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

Monday Musings: A National Cause Celebre?

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How do you like a fairy tale, writes Tony Stafford. As so many English trainers have noted, the inflexible rules concerning the Grand National weights do not allow such potential winners as Midlands Grand National hero Mr Vango from giving Sara Bradstock the chance to join her late father John Oaksey with a place in Aintree history. Next year his adjusted rating will ensure he gets in.

Saturday’s race has the usual proliferation of multiple trainer entries, but it’s not just Willie Mullins with seven that takes up a fair proportion of the 34 available places. Shock horror, Paul Nicholls, still complaining that people were doubting him after a poor, by his standards, season until Caldwell Potter’s Cheltenham Festival success, has five.

Other UK handlers were calling for something I’ve been advocating for years – a maximum for any trainer. Looks like only the multiple champions of Ireland and the UK would be the sufferers if that came to pass.

True, there’s a few more of Gordon Elliott’s lower down if they get past the safe 34, which in itself has been a hindrance to the reputation of the great race. The not so Grand National is like a park race, but as I said at the start, how would you fancy a little flutter on a 13-year-old not guaranteed a run? It is a 150/1 shot to be fair and money-back, no run too.

The relatively new Philip Hobbs / Johnson White team has a horse in Celebre d’Allen here that in four of his last seven has run at Aintree. His sole spin over the Mildmay course in October 2023 resulted in a 16-length victory in a veterans’ chase under claimer Lizzie Gale.

He’s also run three times over the National fences, in successive Topham Trophies over 2m5f, finishing eighth in 2023 and a staying on fourth last year only two lengths behind the eventual winner.

In between he was also fourth in the 3m2f Becher Chase in December 2023, tiring in the heavy ground. The fact he has successfully jumped round Auteuil for Louisa Carberry and started life after her with a hat-trick over hurdles for Hobbs, twice on heavy ground at Haydock, suggest he is the sort of adaptable horse that might suit the once supreme test.

Fewer than ever horses are nudged out at either the five-day (later today) or Thursday’s 48-hour stage, but the Hobbs policy of not harming his 145 rating after Bangor has a fair chance of proving to have been a wise one.

One name that appears on his form lines is Inothewayurthinkin, the horse that would have been the shortest priced ever favourite for the race had he not been taken out a few days after his epic Gold Cup victory.

Celebre d’Allen suffered his single non-completion in the Kim Muir of 2024, won so spectacularly by J P McManus’ horse, who came from a long way back to beat the brave Git Maker at his leisure a year ago.

His in-running comment for that race reads, “hampered by faller and unseated at the 17th”. He does tend to be ridden with restraint as was the case at Bangor, when Callum Pritchard rode him, and it would be great if Ben Pauling’s promising young conditional could get a mount in the big race.

The analysis of that race in the Racing Post confirmed what his overall card suggests: he goes well fresh. Five months since the last run might be stretching it a bit, but with the likelihood of multiple places for each-way bets, the fact he’s cleared 57 National fences without a hitch should be worth clinging onto.

For the win, though, what a story if Shark Hanlon and Hewick can take the prize. Gordon Elliott, Tony Martin and Charles Byrnes have all returned from bans in recent times unashamedly continuing their business of winning big races so why not John Joseph?

He entrusted his stable to Tara Lee Cogan during the rap over the knuckles – not much more than that in reality - for his transgression and no doubt had a fair degree of influence on Hewick’s preparation which resulted in a couple of unplaced runs.

Back with the licence, the flame-haired massive presence that is the Shark, was soon in business in a conditions hurdle at Thurles late last month, Hewick winning as he liked by five lengths.

Gavin Sheehan is lined up for the mount on the 2023 King George winner – he beat Nicholls’ Bravemansgame that day by close to a couple of lengths – and will have that Nicholls horse among the 33 he will need to beat, on 7lb worse terms.

You would say, though, that of the pair, Hewick has shown no sign of deterioration in a far-reaching programme involving (earlier) winning the American Grand National (over hurdles) at Far Hills and running second to the very smart Losange Bleu in the French Champion Hurdle over more than three miles. Bravemansgame has looked a fair bit short of that level in the interim.

I was confident that Vanillier, second to Corach Rambler in the 2023 Grand National, would win the Cross Country race at the Festival this month and if he hadn’t gone straight on at the Grand National-style Canal Turn replica at Cheltenham first time round, he probably would have, rather than finishing third behind his Gavin Cromwell stable companion Stumptown.

For me then it’s Hewick, Vanillier, with a dream 150/1 saver – indeed lifesaver if he wins! – on Celebre d’Allen.

**

I’m not done yet with the 2025 Horses in Training Book. Had it been published a little later, one immediate correction would not have been necessary. It lists Raphael E Freire as operating from Felstead Court, in Folly Road, Lambourn. His 25 listed horses are all owned by Amo Racing.

Freire had his first victory of 2025 with 6/4 favourite Diablo Rojo at Lingfield a week ago, when his true location was revealed as recently retired Sir Michael Stoute’s former yard, Freemason Lodge, off the Bury Road in Newmarket.

I visited Roger Varian’s yard earlier this year and the signs of building as you come along the track off the Bury Road with Freemason Lodge on the left and Varian’s Carlburg Stables up ahead, was intensive. Obviously, everything was readied for Raphael in time for the turf season.

Indeed, he saddled on Saturday Mr Professor, last year’s winner of the William Hill Lincoln at Doncaster, but Amo stable rider David Egan could get him no nearer than 13th of the 22 runners in a repeat bid. Freire moved alongside Mr Professor’s previous trainer Dominic Ffrench-Davies in the summer last year having waited for some time for his visa to come through. He’s Brazilian and cut his training teeth in Norway.

On joining the team, he had special involvement with the ever-expanding intake of juveniles. Genial Dom, meanwhile, has gone the way of many previous Kia Joorabchian trainers. He hasn’t a single Amo horse, although Raphael, to his credit, has left a couple of three-year-olds with Dominic. They are twice-raced Flor Do Rio and Mum’s Called, a filly that last went through the ring for 1,000gns.

Ffrench-Davies has three two-year-olds listed in his care. They cost 28,000, 7,000 and 1,500. Last year he had more than 60 in training at the start of the season, now it’s 30, but, knowing Dom, he’ll still be smiling and doing a great job for his mix of smaller owners and syndicates.

Raphael Escobar (that’s what the E stands for) Freire doesn’t have all the Amo horses. They got off the mark at the first time of asking in Saturday’s Brocklesby Stakes, when the 3/1 favourite Norman’s Cay won for the Richard Hannon team.

Norman’s Cay wasn’t listed among any of the 91 juveniles in Hannon’s 202-strong squad in HIT 2025. It’s impossible to know from the book how many others he has in his care for Amo as no owner’s name is listed by Hannon, but after this instant success for the 60k buy from the Somerville Yearling sale (the first of the season last autumn) at Tattersalls, there might be a few more going down to Herridge before long.

I had to have a second look at the result. I see Exclamation finished third for Grace Harris as a 40/1 shot. The previous Exclamation was also by this one’s sire, Acclamation, except they were foaled 18 years apart. The 2005 Exclamation won the £189k Tattersalls October Auction Stakes at Newmarket for Raymond Tooth, but my fondest memory was when, as a four-year-old, he took part in a memorable gallop at Brian Meehan’s stable.

That Thursday morning, before we tucked into the sausages, bacon and the rest, four horses lined up for a gallop that was meant to cement top 2008 juvenile Crowded House as the real deal for the new season’s Classics.

Exclamation and the three-year-old Nasri were also in the line-up, and they finished second and third with Crowded House a poor last of four.

The easy winner of the gallop was Delegator and Mrs Poilin Good’s colt was available at 33/1 for the 2,000 Guineas that morning. I call a pal to get on but neglected to avail myself of the place option. He finished second at Newmarket – to Sea The Stars.

That brilliant John Oxx-trained colt went on to win the Derby (from Fame And Glory); the Coral-Eclipse (beating Rip Van Winkle), Juddmonte (Mastercraftsman), Irish Champion (Fame and Glory again) and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Youmzain).

To think I had 33/1 about him at Newmarket and didn’t bother to back him each-way, never mind lay anything off the horse that started 3/1 favourite for that Classic!

- TS

Monday Musings: Horses In Training

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We’re in that fallow period between the Cheltenham Festival and Aintree’s Grand National meeting, writes Tony Stafford. Not much happens although this time round my wish to see a horse go off odds on for the National early next month will not happen. Inothewayurthinkin was taken out of the race last week.

No doubt JP McManus thinks his other 7yo, Iroko, trained by Josh Guerriero and Oliver Greenall, can do the job in the Gold Cup winner’s place. That seems to be the wayhesthinkin, and with another five also potentially in the eventual line-up, it could be one more for the man whose support for racing and trainers in his native Ireland and the UK knows almost no bounds.

He has last year’s winner I Am Maximus at the top of the weights for Willie Mullins and, a bit lower down, Perceval Legallois, trained by Inothewayurthinkin’s handler Gavin Cromwell.

Gavin has played an almost classical National hand with this eight-year-old, picking up the 27-runner Paddy Power (formerly Leopardstown Chase) over 3m over Christmas and then snaffling another big pot on the same track in a hurdle race over 3m at the Dublin Racing Festival in early February.

Had that been a chase it would have put him into the stratosphere but, like Iroko (10st11lb), he has a nice racing weight at 10st12lb. You wouldn’t put it past JP to win the race yet again with one of these or the trio lower down the betting lists.

What did happen for me though was the always welcome arrival of the new version of Horses In Training. The 2025 book, sent kindly by Sir Rupert Mackeson of Marlborough Books and Prints, arrived a nice few days earlier than last year.

One would expect the horse population to have fallen in these troubled times as well as trainers giving up. The front cover says 522 trainers (538 in 2024) and 17,681 horses, down from 17,906, are listed, so not all doom and gloom by any means. Especially when you consider none of the massive Richard Fahey team gets a mention.

That’s also the case with several teams’ juveniles who aren’t listed, such as John and Thady Gosden’s, so the actual number will be well over 18,000. At an average of maybe between a minimum £350 a week to train the horses and, at the elite stables, nearer £700, plus Vat, and Newmarket (and other, as well as private) gallops fees, it’s remarkable how well the figures have stood up.

The Guerriero/Greenall stable houses two McManus horses other than Iroko, in Jagwar and My Noble Lord. Jagwar was the 3/1 favourite when bolting up in the Trust A Trader Plate, a 20-runner handicap chase at the Cheltenham Festival. My Noble Lord, a hat-trick scorer to end his three-year-old career with Michael Bell, struck first time of asking over hurdles but has been plodding along nicely enough at a level since then. No doubt there are bigger fish to fry with him. We know JP has plenty of patience.

The double Gs – with apologies to the Double Greens, messrs Munir and Souede – have 108 horses listed at their Stockton Hall Farm near Malpas in Cheshire, only two more than last year. Others have enjoyed spectacular increases, none more so than James Owen.

In the 2024 book, Owen had 31 horses under his control, five of them owned by the Gredley Family, including Burdett Road, also a Michael Bell graduate. He had already won his first two hurdle races for Owen and was a prime candidate at the time for a Triumph Hurdle challenge, but injury ruled that out.

He has bounced back very well to win the Greatwood Hurdle at Cheltenham and then, earlier this month, he took advantage of the general carnage of the Champion Hurdle to finish second to Golden Ace, picking up £97k for his efforts.

Later in the meeting, on Bill Gredley’s 92nd birthday, East India Dock, developed by James Fanshawe, was a hot favourite for this year’s Triumph but was beaten in a tight finish by 100/1 shot Poniros, on debut, and Lulamba.

Bell and Fanshawe, respectively with five each last year for the family, are down in numbers but do retain an involvement. Ambiente Friendly, last year’s Derby second to City Of Troy, has moved from Fanshawe to Owen, symptomatic of the way his stable strength has soared thanks to his remarkable achievements so far.

Taking out a licence for the first time in 2023, Owen didn’t have a winner until the 2023/24 jumps season when he had 38 winners. He’s up to 54 this season.

On the flat, again, there were no winners in 2023, but last year exploded to 63 victories with another 24 already in the AW phase of the 2025 campaign. My pal Mick Godderidge is happy that his syndicate horse Carlton has provided two each either side of the New Year over Chelmsford’s 1m6f.

This year’s book shows that Owen’s team has multiplied exactly four-fold. The Gredley family had five listed including of course Burdett Road, but it was probably Owen’s exploits with a later arrival, the Kameko colt Wimbledon Hawkeye, that got Bill and son Tim sitting up and paying proper attention, prompting them to go all-in.

Wimbledon Hawkeye made a winning start at Kempton in late May, then after a couple of placed efforts at Group level, won the Royal Lodge (Group 2) at Newmarket. He finished off with a third place in the Wiliam Hill Futurity, a race his sire won before collecting the following year’s 2000 Guineas.

So, from having a smattering of mainly jumps horses for them in his Green Ridge stables along the Hamilton Road, now James Owen has seven older horses, including last year’s Derby runner-up. He can add to that ten three-year-olds an,  astonishingly, 29 juveniles for the family. That makes it 46 of the 124 in his yard. Some compliment, but at the same time some responsibility for the former point-to-point and Arab racing trainer.  Phew!

You don’t like to focus on trainers going In the other direction but I was so heartened to see after a few absences, the return to the pages of Brian Meehan’s team. The Sam Sangster Manton Thoroughbreds have been a constant over the past few years and Brian and Sam’s sales partnership has found gold many times at value prices. Brian fought back in 2024 and 2025 and now has 43 animals listed, 22 of them juveniles.

Last year, the exploits of his three-year-olds Jayarebe and Kathmandu, second in the French 1,000 Guineas, thrust him back in the headlines and it was cruel when Jayarebe collapsed and died after finishing a close seventh in the Breeders’ Cup Turf race at Del Mar. He would have had a big season in front of him as Brian had been careful not to over-race him.

That was the race Meehan had won twice previously as a trainer, including for Jayarebe’s owner Iraj Parvizi with Dangerous Midge. Parvizi renewed his acquaintance with the stable when Sam Sangster Bloodstock paid Euro 180,000 at the 2022 Arqana October Yearling sale.

Jayarebe was one of two Group 2 winners for the stable at Royal Ascot last year, the other being the juvenile Rashabar. He won the Coventry Stakes on the unfavoured far side of the track when the next nine home in a 22-horse field all came down the stands rails.

He ended his season with a staying-on neck second to the Aidan O’Brien colt Camille Pissarro in the Group 1 Jean-Luc Lagardere Stakes over seven furlongs on Arc day at Longchamp. He will no doubt be campaigned for the races this year that Isaac Shelby contested as a three-year-old in 2023, when he won the Greenham Stakes and finished second in the French 2000 Guineas.

His owners, Wathnan Racing, have retained him for breeding and he stands this year at Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire at a fee of £7,000.

There are so many trainers and so many good young people on the way up too. I used to see young Jack Morland at Brian’s Thursday work mornings when his father was a prominent member of the earliest Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates. Jack has made a good start and lists 15 horses in his care, with Sam Sangster the owner of the previously unraced four-year-old Farrh filly Nature’s Charm.

Sam also has a foothold in his nephew Ollie Sangster’s stable. Robert Sangster’s grandson has 59 horses under his care at his much-improved and sympathetically developed yard at Manton, just a few hundred yards from Meehan’s stables. Surprisingly, only ten juveniles are listed, but no doubt there will be some more waiting to come in from his good breeders’ connections when ready and, like everyone else, the breeze-ups at Newmarket, Doncaster, Ireland and France offer the potential for more arrivals. Let’s wish them all continued success in 2025.

-TS

Monday Musings: Bloodbath

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Make no mistake. It was another Cheltenham bloodbath for the UK horses. Even if the first day’s four wins offered a crumb of comfort. It was only four beats three because once Constitution Hill fell halfway round in the Champion Hurdle, it needed another catastrophe from State Man to gift the race to Golden Ace.

Fair play to Jeremy Scott, having the audacity to run the seven-year-old mare Golden Ace against the stars. She had won five of her seven starts over hurdles yet, on 144, she languished 31lb lower on official ratings behind Constitution Hill; 24 lb behind State Man, from both of whom she was receiving 7lb; and 19lb behind fellow mare Betterdaysahead.

As well as Jeremy Scott’s enterprise in running her here rather in the mares’ race (at her owner’s behest, according to the soundbites) where she would have encountered (and likely been put in her place) by the peerless Lossiemouth, the UK also picked up, via the James Owen-trained Burdett Road, a touch short of £100k for second. He was a 66/1 shot with no-hoper Winter Fog, presumably there to pick up a few quid place money for the voracious, but very pleasantly so, Willie Mullins. His third place earned just short of 50 grand, amounting to a quarter of all his earnings in 26 races.

The one-two-three were respectively 25/1, 66/1 and 150/1 and if you expected a bumper payout on the Tricast, using the old multiplier formula, you would have been disappointed. It was not much more than 4000/1, ten times the Exacta, but then the firms these days are too cute to resort to outdated models for payouts.

It was a week when the “certainties” by and large proved anything but. Even before Tuesday’s Champion Hurdle, another of the meeting’s “knocking” bets, Majborough, came unstuck in the Arkle Chase. The potential for a proper race and one that would possibly have been the highlight of the meeting evaporated when Sir Gino was scratched, leaving Majborough as the two-to-one on favourite on the day, the same price as Constitution Hill would be later.

Majborough threw away his chance with a couple of major errors and some lesser ones. Jango Baie, for the Henderson/de Boinville team, stepped in for early meeting confidence, soon to be punctured by the Champion Hurdle misadventure.

Another odds-on saviour for the bookmakers was Jonbon in the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Day Two. One awful mistake left him with too much ground to make up and the way he did try to retrieve it still left many believing his status as the best two-mile chaser in training hadn’t been deposed. I would question that because of the terrific performance of Barry Connell’s Marine Nationale.

Marine Nationale had won the opening race at the 2023 Festival, the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, ridden by the late Michael O’Sullivan, and this year that race was renamed in his honour. Emotional and its variants are words over-used in sports writing, but there was fully deserved and deeply felt emotion aplenty all around Cheltenham, re-doubled when Jazzie Matty, Michael’s winner in the Boodles Juvenile Hurdle that same day in 2023, also repeated a win, this time for Cian Collins rather than Gordon Elliott, in the Grand Annual.

I was talking to Brian Meehan the other day. He told me he was a second cousin to the brilliant young jockey and says his relative’s death had been the “most awful news we’ve had around the racing world for many years. He was so young and it happened in a flash. It was a sad, sad day.”

I’m sorry, I can’t be dealing with the “looking down on us” attitude, in full flow in relation to the late John Hales after the Sir Alex Ferguson mob had their big win at the meeting with Caldwell Potter which made all impressively from the front in the Grade 2 Jack Richards Novices’ Handicap Chase under Harry Cobden.

That brought a £64k win prize to be shared among such luminaries as Sir Alex, the late Mr Hales’s estate, Fred Done et al.

If a race is worth £64k to the winner, possibly £55k will go to the owners. Caldwell Potter was bought out of the Gordon Elliott stable last year for €740k. He would need to win another ten at a similar level to get close to the purchase price and there’s nothing in the way of stud fees to be derived from him, so it’s prizemoney or bust.

Such is the tangled logic of racing – probably derived from football where £20 million players can be described as “for nothing” – that listening on the car radio that day, as I had an important errand to fulfil, I heard at least two otherwise sane individuals declaring him “well worth the money”. Not if it was yours, mate!

The James Owen/Gredley team, delighted with Burdett Road’s effort, went into Friday’s Triumph Hurdle on father-figure Bill’s 92nd birthday – so he’s even older than me, just! – with high hopes for East India Dock.

True, he had a smart domestic opponent in the Henderson-trained and twice-raced unbeaten ex-French Lulamba to beat, but he seemed to have the rest covered. Especially so as Willie Mullins had not revealed any of this season’s expensive French intake worth much more than a hill of beans, as they used to say. Still 5/4 did look a trifle short.

But when Willie doesn’t have obvious quality, as with Fact To File, maybe the most impressive by the  Thursday of the week, he can always call on quantity. In the old days, before the insidious opportunity of the Fred Winter, all the good juveniles went for the Triumph and the last thing that could have happened would have been a newcomer getting into the race.

But so limited are the expectations, particularly of the home team, that Mullins (a) could be allowed to run 11 in one race, something I abhor, and (b) could saddle three of them for the first time over jumps.

Much was made of the 100/1 win of Poniros, a 200,000gns buy out of the Ralph Beckett stable from where it ran in the colours of Amo Racing. Here it sported the blue of Tony Bloom, owner of Brighton and Hove Albion FC. Nobody I spoke to beforehand dreamt he was worth the buying price. In the words of the radio commentators from the day before, he was “a snip” or “a gift”. Time will tell but he picked up East India Dock at the last and kept going better than Lulamba on his way to ten wins on the week for his trainer.

There is method in his madness. Last year, Mullins had the Triumph one-two with Majborough and Kargese. Before the Triumph, the filly Kargese already had a rating of 141. She went on to be second to Sir Gino at Aintree and won the Grade 1 juvenile at Punchestown. Her form this season amounted to one run in the UK, a promising second to Take No Chances, who had been an excellent third to Lossiemouth on the meeting’s opening day when her rating of 140 looked idiotically low. That run showed it should have been much nearer 150.

What was Kargese’s mark on Friday? You’ve got it, still 141 after her second in the Triumph and at Aintree, a Grade 1 win at Punchestown and a solid first run back in the UK.

There was an equally give-away mark in the meeting finale, the race that finally got Gordon Elliott off the mark after a frustrating week. Wodhooh, winner of all six of her races over jumps, using some soft touches over here on the way, and hardly harming her mark, also ran off 141 in the Martin Pipe. Again, she should have been nearer 150. Our horses win a race or two and go up in lumps, their Irish counterparts get a much easier ride. We mustn’t upset them!

One race that Mullins would have expected to win was a third Gold Cup, but Galopin Des Champs was rendered statuesque from the last fence by Inothewayurthinkin. Much was made of the 25 grand it cost JP McManus to supplement the Gavin Cromwell-trained seven-year-old – a fiver to you or me? He was rated 17lb his rival’s inferior but beat him six lengths at levels. The Grand National looks a formality with its much more park-like nature these days, assuming this effort hasn’t left its mark. I hope he runs again, I’d love to see an odds-on shot in the Grand National!

The other Mullins shock was Ballyburn in the three-mile Brown Advisory Novice Chase on Wednesday. The 8/13 chance had drawn admirers from friends and family far and wide, such was the anticipation. Instead of winning, though, he trailed home in fifth after a poor round of jumping. Mullins’ scatter-gun approach paid off here, too, Lecky Watson at 20/1 doing the honours.

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There was other racing going on elsewhere last week, and Hughie Morrison was apoplectic at the non-publicised so-called rule from the BHB that when only three are declared for a race at the 48-hour stage, that race is abandoned. He had his improving chaser Filanderer in at Doncaster on Friday and soon after the 10 a.m. Wednesday deadline, was told just that. Eight grand in prizemoney swallowed up into the money machine that is BHA administration.

On Sunday, two of the chases at the Market Rasen meeting attracted a deadline total of four runners each. By the time they were listed on Saturday, already one had come out of each race. Hughie asks, “Why weren’t they abandoned at that stage. Another race last week went ahead with a final field of three. I would like to know, whether this so-called BHA policy has ever been notified to trainers, or is it just another example of their total disregard for owners and trainers’ rights!”

- TS

Monday Musings: Preview Season is Over

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I went to a very swish Cheltenham Preview Night in the Bleeding Heart Restaurant, a stone’s throw, as they used to say, from Farringdon Station in London on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. I had the good fortune to have been invited by a friend and so well was my attendance anticipated, I was designated Malcolm Caine plus 1.

I got there far too early, but then hourly trains do not leave too much flexibility. I hadn’t previously met either Joe Beevers or Neil Channing, the guys who formed Betting Emporium in 2013. They were brought together by their joint love (and success) as professional gamblers and poker players. Not only did they share a birthday, December 9, but in the same year too.

The food was great – as I hoped it would be – although I cannot vouch for the dessert as I had to leave to get my train home. I wonder if Malcolm, or one of the trio of Patrick Neville/Dylan Cunha owners (among them Seamus, adjacent to me, who accepted the white wine that was surplus to my requirements). I wonder also if any of the trio nabbed my crème brulee, Malcolm wouldn’t have – he hates it.

The guest star on my (our) table was compere for the night, Sean Boyce of Sky Sports Racing, a superb, knowledgeable link between the other experts Lydia Hislop and commentator and, so it appears, a real shrewdie-dudie punter in Richard Hoiles, and Channing of course. Looking at Sean, I still wonder why he added that beard to what close up is revealed as a very youthful visage. Maybe he wanted the aura that people think age can add. I can assure him, stay young as long as you can, mate.

I did check with Malcolm, best known Cheltenham-wise as one of the owners and in whose colours 2009 Triumph Hurdle winner Zaynar ran. 2009? That’s nothing, I had one of the favourites in the same race in my colours 23 years earlier: Tangognat ran a shocker on the fast ground that day in 1986.

Arriving early as I did, before the maybe 80 or so all very much close to being punting pros by the sound of the knowledge that emanated from all parts of the basement room throughout the evening, Joe Beevers was the only non-staff member in view. Joe, an amiable chap, tested my suitability for future employment by asking me to join him. I had to allot a pen and the cheat sheet leaving room for notes on each of the races of the week, either on the seat or between the cutlery on each place setting. I elected for the table given my proclivity for sitting first and looking afterwards.

Neil Channing came in soon after. So often had I either seen his punting-wise contributions to Nick Luck’s Sunday show on Racing TV, or heard about them, that it was great to meet the man. In much of my life, I had marvelled that I had never met this person or that, often to be disarmed by their recollection of a specific occasion that I had completely forgotten about. Maybe when I get the results of my recent MRI scan on what used to be my brain, that would give a clue to my sporadic memory.

Neil – can I call you Neil after one meeting, if in fact it was our first? – he thought probably not but couldn’t place when one might have occurred. I’ll see if the hospital can fit him in on a quiet day, presumably after the Festival, on which we were supposed to be concentrating fully.

The Judi Dench reference came out when I or he got round to York as a place he had visited. He and his wife have been living a mildly nomadic existence over the last couple of years, not in the houseboat I was anticipating, rather in Airbnbs.

He and Mrs Neil enjoyed York and I said that I’ve been lucky enough to stay there several times courtesy of former Hackney Councillors Jim and Mary Cannon, in their four-storey “mansion”, compared to Hackney anyway, around the corner from where Dame Judi went to school. I told Neil that and he said Dame Judi also has a birthday on December 9. Small world.

Neil then threw in that Eddie the Shoe (Fremantle) had last summer chosen York to spend the latest of his numerous romantic liaisons – the previous ones presumably not quite surviving his mania for Fulham Football Club. Eddie was one of the earlier regular casual subs on my desk at the Daily Telegraph in the days when I was Racing Editor – thus 1979-1990, exactly duplicating Margaret Thatcher’s time as Prime Minister.

Another aside – my birth-twins story beats yours, chaps. I shared at school a birthday with a boy called Tony Zahl. Not only was he born on March 4, 1946, and had the same first name as mine, he was even in the same house at Central Foundation school, 1.3 miles east along Clerkenwell Road at the Old Street/City Road junction.

Tony, more recently known as Peters, had two good friends, brothers Steve and Kevin Howard. Many years after our school days, we bumped into each other at a racecourse and as Tony’s love of going racing waned, Steve and Kevin became close friends, even staging two Cheltenham Preview nights in Billericay. Steve found a couple of “last-ditch” mortgages for me, Kevin provided the shellfish for our regular Friday of Cheltenham – once I’d left the DT – betting sprees in the Chequers pub in Billericay.

I digress, as I expect you noticed.

For most of the time during the analysis of the major races of the week – I was off before we got to the events where maybe the odd GB-trained horse might take a hand - I marvelled at the knowledge spontaneously exhibited all around the room.

Malcolm had another edge on me there as among the minor partners in Zaynar was Michael Buckley, and my friend had spoken to him recently. He elicited from him the news that Constitution Hill “has never been better!”

Not only is Lydia Hislop fantastic in her role, often (what delight) in tandem with Ruby Walsh, she too has an encyclopaedic knowledge, and impressive memory to go with it. Who would have believed that from his little office just off from Arsenal’s old Stadium in Highbury, Mark Popham could have launched the careers of Lydia and Rishi Persad, not to mention Ed Prosser, horse sales reporter for the Racing Post for many years and then the UK representative for Keeneland sales? I can imagine worse jobs than that considering I went there 40 or 50 times in my journalistic and owner representation years.

Next to Lydia on her table was one more proper expert, Paul Jones, another whom I’d never met. As promised last week, editor Matt Bisogno gave me Gary Wiltshire’s book, “Fifty Years in the Betting Jungle”, sub-titled “confessions of an on-course bookie” which Paul Jones co-wrote.

I’ve known Gary for most of those ever-stretching decades and still run into him when I go to Chelmsford, maybe a far cry from Dettori Day and Gary’s calling card £1.4 million loss, but it’s still part of the same stretch fabric.

Paul Jones inserted his two-penn’orth through the evening, and like everyone of this hand-picked gathering, he was totally clued up.

In between one of the small intervals I asked him: “Are you the Paul Jones that co-wrote Gary Wiltshire’s book?” Then we were away. I must say, I didn’t get sent the first one either and haven’t read it. I do feel it’s good that Paul came out flat about his involvement and you can see a journalist’s hand in the deal. What I didn’t like was when prices of odds-on shots are listed as 1/2 on – rather than 2/1 on or plain 1/2 as I’m sure the star of the book would say and has said every day of his colourful life.

If you are looking for lots of pictures, forget it. The type face is unspectacular but easily readable. Go get one, he’s 70 now, with his share of health issues, some not unconnected of course to his once weighing in at 37 stone! The belly on the telly as the Sun branded him in those days. The book is published by Weatherbys Ltd and at £19.95 it’s a good read.

I started this piece about the only preview night I’d been to this year, because many in which I’ve been involved were on the Monday night before each Cheltenham meeting at the Bedfordshire Racing Club. We had most of the runners by then and the club’s long-time president, Howard Wright, always declared it “The best of the previews” – his words not mine! We went back all that time since 1979 when I invited him to come as my Deputy Racing Editor at the Daily Telegraph.

Such was his obvious ability that he moved on to bigger things at the Racing Post and was still connected with that paper when, sadly, he died last year. He filled the Sean Boyce role, with me, Ian Wassell of Corals, and BHA two-mile hurdles handicapper David Dickinson as the usual panellists.

David, it seems, was one of Gary Wiltshire’s best friends and once he left the BHA Gary relates that he was free to bet again. Like Neil Channing, Lydia Hislop and the rest from Saturday night, he knows his way around the Betting Jungle. It may be a Jungle, but it was fun reading about Gary’s life and how he’s survived it so spectacularly for such a long time. For me, though, Saturday night was as much about remembering Howard as anything else.

 - TS

Monday Musings: Dirt

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We all expect there to be a minimal European presence these days in the dirt races on the Breeders’ Cup cards every November as the stark difference between the two forms of the sport in the United States becomes ever more obvious, writes Tony Stafford.

Aidan O’Brien’s attempts to secure dual and enhanced appeal for his potential stallions over the years have come pretty much to naught even if Giant’s Causeway’s honourable second place to Tiznow – when was it? wow, 25 years ago - had been the marker that kept him trying until City Of Troy’s unplaced effort last November.

It can be done, as Romantic Warrior’s near miss in the Saudi Cup and its £8 million first prize showed last weekend. And I think that if it’s going to be any European stable that tries seriously in the future, it will almost certainly be the Simon and Ed Crisford team.

I doubt it will be Charlie Appleby and Godolphin. I had two preconceptions in my mind before settling down to pen these words. First, that the UK stables have been finding the allure (and money) of the Dubai Carnival meeting less and less compelling. And secondly, that Godolphin still like to have their dirt runners on the main Meydan cards.

Yet when I looked more closely there were ten UK-based trainers, not counting Appleby or the Crisfords, who are regarded as locals in action this past weekend on the Super Saturday card in its traditional spot, three weeks ahead of the World Cup.

Pride of place had to go to George Scott, reinvented winner-wise in 2024 and now showing the kind of promise he always exhibited in his younger days. He initially worked with Michael Bell and, after a short time in the US assisting Simon Callaghan, then came back to help Lady Jane Cecil upon Sir Henry’s sad passing.

Scott’s own marital breakdown inevitably caused a slowdown in his career, but he now boasts a yard full of exciting horses and big owners. In West Acre he has charge of a 3yo sprinter that can top the charts in his category in Europe this year.

Life and luck are all about timing. Between West Acre’s second and third runs in his two-year-old season, back in October, West Acre changed from a joint-ownership between Michael Blencowe and Valmont, the latter having in the past couple of seasons become a major ownership force in UK racing, to the outright possession of Mr Blencowe.

He won easily a few days later at Southwell after which he was shipped out for the Carnival. Following an initial second place, he broke the five-furlong course record in a Group 2 last month and then was not far behind time-wise on Saturday.

He was the 4/7 favourite for the £183k to the winner Grade 2 Nad El Sheba Turf Sprint against 14 opponents, among them last year’s winner Frost At Dawn. Her trainer, William Knight, plus Robert Cowell, Dylan Cunha, Archie Watson and the Crisfords were all represented. It was no contest though as Callum Shepherd brought the favourite through for a regulation win in the final furlong.

 

 

Nearest UK connection was Cover Up, no, not the revered (to me) extreme stayer of Sir Michael Stoute’s who extricated me from a hole at Royal Ascot one day almost a quarter-century ago. This Cover Up picked up 30k for Simon and son Ed, while two of Jamie Osborne’s contingent each collected a similar place prize in other turf races.

I began by illustrating the limit of ambition of European horses in dirt races in the US, even where the money is at its most lavish. I wasn’t expecting to find that no Godolphin horse, trained either by Charlie Appleby or Saeed Bin Suroor - the latter having no representation at all on the card - ran in any of the three dirt races.

They were left largely to the home team, with Bhupat Seemar the leading domestic player nowadays, collecting two of the trio. The one European dirt success came from 33/1 shot Fort Payne, handled by French-based Nicolas Caullery. World Cup night will have the customary top US and Japanese involvement, no doubt, especially in the World Cup itself.

Further emphasising the stark disparity, Godolphin had odds-on shots in all the turf races apart from West Acre’s five-furlong contest. Respectively they went off at 1/12, 10/11, 8/13 and 4/9. All those races were won by Appleby, although the 10/11 shot First Conquest and Mickael Barzalona were only third to the other Godolphin runner, Nations Pride ridden by William Buick.

Buick cleaned up on the day with four wins and a share of his horses’ tally of more than half a million quid. Charlie had some not-inconsiderable place money further to boost his earnings on the day. That is assuming that their already platinum-plated winter contracts are assessed financially in the same way as they are back in Newmarket through the summer.

If you aren’t too familiar with the names Nations Pride and later winner Silver Knott it’s unsurprising as both spent all of 2024 and, in the case of Silver Knott, 2023, plundering riches on the other side of the Atlantic. Godolphin’s management knows that the level of older Graded US turf horses is way below similar Group class contests, in the UK particularly.

 An increasing number of horses in the Godolphin blue are keeping the cash registers flowing and multiplying Appleby and Buick’s transatlantic flights, in the comfort of their private jets of course, through the year. Nations Pride, winner of the Arlington Million last year at its new home of Colonial Downs, will be back in three weeks with the target of the Dubai Turf. I bet Charlie would have preferred not to have to face Romantic Warrior on that day, but the Hong Kong champion is aiming there, realistically so.

What of the day’s opening 1/12 shot? Mountain Breeze, easy winner of the Jumairah 1,000 Guineas, last raced in the UK at Newmarket in August when no match for Lake Victoria. The Aidan O’Brien filly completed her unbeaten five-timer at the Breeders’ Cup in November and it will be interesting to see whether Appleby challenges her and the other strong candidates Ballydoyle have lined up for the first UK Classic of 2025.

A couple of weekends ago, Via Sistina, making her return after a break since her latest success in November, turned out for a 7f Grade 2 contest at Randwick racecourse in Sydney and finished only third, albeit just one length and a nose behind Chris Waller stablemates Fangirl and Lindermann.

The Waller trio were back on parade over one mile of the same track on Saturday for the Grade I Verry Elleegant Stakes and the market bet heavily on Via Sistina. The former George Boughey trainee had already recouped all and more of the 2.7 million gns that Australian interests had paid for her late in 2023 and the success story rolls on.

This time, reunited with regular partner James McDonald (Kerrin McEvoy stood in last time), she got the better of Fangirl by a neck with Lindermann a nose behind in third. The £287k brought her overall earnings to more than £4.8 million, of which only around £100k was accrued in the time she was owned by Becky Hillen, the late David Wintle’s daughter.

Dave was a big pal of Gary Wiltshire, and the larger-than-life bookmaker has a life story out. I’ve no idea what it’s called as the Editor was anxious to save the bother (and cost) of parcelling it up and sending it. I will have to wait until we meet hopefully later this week. When I see it, I’ll let you now, especially how he managed to recover from his wipeout on Frankie Dettori’s seven-out-of-seven day at Ascot all those years ago.

- TS

Monday Musings: Romantic

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It’s official – well almost, the best flat racehorse in the world is a seven-year-old gelding, writes Tony Stafford. True, Romantic Warrior didn’t win the Saudi Cup in Riyadh on Saturday, but he made the high-class Japanese dirt specialist Forever Young pull out all the stops, only getting overhauled in the last 25 yards and losing out by a neck.

The top of the 2024 International Racehorse Ratings was a tie between multiple Group 1 Derby and Irish Derby winner City Of Troy from Aidan O’Brien and the appearing-from-nowhere Laurel River, given an equal figure of 128 after an 8.5 length demolition of the Dubai World Cup field on dirt as long ago as last March.

The Juddmonte-owned Laurel River hadn’t appeared again until being defeated at odds of 4/11 in a Group 3 race back at Meydan where he is now trained by Bhupat Seemar, having started his career in California with three wins for Bob Baffert. He had been an intended starter for the Saudi Cup but was ruled out by injury.

The dangers of allotting such a high score on a single run – true, he had won his previous race at the Dubai Carnival by 6.5 lengths, but that was still only enough to merit a 115 rating – are obvious. In the World Cup, his nearest finisher, staying on all the way home, was the veteran Japanese horse Ushba Tesoro, a regular in Far and Middle Eastern major middle-distance races. He turned up once more on Saturday in the Saudi Cup and the now eight-year-old again put in his best work late in the piece to finish third, albeit ten-and-a-half lengths adrift of the top two.

Forever Young started the 11/8 favourite on Saturday, having gone to the track eight times in his life, each one on dirt. He had been the unlucky member of the trio that crossed the line noses apart in the Kentucky Derby in May, having been interfered with; and again had to give best, this time to Derby second Sierra Leone, when that Coolmore-owned colt won the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the autumn on Forever Young's only other start in the USA. Before Saturday, he'd won all six of his other races.

Those runs gave Yoshito Yahagi's colt an international rating of 121, joint 24th and 4lb lower than Hong Kong-trained Romantic Warrior (125) in joint fifth. The amazing thing about the runner-up, a son of UK-based veteran sire Acclamation and a 300,000gns yearling buy from Corduff Stud at the Tattersalls Yearling sales six years ago, was that this was his first race on dirt after all 23 previous appearances (19 wins) had been on turf.

James McDonald, his regular partner, always finds time away from his Australian commitments – no wonder – to go wherever Romantic Warrior takes him. The only regret for him was that the neck, possibly because he took up the running too far from home and travelled five wide at the top of the straight, made a difference of £5.2 million to the horse’s owner Peter Lau Pak Fai, and maybe half a million for his rider’s share, to McDonald.

 

https://youtu.be/wD848csjW30?si=bacAfJir3FqdJbXJ

 

He didn’t let it get him down though, for having pocketed the best part of 300k there, he was at it again in Hong Kong yesterday, picking up the 720k first prize on Voyage Bubble for a virtual stroll around Sha Tin in the Hong Kong Gold Cup. In the words of the immortal Derek Thompson, he won “as an odds-on <7/20> favourite should”.

It made quite a difference to Romantic Warrior’s earnings. Before Saturday I believe, although the internet resolutely refused to give me up to date figures of before the race, showing horses of lesser prizemoney on top, he was already the highest-earning racehorse of all time. The £18.1 million he had collected from 18 wins, three second places and two (honestly!) fourth spots eclipsed whatever any horse, such as fellow Hong Kong champion Golden Sixty, had compiled. I couldn’t find anywhere that confirmed it.

He isn’t just a one-trick Sha Tin pony either, with Group 1 wins at Moonee Valley in Australia, Tokyo last summer and a cantering warm-up for Saturday across the Gulf at Meydan last month. He’s surely at the top of the earnings tree now, up to £20.9 million and change. It would have become an almost unfathomable £26.1 million if Forever Young hadn’t produced that battling late rally under his Japanese rider Ryusei Sakai.

The case for calling him the best in the world, if only for versatility and adaptability at such a late stage in his career, is made easier by comparing the inability of top-ranked City Of Troy to adapt to dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year at Del Mar. There, he was 13 lengths behind Sierra Leone and ten adrift of Forever Young.

It’s a moot point whether Laurel River’s 128 keeps him ahead of either Forever Young or Romantic Warrior on their form via Ushba Tesoro in Riyadh. I’d love the big three to meet later in the year, maybe in the Dubai World Cup next month, when I’d be siding with Romantic Warrior to clock up another few million of those other sheikhs’ money.

*

The weekend’s (Friday and Saturday) domestic racing was dominated by Ben Pauling and his stable jockey Ben Jones, with two wins on Friday at Warwick, where Jones added a third for an outside stable, and a 200/1 hat-trick together at Kempton on Saturday.

Pauling fancied all of those winners bar one, understandably so as Mambonumberfive, overnight a 20/1 shot for the Adonis Hurdle, had pulled up on his recent hurdles debut and was faced by the Prix du Jockey Club fifth and King Edward VII fourth, the 111-rated on the flat Mondo Man, trained by Gary and Josh Moore.

Mondo Man had cost €520,000, whereas Mambonumberfive was a “cheapie” at only €450 grand! After three non-wins in decent juvenile hurdles for Francois Nicolle, that initial pulled up in the Cheltenham race won so decisively by East India Dock didn’t enhance the trainer’s expectations.

But now we saw the true potential of this giant of a horse of whom Ben Pauling said in the morning “he doesn’t strike me as a juvenile type - he’s one for next season”. Mambonumberfive confounded that negativity with a one-length verdict over Toby Lawes’ St Pancras, the favourite half a length further away in third. Ben Jones reported that Mambonumberfive had been less than perfect over the first three hurdles but got the hang of it in time to get the best of a tight finish.

Mondo Man’s connections reckoned the ground was softer than ideal for the gelded son of Mondialiste, but the effort was still creditable. In between the pair came St Pancras who had picked up the 24k first prize for his Scottish Triumph Hurdle victory at Musselburgh last time and earned another 17 grand here. He was conceding the 5lb penalty to his much more expensive opponents.

A 95,000gns Tatts buy in the autumn out of the Martyn Meade stable, the 86-rated flat performer is almost halfway to recouping the investment of Andrew and Sarah Wates in the colours of Andrew’s 1996 Grand National winner Rough Quest. I expect it will take the two French recruits rather longer to get that far!

With an easy win earlier from the hitherto luckless Bad in a chase handicap (geegeez syndicate-owned Sure Touch running a nice race in fourth) and a more mettle-testing success for Our Boy Stan in the concluding bumper, Pauling had the perfect send-off for his short drive along the A308 to Twickenham where England edged out Scotland in a Calcutta Cup thriller.

That wasn’t a bad weekend as the trainer took his tally to 55 wins for the season and more than 900k in stakes. Ben is 260k adrift of last season’s best and with the major money on offer at the big spring festivals to aim at and ammunition to target them, he must be hopeful that he can push the envelope that little bit further.

- TS

Monday Musings: Levelling Up

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Much was made when the entries came out of this year’s alleged “levelling up” of the respective teams for the Randox Grand National, writes Tony Stafford. Home stables, tired of the now routine grab of almost all of the £1 million prize money by the Irish, had entered close to half (37 of the 87 still engaged) so would have better chances to keep the prizes at home, went the thinking.

Fat chance. Nowadays only 34 can run, making the task of breaking into that portion guaranteed a place in the starting lineup almost impossible. Of last year’s field of 32 (two cried off with vet’s certificates on the day of the race), only eight were UK trained. In contrast, Willie Mullins ran eight on his own, and Gordon Elliott seven.  Three each from those all-powerful stables started at 40/1 and bigger and they all pulled up. The Mullins trio of pullers-up were 100/1, 40/1 and 125/1: Elliott’s were 125/1, 50/1 and 100/1.

No hopers maybe and, just as possibly, their respective owners fancied an afternoon at Aintree and the privilege of being looked after by the redoubtable, nay vivacious, redhead Siobhan Doolan in the owners’ dining room! More likely, their main purpose was to eliminate as many potential UK threats to the big two stables as they possibly could.

With just shy of 50 per cent of the field, it was hard to imagine their failing to get among the big prizes and so they did. Mullins won it with I Am Maximus in the JP McManus colours, and Elliott was second and fourth with old-timers Delta Work and Galvin.

Their compatriot, Henry de Bromhead, had three runners, and two of the first six home in third-placed Minella Indo, the 2021 Cheltenham Gold Cup winner, and Ain’t That A Shame, sixth for amateur-riding owner David Maxwell. Only the Maxwell horse does not have the Aintree ticket this time, but the Irish top quartet from last year do. Christian Williams’ fifth-placed Kitty’s Light does not have the entry.

At nine, I Am Maximus will be the baby of the returning team, and he is up 8lb to a top-weighted 167. Second and third are now age 12, and the fourth is an 11-year-old. They aren’t for moving anytime soon.

Two Venetia Williams horses are the sole UK interlopers in the top ten in the weights. Both Royale Pagaille, the second top-weight, and L’Homme Presse ran on Saturday and neither showed the sort of form needed to be feasible contenders at Aintree or, more immediately, in the Gold Cup at Cheltenham.

Royale Pagaille has a fantastic record at Haydock but, predictably, asking him to give almost two stone to some tough staying handicappers in the Grand National Trial over 3m4f there proved too demanding a task. He faded out of contention behind an impressive winner in Nicky Richards’ Famous Bridge, who does have the Aintree entry, as does runner-up Apple Away and fourth-placed Git Maker.

Famous Bridge had been loping along easily in the same race 12 months earlier, when unseating his rider Sean Quinlan six fences from home. The race was won by Gavin Cromwell’s Yeah Man. He returned aiming at the follow-up but this time it was he that didn’t get round.

Royal Pagaille’s intervention in this race had a significant difference to Famous Bridge’s chances, even if he was running off only a 1lb lower handicap mark. Last year, Famous Bridge carried 11st4lb, now he was 16lb lower on 10st2lb. Checking back, he had never carried less than 11st in any of his last ten races over the previous two years! Going as far as three-and-a-half miles, that surely would make a massive difference and so it proved.

So is Nicky Richards planning ahead to the big day in April? Hardly. On 136, Famous Bridge is number 80, five places lower than Lucinda Russell’s mare Apple Away. To complete the trio of unrealistic Grand National candidates from this so-called Trial, Jamie Snowden’s Git Maker in a closing fourth, is number 84.

Famous Bridge did well to collect the £57k first prize. Yeah Man, rated 144 and who unseated on Saturday, is number 61 for the big race. The lowest mark to get in last year was 146. It could happen, but Gavin Cromwell is almost sure to have his sights lowered, maybe to a Cheltenham handicap with the Irish Grand National even more a possible destination.

The other Venetia star L’Homme Presse did his Gold Cup aspirations no favours with an abject performance in the Grade 1 Ascot Chase. Jumping out to the left from an early stage, he was soon pulled up by Charlie Deutsch as the Paul Nicholls-trained Pic D’Orhy won in trademark all-the-way style.

Nicholls showed his emotion, first cheering the horse and Harry Cobden home with his inimitable energy. Then, when interviewed later, he showed how much he was relieved at this first Grade 1 success for his stable since Pic D’Orhy won the same race 12 months ago. Don’t worry Paul, nobody thinks you’re anything but a fantastic trainer. What do they say, form is temporary, class is permanent?

Anyway, the Irish do not intend relinquishing the £500,000 top Grand National prize lightly and it seems more inevitable by the day that JP McManus will be making it Grand National win number four.

He has the first three in the betting with Inothewayurthinkin on top at 8/1 for Cromwell, and last year’s winner second in at 12’s. Slightly from left field is third favourite Iroko, trained in the UK by Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero; he gets in fine as he’s number 27 on the list.

His latest fourth place in a Grade 3 handicap at Cheltenham last month attracted the attention of the stewards who interviewed Jonjo O’Neill, his rider, afterwards and then issued a lengthy report of his comments. Reading between the lines, it doesn’t seem that they were totally convinced by what he told them, and the 14/1 price about the horse, a seven-year-old as is Inothewayurthinkin, reflects the market’s fear of a McManus “plunge”, if he still bothers plunging that is.

Nicky Richards has been recovering well from the riding accident which caused such serious injuries last year, and his horses have been providing the ideal tonic. As well as the valuable prize so deservedly collected by Famous Bridge in the revered Hemmings racing colours, he has also been having a great time with previously unraced bumper horses.

He even asked me to mention a couple of weeks ago to the boss of the geegeez.co.uk team that he had some horses available for syndication and that surely Geegeez needed a representation in the north of the country! Sorry Nicky, no joy on that one.

It seems that Thursday’s debut bumper winner Upon Tweed had been the subject of considerable interest, and he says, “I’m not sure I’ll be training him for much longer. I’ll never stop being amazed how much money agents seem to have to bid on behalf of wealthy people for prospective jumping horses, but they do!”

At the other end of the scale, the latest Tattersalls Online sale last week proved little short of a total washout. Two or three sequences of around ten horses at a time did not receive a suitable bid between them when the closing time for their sale came up with a few minutes’ space in between them. I made it that only 53 of 137 lots changed hands and many of these at bargain basement levels. The whole sale might have struggled to match what Upon Tweed eventually goes for when that piece of horse trading concludes.

Richards' accident last year is testimony to the inherent dangers of riding racehorses. Yesterday’s news that Michael O’Sullivan, at 24 one of the most promising jump jockeys in Ireland, had died following his fall in a race at Thurles last week, shocked the racing community there and here in the UK, too.

Racing families are uniquely resilient, but such terrible accidents are a constant reminder that the ambulances, doctors and vets that attend every race in the principal racing countries are not in any way arbitrary but rather absolutely essential.

- TS

Monday Musings: Remembering the Aga Khan

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The news that H H the Aga Khan, head of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim sect, had died last week thrust me back more than 30 years, writes Tony Stafford. At the time I was scrabbling around trying to buy cheap horses, usually those that didn’t reach their reserves at the conclusion of the Tattersalls’ Horses in Training sale.

In those days, my targets were Cheveley Park Stud, usually well-bred fillies that didn’t measure up to their demanding requirements and would go privately for £500, or the Aga Khan detritus that it would be too costly to send back to either France or Ireland with nobody other than me wanting them. To be fair, the Cheveley Park ones were rarely much good!

I say detritus, but M. Drion, the Aga Khan’s manager, called them “boucher” (butcher) horses, so if I didn’t step in, they would be destined for the dinner tables of continental Europe. Once or twice, both targeted operations even gave them away.

While not a freebie, one such was Karaylar, a son of the Aga Khan’s Derby winner Kahyasi out of a mare by brilliant broodmare sire Habitat. He had been with John Oxx in Ireland, but the trainer of Sinndar, another Derby winner for the owner, hadn’t managed to get him on the track.

I spoke to His Highness by telephone having got the number from M. Drion. He agreed £500 and the cash was duly handed over. He called him a “boucher” horse, too!

At the time, I was regularly passing on my “finds” to Northumberland owner David Batey. In a few years he had done so well that he had a video made up of his “first” 25 winners. Most had cost buttons whereas only the last, bought from Brian Meehan as a 2yo at Doncaster sales for £14,000, was not my discovery. The winners had all been trained by my friend Wilf Storey.

I can only imagine the rage building up in the mercurial owner as 3yo Karaylar ran last of 11 first time on the flat and then, in the always well-populated novice hurdles in the north at the time, 16th of 20, 15th of 20 and, to finish the job, 19th of 21.

That brought him an initial mark of 64. Wilf and I always in our deliberations used to reckon on one run to confirm the rating and then go to work. Fourth in his first handicap, he then won a John Wade-sponsored selling handicap hurdle, at Sedgefield. That was a qualifier for the final also at Sedgefield on a Friday night early in May.

I can remember exactly where I watched it but have no idea where I had been earlier for me to be in that place. It was a betting shop in Bishop’s Stortford town centre. Karaylar started the 9/4 favourite and in a field of 16 won as he liked by five lengths under Richie McGrath, who had also been on him for the previous win.

What marked that race as special was its prize - £7,000, for a seller! Just a four-year-old, we thought Karaylar was going places – he did, rapidly downhill, never winning another race.

Mr Batey was also the beneficiary of another Wilf winner ridden by McGrath in his 7lb claiming days. That was Cheltenham Festival long-distance hurdle scorer Great Easeby, bought unraced for 2k from the owner-breeder Robert Sangster. A son of Caerleon, he was acquired in a very comfortable negotiation, sent to Wilf and won seven races between the flat and jumps.

Our association (not with Wilf) suddenly ended allegedly because the owner found out I had made a small profit on one of the deals. His success rate dropped almost to nothing once he stopped sending horses to Grange Farm, Muggleswick.

*

The Aga Khan was the third member of his family to make a massive impact on thoroughbred racing and, equally, breeding. His grandfather, also the Aga Khan, owned the famous flying filly Mumtaz Mahal in the 1920s and was prominent in racing until his death in 1957.

His son Prince Aly Khan kept the family horse racing business going, while at the same living a film star lifestyle,  especially when he married the actress Rita Hayworth. He died in a car crash, having already been passed over for the title of Aga Khan by his father who thought his son Prince Karim, as he was, would be a more suitable leader. For almost seven decades, he fulfilled the role with great skill and was reckoned as long ago as 2014 to having a fortune of $13 billion by Vanity Fair.

For racing fans, his green and red colours have been a constant even though he had refused to have them trained in the UK for a long time, relying on Ireland and France. He had countless champions in his time; for me, though, it’s always been Karaylar!

*

How frustrating that a week after the Dublin Racing Festival, one of the two biggest stars of the UK team shaping up to see off the Irish challenge at Cheltenham was unable to run in his warm-up race.

Sir Gino, flawless over hurdles, the latest time when deputising for the country’s number one, Constitution Hill, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and then spectacularly proficient first time over fences at Kempton over Christmas was the absentee. Many had travelled expecting to see him at Newbury, but a cut leg ruled him out of the Game Spirit Chase.

The Nicky Henderson horse was forced to miss the Triumph Hurdle at last year’s Festival and now will be going into the Arkle Challenge Trophy – if he gets there, that is – with only one run over fences behind him, unless Nicky sends him either to Kempton or Bangor as has been mooted.

Of course, waiting to pounce is Willie Mullins with his smart 5yo Majborough, winner of that Triumph Hurdle and unbeaten since in his two runs over fences. He looked last week in winning the Irish Arkle Novice Chase at Leopardstown that he still had a bit to learn about jumping fences. When Sir Gino won at Kempton, you could have thought you were watching a horse that had won ten races over fences, let alone had never run over them before. After all, it was Ballyburn that he was putting back in his box, a horse who all through last season and again at the Dublin Festival, looked like a future Gold Cup winner.

Henderson did have something to smile about on the Newbury card, the mare Joyeuse cantering away with the William Hill Handicap Hurdle and its £87k first prize in the colours of J P McManus. Only a 9/2 shot, the success was therefore expected in some parts but a glance at her earlier career did not present her with the most obvious of chances.

She won her only race in France, a 1m4f AQPS maiden as a 3yo by three parts of a length. The venue? Another of those French tracks where they probably mark out the rails the night before. For the record it was at Paray-le-Mondial, a track and indeed town I’d never heard of; but, in fairness, even those venues that race only once a year are always immaculately presented. Paray-le-Mondial is in the east of France, for the record, about 80 miles northnorthwest of Lyon.

The run was enough to secure a price of €235,000 soon after from the all-seeing McManus talent-scouting operation. Henderson took his time before sending her out for the first run from Lambourn, at Taunton in January last year and she won by half a length.

Two placed efforts in just over three weeks in November and December earned her an initial handicap rating of 123. The way she accelerated away – once favourite Secret Squirrel fell when still right in the argument at the last flight, suggested she wouldn’t have been far away off 143!

The McManus team from Ireland and the UK will be feared as usual next month but a quirk of the altered regulations for Cheltenham’s handicaps means Joyeuse is ineligible for any of them, and she isn’t a novice either. Aintree here she comes, no doubt.

 - TS

Monday Musings: Of The Kid and DRF

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Amid all the extravagantly impressive performances of Wilie Mullins’ three winners on the first day of the Dublin Racing Festival at Leopardstown on Saturday, I must say I was transfixed by one less predictable show a little nearer to home, writes Tony Stafford. Anyway, that’s how I would describe Musselburgh for us down south.

I had spoken to Nicky Richards on Saturday morning about the chance of The Kalooki Kid in the bet365 Scottish Champion Handicap Chase over 2m4.5f, surprised that his seven-year-old was as short as 11/4 for this £100k, £51k to the winner prize.

Nicky was optimistic, saying he had jumped very well at Doncaster (only second time over fences) and he was hopeful as long as the jumping held up.

Let’s put it in perspective. After a debut for the season when second over two miles at Ayr (12 fences) and a win where a few of the potential dangers fell at crucial stages when admittedly he had already taken charge long before the 15th and final fence, he came to Musselburgh having jumped 27 fences in public.

Now, off a tough enough 131 having been raised 7lb for Doncaster, the son of marathon flat-racer Gentlewave, out of a Flemensfirth mare, faced 11 opponents on Saturday. You can add to his two chase runs, six with two wins over hurdles last season, but a starting price of 2/1? Never.

The said opponents had all won over fences and in terms of experience had The Kalooki Kid by his extremities. None had raced fewer than eight times previously over fences, with four of them having won five times each. Adding their hurdles tally to the chase totals, the least number of runs was 16 – in one case – and it was mostly around 20, compared with the Richards’ horse’s eight. More pertinently, the 11 had collected 38 wins in chases before Saturday.

As I said, Nicky was hopeful the jumping would hold up. Regular partner Danny McMenamin settled him on the inside from the start; initially in around fifth in the running and going past the stands was soon in third, the leaps uniformly accurate without being in any way flashy.

By the time they turned for home with four to go, The Kalooki Kid was in a close second place, poised to tackle the long-time leader Saint Segal. A superior jump four out soon had him in front and still going easily.

Saint Segal had bolted up the time before for the Jane Williams stable at Newbury in December, his third win over fences and fifth in all. He battled bravely as for the second time running, The Kalooki Kid reckoned he’d done enough once clear on the run-in, but he still had more than two lengths to spare at the line.

So here we have a horse, bought at the Landrover sale in Ireland by Richards for €40k in June 2021.  Allowed to mature just as his father, the late Gordon W, would have done in his years bossing Greystoke Stables, and now the rewards should be flowing in the yard’s time-honoured manner, granted the required good luck.

With a pedigree like his, three miles should not be a problem, so now it’s down to the trainer to plot the right path. At 68, it’s remarkable that Nicky was still riding out until last autumn when he had an awful fall, breaking his pelvis among other injuries. The rehabilitation has been going steadily, and it would be great to see him back on track in time to witness the future triumphs from his new stable star.

The 2024/25 season has been building up nicely with 21 wins (and almost £400k in prizes) so far and, as well as The Kalooki Kid, he can look forward to further success with the likes of recent impressive bumper scorer They’re Chancers.

**

It was to be expected that Galopin Des Champs buttoned up the first part of the unheard-of triple double when adding a third successive Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown to the two Cheltenham Gold Cups which he has collected in between.

He might have been beaten twice since Cheltenham at right-handed Punchestown by Martin Brassil’s Fastorslow and then stablemate Fact To File, but as Willie Mullins would say, it’s not what you lose that matters, it’s what you win.

The same Fact To File was in this three-miler on Saturday and like three or four others was poised just behind the champion as he as usual led the field into the short home straight with one to jump. Then, Paul Townend asked and Galopin Des Champs delivered. The finishing burst obliterated any challenge.

It was a similar situation with last year’s Triumph Hurdle winner Majborough as he made it two from two since Cheltenham. In a display of raw power rather than slick jumping he made the considerable opposition in the Irish Champion Chase look much less that it had appeared beforehand.

Now he is poised for yet another of those titanic Mullins/Nicky Henderson battles in ‘the’ Arkle at Cheltenham with Sir Gino. Two emerging giants – redolent almost of the Mill House/ Arkle jousts in the 1960’s which so enthralled racegoers for almost three years until Arkle proved his immortality.

The third Mullins winner came in the opening race. The fact that the horse to be called Final Demand was sold for €230k as long ago as June 2022 suggested somebody knew something. The buyer waited until last March before sending him to a point-to-point which he won with ease.

He was then persuaded to let him go and it would be interesting to know how much Brian Drew and Professor Caroline Tisdall needed to shell out for him.

Anyway, they won’t be crying after an easy win at Limerick between Christmas and the New Year and Saturday’s exceptional 12-length victory in the opening Nathaniel Lacy and Partners Solicitors €88k to the winner Novice Hurdle over 2m6f. Mullins had four back-up runners in this and far from creaming the place money, all he had to show was 4th, 5th and two pulled ups including the second favourite Supersundae.

Final Demand will be a banker to follow Ballyburn in the 2m5f novice hurdle at Cheltenham while Ballyburn showed he was back in business after finding Sir Gino too speedy over two miles at Kempton at Christmas time. Back to the distance of last year’s hurdle win at the Festival, Ballyburn slaughtered yesterday’s opposition in the Ladbrokes Grade 1 Novice Chase.

Briefly returning to Final Demand, a son of Walk In The Park, he has the same broodmare sire, Flemensfirth, as The Kalooki Kid. Walk In The Park has been a shining light among Coolmore’s main jumps station, Grange Stud, for the past ten seasons in which time fee has always been advertised as “private”.

His story is odd enough. Runner-up in Michael Tabor’s colours in the Derby, a son of Montjeu, also a Tabor horse and a dual Classic winner (French and Irish Derby), Walk In The Park won only once (as a juvenile) in 14 career starts. Initially standing at stud in France, the year before his transfer to Ireland, his last publicised fee was €1,500. How do they do it? Like Willie Mullins, no doubt, talent and dedication.

We were promised a thriller between two Mullins horses in the Irish Champion Hurdle. State Man had won the last two along with last year’s Champion Hurdle proper in the absence of Constitution Hill, but the market settled on the younger mare Lossiemouth who had put in a spirited show when second to Constitution Hill in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton.

But the clash evaporated into a damp squib down the back straight as Lossiemouth fell, leaving State Man, who narrowly avoided being caught up in the tumble, to collect the €112k first prize. Daddy Long Legs, in the winner’s second colours of Mrs Donnelly, stayed on best to get the “measly” €38k second prize for what was almost a school round until he was asked to go faster in the last half mile and beat two other no-hopers. Was there no UK horse thought capable of nicking one of those lavish place prizes?

Well done then to Warren Greatrex for his enterprise in sending over Good And Clever for the novice hurdle won easily by Mullins’ Kopek Des Bordes. Kopek will be a strong favourite for the Supreme Novice at Cheltenham, but Good And Clever collected €13.5k for his owners Jim and Claire Bryce, as the sole UK runner on the day. That following an unplaced Henry Daly runner – 33/1 as top-weight in a three-mile handicap hurdle the previous afternoon.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Trials of a Champion

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They crammed into Cheltenham on Saturday, intent on watching possibly the best hurdler of all time go through a public work-out where the betting market suggested there was only a single chance in 13 that he might not retain his unbeaten record, writes Tony Stafford.

Constitution Hill, back from his year’s inactivity with a smart success in the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton, was getting paid £71k for his troubles and, as he and Nico de Boinville approached the final flight in a clear lead, even those who risk such odds as a matter of routine often “in-running” were counting their impending returns.

But then it almost ended in, if not tragedy – we’ve seen enough of thise in the UK and elsewhere in the world lately to know the difference – at least horse-racing turmoil, as the big horse crashed through that last obstacle.

 

 

He’s clever, though, is Constitution Hill, and landed efficiently enough while de Boinville wasn’t as complacent as his idling mount had been and stayed on board. Ignominy would have been his fate, but normal service was resumed up the hill, with Brentford Hope merely achieving best of the rest status and a very nice second prize of 26 grand.

Not bad for an afternoon’s work when the winner is rated 29lb his superior. Congratulations are due for Harry Derham to identify such a potential reward.

So now it is straight to the Festival, for which Constitution Hill is a 4/5 chance ahead of the Irish trio of Lossiemouth, Brighterdaysahead and last year’s stand-in winner State Man. Maybe next weekend’s Dublin Racing Festival will offer further clarification of where the potential dangers lie, but 4/5 with the guarantee of non-runner no bet seems value to this jaundiced eye. I said earlier, possibly the best we’ve ever seen. Sorry, he’s the best and you can’t get away from it.

Before Saturday’s other most interesting contest with the Festival in mind, there was general concern that East India Dock, the overnight 8/13 favourite for the JCB Triumph Trial Juvenile Hurdle might be a trifle “skinny” in face of a strong back-up field for this juvenile contest. He started at 2/1 on and won as he pleased.

 

 

This was the race in 2024 where Sir Gino, Constitution Hill’s “shadow” in the Nicky Henderson yard, demolished Burdett Road’s hopes of Triumph Hurdle success when the James Owen gelding had been market leader after his bright start to jumping.

In the event, neither horse was there to try to stem the irresistible force that Willie Mullins was able to bring to the race which he has dominated for the past two seasons with Lossiemouth and then Majborough who won at Cheltenham last March from Kargese.

Sir Gino, having missed Cheltenham, took out Kargese at Aintree and then deputised for Constitution Hill to win the Fighting Fifth at Newcastle in November. With Constitution back in time to run over hurdles at Christmas, Sir Gino was allowed to switch smoothly to fences and impressed so much in beating Ballyburn at Kempton that he’s odds on for the Arkle Novice Chase even though Majborough has also made a winning switch to the larger obstacles. Again, Leopardstown might give us an inkling as to where the Mullins team is now.

Henderson’s skill at earmarking a lightly-raced French import as a Cheltenham Festival contender had, until Saturday, had a serious influence on the Triumph Hurdle market. Lulamba, the easy UK debut winner for Henderson of his juvenile hurdle at Ascot remains the 5/4 favourite despite East India Dock’s ten-length win on Saturday. The third horse home had been 18 lengths behind him when they met previously over the course, now it was 28 lengths back to that Nigel Hawke runner, Torrent.

In between them in the J P McManus colours was Stencil, a good winner two runs back in France for the George/Zetterholm team, but a well-beaten sixth last time out, both races at Compiegne.

Lulamba had raced only once before his smooth success, that was for previous trainer Arnaud Chaille-Chaille (so good they named him twice – still can’t resist it!) at Auteuil. He contested a 15-runner AQPS race and started almost 8/1 yet bolted home by five lengths from another George/Zetterholm juvenile.

Compare that history with East India Dock, who went off in front and made all on Saturday. That was his third unbeaten hurdle race following a busy campaign on the flat where he won twice with three places from ten, running at two miles and ending with an 89 rating. Two different ways of arriving at the same point.

Which do you choose, the battled-hardened ex-flat racer or the totally untested dual hurdle winner? I know which type Henderson would favour and with the immediately-preceding example of Sir Gino who came a similar route in 2023, it’s hard to pass over Lulamba, but I think it would be great for racing if James Owen did have a Festival win.

Incidentally, it seems he still intends having a shot at the Champion Hurdle with Burdett Road. The Greatwood Hurdle winner is up to 150 after his latest third to Constitution Hill and Lossiemouth in the Christmas Hurdle and you are entitled to believe he would have finished closer but for a very bad mistake at the last, which brought a tired effort to the finish thereafter.

Running for third or fourth at Cheltenham is still a worthwhile objective. Last year, the places behind State Man were around £100k, £50k and £25k. With the chance of a smallish field, where can you be getting such value for money? Also, the proud right in your later days to show your grandchildren the race card with your horse and the greatest hurdler of all time contesting the same race.

My grandchildren have had the odd day at the races, but it’s their parents who have the recollection of the day they came to Cheltenham late in January 1986 to see my horse (owned with Terry Ramsden after he bought half my share) win Sir Gino’s and East India Dock’s Triumph Hurdle Trial. The silver trophy was and is very nice, and I’ve promised it to my elder daughter. I just had a look and it needs a clean.

The race in those days was sponsored by the Tote and was worth ten grand to the winner. Tangognat started second favourite for the big race but finished tailed off on fast ground. Peter Scudamore, who had ridden him to that win and also on January 1 at the same course, was forced to ride for his boss David (The Duke) Nicholson despite protest, and won on 50/1 shot Solar Cloud, his and Nicholson’s first winner at the Festival.

When earlier I played a couple of times in football matches against David Nicholson – press versus trainers – I came away with heavily-bruised shins, he was such a tough bugger. But deep down there was a great degree of kindness, too.

A few years later and after the football, a horse I’d bought for two grand off Robert Sangster for an owner of Wilf Storey’s had proved a money-spinner. That horse, Great Easeby, was by Vincent O’Brien’s and Sangster’s French Derby winner and later champion stallion Caerleon and was adept both as a hurdler and a flat-race stayer.

He lined up for the 24-runner Hamlet Cigars Gold Card Handicap Hurdle (precursor to the Pertemps Final) and won all out from fast-finishing Gillan Cove, with Nicholson’s Pharanear a close third.  The stewards interviewed the jockeys to see if Great Easeby had caused interference to Pharanear and 7lb claimer Richie McGrath was entitled to be nervous.

Nicholson, however, instructed his jockey Richard Johnson not to object, which might otherwise had given the race to Gillan Cove. The Duke – more a King to my mind.

Incidentally, 29 years on, the same Richard Johnson signed the chit at Cheltenham’s Tattersalls sales on Saturday night at 230k for an Irish point-to-point winner. The not-so-young McGrath is also busy with a preparation yard in Middleham and remains a great friend and help to his old mate Graham Lee.

*

I note trainers are being recommended by their trade organisation the NTF to request payment for interviews and Dan Skelton is quoted in yesterday’s Racing Post as agreeing with the idea.

I wonder how much trainer Evan Williams would be expecting to price up his “inside information” after Saturday’s 4.20 race at Uttoxeter. Interviewed by Andrew Thornton and asked about his Owl Of Athens that had been backed from the overnight 66/1 to 85/40, he said, “you must be clutching at straws if you backed it”. Owl Of Athens won by eight lengths.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Lunatics Prove Me Wrong!

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A week ago, I sat down at this keyboard wondering who were the lunatics that thought staging the inaugural so-called Berkshire Winter Million over the following weekend was a viable project, writes Tony Stafford. The frost stood outside like snow on the whole of my car and temperatures had plunged to minus 5 degrees overnight.

Also, Ascot’s recent record with its mid-January Saturday fixture was hardly encouraging, the last two having been frozen off. The money on offer for the two days on the Riverside Royal racecourse and the sandwiched-in Ascot date was terrific, yet by and large the Irish left us to our own devices: they clearly thought the odds were against its going ahead.

But they, like most of the UK racing fanbase, starved of jumping for much of the previous week or so, were to be confounded.

Windsor has the luxury of wide swathes of turf that are relatively lightly worked all year, those Monday night cards giving the racecourse staff plenty of time between fixtures to repair the effect of pounding hooves.

The worry, having seen the first jumps fixture since Windsor briefly took over some Ascot cards when that racecourse was having its drastic and by now (if not at first) accepted to have been beneficial, not least to racegoers, transformation almost two decades ago, was the layout of the circuit.

Talking to Hughie Morrison on the Friday morning, he said he wasn’t convinced by it, but like trainers of the other 13 runners in the £110k - £57,000 to the winner Fitzdares-backed handicap hurdle - he was prepared to give it a go. He believed his family horse Secret Squirrel was “very well handicapped, but maybe not quite tough enough for a race of this nature”.

I was on a train, travelling back from four brilliant days with Victor Thompson at his superb Link House Holiday Cottages 100 yards from the beach in Northumberland, so didn’t see the race live, but I have since. That was the beach, maybe a mile away across the bay at Beadnell, where Gordon W Richards, father of Nicky, began his own training career in the 1960’s before transferring across country to Greystoke.

Back at Windsor, Hughie needn’t have worried. Indeed, far from being overawed by tackling much more experienced rivals, 11/4 favourite Secret Squirrel gained control over Knickerbocker Glory at the final hurdle and gradually pulled clear to the line, without Nico de Boinville needing to pick up his stick. You would imagine the William Hill Newbury Hurdle at Hughie’s home track in three weeks would be the next objective.

Secret Squirrel was bred by and runs in the colours of the Hon. Mary Morrison, Hughie’s wife, and is a son of Stimulation. Hughie trained Stimulation to win the Group 2 Challenge Stakes over 7f on the flat and supported him as a stallion throughout his time at Llety Farms, a 250-acre spread in Carmarthenshire, run by David Hodge.

On the flat, Stimulation’s best produce has been the staying mare Sweet Sensation, whom Hughie trained to win the Cesarewitch for Paul Brocklehurst. After Friday, Secret Squirrel will have become the sire’s outstanding jumper. Llety Farms have for now given up standing stallions and Stimulation has been sold and been based in Kuwait for the past two years.

Hughie and Mary had a day to remember as a few minutes later at Market Rasen, their recent acquisition Eyed added a second win on the course for the stable. In between he was unsighted going to the first fence at Lingfield where he unluckily came down. Eyed could also be on a steep upward curve as a three-mile chaser.

Back to last week, and I had suggested it was lunatics that framed the Berkshire Winter Million. On the same day as the two Morrison winners, one horse that was sold from the yard for 27,000gns last autumn almost made a winning debut for his new connections an hour or so earlier at Meydan. Lunatick – yes, that’s how they spelt it – got within a neck of bagging the £24k opener on the card, his strong finish thwarted only by Silvestre de Sousa on a 33/1 shot.

While with Victor the other day, preparing for what I believe (well, perhaps hope) will be a compelling book, we had a trip around the area near Newton-by-the-Sea and as far south as Lynmouth and Amble on the coast, seeing the sites where he was King of the Sea Coal industry for decades until the mines packed up. On the way, every few miles there were pockets of houses (amounting in total almost to one hundred): “we built those”, he said.

Then, on the way back for a late lunch at his beloved Purdy Lodge, where they serve the world’s biggest all-day breakfast – not that he or partner Gina Coulson partake – we took in the village of Felton, where in the 1980s he added farming to the strings of his very wide-ranging bow, acquiring four (three now sold) farms totalling 3,750 acres. He removed all the hedges and quickly became the leading corn grower in Northumberland.

As he mused at the time, “If farmers can farm, why not me?  It can’t be that difficult, if you are prepared to work; and all the Thompsons worked!” Until you drive along with Victor’s former farms on either side of the road seemingly on and on for miles – 3,750 acres is almost six square miles! – you realise what a massive undertaking that was. When you consider Llety Farms is 250 acres and many would regard that as a sizeable plot.

It all makes me feel tired! Luckily, I managed to upgrade to a First-Class seat on the way back from Alnmouth (319 miles to London), elected for sausage and mash over a lamb rogan josh and arrived home in okay shape. I didn’t feel it until Saturday evening when for once I slept right through!

The Irish challenge on Friday was restricted to a duo of Gavin Cromwell runners in lesser races and both finished in the money. Same again, two runners, on Saturday. This time it was Willie Mullins, chancing his arm, again, with one-time invincible Energumene, against Jonbon in the Clarence House Stakes; but the Nicky Henderson horse cantered home and will go to Cheltenham as a hotpot for the Queen Mother Champion Chase.

Willie sent over a travel companion for his old champion, no doubt thinking 2/5 shot Kargese, last year’s Triumph Hurdle runner-up, would have a walk in the Royal park. That mare had to give best though to Dan Skelton’s improver Take No Chances who came out on top under Kielan Woods, by three-parts of a length.

Then to yesterday. Here we had to be a little more cautious as among five raiders, two from the more readable Henry de Bromhead in terms of expectation, there were three from less predictable sources.

We all know about back-with-the-licence Tony Martin. The form of his Zanndabad suggested he ought to be among the principals in the 2m4f novice handicap hurdle, but he faded in the home straight, proving correct his trainer’s fears about the soft ground.

Then it was the turn of Charles Byrnes, of whom you can never be sure until the money’s down. And maybe not even then.

Byrnes, like Martin, had a ban recently, but it doesn’t seem to have altered his way of going about his training. He had two runners, one a newcomer in the bumper for whom there was pre-race interest and another in the immediately preceding novice handicap hurdle.

That horse’s three runs this season had been 8th at 33/1, last of 17 at 33/1 and pulled up at 20/1. Despite this, serious money followed him in the 3m4f handicap chase into 9/1. He ran a respectable race in third behind 25/1 shot Planned Paradise, trained by long-distance expert Christian Williams. Watch out Eider Chase!

Byrnes was also on the premises in fourth in the closing bumper, won by winner-a-day over the weekend Harry Fry with Idaho Sun, who looks a very smart performer.

The Irish horses generally ran well, but none from nine was their winning tally over the weekend. So well done to the home trainers and to the organisers, Arena Racing. Even if Ascot is not in their ownership grouping, they do show its racing on their Sky Sports Racing channel. I think it’s fair to say you’ve proved so many of us wrong!

- TS

Monday Musings: A Perambulation

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At least we had South Africa’s biggest weight-for-age race to talk about last week, writes Tony Stafford. This time, it’s a perambulation taking in Exeter Stables near Newmarket, Manton in Wiltshire, and a couple of sports-themed restaurants and entertainment venues in London’s West End.

I’ve got to know Michael Solle, a senior executive of the wine/whisky company UKV International, and was delighted over the past two years to get an invitation to a couple of his company’s events. These were staged in part to reward and, more importantly, recommend to clients existing and prospective various potential future investments.

First in the deep winter – probably February of 2023 – it was to London’s Strand, between Fleet Stret and Trafalgar Square, that we all pitched up at Oche, where darts – obvious to anyone that watched Luke Littler and co a couple of weeks ago – is the gimmick.

The design was very clever, nine individual oches (if that’s the correct plural) with seating behind and alongside the thrower. Most of the 100 or so invitees had a go – your observer could not be persuaded to reveal his limitations.

Meanwhile copious amounts of finger foods arrived, and wine and whisky were later added after a senior sommelier from the top West End shop Hedonism Wines made a presentation, bringing a few exquisite examples of each for everyone to sample and hopefully add to their portfolios.

But I had another mission that day. I spoke regularly at that time with Sam Stronge, husband and assistant to trainer Ali, and he had mentioned to me a three-year-old they had where the original owners, who included a long-term pal Geoffrey Bishop, wanted to sell a half-share. That horse, Angel Of Antrim, originally a 37,000 Guineas yearling, was available for sensible money. He had run promisingly in his three runs at two, acquiring a handicap mark in the process, and was recently gelded.

Covid was just about finished and after I was introduced to the owner of Oche, I set about getting him interested. Unfortunately, Sam, who had intended to come along, was unable to be free at the last minute, so the sale wasn’t as easy as it might have been. Now it would be impossible as he has taken over much of the retired Dave Roberts’ team of jump jockeys including champion Harry Cobden.

I left that afternoon convinced we did have a sale, but a call the following morning soon ended that illusion. He stayed with his original owners, won a small race with Ali Stronge later that year, and another in 2023 for the same owners, but with Ed Dunlop.

In March 2024, he was sold for 6,000gns whereupon he joined Phil McEntee, again winning a single race for new owners Derek Lovatt and Colin Bacon. Lovatt has been around the racing game for a long time and, when Simon Lockyer had his brief spell of mega-multiple ownership with the late Shaun Keightley around 2020, Lovatt was a fellow owner there.

A real shrewdie, Derek always had a plan, but I doubt even he would have believed what an amazing transformation was in the offing. Now a five-year-old, Angel Of Antrim joined rookie trainer Jack Morland late last year in his new base at Exeter House Stables.

I had a happy connection with the yard as it is where Vince (later Victoria) Smith trained with a degree of success between 2004 and 2008. He deserved better than the five years and a total 54 wins he amassed during his spell there. Raymond Tooth did well with such as Majestical in the yard while, in the latter part of 2006, Vince gave William Buick rides when even his own boss Andrew Balding was hesitant. After several winners he was off, with Michal Tabor’s recommendation, to Todd Pletcher and thence a stellar career as multiple champion jockey with Godolphin and Charlie Appleby.

Probably a decade ago – time goes so fast – on my weekly Thursday trips to Brian Meehan’s Manton yard, where Raymond also had a serious involvement, I met Giles Morland, owner of some smart horses in the stable. Giles was also one of the early members of the Sam Sangster-arranged Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates.

Giles’s son Jack would often be around, and such is the passage of time that the young man, now 29, has fitted in a few years working in the top Australian stable of Ciaron Maher and David Eustace (now in Hong Kong), where he supervised a 20-horse barn, and subsequently five years as assistant to Ed Dunlop down the road from his present base. He took out his licence to train here on October 1st last year.

Now though, he has the gig at Exeter House Stables, owned by Charlie McBride, from where he, and Lovatt and Bacon’s Angel Of Antrim, after three wins in 23, has suddenly won four races in a row. The total prize money for the four wins is as paltry as it gets, around £15k, but this is the UK after all! I presume the shrewd owners have collected a few bob off the bookies, as long as their affordability checks panned out! The official purse money is not in truth much different two decades on than it was for Regional Racing.

I’ve often reckoned that the BHA, and especially their official handicappers, do not like small stables winning. Between wins one and four, Angel Of Antrim has been raised a whopping 34lb: up respectively 8lb, 5lb, 11lb and 10lb for his wins. I can think of a few trainers completing four-timers that would have got away with less than half that punitive imposition.

Jack Morland deserves great credit for the flying start (six wins so far) to his career and if he manages to win five in a row with Angel Of Antrim at Southwell on Wednesday, he will be looking at a mark in the 90’s and maybe even a run at one of the Royal Ascot handicaps.

On his site, there’s a picture of a smiling Jack, alongside his father and Brian Meehan, after a win from one of their horses at a Royal meeting. Maybe Angel Of Antrim or one of the other 11 horses in his care can get him to that trainer’s holy grail.

I had my last winner as an owner from Exeter House Stables, Vince and I finding a nice opportunity for Richie Boy in a claimer on one of the Saturday morning Regional (or banded) race meetings in October 2004. I had come to own Richie Boy as jockey Simon Whitworth – he rode my first solo winner at Beverley 22 years earlier - told me that his owner Andy Grinter had misread his colours watching the video of his final start and sent him mistakenly to Gary Moore. He wanted rid and quick!

I accepted the story, gullible as I am, and Richie Boy won on debut for us. I loved Regional Racing, with its succession of level-weights contests for low-grade horses. That day at Warwick the field sizes were 12, 17, 16, 13, 16 and 13. Again it was rubbish prizemoney, but it was 20 years ago. The best thing was the races were mostly 3/1 or more the field.

Paul Blockley, another sadly no longer with us, claimed him from us that bright morning. He offered to let me take a share, but I declined and watched two days later as he wasn’t off a yard but then was on him again two days further on. I was in a betting shop with Keith Sobey in Newcastle, the horse was at Nottingham and won at 50/1!

Blockley then had him in a seller at Redcar the following week (November 1) and he bolted up at 4/7. I went to the track and resolved to get him back, bidding all the way to 12k but gave up, leaving him bought in at 12,500gns.

So, I missed the boat, you would think. Not exactly, as Richie Boy was 11th of 12, last of 15 and 8th of 12 in three runs for Paul later in November.

Switched after that to Jennie Candlish, he graced the turf six more times, once in a hurdle race when as a 100/1 shot he was always behind and fell three from home. His flat placings were last of ten, ten, 12, 15 and 14 after which he passed into oblivion. Tough game that ownership.

When Noel Quinlan was based in what is now Darryl Holland’s Harraton Court stables, before Shaun Keightley, there was a small, neat, much more modern maybe 15-stall building close to the entrance. James Owen had his Arabian and point-to-point horses there, the first steps on the way much more recently to a brilliant start to his dual purpose Rules career, helped massively by the Gredley family.

I mentioned the handicapper’s treatment of Angel Of Antrim. One of the lesser lights (for now) in James Owen’s Green Ridge yard in the town is Carlton, acquired from the Gemma Tutty stable late last year. My friend Mick Godderidge is among the owners, the Think Big Partnership, and when he completed his four-timer at Chelmsford on Saturday (all over 1m6f at the Essex track) he was running off only 12lb higher than his starting point.

His style of racing hasn’t made for extravagant wins, generally coming late and fast, although Thursday’s more clear-cut verdict off 55 ought to result in more than the 5lb penalty he carried on Saturday. Each of the earlier wins was worth £4k. The team can add to that the ten grand they and Owen collected for Saturday’s win in a race only scheduled two days previously owing to the hit to jump racing by the weather. As I said, twice the money as Angel Of Antrim and considerably less of a handicap hike. Carlton was due to bid for his own five-timer in the opener at Wolverhampton this evening but is now a non-runner; it won't be long no doubt.

As to the other sports-featured experience in Central London, last summer we (me with my golf-playing son) went along to Pitch, one of two (soon to be three) golf hospitality venues. This one is close to Tottenham Court Road station, handily on the new and phenomenally-quick Elizabeth Line.

Another 100 or so adherents to the UKV International family now could smash a golf ball at one of nine screens depicting various holes on a golf course and have their distance assessed. The longest hitters got some very choice wines for their achievements.

Otherwise, it was a similar model to Oche and in the same ownership, although here brute force and ignorance held sway rather than the delicacy required to find treble 20. I wonder where Michael Solle has in mind for his clients (and me, I hope) this year. If we do return to either Oche or Pitch, I can’t wait to tell their owner how much he missed by not buying Angel Of Antrim. Like all the best bloodstock agents, I know which lines of form to highlight!

 - TS

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