing with his new trainer Raphael Freire, a very nice chap relishing the chance of being the man to follow the great Sir Michael Stoute at the local Freemason Lodge yard.

Having already witnessed a 1.4 million gns Acclamation colt being sold to Godolphin on day one, predictably it was Kia’s Amo Racing that swamped that on day two at a breeze-up record 1.75 million gns price for a son of Havana Grey. Big money from big players then, but don’t forget little Amie. Sounds like a Jane Austen heroine!

- TS

Monday Musings: What Went Wrong?

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What went wrong, Willie? Okay, so you got the 1-2-7 in the Coral Scottish Grand National at Ayr, but what happened to the 3-5, especially when you had an extra runner compared to the five in the Randox Grand National at Aintree the previous weekend, writes Tony Stafford.

“I can tell you”, he might say. “One got carried out and the other two, including last year’s winner, MacDermott, pulled up”. Sadly, it was later reported that McDermott had to be put down due to an injury sustained in the race.

It left the Irishman trailing Dan Skelton by £1,581 in the race for the 2024-25 UK trainers’ title. The winner, Captain Cody, is by flat-race stayer Arctic Cosmos, out of the mare Fromthecloudsabove and that was a fair description of how Harry Cobden delivered him from right out the back to foil Klarc Kent, so not quite the Superman, with a flying finish at the end of four miles, if you don’t mind. Cobden must wish he got a few more rides for the Irishman.

Willie has sent 124 individual horses to the UK this season and 27 of them have won 31 races. With place money he has earned £3,102,994 at 19%. Dan Skelton has run exactly twice as many, 248 for 163 wins at very close to the same strike rate (18%) for £3,104,425 after a treble at Ayr on Friday.

Last year, in what now looks sure to be a similar outcome between the two powerhouses, Mullins dominated Sandown’s final day leaving him with £3,326,135 for the season. Skelton, for all his herculean efforts, was marooned (rather unfair to use that word in the circumstances) on £2,983,657 for 121 victories. He’s already exceeded those figures and has 25 entered for Cheltenham’s meeting this week which has £120k in win money on offer, and Thursday is even more potentially lucrative with almost £160k in winner’s cash to be divvied up.

Mullins has 16 in at Cheltenham and in a final day onslaught has 17 in the early-closing races at Sandown on Saturday week compared with Dan’s four. Tough? Like scaling Everest without oxygen!

The rise of the Skelton yard has been remarkable. Minutely master-minded by Nick Skelton, father of Dan and jockey Harry, it can only continue to thrive. Harry is a former champion jockey and winner of the recent half a million pot for big-race points. Nick is an Olympic Gold medal winner from London 2012 but a top international show jumper for decades before that.

Their Warwickshire base has had all the attention paid to it in the manner of a Ballydoyle. Dan will win the title at some stage if not this time round, as Mullins is pushing 70. Then again, with son Patrick or even Ruby Walsh or David Casey to take over, you wouldn’t expect too much loss of effectiveness from Closutton any time soon.

It’s also fair to consider what Willie does at home, when he’s not scaring the daylights out of our best, like Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls, the Skelton boys’ original mentor. Clever fella that Nick Skelton! Mullins has run 287 horses back home this season. Of those, 137 between them have clocked up 181 victories and £4,162,000 in total prizes. He might be good but the numbers help!

I hope Dan manages to move a few thousand clear over the two days at Cheltenham, which will become more than just a side show to this week’s Craven meeting at Newmarket when fast ground will have conditions more like August on the Rowley Mile. <They obviously don’t use that course between June and August, but you know what I mean.>

I couldn’t resist my first few words, as they hark back to probably the two least reasonable examples of “what went wrong” ever used in relation to horse racing.

In April 1985, a horse we’d bought, from Charles O’Brien if memory serves, was heavily backed by its new owner. The more than capable 7lb claimer Simon Whitworth rode a terrific race and Cool Enough won in a photo in a big field Thirsk seller. Wilf Storey was the trainer. In those days daily racing wasn’t televised, so despite picking up a ton of cash, the hard-to-please owner – you’ve guessed it – asked: “What went wrong”, as in “I thought you said it was a certainty”. Cool Enough went on to win seven times in a long career for Lynda and Jack Ramsden.

Then after that, Wilf (I can’t really reveal his part, though totally legal, in it) and the late David Wintle helped engineer one of the best stunts of modern racing history – if I say so myself! - when Topsoil, trained by Wintle having been previously in the care of Barry Hills and Rod Simpson, won a selling hurdle at Haydock.

We’d identified the only danger being a horse of John Jenkins’ and so it proved, Topsoil winning by I think one and a half lengths with 25 lengths back to the third. The owner had a nice win bet and cleaned up with the forecast. Again, no pictures to see; once more the reaction after he collected: “What went wrong?”

It’s hard to believe it was as long ago as July 2017 that Dave died aged 77 and it’s sad that it means he never knew about the significant part in a slice of racing history that his daughter Becky and husband Steve Hillen played in the life of one of the more remarkable horses of present days.

The racing industry is quick to forget where praise is due. When the Hillens’ filly Via Sistina was sold to Australian interests at the end of her 5yo career from the George Boughey stable, nobody seemed to remember it was the retired Joseph Tuite who had sent her on the path to greatness, patiently handling the five grand yearling buy.

True, Boughey quickly brought her into Group race company and her final run, second as a five-year-old to Derby runner-up King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot in October 2023, was a great achievement.

Sold by the Hillens for an eye-watering 2.7million guineas at the 2023 December sales, she went into the care of Chris Waller in Australia. She won a Group 1 race almost immediately in her new home before running a well-beaten 2nd in last year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick racecourse in Sydney.

On Saturday, she put that blemish to rights, winning this year’s Queen Elizabeth Stakes by more than a length from the William Haggas globetrotter Dubai Honour in a finish of seven-year-olds. In between, from August in the latest Australian season, she has won another six races, so seven in a single campaign, all at Group 1 level, emulating one of the achievements of Winx for that great mare’s trainer. In all, eight from 11 runs is her Australian tally.

The race was worth £1.46 million to the winner and £420k to the runner-up. That should help with jockey Tom Marquand’s travel expenses to ride the runner-up. New Zealand-born cash cow James McDonald held the reins on the winner as usual.

Via Sistina’s total earnings have passed £6.6 million and she has such an easy disposition according to her trainer that she could keep on notching up those seven-figure prizes for a while to come. Imagine if Joe Tuite had cranked her up as a two-year-old when she wasn’t ready. Indeed, how many potentially great horses go the wrong way for impatience either from owners or indeed trainers?

This week at Newmarket, the Craven Breeze-up Sale will offer the most desirable pedigrees of all the sales of two-year-olds in training to be had, with the arguable exception of Arqana’s similar auction next month. The biggest prices at Newmarket will be paid for sprint types that record fast times over two furlongs in the middle/conclusion of their breezes, but as the editor pointed out to me when we met last week, various other considerations have been added to the agents’ and trainers’ wish lists. I can’t wait to see the returns.

We saw some nice performances in the Newbury Classic trials, notably appropriately named 33/1 Dubai Duty Free Fred Darling Stakes winner Duty First. Archie Watson’s Showcasing filly slaughtered a decent field and Archie’s owners will presumably re-invest their share of the £48k winnings to supplement her to the 1,000 Guineas.

The Watership Down Too Darn Hot Greenham Stakes was almost as clear-cut. Sir Michael Stoute may have retired but Jonquil, in his care for Juddmonte last season, made an instant hit for Andrew Balding – he of the 282 horses, up from 236 last year. This nice colt beat the equally admirable Rashabar from Brian Meehan fair and square, but both will have plenty to say as the season stretches on.

- TS

Monday Musings: Willie Do It Again?

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Before we enter dream world proper, for a few hundred yards of Saturday’s four miles and two and a half furlongs of the Randox Grand National, my own silly dream tip looked almost a possibility, writes Tony Stafford.

The 13-year-old Celebre d’Allen had jumped into the lead at the third fence from home apparently still going and above all jumping well. All those safely negotiated jumps (57 before Saturday and another 30 now) were apparently combining to make the impossible come true.

Admittedly, the Irish and especially Willie Mullins hordes were grouping, but Michael Nolan turned into the final short straight – there’s also an elbow of course, in the lead. Then, the few agonising strides to the penultimate fence were enough for the bubble to burst, but what a showing, Celebre giving his everything.

That 150/1 last Monday had only been trimmed by a relatively small margin to 125/1 and a friend got me at least double the 150/1 on Betfair, admittedly for peanuts. Then the old legs tired, the Philip Hobbs/ Johnson White Aintree warrior and phenomenon ran out of puff and pulled up on the run-in.

His implosion left the way clear for a Willie Mullins 1-2-3 and for good measure 5-7. It was led off by Nick Rockett (33/1), last year’s winner I Am Maximus (7/1, 2nd favourite) and Grangeclare West, also 33/1. The Trifecta paid £6,850 for a £1 stake.

Had the one UK-trained horse to finish in the first nine, the Josh Guerriero/Oliver Greenall 13/2 favourite Iroko (4th, in the McManus colours) and Henry de Bromhead’s Senior Chief (40/1 in sixth place) behaved themselves, this would have been a superdoopafecta (super is 4) to eclipse the 42-year-old feat of Michael Dickinson’s Famous Five in the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

I suggested to one trainer yesterday that I thought this, as it stood, beat the Tricky Dicky achievement. He wasn’t so sure, saying: “Mullins has 300 horses to work with. The Dickinsons had probably around 50, so for Michael to sort them out to do what they did in a highly competitive 11-horse field was incredible”.

Three hundred to pick from is one thing. To get the right five, mostly high in the handicap, was amazing. Several post-race questions immediately came to mind, firstly how could a horse trained by the master and fresh from winning successively the Thyestes Chase, for many years one of the prime trials in Ireland for Aintree, and then the Bobbyjo Chase, be allowed to start at 33/1? Crazy, why didn’t we find it instead of messing around with 150/1 13-year-olds?

There is no question that Walk In the Park, listed as “private” as regards his fee at Coolmore’s Grange Stud since relocating there in 2016 from France, where his last fee was €1,500, is still the most coveted stallion of jumps horses. He sired the eight-year-old Nick Rockett – the only one of the 34 in the field by him.

Several times over the winter, before and after the publication of the weights, I’ve been moved to question how home trainers can ever get their horses into the race. There were a few more than expected this time, but apart from Iroko, only Twig (10th), Beauport (12th), Horantzau d’Airy (13th), Bravemansgame (15th) and Chantry House, last of 16 to get round, completed the course.

When you think Twig never got into the heat of the action and was more than 40 lengths behind the winner, yet miles in front of the other four to survive, you can see the problem.

It’s no longer the fences. Only two fell in the hunter chase on Thursday and there were no fallers in the Topham on Friday, both admittedly over almost a full circuit less than the big race. Twenty-three got round in the Topham and on the fast ground it was a thriller all the way to the line as Mullins/McManus’ Gentleman De Mee got up near the post. Six pulled up and one unseated.

Apart from the big race, Mullins’ 30 runners over the three days yielded eight wins, only one of which, Green Splendour (100/30) completing a double from the big race for Willie’s son Patrick in the finale, started favourite. Indeed, only three of his horses on the week were market leaders. It must have been unique when none of his four winners that led off Thursday’s card started favourite.

Dan Skelton also provided three favourites, in his case from 19 runners over the three days, but a single win has meant his lead over Mullins in the trainers’ title race, once around £1.5 million, has been cut to not much more than 100 grand.

The five Mullins Grand National runners nicked, thanks principally to Nick Rockett, £860k. Not a bad day’s work.

Mullins has already stated that he will have a go at retaining his title and, knowing his voracious, if genial nature, he’s odds on to do it.

You might not have noticed, but there was another big-money card going on over in Dubai on Saturday. No doubt Frankie Dettori was aware of the sudden burst of “where did it all go wrong” stories in the UK press and social media over his filing for bankruptcy.

Also, I’m sure the HMRC executives that have pursued the claim might have been watching – do they do a two- or three-day week these days and Saturdays are no doubt sacrosanct? They might have been getting excited and checking whether Dubai earnings are retrievable by UK authorities as Frankie’s 40/1 mount, the US-trained Mixto, went for home with a good lead in the Dubai World Cup.

Then, irritatingly for the veteran Italian, along came another US-trained and fellow 5yo, Hit Show, for Brad Cox and rider Florent Geroux to steal the £5.5 million first prize. Hot favourite at 4/9 was Forever Young who pretty much plodded home for third. Frankie must be content with his share of the £1.9 million second spot, adding to the chunk of the £443k of the Godolphin Mile he won on Raging Torrent for US trainer Doug O’Neill.

While there seems to have been fewer UK horses running there this year – I haven’t done an analysis to check that - Jamie Osborne has been as busy in the desert state as ever in 2025. He went close with daughter Saffie to winning the UAE Derby, their Heart Of Honor being nosed out by Japanese-trained Admire Daytona. No doubt Jamie will have the Kentucky Derby on his mind for this horse who so clearly enjoys the dirt.

The most handsome earner for the UK though was, unsurprisingly, William Haggas. His Majloom, albeit Maktoum-owned, a 33/1 shot ridden by Tom Marquand, collected £400k for finishing 3rd to another Japanese winner, Soul Rush, who caught and passed 2/5 shot Romantic Warrior on the line in a finish of seven-year-olds for the ten-furlong Dubai Turf.

Meanwhile, back home in Japan there was a £1.5 million winner’s pot for a ten-furlong Group 1 race on the turf. Bellagio Opera was the winner. If you doubted the strength of the racing and also the breeding programmes that are the base line for Japanese racing, all 15 of the runners were domestic-bred and only two of their sires were bred anywhere but in Japan. It’s been a long-term programme and overseas wins show just how well it is working and will continue to do so.

- TS

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