Monday Musings: Sistina’s Aussie Fortunes

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Who would have believed it? Three hundred and twenty-five days after buying the then five-year-old mare Via Sistina for 2,700,000 guineas at Tattersalls December sales, new owners Yu Long Investments were already in the black, writes Tony Stafford.

On Saturday at Moonee Valley racecourse, Via Sistina tackled the Ladbrokes Cox Plate over ten furlongs. She won, beating the Japanese-trained favourite, the six-year-old entire Prognosis by eight lengths in track record time, taking her earnings in Australia to £2.9 million.

It’s common knowledge that Australian trainers know how to prepare for the Melbourne Cup, Tuesday week’s (November 5) biggest prize and “the race that stops a nation”, but before we get too excited about Via Sistina’s chance in the big one, there is a small hurdle for her to overcome.

Moonee Valley and Flemington may only be 3.1 kilometres apart, so less than the Cup’s distance of two miles (3,200 metres), but the double in the same year of these two highly prestigious races has been only rarely achieved. Phar Lap, the greatest Australian horse of the Inter-War period, did it in 1930, while the dual Melbourne Cup heroine Makybe Diva did the Cups double 19 years ago. Time flies.

She was a six-year-old, and that second Melbourne Cup win proved to be her racing swansong before retiring to stud.

The Cox Plate is acknowledged to be Australia’s premier non-handicap Group 1 race and it carried just over £1.6 million to the winner on Saturday. It was Via Sistina’s fourth Group 1 victory in six starts since travelling down to Australia, to which can be added one second place in another £1.6 million to the winner extravaganza.

Chris Waller, best known for his training of Winx, never asked that great mare to go further than the 1m2f of the Cox Plate. She won the second of her consecutive quartet in the race by eight lengths, mirroring Via Sistina on Saturday, and won 37 of her 43 career starts.

Should Waller decide to go for the Cup. Via Sistina will clearly challenge for favouritism and while like Winx she has never won at beyond 1m2f, she is a staying rather than the speed type of Winx at the trip. If she runs it would add massive excitement and a completely different aspect to an already compelling race.

Two people at least that will be looking on wanly should she run, will be previous owner Becky Hillen, daughter of the late David Wintle, and her initial trainer Joseph Tuite, who handled the five grand yearling as an unraced two-year-old and progressive three/four-year-old.

George Boughey had her in his yard at the latter part of her four-year-old season and then at five, where she began the startling progression, that culminated (so far) in that Cox Plate tour-de-force. Some selling owners cannot bear watching their former horses win for the new connections. Until Saturday, Becky and husband, bloodstock agent Steve, were probably happy enough. After Saturday and maybe next week, it might be a different story.

But for Joe Tuite it can only have been two years of turmoil and what might-have-been after he relinquished his licence in late August 2022. Clearly, studying Via Sistina’s career from the comfort of my office, Tuite had a major part in developing a late-maturing filly into the colossus she now is.

Unraced at two, Via Sistina won second time out as a three-year-old, by five-and-a-half lengths in a Goodwood maiden fillies’ race. She added a Newmarket handicap off 89 by four lengths in October of that year. Such was her obvious potential at that stage, that when Tuite targeted a fillies’ Listed race at Doncaster the following month, she went off as the 11/4 favourite, but finished in the ruck, only 13th of 18.

Clearly at the start of her four-year-old season, her training hadn’t gone smoothly, and it wasn’t until August 27 that Via Sistina made her debut. She appeared in the Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor, a Group 3 race open to colts and geldings as well as fillies. She was a 33/1 shot and in finishing fourth she probably exceeded expectations.

By now though, the die was cast and Joe had already made up his mind to give up the unequal fight of trying to keep himself financially afloat. A report in the Racing Post the day after the filly’s promising return to action tells how it was almost with a measure of relief that he was finishing. The story went thus:-

Joe Tuite felt a mix of sadness and nerves as he saddled the final runner of his 11-year training career on Saturday, yet he stands by a decision to retire due to financial difficulties. Via Sistina outran her 33/1 odds to finish fourth in the Sytner Sunningdale & Maidenhead BMW Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor.

Tuite revealed he'd had a "few offers" for a future job in racing but no decision had been made.

Tuite said on Saturday morning: "It's a bit of a weird feeling – I can't really describe it. It's a bit of sadness I suppose.

"There are a lot of times where you go racing and there's not much of a worry but today I'm on tenterhooks about it all."

The trainer said a difficult season, with just two winners, and financial issues heightened by escalating costs were behind his reasons to retire.

He added: "It's definitely the right thing to do. I was down on numbers, and it was putting square pegs into round holes. I'd be worried looking down the road what the future would be like for the lower-tier of racing, that's for sure.

"It's tough but business is tough for everyone, not just racing, it's in all walks of life.

"I know my decision surprised a few people, but a few people that were closer to me weren't, as they could see the way things were going."

Within not much more than a month, Via Sistina was already showing Joe that maybe if he had held on for a short while, things might have sorted themselves out for him. Transferred to George Boughey, Via Sistina was quickly off the mark for him, running 2nd in the Group 3 Pride Stakes at Newmarket at the beginning of that October and then going across to Toulouse and picking up a provincial Group 3 in November.

She ran five times for Boughey last year as a five-year-old, starting off with a six-length win in the Group 3 Dahlia Stakes at Newmarket in May, before going across to the Curragh for the Group 1 Pretty Polly on July 1 where she beat Hughie Morrison’s slightly unlucky in running Stay Alert by two lengths.

She didn’t win again in this hemisphere, but third as the even-money favourite in the Group 1 Falmouth at Newmarket 13 days later when dropping back to a mile probably wasn’t her ideal task. Then it was 2nd, beaten a nose in the Prix Jean Romanet (ten furlongs) at Deauville before that sale-exploding run behind King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot a year ago.

The luck was certainly just as much with Becky Hillen in terms of the timing with the December sales and all that Aussie money, barely a month ahead. Just as the luck had been notoriously absent when Joe Tuite had to make the awful decision to cut his losses and hand in his licence even as the filly he nurtured so carefully was about to come into full bloom as a late-developing racehorse.

For each of her 121 seconds of action around Moonee Valley on Saturday, Via Sistina earned her new (ish) owners £13,000.

In 11 years as a trainer in the UK, Joe Tuite had a best tally of 30, but usually picked up between 15 and 20 or so wins each year. From 1,881 runs over those 11 seasons, on the flat he won 173 races and total earnings of £1,552,585. Put another way, it represented a return of £825 per runner.

It must be salutary to think that his former inmate, the one that he brought to a position where she was equipped to make the giant strides she later managed as she had not been rushed or abused, won more in those 121 track-record-breaking seconds than he did in all those 11 years.

We keep saying it. Something’s rotten about English racing that we can afford to lose people with the skills of a Joe Tuite because he can’t manage to make it pay. Our only point in world racing seems to be to provide the proven material that can then go back to countries with many times more prize money to spread around and clean up – like Via Sistina!

One footnote. Cheltenham’s winter season proper started on Friday and Saturday and, as usual, it proved a bonanza for the Irish. They had six winners over the two days, including the first four races on Saturday. Henry De Bromhead had the 1-2 in the £100,000 featured chase, his pair mopping up £75k as they careered well clear of the rest up the Cheltenham run-in. Here we go again!

- TS

 

Monday Musings: UK Prizemoney has a mountain to climb

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Eighty-six horses, many of whose connections feared that heavy ground at Ascot would render their task hopeless, gathered on Saturday aiming to take a slice of the – for the UK anyway – lavish prizemoney on offer, writes Tony Stafford. It was British Champions Day, for four Group 1 races, a Group 2 and a one-mile handicap making up what from the stands seemed a motley six-race card and, in the end, the ground wasn’t too bad looking at the race times.

The UK administrators have clearly been beaten to the punch though by the Irish, and by their two-day feast at Leopardstown and the Curragh in September. Obviously, the French could never be budged from their also two-day sacrosanct Arc extravaganza over the first weekend of October.

So here we were again, switched from the outside flat track to the inner hurdles circuit. As I approached in the late morning, the sun finally having broken through, I passed the one-mile round start. The grass looked lush and verdant green, almost waiting for a herd of cows to come along and start munching.

Apart from Kyprios in the opener, there was no other established superstar on show although Roger Varian’s Charyn deserves to be elevated to the elite level after snaffling the day’s second biggest prize, the one-mile Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, with authority.

Saturday’s top pot, money-wise, the Champion Stakes, had been expected to be a match between the smart French-trained Calandagan and William Haggas’s improving Irish Champion Stakes winner, Economics. But in a rough race, Economics had a dreadful passage (and also reportedly bled), and it looked as though his fellow three-year-old Calandagan was home and dry, having squeezed through a gap at the rail.

But Jim Crowley on the lightly raced six-year-old Anmaat, at 40/1, also managed to thread a passage through in the dying strides to deny the younger horse and give trainer Owen Burrows a massive boost. Most of the crowd were scratching their heads, apart from my mate Steve Howard who fluked a tenner each-way and paid (with help of two of his friends) for a superb Chinese meal for nine of us on the proceeds.

To my mind, the Champion Stakes has never been the same, not benefiting at all from the switch in 2011 from Newmarket and its far less weather-susceptible surface, even conceding Frankel on his career finale the following year.

Saturday’s racing was eventful, Kyprios making it seven from seven on the season with one of his most commanding performances when collecting the G2 Long Distance Cup by an untroubled couple of lengths. What do the boys do now, we thought? Keep on collecting the same half dozen races as in 2022 and this year – 2023 was an injury-marred aberration – or retire him to stud? Not a bit of it, Aidan O’Brien said after the race, he’ll be having the winter off, coming back in the spring for the customary Navan then Leopardstown path to, hopefully, a third Gold Cup – and the rest.

The Stayers are given short shrift by the powers that be, the winner’s cheque £255,000 good enough for a non-elite race but below the other treasures on offer. £283k was the main prize for the sprinters and fillies and mares, while more than double that goes to the milers and ten-furlong stars. Takeaways for the two top prizes were respectively £737k for Anmaat and £655 grand for Charyn. Second home in the Champion Stakes was worth £279k for Calandagan while another French horse, Facteur Cheval, received £248k for his second to Charyn, both uncomfortably close to Kyprios’s take-home pay.

Calandagan had already earned eleven grand more than Saturday on his previous trip to the UK, following home City of Troy in the £703k to the winner Juddmonte International at York.  When Ambiente Friendly ran on into second behind City Of Troy in the Derby two and a half months previously, he collected £334k for the Gredley family and James Fanshawe against the winner’s prize of £882,000, best in the entire UK programme.

Thus, the top reward for a runner-up spot in UK racing in 2024 has been Ambiente Friendly’s £334,000. So what? you may ask. So what, indeed. On the other side of the world, at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, Australia earlier the same day, a horse called I Wish I Win collected £337,331 for finishing last of 11! That’s 43 thousand more than Ambiente Friendly’s best second prize of the entire UK race programme and, as near as damn it, £100k more than Calandagan picked up in the Champion Stakes later that day.

The six-year-old was competing in the Everest Stakes over six furlongs. If he had finished seventh, the money would have been just the same for this six-year-old who had previously won six of his 18 races. His total earnings to date have been a touch short of £7 million.

The year-older mare Bella Nipotina won the race, and her earnings leapfrogged Saturday’s tail-ender by dint of the £3.74 million to the winner – up to £8.78 million. She has won seven of 52 career starts and is trained by Ciaron Maher. Kyprios, with 15 wins from 19 starts and only a year younger than Bella Nicolina, has earnings of £2,635,000.

Until recently, Maher shared the training billing with Englishman David Eustace, son of James and brother to Harry, who has quickly built up a strong stable in their hometown of Newmarket. David has now moved to Hong Kong, another place where the prizemoney levels must burn into the hearts of those David has left behind in his native land.

Not content with knocking off the big one, Maher also collected more than a million for third and, for good measure, added another £1.5 million for the victory of Duke De Sessa in the Caulfield Cup. Caulfield, near Geelong in Victoria, is a mere 886 kilometres south, and a nine-hour drive, from Randwick. The race is usually a stepping stone to the Melbourne Cup, run at Flemington on Tuesday, November 5.

A nice touch on the last race of the Randwick card was the £1.58 million-to-the-winner King Charles III Stakes as the King and Queen embark on their tour of Australia. Maher was second here, threequarters of a length behind winner Ceolwulf, with the favourite Pride Of Jenni.

Reverting to the Everest, and its 20 million Australian dollar (just over £10 million) total prize fund, it threw up some other amazing facts. The 11 competitors after the race had each won more than £1 million in their careers to date, several of them from only a handful of runs, especially a trio of three-year-olds. Among these was a Justify colt owned by Coolmore called Storm Boy, who finished eighth behind the winner yet beaten only two lengths.

The total career earnings for the eleven, stands at a notch over £40 million from a total of 180 runs, which I make more than £22,000 per run. When Duke De Sessa was trained in Ireland by Dermot Weld, he won around €100k for two Group 3 wins and one Listed victory.

The clue? The title name Everest is preceded by the letters TAB, the off-course near monopoly system which fuels the astonishing power of the prize money in that country. No wonder owners here beseech their horses to win nice races as three-year-olds and await the calls of the top trainers, of which Maher is no exception.

We’ve been saying it for half a century. Maybe the Prime Minister’s wife, who likes racing, might get her hubby and his party to rush through a bill to effect an off-course pool monopoly here. Actually, no rush, you have five years to do it!  We’d still have one or two bookmakers on the course for colour, although when it happens, don’t try to get a hefty bet on when you go racing, having paid all the excessive costs – for everything!

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Last week at Newmarket, Book 2 of Tattersalls sales in Newmarket was also operating at more than 100,000 guineas per horse over the first two days – of course nothing like the drama of Book 1. Maybe if the buyers had been sending their precious acquisitions of the previous week straight to Australia you could start to understand how it could happen.  It won’t be the case; the Aussies are mostly too canny for that and wait to see what they can do on the track before biting.

At the other end of the scale, Book 4, starting late on Friday when most people had gone home, originally catalogued 81 yearlings. Of those, 20, probably wisely, didn’t show and of the remainder that did, 28 didn’t make their reserve prices.

In the event, 33 were sold through the ring, although others, probably out of desperation by their vendors will have found new owners later. The total official aggregate of the 33 that did change hands was £111k, for an average of just over three grand and a median of two thousand, both figures around one per cent of the Book 1 figures.

Ten found new buyers at the minimum bid of 1,000 guineas including a strong-looking Rumble Inthejungle colt bought by Henry Candy. Henry, one of the most-admired veterans of his profession, has been saying that he has no wish to retire, and that he has worked hard all his life and intends to continue to do so. I’d love that colt to win a race or two for him.

As for the hapless vendors who have nurtured their young stock with the same care as the posh studs who made all the big money, you must be totally sympathetic. To be in Book 4 is like a leper’s curse. Surely Tattersalls can either include them in a slightly enlarged Book 3 where they could have a chance as buyers are still around, or be more stringent on which horses they accept for the sale.

- TS

 

Monday Musings: A Mishap for Martin

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It wasn’t Mullins, Willie or nephew Emmet; nor Gordon Elliott; neither O’Brien, Aidan or Joseph; nor even tricky old Charles Byrnes that was slipping away silently to collect the proceeds from a 33/1 winner of the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. No, it was that man Martin again.

Tony of that ilk is a mastermind at, in racecourse parlance, having it off. He did under his own name in the Chester Plate (Cup consolation) in May; lost his licence but still had the brass neck to stand grinning alongside his sister Cathy O’Leary – the trainer in name – after the same horse, Alphonse Le Grande, also picked up the Northumberland Plate consolation at Newcastle in June. Martin must have had more than a little influence in Saturday’s even more spectacular coup de grace on Dewhurst Stakes Day.

I would imagine those closest to the horse won a few bob – it’s difficult not to when the SP is 33/1 and presumably in a race that was at least ten short of the optimum figure - and no better for it - they must have got longer than that in the build-up.

It was almost with glee then that on the TV coverage after the photo-finish verdict was announced, Lydia Hislop and Nick Luck counted the whip strikes administered by apprentice rider Jamie Powell and came up with ten, the magic number which would normally be construed as the borderline for disqualification.

Nothing will be finalised until tomorrow when the whip offences committee reviews a case that seemed to satisfy the local stewards and young Powell himself, namely that he did indeed hit Alphonse Le Grande ten times.

The £99k first prize will be a significant loss to the owners, the appropriately named Bet Small Win Big syndicate, but their respective sibling trainers have done them proud collecting three very tough handicaps in the UK this year. Pretty rough justice for the rider, too!

The hapless jockey is no novice. Before this year he had amassed 59 wins in three seasons at home. In that context, only seven more from 171 rides in 2024 when an acceleration might have been expected along with experience, is quite an anomaly.

But nothing like the anomaly where riding for Saturday’s trainer, or indeed her brother when he still held the licence, is concerned. Cathy O’Leary has had an almost equal number of domestic runners on the flat and over jumps in the past period. Until September 5 when En Or won a two-mile handicap at Clonmel, she had not trained a single domestic winner and, until now, it’s En Or from 37 runs. Over jumps, it’s nought from 30, so one from 67 in all.

As to the possibility of a rider/trainer(s) connection, forget it. Young Powell, as I mentioned earlier, has had 171 rides in Ireland this year, yet none from either Mrs O’Leary or her brother. I wonder if the disqualification is confirmed tomorrow whether he’ll be asked to get up on another of their plots.

Plots they surely are. One report suggested Alphonse Le Grande had been down the field in his previous race in Ireland as though it was a rubbish run. His eighth of 30 in the Irish Cesarewitch, worth almost 500k to the winner, represented a very good performance. I just watched the replay, and he was almost the only runner staying on in a race won by Aidan O’Brien’s The Euphrates

In the last furlong and a half, he passed at least half a dozen high-class handicap stayers, many like him laid out to try to win the massive prize. Had there been another 100 yards to run, he would have been fifth.

Anyway, one win in 67 at home: yet two in five for Cathy in the UK. Her Zanndabad came over for the Queen Alexandra at Royal Ascot, started 9/2 favourite and finished sixth under William Buick. Belgroprince accompanied Alphonse Le Grande to Newcastle and finished seventh behind him.

Her final UK runner in that time is probably one to write down in your notebooks or trackers. The 47-rated Jackie Brown came to Hamilton in August and was unplaced in a low-grade handicap.

Since returning home, the filly has had three runs and started 25/1 each time. First it was 14th of 17; next 5th of 12; then last week at Navan she was beaten only half a length in an 18-runner handicap. Remember the name and watch out UK, Cathy might well be coming!

If the result is amended tomorrow, it will mean that never mind the 12-horse Irish assault, the UK will have ended two years of their domination in the race with a 1-2. The Crisfords’ Manxman won the race on the far side by half a length from Ian Williams’ Aqwaam, who looked all over the winner a furlong out. Strong-finishing Alphonse Le Grande nosed ahead on the near side of a race shaped into two halves by Ryan Moore’s guiding Queenstown across as they entered the ten-furlong straight.

Ryan and Aidan had earlier had the disappointment of the withdrawal of overnight odds-on shot The Lion In Winter from the Darley Dewhurst Stakes.

In his absence, once raced, and that only a week earlier, Expanded made a brave battle of it with Godolphin’s Ancient Truth up the stands rail while Shadow Of Light, the other Charlie Appleby runner, switched over from the far side group to get up late in a battle of heads.

All three colts will probably be aimed at a Guineas, though whether it will be in Newmarket, Longchamp or at the Curragh is anyone’s guess at this stage. It didn’t appear there was another City Of Troy in there this year, but you never know and it was a great effort for Shadow Of Light to come back so soon after his emphatic Middle Park Stakes win over Whistlejacket two weeks earlier.

Saturday’s racing for the big teams was almost a half-term break after the excesses of three days of Tattersalls October Yearling sale Book 1.

The board behind the auctioneers shows several currencies in addition to the UK guineas bidding, with Euro, US dollar and Yen to the fore. I am grateful to the Blood Horse for revealing that Newsells Park Stud, owned by Graham Smith-Bernal, grossed almost three times as much as any other vendor, his lots accruing more than $23 million. That’s 17.6 million guineas!

The median figure (the middle when all 400 are laid out from top to bottom was an astonishing 250,000 guineas and the average 340,000 guineas, both records, as was the total turnover of 128 million guineas. That figure beat the 2022 record when 120 more yearlings were catalogued.

Sixteen lots exceeded one million guineas, and two buyers dominated throughout. Amo Racing, in a concerted effort to break into the territory that Kia Joorabchian described as “the province of the home-breeders like Coolmore, Godolphin, Juddmonte and Shadwell”, paid a total of 20 million for 17 yearlings.

Godolphin might be prolific breeders these days, but Sheikh Mohammed and team were also very active, even exceeding Amo Racing’s tallies with 18 yearlings at just over 22 million guineas.

Smith-Bernal, happy for the international break so he could concentrate on his lovely yearlings rather than Tottenham Hotspur FC, sold the most expensive of the lot at 4.4 million for a filly by stallion of the week Frankel, naturally to Amo.

Lots of love, as the ancient Romans and Latin scholars might have said, going around at Tattersalls. And plenty of Amo too!

- TS

Monday Musings: Gloom?

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There’s so much gloomy navel-searching about all the things that are perceived to be wrong with racing in the UK, but it took only a couple of days in Paris to dispel them, or some of them anyway, writes Tony Stafford.

True, the statistics are invariably distorted by first place in the £2.4 million to the winner Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe – something which wouldn’t have been allowed to happen in pre-supplementing days – by Ralph Beckett’s remarkable filly Bluestocking, but in overall terms the home team took a real hiding.

Four wins for the UK, via Brian Meehan, the Gosdens and Ed Walker, as well as Beckett, matched Aidan O’Brien’s personal quartet over the two days. The French, on home soil with everything - even down to the going in their favour - limped behind with three.

Aidan also collected the £100k-plus Arqana sales conditions race on the first day and front-running Los Angeles picked up just shy of half a million for his third in the Arc. Once more, though, it was fillies to the fore, Bluestocking confirming Prix Vermeille form with Aventure, edging a half-length further away than in the trial three weeks earlier.

I’ve always found the fillies’ Group 1 on Trials Day much more significant than either the Prix Niel for 3yos or the Foy for the older colts. Those two races had five runners each last month, whereas the Vermeille had a field of 12.

The Arc 1-2 had some smart performers behind them that day: Emily Upjohn, Stay Alert and last year’s champion juvenile filly Opera Singer were the next three home. The races for the boys were remarkably similar, each run at more than four seconds above standard, a full three seconds slower than Bluestocking in the Vermeille.

Ralph Beckett has been relentless closing on the top training positions over the past few seasons and his comment, “I couldn’t see any reason not to supplement her,” epitomises his pragmatic approach to training.

Of course, as with all the big stables, and he had 183 listed in this year’s Horses In Training, there is a margin for error. When the year began, Bluestocking had won only once, on juvenile debut in September 2022. Since the summer, it has been a roller-coaster of ever greater success.

I had a look at the overall prizemoney earned by each of three major European horseracing and breeding superpowers over the weekend. Although Aidan got off to a flyer winning three Group races, including Kyprios’s second Prix du Cadran over 2m4f on day one, the momentum wasn’t quite maintained.

Yesterday, the lesser fancied of his two Jean-Luc Lagardere runners, Camille Pissarro, echoed the late-running performance on the first day of 25/1 shot Grateful. The similarity? Both were ridden by Christophe Soumillon with Ryan Moore on the first string. Ryan had the consolation of three €100k plus wins on day one, the third in the valuable conditions event put on by the Arqana sales company. And his third place on Los Angeles in the Arc earned him his jockey’s share from around half a million.

The overall Irish haul not including the Arc was around £675,000. The French on home soil amassed just over £800,000 for their non-Arc runners, while UK horses collected more than £1.22 million for 22 places. When you add in the Arc money, the GB total thanks to Bluestocking is more than £3.67 million; the French total comes to approximately £2.15 million and Ireland – almost entirely via the Coolmore runners was close to £1.3 million. So the UK stables picked up better than half the available money!

Even though the French had many more runners in the additional races than either UK or Ireland, they retained barely 30% of the money available. If we’re in trouble, how about them?

Those from the big teams cannot rest. After a day today looking at stock in the Tattersalls sales barns, Book 1 of the October Yearling Sale starts tomorrow, three days when 448 yearlings – blue-bloods all, but which cannot all turn out to be talented – go under the hammer.

The sale nowadays closely echoes the example of the Goffs Orby sale in Ireland, staged last week. That also commences with a Book 1 for the top stuff and Book 2 for the rest. A later sale offers less expensive pedigrees.

It’s amazing how the decisions of a sales company can make such a difference to the prospects of a borderline Book 1/Book 2 yearling. It’s simply the difference between whether an owner is to get a decent price for his/her sales candidates. Book 1 over there had 466 lots going under the hammer over two days. Of those, 399 (80%) found new owners at an average price of €128k.

The two days of the similarly populated Book 2 proved far less attractive to buyers with only 332 of 449 changing hands, that’s 70%. If that was significant, the average price of €20k was disturbing for many stud owners, especially pin hookers who will have struggled to match foal prices never mind a year’s costs.

One well-known trainer who was happy to pick up a horse from Book 1 at a fair price, did not look at any of the stock in Book 2. “It’s okay to buy them just because they are cheap,” he said, “but you have to find someone to pay for them and to have them trained.”

I canvassed a few trainers some weeks ago as it was proposed by friends to buy a horse in training. They were all middle-range but talented trainers and they were all somewhere around £60 a day (plus VAT of course). So, we’re already up to at least £500 a week, with extras like shoeing, vet charges and transport to the races. In Newmarket and many other training centres, there is also a gallops fee levied.

On Friday, the day after the conclusion of Book 1 and three days before Book 2 where most owners will not have to worry much about the likes of Godolphin, Coolmore, Amo Racing and rest to find a yearling, there are more than 750 lots to wade through. Smaller catalogues for Books 3 and 4 next week conclude as the runners for the Cesarewitch, Dewhurst and the rest go to post next weekend.

Newmarket’s first day stages a race which illustrates just how tough and frankly absurd UK’s horse racing economics are for all bar the super-rich – or those lucky enough to get a superstar for not much money.

The opening maiden of that Friday’s card has a prize of just more than £10k, much better admittedly than some that have been run on the Rowley Mile recently. Many were bought at this time last year, so at around a minimum £2,500 per month that’s at least £30,000 to get to this stage on top of their purchase price.

The happy winning owner on Saturday will receive approximately 70% of the £10,000 first prize, less jockeys’ fees and transport to the course. Sixteen of the 30 entries went through the ring, home-breds making up the remaining 14.

The cheapest of the sales group cost £45k – bought by our friend Sam Sangster and trained by Brian Meehan. The most expensive was £400k for a newcomer from Aidan O’Brien. The average - going for a £7k pot I emphasise - was 135k.

Talking of Sam Sangster and his link with Brian Meehan, Manton's longest-serving present incumbent had a Royal Ascot double this June with Rashabar (Coventry Stakes, Group 2) and Jayarebe (Hampton Court Stakes, Group 3). They had only one run each in the meantime, Rashabar when second in the Group 1 Prix Morny to Whistlejacket, and Jayarebe, also second at Deauville, to Economics. They came to Longchamp with high hopes.

Jayarebe did the business on Saturday in the Group 2 Prix Dollar, making all, while Rashabar was caught only in the last few strides of the Group 1 Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere by Camille Pissarro, the aforementioned O’Brien second string ridden by Christophe Soumillon.

Rashabar will aim at the 2,000 Guineas next spring while it would be no shock if Jayarebe pitched up at the Breeders’ Cup. Meehan won the Turf race there a decade or so ago with Dangerous Midge, who raced in the same Iraj Parvizi colours. Parvizi only came back to the stable after a break of several years with his purchase of Jayarebe.

There were two other notable efforts over the weekend that caught my eye. Apollo One, so often the bridesmaid in big sprint handicaps, gained a first Group-race win at Ascot on Saturday. Peter Charalambous, his owner/trainer/breeder had been frustrated at being beaten close home in the Wokingham, Stewards’ Cup and Portland handicaps this year, but on ground Pete believed he wouldn’t handle, he did, winning almost as he liked.

Secondly, another working on the wrong surface was Hughie Morrison’s Mistral Star, third in Saturday’s Group 1 Prix Royallieu where she was in front until the last 50 yards. I’m confident she would have won on faster ground.

Finally, last week I mentioned Joe Lee and his filly May Day Ready. The pair, with the help of Frankie Dettori in the saddle, got the best of a wafer-thin three way photo (centre, see below) on Friday in the Grade 2 Jessamine Stakes at Keeneland, a Win And You're In for the Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf. Exciting times!

- TS

Monday Musings: Joe Lee

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A week short of 30 years ago I was in New York, staying at the late Virginia Kraft Payson’s rather large house (since sadly demolished) at Sands Point, Long Island, writes Tony Stafford. I’d arranged to meet Bjorn Neilsen – bet he doesn’t think it was that long ago! – at his offices in Wall Street.

He had a very friendly receptionist whose name I cannot recall, who whenever I did try to contact him, always reminded me that she thought my accent was identical to that of Robin Leach who fronted a television show for almost ten years called ‘Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous’.

Leach, a Londoner, worked on the Daily Mail’s Front-Page team at age 18, before emigrating to the US. He died in Las Vegas four years ago after a very successful TV career.

When I arrived at Bjorn’s offices, having never met the receptionist before, I started: “I’m….” but before I could get another word out, she said, “Hello Mr Stafford, Mr Neilsen is waiting for you.”

After some chitchat, we retired to a nearby deli where the sandwiches were around five inches high. I had intended going on to Belmont Park for the races that afternoon and Bjorn suggested if I went to Grand Central station, I could get the race special.

When I got there, I discovered the specials had finished and I was recommended to go to Jamaica station and take a taxi from there. I remember crossing the busy road to a drab cab rank and was welcomed into the first one by a genial Asian gentleman who waited for me to state my destination.

“Belmont Park, please,” I asked. “Balma?” he replied, but I thought what the hell and as I was short of time, persevered as we moved along. “Balma?” he said once more. I knew the reputation of many New York taxi drivers not having more than a rudimentary understanding of any form of English, let alone the Cockney version, but he was my best bet.

Suddenly on the left-hand side, a green space loomed. He turned in his seat and said, triumphantly; “Park!” Now I was in dread of what might become of me but was soon reassured to see a line of local women on our side of the road standing at a bus stop.

I managed to get my, I must say, very friendly driver to stop alongside it and opening the door, called out to nobody in particular, “Does anyone know Belmont Park?” Eventually a nice lady possibly in her 40’s said. “I do. If you like, I’ll get in and direct the driver most of the way. Then, I must get out close to where I live, but I’ll tell you where he needs to go from there.”

The lady, called Mrs Lee, explained she was among the 75,000 crowd for the visit of Pope John Paul II to Aqueduct racecourse – the one closer to the city – that October 6, 1995.

She started by saying she probably shouldn’t have got into a cab with a stranger. She had lived nearby as a girl, but the area had become much more dangerous, and a woman had been raped right on the spot where the bus stop was, only a few days before.

She excused her rash reaction by saying someone in racing ought to be safe and that her son was in the sport and worked for Godolphin, asking if I had heard of them.

She said that his name is Joe Lee, and he was in Dubai all the previous winter and would be going out there once more that year.

On the day the National Lottery first began, Saturday 19th November 1994, my son had also made his way from the UK for a six-month stint working in Sheikh Mohammed’s sports club mainly to teach his sons the elements of football, cricket, tennis and the like. He’d just left school and was embarking on what turned out to be a gap year.

He was housed in the same apartment block as many of the work riders, including that year Johnny Murtagh, Vince (now Victoria) Smith and, as I was to find out when I called my son later, Joe Lee.

Joe was a good friend, according to his mother, of Jeremy Noseda. This was the year before the famous Frankie Dettori seven out of seven wins at Ascot on its championship Saturday late September card. I had worked with him that year, helping him with his “A Year in the Life of Frankie Dettori” book, which needed an extra chapter when the copy was already all in type. My entire family was at the launch.

Frankie finished his stellar UK riding career last year but has since enjoyed a second blooming (and some hefty prizemoney percentages) across the pond. These have been temporarily curtailed with an injured shoulder sustained in the stalls at perhaps coincidentally, Aqueduct racecourse two weeks ago.

Time is money these days. One of his most lucrative wins of late was in a Listed fillies’ 2yo race at Kentucky Downs. The winner, May Day Ready, is a daughter of Tapit and Nemoralia, which Dettori rode to the first three of her four career wins when trained by Noseda. Her owners were Peter Brant and Joseph Allen. Brant bred May Day Ready, who has been sold twice, first for only $60k and then as a two-year-old at the Ocala, Florida 2yo sale for $325k to the syndicate which races her now.

May Day Ready won her maiden (and $43k) at Saratoga with Dettori on board, as he was when she cleaned up the $463k when winning a Listed race at Kentucky Downs this month. Jacqui Doyle, freshly back from her four-year stint in the US, told me at Newmarket on Saturday that winning jockeys can expect a ten per cent share. So May Day Ready has already earned the itinerant Italian 50 grand. Quite right too, with a fortnight’s not earning to make up for!

And the point of all this? May Day Ready is one of a small team trained by the same Joe Lee. If someone who knows his very nice mum ever reads this, maybe they could pass on my thanks for that moment of Divine, or at least Papal, Intervention, and congratulate her on her son’s great success all these years later.

Frankie was due to end his absence by riding her on Sunday evening at Santa Anita in the Grade 2 Miss Grillo Stakes which is a “Win And You’re In” qualification for the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies’ Turf race at Del Mar in early November. However, the weather intervened and the Miss Grillo is now scheduled for next Sunday, October 6th; what a day of international racing that promises to be.

Jacqui says that daughter Sophie is back riding winners in her adopted country while son James isn’t doing too shabbily as first rider for Wathnan Racing back here. She also stated that the maidens at River Downs carry $43,000 for the winner, and just couldn’t comprehend the prizes of barely £4k for 2yo maidens at Newmarket on Saturdays. But then who can?

Despite our relatively poor money levels, Aidan O’Brien is already past £7.5 million in UK earnings and he had another memorable afternoon when Lake Victoria ran home an exceptional winner of the Cheveley Park Stakes.

All three of her previous wins had been over seven furlongs, so reverting to a furlong shorter for this Group 1 might have seemed over-ambitious, but Ryan Moore never had a moment’s doubt about the daughter of Frankel’s speed.

Taking her to the front after a few yards, she made all the running, at around 40/41 mph in the first half of the race, then drew away at the finish. She did slow a little but not as much as all her rivals. She was faster than the winner of the earlier Middle Park Stakes too.

That winner, Wimbledon Hawkeye, was a clear example of the emerging talent of his youthful trainer James Owen. James Doyle, riding for 92-year-old Bill Gredley, could have a potential Classic candidate here assuming he’s not required to ride for Wathnan. Then again, maybe Wathnan might enquire to Gredley about the colt’s availability.

- TS

 

Monday Musings: Of Real Racing Heroes

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Less than a year after areas of Southwell racecourse, including the main grandstand and offices, were flooded to a depth of up to three feet, it played host last Friday to a unique presentation, writes Tony Stafford. No racing there, nor even the Big Trucks event that was lined up for the following couple of days, just one group of five horses galloping for a mile around its Tapeta oval.

Yet the mesmeric draw of City Of Troy and four of his lesser stablemates, accompanied by trainer Aidan O’Brien, was sufficient to entice 1,500 people – that was the pre-event estimate but on the ground the feeling was that the figure had been exceeded – to come to see it.

Here were Ryan Moore, Wayne Lordan, Brett Doyle, Rachel Richardson and Dean Gallagher to ride the quintet in advance of City Of Troy’s Breeders’ Cup Classic challenge at Del Mar, California, in November. (Gallagher amazingly so as it was more than 30 years ago that his dad Tommy asked me if I could find him a job in England. I did and he came to Rod Simpson, yet he is still regarded as sufficiently talented and fit to be asked to take his part in a trial of this importance.)

https://twitter.com/RacingTV/status/1837185812837855338

A few years after Dean had been signed as first jockey for the one-time Midlands greengrocer Paul Green, by then a substantial owner, he rode the Francois Doumen-trained Hors La Loi III into second place in the third of Istabraq’s triple Champion Hurdle sequence, Istabraq trained of course by Aidan O’Brien.

There was no Champion Hurdle the following year because of foot and mouth, but when Istabraq went for the four-timer in 2002, he pulled up as Charlie Swan felt he was wrong, a view confirmed by the vet’s post-race inspection. The winner, Hors La Loi III, by now trained by James Fanshawe but ridden still by Gallagher, beat Hughie Morrison’s Marble Arch, a 25/1 shot into second place.

I can throw in another small personal part to this story. I was asked to try to buy Istabraq from the July sale in 1996 and went to the John Gosden yard at Newmarket a couple of days earlier. I was shown the horse by the late John Durkan, Gosden’s assistant at the time, who said: “He’s a lovely horse. I couldn’t recommend him more highly.”

I had a budget from a Saudi prince who wanted the staying 3yo for the King’s Cup in his home country. I stayed in until 36k but Timmy Hyde, bidding for J P McManus, held sway at 38,000 gns.

I was coming back from Keeneland Sales a few years later when I heard a voice from behind me as we walked to change planes in Cincinnati. It was Timmy Hyde. He said: “Tony, you were the under-bidder for Istabraq. I know because I was standing right behind you! It’s just that that f…ing Danny Murphy is telling everyone he was!” He wasn’t.

The obvious next question was: “How high would I have needed to go?” Timmy smiled and said: “We had 100 grand if necessary!” Hardly an underbidder in truth!

The saddest part of the story was that Aidan wasn’t meant to be training the horse, it was John Durkan who would be leaving Gosden to set up his own operation in Ireland. He even came up to the Daily Telegraph’s office in South Quay Plaza, the one between Fleet Street and Canary Wharf, with our photographer Ed Byrne and Conor O’Dwyer.

But then he contracted inoperable cancer and was unable to proceed with his plans. JP McManus gave the horse to Aidan and four consecutive Festival wins, starting with the 2m5f novice and then three Champion Hurdles, earned him a place in jumping folklore, along of course with his owner and trainer. I’ve never forgotten how honest he was about the horse even though if JP had bought him, he would be training him. Istabraq died this summer at the age of 32, much lamented by his owner and family.

JP has stayed mainly in that environment, dominating owners’ championships on either side of the Irish Sea, while O’Brien has been unchallenged on the flat in his homeland and more than a match for Gosden, Hannon and the rest for most years over here.

When interviewed after a big win, Aidan invariably remembers all the people he considers have played a part in the particular horse’s preparation. It’s not about him, everyone else almost.

On Friday, as Pat Keating awaited his boss’s delayed arrival – there was a crash on the way from the airport - replying to his question: “How long <have they been walking around the paddock>? answered “Forty-seven minutes”. Aidan said: “They are set to go then.” Thirty is the usual requirement. The jockeys mounted, setting off around to the far side of the track for the American-style stalls especially brought for the event.

The imperative, apart from City Of Troy working well and acting on the surface, was a fast pace and the short-running duo that broke best, ensured that would happen. Up the straight, the markedly elongated stretch of the Derby winner’s stride not for the first time struck connections Paul Smith, son of Derrick, his son Harry and Mike Dillon, former Ladbrokes man and a close friend.

The workout was the day job. But then we saw the true Aidan. He had a quick post-work de-brief with the jockeys, giving each the chance to comment, but obviously then having the crucial talk with Ryan on how it went.

But then the crowd saw something I doubt even those that travelled from far beyond the East Midlands would have expected. Aidan smiled throughout whenever cornered by a gallop-goer to sign the nice little racecard designed by Nick Craven, one of Weatherbys’ bosses. Each signature, because we are in 2024 and not 2004, had to require a selfie. None of which the personable O’Brien refused.

There was a lengthy television interview for Sky Sports Racing with Jason Weaver, while Brough Scott added his wisdom of many years to the proceedings. Then Aidan spent ages talking to mainly young aspiring journalists, none of whom could believe this giant of racing would give them so much time.

I guess almost an hour and a half after the workout – the pre-event blurb said he would stay for 45 minutes - he went off smiling for the car to the airport, long after Keating, his travelling head lad, had caught his eye and pointed to his watch.

Aidan O’Brien may be no Frankie Dettori but where the Italian has showmanship in the extreme, Aidan has a modesty and innate kindness that you would need to go a long way to see replicated by any public figure.

It could have been a fiasco, but Aidan’s plan to give his horse an awayday must be termed a great success, not least in PR terms. I’m certainly glad I was there to see it. And I know that the final line of people waiting patiently for his signature, selfie and smile, all got their precious reward for their trip. Well done, Southwell, well done Aidan, Ryan and the rest.

*

Mentioning Marble Arch in relation to Hors La Loi III and Dean Gallagher reminded me that Hughie Morrison has been around for a good while, too. Not So Sleepy hasn’t been with us for quite as long but he did win first time out as a two-year-old at Nottingham ten years ago and in the following May, won the Dee Stakes, the pre-Derby warm-up for winners Oath and Kris Kin, the latter for Sir Michael Stoute who will retire from training at the end of the season.

Not So Sleepy has raced at least four times in each of the next nine seasons, never once having his flat handicap mark drop below 94 and now, after a wonderful repeat win in a valuable Newbury handicap on Saturday, will surely end his career rated over 100 – he was 99 on Saturday. I’ll be shocked if that has ever happened before.

Hughie trains with a rare sympathetic view of his charges – “Each one that gets injured I feel it so much”, he says. But consequently, few trainers have a comparable facility for extending their horses’ working lives. He won a Group 1 with the stayer Alcazar when that horse was ten years of age, but his achievements with the difficult to manage Not So Sleepy dwarf even that.

He finished in the first four in three Cesarewitch Handicaps and was seventh last year. He also ran in four consecutive Champion Hurdles. Despite not taking up hurdling until the age of seven, his three Grade 1 wins include a dead-heat with previous Champion Hurdle winner Epatante in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, a feat he followed with a second win in the Newcastle race.

Last December, he won a Grade 1 hurdle at Sandown in a procession, a few days short of his official twelfth birthday. Few horses have achieved half as much as Sleepy. His owner, Lady Blyth, seemed very keen as with Quickthorn recently to ascribe lots of credit to rider Tom Marquand, a sentiment reciprocated in their interviews with Matt Chapman for Sky Sports Racing.

Never a mention of the trainer and the usually forensic Chapman didn’t seem to think of bringing in his name either. Maybe Hughie was being courted and given his rightful credit for the horse’s achievements by ITV, but I have only one television set.

Also Saturday was the final day’s riding for Franny Norton, and he chose Chester, where he has been the “King” for so long, for the farewell. He did it in style, notching a treble, and it would be fitting if the course made him an ambassador for the future, especially at the May meeting.

It was a lovely weekend at any rate for some real racing heroes.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Jugglers

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The second Saturday in September illustrated how trainers and jockeys’ agents need to be expert jugglers at this time of year, writes Tony Stafford. We had the Irish Champion Stakes, worth a total €£1.15 million (€712k to the winner) and the Betfred St Leger, £830k and £421k to the winner, yet three UK champion jockeys were riding more than 3,000 miles away from either venue.

The trio - Oisin Murphy, William Buick and Frankie Dettori - all lined up in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes for 2yo fillies over a mile and worth £177k at the Woodbine racetrack in Toronto, Canada. Buick was on the 4/5 favourite for Godolphin and Charlie Appleby, the dual early-season winner Mountain Breeze, but she could only manage eighth place.

Ahead of her were Murphy, fifth on 65/1 shot Ready To Battle, for dominant local trainer Mark Casse despite being the outsider of his trio; and Dettori was one place behind on the Christophe Clement filly Annascaul, the race second favourite.

He was the only one of our itinerant trio to have a ride in the next Graded race, the Ontario Matron (G3) on the Tapeta track. He finished fourth for Casse who again had three runners without securing the win.

Only five turned up for the E P Taylor Stakes for fillies and mares, run on the turf track. In the past the E P Taylor was a frequent target for UK and especially French runners. It honours the Canadian breeder Eddie Taylor. He stood Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Northern Dancer, the stallion who first tickled the fancy of Vincent O’Brien and led, with Robert Sangster and John Magnier’s help, to the legacy of Sadler’s Wells and, through him, to his even more influential son Galileo.

This year, the E P Taylor was a tame affair considering there was £266k for the winner. Oisin got a ride here but could do no better than fourth of five on Blush for French-based trainer Carlos Laffon-Parias. All three of the visiting riders had been previous winners of the race.

Charlie Appleby and Andrew Balding staged a rematch from a Listed race on King George Day at Ascot in July, with Al Qudra, the winner of that race for Charlie and Will, going into the bet365 <they get in everywhere!> Summer Plate over a mile on the turf as favourite, having beaten New Century by just over two lengths then.

Here Oisin turned the form around on identical terms, winning by one and a quarter lengths from Al Qudra in another Grade 1 again worth £177k, as with the juvenile fillies earlier. The share of the spoils made Oisin’s awayday worthwhile and even in defeat Buick got his mitts on a portion of the 60 grand for second.

The principal reason for the Appleby/Godolphin attack was presumably the featured Rogers Woodbine Mile, with a hefty £355,000 to the winner. The Buick mount, Naval Power, was the 11/20 favourite but finished only fourth to a couple of Mark Casse runners, siphoning up between them a good deal more than half a million Canadian bucks. Naval Power had been a very close second on his previous start when Dettori had the mount in a valuable supporting race on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs in early May.

If you feel sorry for Frankie, the pensioner (in jockey terms) started out the previous weekend looking forward to a hatful of Aidan O’Brien mounts at Kentucky Downs, but only Greenfinch, who finished fourth, ran, the others being withdrawn. But then, a week yesterday at the same track, May Day Ready won a £483k first prize and that was supplemented by a double at the same track on Wednesday. Dettori won the £238k Gold Cup with Limited Liability and then the Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational with Kathymarissa and another £720k.

His win prizes amounted to £1,323,000 over the week. No wonder he loves being in the US!

What did they miss while waiting for Saturday in Canada? At Doncaster there was an eighth St Leger win for Aidan O’Brien as the inexperienced and in some ways still green Jan Bruegel edged out Illinois in a thrilling tussle up the Doncaster straight. Both colts are by Galileo and at the final opportunity, his sons dominated yet another English Classic.

Impossible to separate in the market, it looked like a potential dead-heat in the race until Sean Levey, who started out life as an O’Brien apprentice before relocating to the UK, forced his mount’s head in front close to the line.

Behind in third and fourth, also locked together, were Deira Mile and Sunway who crossed the line only a nose apart. I thought it a mealy-mouthed decision by the stewards to turn the form around, denying Deira Mile’s ever-adventurous Ahmed Al Sheikh of Green Team Racing another placed run in the English Classics of which he is so enamoured.

Bay City Roller was a good winner of the Champagne Stakes that opened the card, but it might have been a different story had not Chancellor prematurely burst out of the gate. The Gosden colt, a smart scorer at the track last time, was third at Ascot in the race where Al Qudra beat New Century.

The raft of unlikely horse/trainer/jockey partnerships on this unusual day continued in the Portland Handicap, one of my favourite races with its intermediate sprint distance of around five and a half furlongs.

Here, the unluckiest horse in training, Peter Charalambous’s Apollo One, got the services of no less a partner than Christophe Soumillon. The Belgian, a multiple champion jockey in France, had just got his mount’s brave head in front of a gaggle of horses on the far side when the favourite American Affair flew down under the stands rail under Paul Mulrennan to beat him by a nose.

It was a notable win for Jim Goldie and, given the way he finished on Saturday, the Ayr Gold Cup in five days’ time must have its appeal. Peter Charalambous is adamant he would never ask Apollo One to run in the likely soft ground at Ayr, but it would be nice to think he would win a big sprint handicap before too long.

Over the past two seasons he has finished second in four big sprints, the Wokingham and Stewards’ Cup last year and the Stewards’ Cup and Portland in 2024. His total losing distance is barely two and a half lengths in those races.

Irish Champions Weekend featured a fine return to form by the slightly unpredictable but undeniably ultra-talented Auguste Rodin. He ran a great race in the Irish Champion Stakes but just failed to cope with the tenacious favourite Economics.

It had been a brave decision by William Haggas to resist running his colt in the Derby after his sensational <I use the word advisedly> Dante Stakes romp at York and, nicely rested, Haggas had given him an ideal warm-up run at Deauville last month for his main target here.

Economics came from some way back, as did Auguste Rodin. Tom Marquand sent his mount into the lead halfway up the short Leopardstown straight, when it appeared that Ryan Moore on the dual Derby winner was going marginally the easier, even getting his head in front in the last hundred yards. Economics, to his credit, pulled out extra and, despite battling all the way to the line, Auguste Rodin had to be content with an honourable second place.

The path for both horses is set in stone. Economics will now go to the Qipco Champion Stakes for what will be only his sixth career start. Auguste Rodin has the Breeders’ Cup Turf, which he won last year, as his autumn objective.

Just behind in third and fourth were the Japanese horse Shin Emperor, who should make a bold attempt at being the first from Japan to win the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, and fast-finishing Los Angeles, who probably would have fully extended his two stablemates at Doncaster.

His range of entries, from the Champion Stakes (ten furlongs) at Ascot to the British Champion Long Distance Cup (two miles) the same day and, a fortnight earlier, the Arc over one mile and a half reflect his untapped potential and versatility. I’d go the stayers’ route if he were mine – wishful thinking in the extreme!

Yesterday, Messrs Buick and Murphy made it back to the Curragh for the second day of the Irish Champions Weekend. They might not have won as they rode respectively Vauban and Giavellotto into second and third in the Irish St Leger, but at least they got a close-up view of the remarkable Kyprios.

Aidan O'Brien's six-year-old entire was taking his earnings past £2 million with an authoritative performance under Ryan Moore. It was Kyprios' 13th win in 17 career starts. After last year's injury problems and a curtailed season of only two second places, he has now repeated the same first five victories of his unbeaten four-year-old campaign and in the same  races.

That year (2022) he ended the season with victory in the Prix Du Cadran over two and a half miles - by twenty lengths! If he goes there and wins in three weeks it would be a double unbeaten six-timer, four of them at Group 1 level, surely a record, and one that will be exceptionally difficult to match in the future. He deserves to be regarded as at least the equal of Yeats as a stayer. Many will think him superior.

- TS

Monday Musings: Play it again, Sam

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Visitors to Ascot racecourse on Saturday, at least the older ones, might have been excused for having their memories jolted back to a 1970 Woody Allen film, Play It Again Sam, writes Tony Stafford. Woody plays a man obsessed with Casablanca, the 1942 film in which Ingrid Bergman asks Dooley Wilson to "Play It Sam, play it."

The song she was asking for was As Time Goes By, and she was about to leave Humphrey Bogart. Everyone, however, remembers her words incorrectly as “Play it again, Sam” - and Sam Sangster was certainly playing it again with another of his fiendishly cheap yearling buys.

On the same course where in his late father Robert’s treasured colours Rashabar was the 80/1 winner of the Coventry Stakes at the Royal meeting from the wrong (far) side of the track, now it was Law Of Design. On only his second start, Law Of Design showed he was already worth many times that yearling price of 25 grand from whence he was recruited into another of Sam's Manton Thoroughbreds syndicates.

The common theme of course is the revived Brian Meehan training them both on the Manton estate which the late Robert Sangster bought in 1984.

I’ve often referred to Sam Sangster’s inherent understanding of what makes a racehorse when perusing the animals at the sales, almost always in Brian‘s company. Law Of Design is from the first crop of the Prix du Jockey Club and then, at four, Prix de l’Arc to Triomphe winner Sottsass, a son of the great sire Siyouni.

Siyouni stands in France for €200k. His top-class son, who also has a further Group 1 win on his record of six victories from 12 starts, is standing for one-eighth that amount at Coolmore stud.

There’s an uncanny similarity between Sottsass so far and the early stage of Galileo’s stud career when his first crop was slow to get going – until they were able to run over seven furlongs and then bam! The rest as they should say, rather than history, was transformative of the entire breed.

I’m not suggesting that Sottsass will be another Galileo, but with the gelded Law Of Design’s smooth win at Ascot, he now has three winners, two of them fillies, so this was his first male victor. The shortest winning distance is seven furlongs, with a runaway Christopher Head filly at half a furlong more in France and the Dr Richard Newland/Jamie Insole inmate Veraison winning at the third time of asking at Wolverhampton.

With two wins each on all-weather and turf this year, the Insole half of the partnership has been concentrating greatly on juveniles in their revamped operation. Insole is the main force in that direction and Veraison wasn’t cheap. She cost €120k at the sales.

Jamie Insole is from an Irish family, his grandfather Victor Kennedy, first a jockey who rode Bigaroon – I backed him! - to win the Irish Cesarewitch, then became a successful trainer. Jamie grew up in Billericay in Essex but learnt to ride on frequent trips to the family home in Ireland.

He had spells with Alan King and then as assistant to Charlie Hills before coming to the notice of the Grand National-winning trainer, Dr Newland. The new partners, like another jump specialist Warren Greatrex and his stable owners Jim and Claire Bryce, have made a great start to training on the flat.

The 2023 haul of twenty or so yearlings included 19 who went through a sales ring. The Sottsass filly was the most expensive, but they have certainly given themselves a chance with the average price at around the 50k mark. Greatrex’s story differs as their juveniles were acquired at breeze-up sales this year.

Sottsass stands at €25k at Coolmore, a similar figure to what Galileo was standing for after his first season’s runners had been on the track.

I’ve mentioned many times the Royal Ascot card when eight of his first-crop three-year-olds competed in five different races on the same day. Just because Galileo had been a Derby, Irish Derby and King George winner, it still wasn’t guaranteed that the Coolmore partners who owned him would immediately dominate ownership of the mares sent to him. Each of the eight horses that ran on that Friday at Ascot had a different trainer and all bar one had been through the sales.

Red Rocks and Sixties Icon were second and third in the King Edward VII Stakes, trained respectively by Brian Meehan and Jeremy Noseda. Sixties Icon went on to win that year’s St Leger, Red Rocks the Breeders’ Cup Turf.

The Queen’s Vase, then a two-mile race for three-year-olds, featured Galient in second for Michael Jarvis and fourth-placed Road To Mandalay, running in the Michael Tabor colours after being bought for 420 grand at the sales from Timmy Hyde’s Camas Park stud. He was the lone O’Brien runner from the octet. Kassiopeia, bought in by his vendor for 195,000 gns, was unplaced for Mick Channon.

While the Dermot Weld home-bred filly Nightime ran poorly in the Coronation Stakes, she thrived later in her career. At stud, she is notable as being the dam of world champion Gaiyyath, coincidentally a stallion also making a halting start to his new career for the boys in blue.

Two further competitors on the day were Lake Poet, trained by Clive Brittain (57k) and fourth in the King George V Handicap, and the unplaced The Last Drop (75k) for Barry Hills. All top trainers and it wasn’t until the exploits of the unbeaten champion two-year-old Teofilo for Jim Bolger that the die was effectively cast and the bulk of the Galileos stayed at home.

Sottsass raced for one of the semi-inner circle at Coolmore. Peter Brant bought the colt for €340k at the Arqana Deauville August yearling sale in 2017 and sent him to be trained by Jean-Claude Rouget. After his spectacular exploits on the track, Brant chose to send him to stand at Coolmore with his good friends Messrs Magnier, Tabor and Smith. He is in several of the Coolmore racing partnerships too – often those that run in his green colours.

You would think that the Sottsass progeny would appear in the list of Aidan O’Brien juveniles. They do, but only once, a colt out of a Hat Trick (Japanese) mare. He was bought in partnership by Brant and M V Magnier at the same Deauville August Arqana sale last year for €380k.

Just because a horse has great form it doesn’t follow automatically that he will be a top stallion, or indeed be given preferential treatment before he shows himself deserving of it. No Nay Never and Wootton Bassett, two of the rising, indeed arrived already, stars at Coolmore both needed to show that they had what it takes. Then the boys go full bore, even buying Wootton Bassett when it was evident there was promise aplenty to come.

I’m not sure how Sam Sangster managed to get the half-brother to three useful winners trained by Richard Hannon (two) and William Haggas for just the stallion’s covering price, but it says for the umpteenth time he knows what’s he’s doing. Why not? It’s bred in him, and Brian, a dual Breeders’ Cup-winning trainer, fits into the profile so well.

The second of Brian’s Breeders’ Cup Turf wins came with Dangerous Midge and, after more than a ten-year gap, those colours of Iraj Parvizi have returned with a vengeance with Jayarebe. The Royal Ascot winner might not have been able to handle Economics in France last time, but not many horses will.

As to fellow Royal Ascot winner Rashabar, he showed his class and potential for the future when only narrowly edged out by an inspired Ryan Moore on Whistlejacket in the Prix Morny at Deauville last month.

Rashabar had the worst of the draw that time too, coming very wide up the middle of the track, probably not near enough to respond to the O’Brien-trained winner as he might have done if they had been racing closer together. Brian said on Saturday after Law Of Design’s win that Rashabar will probably go next to the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at the Arc meeting next month.

As to Law Of Design, the future is looking bright. With both horses – for now – still in the Manton Thoroughbreds ownership, they will need to avoid each other, although their stamina profiles are very different.

There’s no chance of a UK Classic campaign for him as he is a gelding, but the way in which he drew away in the last furlong at Ascot – two and a half lengths, the official margin, looked nearer four! - he could be a major player at a mile next time, and over a mile and a half next year! Play it again, Sam – and Brian, of course.

- TS

Monday Musings: Chasing Records

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I chased after the young man at York, definitely arousing his interest, but with no definitive response, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday morning, on a 22-minute call to his agent in Cambodia, I think I’d got a fair way along the road, but again, no reply from Gavin Horne.

It’s all so different now. Could you imagine 25 years ago being able to live 6,221 miles away and six time zones ahead of the UK and still sort the rides with such certainty for the now guaranteed four times champion Oisin Murphy? “He’s been with me for ten years and is the only jockey on my books, but it’s still a tough existence,” he says.

“I owe a lot to WhatsApp”, says Gavin, “I have everything ready for the trainers when they get to their offices at 6 a.m.” So far, the formula has brought a career-best 22% wins of his mounts, with 168 victories, 52 short of his best of 220 in 2019.

Four championships will be something to be proud of, but a shade insignificant in numerical terms compared with the 11 each by Lester Piggott and Pat Eddery. But one name – in flat racing terms anyway – stands above all others: Sir Gordon Richards, 26 titles and a peak of 269 in 1947.

It took the force of nature that was Tony McCoy to exceed the single-season tally with 289 jumps wins in 2002/3, one of 20 consecutive titles the dominant jumps rider amassed.

Returning to my first point. My initial question to Oisin was to ask whether he was likely to be away for large parts of the winter. He said not, so the prospect of lucrative stints in either Hong Kong or Japan was unlikely. Gavin Horne confirmed that supposition.

So we sit, with barely seven weeks of the Flat Race Jockeys’ Championship remaining to divvy up the honours and, after Champions Day at Ascot, that’s it.

What I was trying to emphasise to young Mr Murphy was that at the present rate of progress he would comfortably exceed the necessary 102 wins to beat Sir Gordon’s 77-year record and have a fighting chance to topple the McCoy tally.

This was the idea I floated, seemingly getting a positive response. The idea first came to mind based on the recent example of the 2023/4 jockeys’ championship in South Africa when Richard Fourie beat the existing record by more than 40 victories.

Turf Talk, my weekday daily read of all things South African racing, latched on to the Fourie phenomenon early, and issued a daily Barometer, as they called it, of his likely finishing figure.

It brought tremendous interest over there, unsurprisingly as he ended on 378 wins, despite putting the handbrake on with some more leisurely weeks as the conclusion came nearer.

My contention to Murphy and Horne was that the last weeks of the UK season on the flat, solely all-weather for seven weeks after the conclusion of the final meeting at Doncaster, needs a little enlivening.

Jump racing is of course the main diet of those times, but if we got a severely cold or excessively wet period, all-weather steps forward into the role for which it was first intended more than three decades ago (October 1985, when Conrad Allen won the first race and is still going strong!)

Other major jockeys will be elsewhere, but with their massive strings, Andrew Balding, Murphy’s boss, and many others have to keep going with their later developing juveniles and horses that need to get a win on the board, something that can be easier as the season draws on.

Gavin described Oisin’s last few days as “like a snowball going downhill and getting bigger and accelerating all the time.”

On one of our brief encounters at York, I asked if he’d given it any thought. “I need a winner here first,” he said. Naturally, he won the next race and four in all, one a day at the meeting.

Since then, though, it has indeed been the accelerating snowball. He rode two winners each day at Goodwood on Sunday, Epsom on Monday, Lingfield on Tuesday, Kempton on Wednesday and Sandown on Friday, topping it up with three at the Esher track on Saturday. Eleven different trainers contributed to the tally.

I’m pretty sure that if he did declare that he would be going all out, the rides would come in exponentially, requiring Mr Horne’s knowledge of the form book to sort the multiple chances in various races.

That 17-winner spell from York to Sandown came in 11 days. To beat Richards, he needs 25 wins a month and a couple more. To beat McCoy it’s another five a month, so virtually a winner a day in all. But I’m sure trainers would be falling over themselves to get his services, knowing that it would guarantee a committed ride by one of the best three jockeys in the weighing room.

Referring to this year’s action, Gavin said that Oisin had hardly over-exerted himself in collecting 46 wins up to early May when the championship took over; “He was pretty much messing around in the US,” he says. “If he’d have been at full throttle from January 1, he could have had a lot more winners by now,” he added.

Naturally, there would need to be an incentive and I’m pretty sure that one of the big bookmaking firms might like to get involved. The Oisin Betfred Barometer has a ring to it and I know from a quiet word with Ed Chamberlin that ITV would certainly like the extra excitement. With AP a regular on ITV for the jumping season, it would be interesting to see if his score was exceeded, whether he would be as gracious as Alastair Cook was when Joe Root beat his record number of Test match centuries at Lord’s on Saturday.

In the final analysis though, Murphy might not fancy the cold, winter days, up early to drive (or be driven) across to the all-weather tracks that are within comfortable reach of his base in Lambourn. You wouldn’t blame him if he didn’t fancy it, but how I’d love to see someone beat a great racing historical record that Piggott, Eddery, Dettori, not to forget Jason Weaver, never managed. And, of course, for Oisin to make his own little piece of history.

**

Talking of champion jockeys and agents, I was at a party yesterday hosted by Graham Smith-Bernal at his Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire. I sat at the same table as Tony Hind, agent to Ryan Moore, William Buick and many others. Tony is the flat-race equivalent of Dave Roberts, who looked after McCoy for all his career, but so many other top-notchers.

‘Bony Tony’, as he loves to be called, and his wife, along with friend Charlie Pigram and his better half, were all fully in step with the Tottenham Hotspur vibe, (as an Arsenal fan I wasn’t too upset when yesterday’s result came through), with former player Davd Howells also on our table.

Across the way were Ossie Ardiles, Steve Perryman (Bony’s idol whom he had never met before) and John Pratt, who played cricket with me at Lord’s I think in 1964. Hard to believe it was so long ago.

Buick was on family duty, often happily carrying his younger child outside the tent on a rare free day in the summer. To think I knew William, introduced by dad Walter in the press box at Newbury racecourse, when he was ten years old.

The party was arranged to thank members of various syndicates. The one involving Charlie and Bony includes Smith-Bernal, who retains 25%, and the Stud name includes club legends Ardiles, Brazil (Alan) and Hoddle (Glenn). The boys all made a £30k investment in several horses in which they have a share and Miss Fascinator, a daughter of Mehmas trained by Roger Varian, is likely to bring a big return.

Already a winner at Ascot and Newmarket, the two-year-old, bought for Newsells by Jamie Piggott for 72,000 Guineas, is rated an official 95 and, if she went to the sales, would probably be worth at least four times the purchase price.

Incidentally, Jamie Piggott was at the table alongside older sister Maureen Haggas and husband William who reported the “promising” Economics <as he called him> will be taking on the cream (minus City of Troy) of Aidan O’Brien in the Irish Champion Stakes next weekend.

His last run, when he got to and drew away from Brian Meehan’s smart colt Jayarebe at Deauville recently, got a big boost from the other side of the Atlantic this weekend. Jayarebe had won the Group 3 Hampton Court Stakes at Ascot before taking on Economics in France.

The third home at Ascot was Andrew Balding’s Bellum Justum, ridden by Murphy, and he went on to be a closing second to Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood.

Balding might have a massive string nowadays, but he is certainly aware of opportunities around the globe. On Saturday at Kentucky Downs, Bellum Justum went for the DK Horse Nashville Derby Invitational and won easily under Frankie Dettori. The prize? £830k to the winner! Nice to see Frankie’s still earning a crust!

- TS

 

Monday Musings: Of Lazarus, and the Rogues

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York is my idea of a holiday, writes Tony Stafford. Four days of wonderful racing, dinner in excellent restaurants peopled by friends from the racing world, and accommodation – or rather – home from home, at the elegant town house of Mary and Jim Cannon, midway between the station and the racecourse – not bad eh!

From City Of Troy on the opening day – dry coat after the Juddmonte, unlike sweaty at Sandown, his hardest race by my inexact barometer – to the facile Ebor win of Magical Zoe on Saturday, events flowed into each other. The four days provided a melange of thoughts as I drove home down the A1. The reverie was soon expunged when the diversion took us across to the M1 – in all an extra 48 miles on the journey and around an hour on the time.

But back home, checking the later results, after leaving before the last, I was thrilled that having wished William Knight luck as he arrived with one of his owners just after midday, I saw that he had provided the last-race exacta. His old-timer Sir Busker (12/1), a Group 2 winner on the track two years ago and the stable star for longer than that, beat Dual Identity.

There were two winners on the day, the other being Tom Clover’s Melrose Stakes hero Tabletalk, also at 12/1, that nicely rounded up a great spell for both trainers, and a situation that earlier in the year you would never have thought possible.

William Knight endured a horrific 2023. He’d kicked off with three UK wins by February 8, and went off to Dubai with stable star Sir Busker hoping to get some of the big money on offer. You could predict that maybe the kickback on the dirt track there might prove troublesome. In the case of Sir Busker, it was a piece of turf propelled in his direction that went into an eye, causing serious injury.

He needed an operation straight after and then to convalesce for several months before he could be brought back. William did well to get him ready to run in the autumn and in an upside-down season kept him going through the winter, picking up some place money at Newcastle around the turn of the year.

Then came his “winter break” – April to August – when he returned to Glorious Goodwood three weeks ago, a lovely day out for the Kennet Valley Syndicate that had already collected more than half a million pounds for his career exertions.

But to return to 2023 and the aftermath of Dubai. Knight had three early all-weather wins on the board, but from February 8 to September 12 last year, 171 days, he won just three further races – two in June and one in July.

“I did nothing different to always, but we just couldn’t get going. Thank God we had that little flurry at the end of the year,” he said.

A further ten wins came from September 6 to December 18, a Lazarus-type return from the dead as far as the racing community was concerned, and just in time to have a little confidence going into the yearling sales season.

One of the late winners was the filly Frost At Dawn and after her easy win at Chelmsford in early November, William took the calculated risk of sending her to Dubai – not least with the memory of Sir Busker still fresh in his mind.

But owner Abdulla Al Mansoori’s acceptance of the plan paid handsome dividends. On the fifth of her six runs at Meydan, she out-sprinted the Godolphin odds-on shot Star Of Mystery in the Nad Al Sheba Sprint. Dreams of a win in the £600k-plus championship on Dubai World Cup night did not materialise, but the grey filly had done everyone proud.

Project forward to the 2024 season. As we’ve indicated above, Knight had won only three races in the more than five months of last summer, the seventh win of the year coming on September2.

This year, following Frost At Dawn in March, Knight has won 28 races; one in April, four in May, ten in June, eight in July and with Sir Busker on Saturday, another five in August.

Almost all have come from handicaps – “At least when they run as badly as ours did last year, the handicap marks have to drop.” True enough, but horses like Atlantic Gamble, off a mark of 79 at Kempton winning for the fifth time this season having started the run on 56; and Blenheim Star, three wins starting from 51, is rated 69 with the prospect of more to come.

Always approachable, he can also point with satisfaction to Saturday’s opening race third with the recently gelded Checkandchallenge. A 33/1 shot, he looked the likely winner until a little ring-rustiness allowed a couple of horses to pass him.

If William Knight’s good form has been heartening for me, I’m also chuffed that the Tom Clover stable seems to have ridden out the unexpected (at least to me) of the Rogues Gallery horses.

Tom and wife Jackie brought that syndicate’s Rogue Millennium, a daughter of Dubawi, from a 35k 2yo buy to a £1.6 million guineas sale, in the meantime collecting a couple of stakes races and running well at the top level. Rogue Lightning won valuable handicap sprints, turning an 80k breeze-up acquisition into a £1 million sale to Wathnan Racing, who have kept him with Clover.

Then in the spring came news of a parting of the ways, The Rogue apparently becoming uneasy about another syndicate muscling in on their territory, or that’s how it read at the time.

No sooner had the 2024 Horses in Training book come out in March/April than the 16 horses listed under the Rogues Gallery had been dispersed far and wide – well all around Newmarket anyway. Talk about gratitude. I’ve no idea if Tony Elliott bought the two stars on his own judgment or that of Tom Clover, but I immediately got the dead needle to their horses.

The Thursday before York, I went to Chelmsford and the flashy red vehicle emblazoned with Rogues stuff was parked next to me. If I had been a little more mobile or less conspicuous, I might even have let the tyres down!

Mr Elliott might well be a great bloke and his syndicates do well and are endorsed by a couple of influential figures, but I was delighted when their Rogue Invader finished a place and two lengths behind Fire Flame, albeit himself a beaten favourite, the horse I was there to watch.

On Friday at York, the Clovers ran recent arrival Al Nayyir in the Lonsdale Cup and if he had had another ten yards to travel he would have beaten Vauban rather than lose by a short head. The six-year-old will be one to watch out for in any long-distance race from now on.

They had a winner elsewhere that day and another at Goodwood on Saturday, but the main event came in the Melrose Handicap, now much stronger as the three-year-olds are excluded from the Ebor, which follows later in the card.

Their lightly-raced Tabletalk came through strongly to win comfortably, beating Coolmore’s The Equator, in a faster time than Magical Zoe took to win the Ebor. He can go a long way as can Tom and Jackie, who have matched last year’s tally of 22, even without the rogue element.

Tabletalk was an appropriate winner that I suggested in response to a request for “a winner” from the three lovely Scottish ladies on my table on Saturday. Once something like that wins, you become fair game for the rest of the day. Nice though.

On Wednesday evening in the inevitable Italian restaurant Del Rio, Irish photographer Pat Healy posed the question “Vincent or Aidan?” a conundrum that could never be adequately resolved. That brought the conversation around to the late Gerry Gallagher, Vincent’s long-term traveling head lad.

One year, Vincent, to Pat’s recollection, had five winners at Goodwood and a couple more on his way back home from there and Gerry backed them all.

When he returned to Ballydoyle, he told Vincent that he’d made a nice pot of money and wondered whether he could buy a bit of land there on which to construct a house.

Vincent asked where he had in mind. Gerry said: “There’s a rough patch of land just to the right of the entrance.” Vincent said to leave it with him and after a couple of days called Gerry in and said yes, he could buy it.

Gerry realised it might not have been the greatest idea to tell the trainer how much he’d won, but anyway asked what he wanted. Vincent took a breath and said: “One pound.” The house was duly built and Gerry and his family lived there for the rest of his life.

Two days later, I was sitting down to lunch when Polly Murphy, the lady who always comes to greet visitors to Ballydoyle and takes them to wherever they need to go, sat down next to me.

I told her the story and asked her if it was true, as it was such a heart-warming incident. Polly said: “Do you see the lady sitting at the table behind us, ask her, she’s Gerry’s daughter Trish.” “It is, and while I’m married now, my brother still lives there,” said Trish.  Small world.

-        TS

Monday Musings: Small Steps

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After Simmering won the Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot on King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes day late last month, Ben Sangster urged caution concerning his son Ollie’s burgeoning training career, writes Tony Stafford.

"Small steps," he maintained, after the filly in which, until just before that day, wife Lucy had been a partner with Justin Casse and Dr J Berk, came from a fair way back to get up close home.

Ryan Moore was on board the filly as she cemented the promise of her second spot behind the Moore-ridden Fairy Godmother in the Albany Stakes at the Royal meeting.

Ryan was otherwise engaged on his day job at the Curragh on Saturday, so Dylan Browne McMonagle sat in and Simmering, up a furlong as her run style had suggested it would, suited her to the extent of a three-length victory in the Group 2 Prix de Calvados at Deauville.

While the French are not always fast out of the blocks with two-year-old racing, perennial leading trainer (if M. Fabre doesn’t intervene) Jean-Claude Rouget isn’t quite so reticent. On the weekend of the big August sale at Arqana in Deauville, Rouget supplied an unbeaten-in-four filly, Fraise Des Bois, running in the colours of Prince Faisal bin Salman’s Denford Stud.

A triple winner at the provincial course at Tarbes in Southwestern France, an entire region where Rouget dominates affairs, the €75k daughter of Zelzal went on to a wide-margin win when stepped up to Listed class at Marseille Borely.

Inevitably on Saturday she shared the market with the UK challenger who, coincidentally, also cost 75k as a yearling, but in real money as we used to call it!

Both fillies were moving up to seven furlongs for the first time and Simmering duly took the race apart after going ahead before the last 200 metres. McMonagle said afterwards he thought he probably went too soon, but there was no sign of weakness as Simmering strode up to and across the line.

You’d think the Moyglare – where she might renew rivalry with Fairy Godmother - would be an obvious target, but further down the line Ollie has the Breeders’ Cup in mind for this fast-improving filly.

Small steps – from Group 3 to Group 2 – seems to follow dad’s coda, but this win could hardly have been timed better. It came between the first two select evenings of the big August Arqana sale on the track’s doorstep.

Running in the colours of Al Shaqab, Ollie had already pulled one rabbit out of the hat by winning the Ascot race for them - they are closely involved in Qipco, a main sponsor of the Royal track – and now showed his worth again at the perfect moment.

Five horses were knocked down to Al Shaqab at the smallish Saturday night portion of the sale, so who would be the first to enter their thoughts having seen off a highly regarded home runner than the short-stepping Ollie?

Sorry Ben, this is a young man with a long, languid stride who is going all the way to the top. As George Boughey has shown, this sort of momentum can be hard to stop if the clients and the talent are there.

The history does stack up. Grandson of Robert, the man who, with John Magnier and Vincent O’Brien, rewrote racing history in the last quarter of the 20th Century. Since Robert’s death, sons Ben, backed by Guy, and in Australia another brother, Adam who ran the southern hemisphere end of Swettenham Stud, provided the ideal introduction to the family business.

Of course, Ollie’s uncle Sam, another of Robert's sons but not much older than Ollie, has been flourishing with his syndicates with Brian Meehan who, like Ollie, trains at Manton.

Stints working with Wesley Ward, both for a time in the US, but for years as his rep on this side of the Atlantic, could not have been a hindrance to his handling of juveniles. Also, his riding career was not to be discounted either. He won four races just over a decade ago for the late Alan Swinbank.

On Lothair at Carlisle in August 2013, he scored with a very professional ride – it was a race for inexperienced amateurs – but 50 yards after passing the post, he came off his mount. Refusing to drop the rein, he held on for at least another 100 yards, until the horse agreed to stop. While the unwritten rule is to let go, Ollie’s guts, horsemanship, strength and a determination not to give up already characterised him from that early point. No wonder Wesley trusted him to pony his horses to the start at Ascot.

It helped before starting his training career last year that a filly he shared (ten per cent) with mum Lucy and James Wigan, bought as a foal four years earlier for 55k, sold at the 2022 December sale for 3.6million gns. The filly was Saffron Beach, a multiple Group 1 winner trained by his aunt Jane Chapple-Hyam. “I was in her from the start,” Ollie avers.

When speaking to Ben after the Princess Margaret, I referred to what he’d mentioned earlier in the year, his dream that Ollie might one day transfer from the Red Post yard into the historic original main yard around Manton House itself where he grew up. “I’d love that”, said Ben. This could be a case of the irresistible force happening sooner than either of them anticipated.

**

When you reach my time of life, you can expect sad news coming around every corner. On Friday, unfortunately, I had a double helping. First my friend Malcolm Caine asked if I’d heard that David Myers had died. I hadn’t. A very clever owner/punter in the 1980’s with the equally clever if rather grumpy Epsom handler Mick Haynes, he’d developed kidney problems at a relatively young age and was on dialysis for many years.

He recently went into hospital for a leg operation and never regained consciousness. Such was his standing within the world of charities that he and his wife were invited to King Charles III’s coronation.

Then later that day an even more awful moment came when I heard from Sir Rupert Mackeson that Howard Wright had died, aged 79. Howard had a deserved tall reputation as a journalist with the Racing Post for many years as the many commendations about him have shown over the past few days.

I must add my own involvement in his story. When I took on a part-time job as Editor of The Racehorse weekly publication in the autumn of 1974, my first headline (unaccredited) was to tip the 25/1 Cesarewitch winner Ocean King, ridden by Tommy Carter and trained by Arthur Pitt, Alan Spence’s first trainer in Epsom.

Peter O’Sullevan was moved to send a letter of congratulation – to Roger Jackson, the greyhound man whose byline was prominently displayed! We did have a laugh about it a few times later as Peter and I knew each other rather better.

Tne Racehorse job involved working early Monday and Tuesday mornings, then off to the Daily Telegraph for late shifts. The need arose as I was paying back a debt to a Mr Lippman and needed the extra. Wednesday was print day, so I had to take my Telegraph day off and also worked Saturdays subbing the sports results for the Sunday Telegraph – thus a full seven-day week, but more like eight days a week really!

The Racehorse had a great team of writers, such as Roger Mortimer, T E Watson (Diary of a private handicapper) and, from the younger generation, Walter Glynn, Alan Amies and Howard Wright, who was assistant sports editor at the Sheffield Morning Telegraph, where I’m pretty sure as Fortunatus he won the Sporting Life naps table.

I never needed to speak to him. His copy came down each week, perfectly presented and never needing any correction. Then, when in 1979 I was appointed Racing Editor at the DT, I requested as my deputy someone from outside – Howard.

The bosses agreed, and happily, so did he. Some people in authority like to have yes men behind them and Howard was anything but that. When you had a day or a week off, you knew the job would be done properly – in all honesty with less of the flying by the shirttails of his boss.

It was no surprise (if rather annoying) when Howard was offered the chance to join the newly-instituted Racing Post in a senior role – one which he held for many years, specialising on the administration end of racing. His death after a short illness was so unexpected.

Will Lefebve, who started at the Press Association in 1969 one week before I did and remains a regular on the course on the big days, said he was with Howard negotiating the sale of some (by Will) historic racecards to Howard when he said he didn’t feel great.

We weren’t ever close, apart from the period of working together, but another friend Jeffrey Curry remembered a day at Kempton earlier this year when the three of us talked for some time in the owners’ room. Jeffrey (or Curly as he’s better known), said: “You’d have thought you were best mates!”

He took the steadfast accuracy of his working life to his family, with wife Anne and their two daughters. When someone dies, you can express your regrets, sympathise and move on. This one keeps coming back, even as I finish this totally inadequate memoire.

- TS

Monday Musings: Fours, and All Sorts

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With more than a week to go before the next big thing, York’s Ebor meeting, It may be a suitable time for a little quantity over quality, writes Tony Stafford. For Iain Jardine, whose week had brought a tragic note with the passing of his barn manager John McPherson, 54, found on Thursday morning after dying in his sleep, it ended on a much happier note.

Runners from the Jardine yard took the 70 miles or so ride up the west coast of Scotland from the Borders to Ayr and clocked up four consecutive winners. Not the least surprising were the prices and that there were three tight photo-finishes.

Jardine kicked off with 7/2 shot Parisiac by a head; followed with the only clear scorer, 16/1 outsider Can’t Stop Now; with Giselles Issy (12/1) completing the hat-trick by a neck. The four-timer, amounting to 5,468/1, was completed with another head finish by 9/2 Jonny Concrete. This is one achievement that will indeed be set in stone.

That brought Jardine to 40 wins for the season, more than two-thirds of the way to his career-best of 58 in an always upwardly mobile career which began only in 2011.

Jardine’s was not the only Saturday four-timer, but in the case of championship-leading Oisin Murphy, his quartet at Newmarket illustrated why he is unbackable to win a fourth career title.

Winners count towards the jockeys’ title only from May 4, the start of the Guineas meeting at Newmarket. In 98 days therefore, Oisin has already passed 100 (101) and can add (but nobody bothers about that) 46 clocked up in the first four months of the campaign.

That puts him a mere 122 behind the record of Gordon Richards (later Sir) set in 1947 when the sport was just getting going after the Second World War and Richards had the benefit of compliant starters under the old gate start. They always made sure Gordon was ready!

Unlike in Gordon’s day, getting to the races has been eased by motorway travel and, for the top boys, small planes or helicopters to get the likes of Ryan Moore, William Buick and no doubt Murphy home safe and quickly.

At the same time, the ruling that stopped double meetings might have reduced the potential for racking up the wins in the summer when the fields tend to thin out.

That’s all well and good, but rather than stick around to mop up the all-weather opportunities after November 4 when the flat season ends at Doncaster, the named trio will be off far and wide in search of the riches available in those countries. That's in contrast to the UK, racing here held in thrall by the bookmakers and racecourses whose strangling effect has been evident by yet another Levy shortfall and the missing millions from media rights payments that never find their way to a race purse.

But I wonder. Those riches will still be available after the turn of the year to Murphy, who is already virtually assured of a fourth title to go with the three he collected from 2019 to 2021 before his ban. He’s 36 clear of Rossa Ryan who also continues to thrive despite last year’s break up from the poisoned chalice that is retained rider for Amo Racing. Maybe David Egan and his calm personality can outlive the previous incumbents in that position.

No, I would like to see Oisin stay for the winter. There hasn’t been a Triple Crown winner in the UK since Nijinsky in 1970. How sweet would it be for Oisin to exceed Sir Gordon's 269 and break a record set the year after I was born. Blimey, when you think of it like that!

So, say he stays, just taking four days off for the Breeders’ Cup and one or two more for overseas spectaculars like Irish Champions' Weekend. Then he would only need to maintain the present rate of progress to collect the 123 wins he needs.

Somebody should step in to sponsor it – no doubt a bookie like Fred Done (Betfred) or Bet Victor – and publicise it with a daily update on his progress towards this record which has seemed an impossibility for much of the time since Lester Piggott was the successor to Richards.

*

Racing In South Africa might have been regarded as a backwater for a long time but efforts to redevelop it and the removal of the ban on importing horses from South Africa to Europe has given it a massive shot in the arm in the season which ended last month.

I keep in touch via a regular look at the well-regarded five times weekly Turf Talk newsletter and was able to tell William Knight before his horse Holkham Bay won at Ascot on Saturday that his South African lady jockey Rachel Venniker was very talented.

The last few months, until season's end, Turf Talk had a daily Richard Fourie barometer as the leading jockey approached and then galloped past the previous record of 335 wins in a season on June 8. He eased off a shade but still stretched to 377 by the end of last month.

Looking at his stats on the At the Races site, Oisin Murphy’s strike-rate looks almost pedestrian. Fourie over the past 12 months has won 276 races on turf and another 106 on all-weather surfaces, so in all 382 – 115 better than Gordon’s best.

Just why nobody has thought to recruit rampant Richard for a spell riding over here, I don’t know. He wouldn’t be the first South African rider to do well, Michael (Muis) Roberts won our title in 1992 and is now a successful trainer back home. I’ve told the tale before, but Roberts and I shared flights travelling to, I think, three tracks in one day.

Getting off the small plane to go to Leicester, he nimbly stepped out. By the time I’d followed him, Neil, the pilot was already on the move, and the rear fin knocked me over with a right bang. The bruise was there as evidence for a good few days!

Returning to Fourie, it's probably more likely that he could become another South African to test his skills in Hong Kong.

*

The phrase plus ca change, plus la meme chose [roughly, 'the more things change, the more they stay the same'] doesn’t seem to apply to life in the mid-2020s. Long-held ideas on behaviour and respect seem to have gone out the window in the UK and last week's riots came as a shock to everyone that had been expecting something much more likely to ruin Paris’s Olympic Games.

They, though, have gone along famously well and the home crowds have shown that there is a place for patriotic support without its boiling over into violence.

For the regulars in the Newmarket owners’ room, last Saturday was a very sad occasion and one where change will certainly not be la meme chose, but very different. We (I’ve plenty of friends who get me owner’s badges) who regularly attend have marvelled at the ultra-professional Lynda Burton as she runs the lunchroom with welcoming efficiency, never seeming to get slower than a fast canter as she attends to the inevitable issues that crop up.

In times when catering staff can be at either end of the acceptable spectrum, she has gathered some excellent colleagues, so it was a shock to hear that owing to an “unpleasantness”, as she described it, Lynda had decided to resign forthwith.

I’ve known her for 15 years from when she was running the Goodwood owners’ room, before she transferred to Newmarket. It has been very demanding, travelling so often from her home in the West Country and now, with a grandchild and as her husband has retired, Lynda is reserving her considerable energies for closer to home.

Judging by the bouquets of flowers and other examples of gratitude for the past years’ efforts, I’m clearly not the only one to rue her departure. Her shoes will not be easy to fill. Good luck Newmarket!

At Goodwood I had a great reunion with a friend who around two decades ago asked me if I would introduce him to Sir Henry Cecil. Gerhard Schoeningh, a German based in London where he worked in finance, wished to ask Henry whether he would be prepared to train his home-bred horses, mostly stayers.

Among the best he sent to the master trainer were Brisk Breeze and Templestern, but he says that when Henry died, he failed to find another trainer to suit him. Instead, he bought a racecourse, Hoppegarten in Berlin, and over time he has lovingly improved and restored it.

I asked how it’s gone. He said: “It’s getting better and better every year. This year, I hope we can break even!”

Yesterday, he staged his most valuable and important race, the €100k to the winner 134th running of the Grosser Preis von Berlin (Group 1). He was still trying to recruit supplementary entries for the race at the time and his negotiations with Joseph O’Brien bore fruit with Al Riffa, the excellent runner-up to City Of Troy in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown Park last month, lining up.

Ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle, Al Riffa started the 3/5 favourite and won by five lengths. Gerhart has asked me to try to come over either in October or next spring. I’ve never been to Germany, but you know, I might take him up on it.

- TS

Monday Musings: Mick’s the Man

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The Appleby “brothers” were at it at Goodwood last week, with Charlie first to the fore, winning the Sussex Stakes with the revived 2000 Guineas winner Notable Speech and  the Group 2 Vintage Stakes with improving juvenile Aomori City, writes Tony Stafford.

You can always identify a Charlie Appleby runner, the Royal blue silks only ever modified by different-coloured caps when there are multiple entries. At Goodwood he ran only four horses over the five days, when hot sunshine and the avoidance of any of the promised thunderstorms [I found one on Thursday going home around the almost-flooded southern portion of the M25] were the theme of the meeting.

Charlie has one owner, Godolphin, and, according to Horses in Training 2024, 233 horses to pick from. The same publication at the time of the snapshot before the season started listed 102 for Michael Appleby, a journeyman who made his way out of the Andrew Balding stable into his own business around 20 years ago. At the end of last week, it was Mick, rather than Charlie, or indeed Aidan O’Brien, that was declared Champion Trainer at the meeting.

That 102, bolstered since by additional juveniles, is the result of hard graft, ever-improving results and continually punching above his weight. Local businesses, clubs and syndicates with shrewdies like the Dixon brothers through their Horse Watchers horses [and geegeez.co.uk! - Ed.], have hastened the upward trajectory. The weaving together of these strands has provided the cocktail of horses that benefit from the “Mick” treatment, with sprinters the foundation of it all. And, of course, he isn’t Charlie’s brother!

If ever there was a moment to evidence the culmination and flowering of the effort of those two decades, it was Big Evs’ winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint at Santa Anita last autumn in a battle of three Europeans. He and Tom Marquand held off runners from the Adrian Murray and Ralph Beckett yards.

That was a fourth win in six starts, Big Evs having collected previously the Flying Childers at Doncaster, after sinking in the Nunthorpe at York the previous month.

One obvious observation in the aftermath of his finishing 14th of 16 against the top older sprinters is just how insensitive and crass it was of the stewards at the meeting to ask Appleby for an explanation for his “poor performance”. He’s a two-year-old for pity’s sake! Do you know nothing about horses?

Back home and with the US win on his scabbard, Big Evs made a winning return in a Listed race at the York May meeting. Royal Ascot the following month was a lottery for the most part in the week’s sprints so while ‘only’ 3rd to the Australian speedster Asfoora in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes, he ‘won’ his race on the unfavoured far side.

The ultra-valuable King George Stakes last week was his first run since Ascot, and it gave him the chance to avenge the defeat. He duly gained that revenge - though only by a short-head - as the Australian mare was hunting him down in the final yards.

Big Evs was the sixth Mick Appleby runner at Goodwood last week and the fourth winner. The only two losers at that point were Billyjoh, second in a seven-furlong handicap – the longest trip any of the team attempted all week – and Mr Lightside in the Molecomb Stakes.

Mr Lightside went into that race as the better fancied (11/1) of the stable duo, but 25/1 shot Big Mojo, having dwelt at the start and raced in rear early, had the pace to come through and win under Silvestre de Sousa. Mr Lightside was a close third and will have plenty of wins to come given that sharp speed he showed.

Going into the Molecomb as a maiden – Big Mojo had, like Big Evs prior to his Listed Windsor Castle win at Royal Ascot last year, been runner-up on debut at one of the Yorkshire tracks, Beverley in his case – he was an expensive buy for the yard, and owners Paul and Rachael Teasdale, at his 175,000gns yearling price. Bought from Derek Veitch of Ringfort Stud, he clearly holds a high place in Appleby’s estimation. “He could be as good as Big Evs,” he said. Praise indeed.

Handicappers Kitai over seven furlongs and Shagraan, at the minimum trip, completed the winners’ roll for the stable, but there was still to be one last hurrah, planned for the earlier second finisher Billyjoh.

If Appleby could have moaned about the draw for Big Evs at Ascot, he would have been entitled to have regretted the one that got away after the also very well-endowed Stewards’ Cup on Saturday. Twenty-five of the 28 declared kept the engagement and Billyjoh, drawn four, led into the final furlong on his side of the race – they did edge across - finishing best of the 16 that kept up the middle.

Meanwhile George Baker’s six-year-old Get It had grabbed the near rail from the outset, leading clearly, and held on all the way, with major sprint handicap regular Apollo One getting closest for a staying-on half-length second.

Peter Charalambous earned a not insignificant £60k for his troubles with Apollo One but he must be despairing of the big win his wonderful servant at age six deserves. He couldn’t complain of the luck of the draw though – the first six came from 28, 27, 4 (Billyjoh), 24, 26 and 20! Peter pretty much is training just the single horse under the Charalambous/ Clutterbuck ticket, and the gelding is now up to £350k in earnings, 80% of it for places.

Get It was a notable local success for genial George Baker, once a wet-behind-the-ears writer for the long-defunct Sportsman newspaper, but ever the mine host over Goodwood’s entire week. He is entering a new phase of his career with a stable to be based in Bahrain over the coming winter.

I still remember pulling up at one of my 2009 trips down to the west of France, availing myself of the late Roger Hales’ driving skills. We were there at Le Lion d’Angers to watch the second of French Fifteen’s three consecutive wins down there and who should we bump into before racing but George, who had a runner in another race. Ever the ground breaker is George!

As usual, Ryan Moore’s skills were in evidence all week. Kyprios in the Goodwood Cup proved easy enough and was a testimony to Aidan O’Brien and the team’s skills to rehabilitate him from the severe injury problems of 2022 into 2023 to be the revived master stayer of his time.

Ryan had predicted he would be too good for what he described as horses that were “much of a muchness”, but in truth were decent 110-plus rated stayers all. Moore needed to be much closer to the peak of his powers though when completing a big-race double on Thursday aboard Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes and last year’s champion juvenile filly Opera Singer in the Nassau Stakes.

Each time it looked as if his nearest challenger might be about to pass him but Ryan seems to mesmerise his fellow jockeys in such situations. Opera Singer was the sixth winner of the Nassau Stakes – but only the fourth for Aidan O’Brien - for the Coolmore owners, starting in 2007 with the remarkable Peeping Fawn. Minding and Winter were the other two of Aidan’s within that 17-year period.

Like City Of Troy, her male counterpart as juvenile champion last year, Opera Singer is by Triple Crown hero Justify; and it seems the plan is to go for the Arc with this highly-talented filly. City Of Troy, of course, is pencilled in for the Juddmonte International at York this month.

Later, the juvenile newcomer Dreamy, by the Coolmore team’s other Triple Crown winning stallion American Pharoah, overcame greenness to win the fillies’ maiden under the same jockey to make it a Ballydoyle/Coolmore hat-trick, though each wearing different silks such are the extending tentacles of the co-ownership edges of the operation these days.

Eight years ago, the same maiden race was won by Rhododendron, but she had the benefit of a run in Ireland beforehand. A multiple Group 1 winner, she is, of course, the dam of Auguste Rodin. If Horses In Training is correct, Dreamy is the only American Pharoah two-year-old among the one hundred-plus juveniles at Ballydoyle. Someone knows how to pick which goes where!

Finally, as if three wins on the day for the team weren’t enough, Mrs Doreen Tabor had a winner in her colours that same afternoon at Nottingham, trained by Ralph Beckett!

- TS

Monday Musings: Beaten by Sepsis

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It’s funny when you speak regularly with people in racing, especially in my case primarily those I’d known in my previous incarnation, that memories come flooding back, writes Tony Stafford.

For example, before the first at Ascot on Saturday, a two-year-old contest, representing part-owner Jonathan Barnett and his Fire Flame, I stood at the end of the paddock to view it on the big screen. While there, I ran (or rather stumbled) into David Loder and John Garnsey. Many years ago, when Loder started training at Sefton Lodge in Newmarket, he had terrific success, notably with his juveniles, which were always well-schooled and ready to run.

Ricky Bowman was an “enthusiastic” work rider at a time when whip use was less frowned upon and indeed “when whips were whips”.

So, the Loder horses went into action with the equivalent of a race behind them and it was pretty easy to find winning opportunities. Many of the best prospects found their way into my Daily Telegraph tips as I was in contact with David every day.

So much so that when I bumped into legendary punter Harry Findlay at Doncaster sales maybe 15 years later, he said that when I napped one, he had his maximum on. “No commission, Harry?”

David has stopped training for some time. When he left Newmarket for the first time to look after the Sheikh Mohammed horses in Evry, France, on the site of the former racecourse, after Jeremy Noseda declined the offer, the contact finished.

Before he left, we regularly used to suggest that John Gosden didn’t seem to be doing much of a job with the Sheikh Mohammed home-breds in his yard. The first year he returned, I bumped into him as he was about to run his juvenile City On A Hill in the July Stakes. Of course it won, as did Noverre the following year.

As we were about to pass, he stopped me and said:” You know we used to laugh at John Gosden about what a crap job he did with the Sheikh Mo home-breds?” "Of course", I laughed. “Well, I’ve got them now and I think he was a f…… genius to do what he did with them!”, he said.

Now the wheel has turned full circle, David and Anthony Stroud are back buying the sales horses for Godolphin in close concert with the boss and Charlie Appleby, who was with Loder in the yard back in those Evry days.

I was chatting to Charlie a bit later along with Jono Mills, who was the young manager for the Rabbah (Godolphin-lite as I used to call them) horses at the time. Quite a few were in the revised Loder team after the Sheikh ended the Evry project and David took out a licence to train publicly from Egerton stud, next to the National Stud in the town, and the base for David Elsworth until his retirement a couple of seasons ago. Johnny Murtagh, before his Classic-winning time at Coolmore and post-John Oxx, rode the horses and unlike in David’s first go at the job, they tended to finish 2nd. Murtagh couldn’t ride a winner and Dave soon ended the experiment - Jono still remembers the frustration of it all.

Now, tall and lean and looking like some distinguished film producer, Loder can lay claim to Thursday’s wide-margin Sandown debut winner Ruling Court, a €2.3 million buy from Arqana. “Maybe he beat trees, but he looked good,” he said. A son of Justify so maybe another City Of Troy would be the hope

John Garnsey was and is an almost exact (but slightly younger) contemporary of mine, him at the Daily Express. Quiet and amusingly laconic whenever we meet, he usually says something like: “Well at least we’re still here!”

We had all agreed as the horses milled around behind the stalls that one of the runners, Letsbeatsepsis, had a most unfortunate name. Trained by Gary and Josh Moore, obviously there was a story behind it. Loder was there to watch another of his discoveries, the 1.5million gns Al Misbah, the 11/10 favourite.

A slow start didn’t help the favourite and he could only keep on for fourth, just ahead of a tubby-looking Fire Flame, with both beaten for third by Letsbeatsepsis, an 80/1 shot.

I thought I’d better investigate and indeed there is a story. I called Jayne Moore, wife of Gary, mum to joint-trainer Josh, recently-retired jump jockey Jamie and TV star Hayley. Oh, there’s also Ryan, who won that race on Richard Hannon’s Our Terms and went on to take the next, the Princess Margaret Stakes (Group 3) for Ollie Sangster.

Jayne explained that Letsbeatsepsis’ owner-breeder Patrick Moorhead had fallen ill with sepsis a few years back and hadn’t heard of it until he caught the disease. He was in ITU for months, but when he recovered, thought it would be an appropriate name to make people aware of it.

Saturday’s runner, a first foal, shows enough talent to do just that. I did some research and discovered that sepsis in the UK claims 48,000 deaths annually. The much more publicised breast cancer (11,500) and prostate cancer (12,000) claim together less than a half as many victims. To illustrate the full horror of sepsis, it is estimated that 11 million, one-fifth the world’s annual death toll, succumb to it.

Gary had only half a dozen two-two-year old wins in the past five years but now with Josh on the licence you can expect the younger end of the team to press for more flat horses and if possible of a precocious nature.

One young man on the fast track to success is Ollie Sangster, and not the least of his skill in only his second season as a trainer has been to judge the time when allowing big-name owners to buy out the existing owners.

Judging by the smiles of parents Ben and Lucy before the Princess Margaret, the price paid for the twice-raced maiden Simmering by Al Shaqab Racing was substantial enough for original partner Lucy to enjoy the day whatever happened.

Just as at Royal Ascot where Simmering flew home in the shadow of highly rated Fairy Godmother, showing similar finishing speed in the Albany Stakes to the winner, Simmering again got a fair way behind. Then Ryan, switched from her Royal meeting nemesis, found himself a fair way back but came through the middle of the field and was well on top at the finish. A 70,000gns daughter of Too Darn Hot, Simmering will have enhanced her value still further, but that sure touch Ollie showed when lining up a Group 3 to break a maiden will have impressed the international set.

Later, Ben Sangster, still with a full-on smile, was anxious not to put too much expectation on the young man’s shoulders. Ollie, obviously grandson to Robert Sangster, should according to Ben, “take small steps. The dream is still there though that one day he can move into the main yard at Manton House.”

One final point about King George day and the main event. Before the race Aidan O’Brien, having walked the course earlier, and Ryan Moore told Michael Tabor of their misgivings after 3mm of water were added overnight. Also, near the inside they had put down a fair amount of sand. Michael, realistic as ever, said: “It’s what it is!” almost resigned to another down to the 2023 Derby winner’s in-out career.

One thing I’m pretty sure of: the winner, the Francis-Henri Graffard-trained gelding Goliath will have been the first winner of the race with such a pronounced case of stringhalt. As he went past us in the pre-parade, I was dying to ask him: “Can you do it as well with your right hind leg?" Bet he can’t! Decent performance though.

**

Yesterday featured the last day’s UK jump racing for around three weeks. While the top jockeys will be able to afford to go on exotic trips, their lesser-earning counterparts will be ruing the fact of reduced earning possibilities. Nicky Richards told me that he thought the stop was an opportunity missed. In Ireland they have races for jockeys that have won fewer than 20 races in the previous season and he reckons that should have been copied here.

Meanwhile, on another contentious issue, Dylan Cunha, who won a Racing League contest at Yarmouth last Thursday, goes further, believing that the top 20 trainers could be excluded to no harm for themselves, leaving the better prize money in these races to the remainder. Hughie Morrison, one of the Team Scotland trainers in the Racing League, believes that the bigger than usual for the grade money available has merely been “stolen” from the rest of the UK’s races in their respective grade. Three men with plenty to say and all with feasible opinions.

- TS

Monday Musings: Of Cups and Plates

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The joys of shared ownership were never better exemplified than on Saturday, with big wins on both the flat and in the most valuable race of the summer jumping season, writes Tony Stafford.

Suppose you owned a highly respected stud farm and stood three stallions, one of which, Nathaniel, is long-standing and good enough to have produced a mare of the calibre of world champion Enable, you would always be on the lookout for anything you thought capable of coming some way towards that sort of racecourse brilliance.

Step forward Graham Smith-Bernal, boss since May 2021 of former German-owned Newsells Park Stud. Nathaniel, a son of Galileo, has over the past couple of years been joined by smart mile performer Without Parole and top sprinter (five times Group winner) A’Ali.

Trained by John Gosden, Nathaniel began life in that famed juvenile maiden at an evening meeting at Newmarket, finishing a gallant runner-up to Sir Henry Cecil’s career-saving Frankel, also making his debut. Frankel’s famed 14-race unbeaten record entitles him to be regarding as maybe the best-ever flat racer.

Nathaniel was no slouch either, winning the King George at Ascot as a three-year-old, the Coral-Eclipse the following year, and edged out by a nose by Danedream in his follow-up King George attempt. He bowed out with a third to old adversary Frankel in the 2012 Champion Stakes, finishing their careers in the same race, too.

Four lengths was the margin this time, the brilliant French gelding Cirrus Des Aigles intervening. Frankel has lived up to his racecourse form at stud and stands for the Juddmonte operation for £350k. You might say that Nathaniel, if he can produce another Enable, is outstanding value at one-twentieth the Frankel figure at £17,500.

So here goes. There was a first-time Nathaniel filly in a Kempton 2yo maiden at the tail end of last year, running for the emerging Valmont operation and trained by Ralph Beckett. A £200k Tattersalls Book 1 yearling, You Got To Me started her debut race slowly, but soon made smooth headway to track the leaders on the outside. That effortless speed was what most impressed the Newsells team.

Then, having got to the lead inside the last furlong and a half, she showed resolution to win quite nicely at the finish, coming out best of four in a line 100 yards out, staying on well as you would expect a Nathaniel to do. Graham made contact as to whether she might be for sale. “Luckily, Valmont are traders. I offered £200,000, for a half-share. They replied “£300k.” We settled on £250k.” Some deal I think.”, he said.

The partnership began with a win in the Lingfield Oaks Trial (or rather the Ralph Beckett benefit), followed by fourth in the Oaks and again fourth in the Ribblesdale, where she was very free, going into a near ten-length lead at Swinley Bottom. Once headed, she battled on more resolutely than could have been expected in the circumstances, for a close fourth.

Beckett decided to fit a first-time tongue-tie on Saturday in the Irish Oaks, to curb that enthusiasm, and it worked perfectly. The result? A measured performance where Hector Crouch managed to keep in Ryan Moore on the Coolmore favourite Concede just behind him in the home straight, and You Got To Me went on to win by a comfortable one and a half lengths, again showing that strong finish.

It probably helped the team that Moore didn’t get as smooth a passage as the winner and it will be interesting to see whether the result will be replicated on a further meeting.

Another Enable? Who knows, but You Got To Me is going the right way, stays well as do all the Nathaniels, but with that extra instant speed ingredient that most horses don’t possess. Instead of the boss being there to enjoy the win first-hand, it was deputed that racing and nominations manager Gary Coffey should represent the Newsells half of the team at the Curragh, a proud moment for the Irishman. “It was a great day for us, almost up there with when another partnership horse, Waldgeist, won the Arc the year after Enable’s second win in the race.”

Smith-Bernal, kept on home soil worrying about the health of the family dog, instead hosted 16 members and friends of a (sadly unplaced) Charlie Johnston-trained runner at Newmarket’s oddly-timed fixture. They had no luck, but a beaming Smith-Bernal made sure the champagne kept flowing. It was almost better to be celebrating in the owners’ dining room at Newmarket, able to whoop with delight as she passed the post. We happened to leave the course at the same time, he and wife Marcella holding hands, he with that massive grin still on his face.

The Newsells model is different from many others. They have around fifty mares of their own and another fifty or so for clients as well as a similar number of boarders. Their own colts and fillies are all available for sale. Newsells fixes a value and if they are unsold at the sale, often partnerships are negotiated with the stud retaining an interest for racing.

It wasn’t all gloom for Coolmore and especially Ryan Moore. He rode the most audaciously patient ride on the much-improved four-year-old Tower Of London in the one mile, six furlong Group 1 Curragh Cup.

The three-year-old and fellow Galileo horse Grosvenor Square set the pace in a race where top-class dual-purpose performer Vauban and Tower Of London dominated the market. Also, in the O’Brien stable, he set up a 20-length lead and was still at least eight ahead coming to the final furlong. Meanwhile, a long way behind Grosvenor Square, Tower Of London was easing past Valmont and swiftly made up the ground. He won with his head in his chest. Wow, such mastery of his trade!

There was a future potential opponent for You Got To Me and Concede in the Hughie Morrison-trained four-year-old Mistral Star, on show later on the Newmarket card. Mistral Star took on a sizeable field in a ten-furlong Listed race and smoothly raced away from them. The homebred will be pushed quite close to a 110 rating after this and Morrison knows just how to bring the Helena Springfield fillies to their optimum potential. She looks sure to stay further on this evidence.

Now to, for me, the happiest Saturday result of all. On Thursday I sat in a Gaucho restaurant in London’s West End, while this publication’s editor showed us three a recent video of the Geegeez.co.uk chaser Sure Touch in a schooling session before taking up his Saturday target in the centenary Summer Plate Chase at Market Rasen.

I had to agree with Matt that it was “sensational”, especially for a horse with only five previous chases on his card for Olly Murphy. As he was winning the big race, attended by my York races landlord Jim Cannon and a couple of my fellow guests, all of whom are in this syndicate, I’d forgotten all about it.

Contacting Matt later in the afternoon, the drinks had already been flowing. I don’t suppose any of the numerous errors that no doubt will be sprinkled within this offering will be picked up, so I better check again. [They have been 😉  - Ed.]

Then yesterday, the team were on the mark at Newton Abbot with the 4/1 favourite Konigin Isabella, trained by Anthony Honeyball. Rumours that Jim paid for the helicopter to take the team from Lincolnshire to Devon are apparently untrue.

The moral of this epistle is clear. If you have a couple of hundred grand or so, scour the autumn maiden juvenile races for potential. If you want to join a syndicate, have a look at Geegeez.co.uk. Other syndicates and agents – some of whom we often mention here – are available.

- TS

 

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