On Tuesday evening I left Brighton racecourse at around 7 p.m. after a frustrating day brought on by the closure of the A23, diversions from which cost me at least one and a half hours’ irritation, worrying that I’d get there in time, writes Tony Stafford.
At about the same time, John Hunt was arriving home in Hertfordshire having commentated at Lingfield Park’s afternoon meeting. He found a horrific scene which in one ruinous moment wiped out 75 per cent of the life he and wife Carol had built together for their three daughters.
The fact that three female members of one family, Carol and younger daughters Hannah and Louise, had become a target of a single malevolent individual is bad enough: the ordeal he subjected them to before administering the final sanction simply multiplied the horror.
My own view while waiting for news of the outcome of the search for the suspect – do we still today have to go through that charade when it’s all too certain who the triple killer was? - is anger. That’s right, anger that while being so gifted in sending the three blameless women to their deaths, this Army-trained killer didn’t have sufficient skill or guts to end his own life.
So now he has precipitated a farcical process that will mean an entirely futile murder trial sometime in the months to come that will make even harder the mourning process for John and eldest daughter Amy.
Everyone commenting on John Hunt, an exemplary commentator on numerous sports, is unified in describing him as a wonderful individual.
My recollection of him every time we’ve spoken over the last couple of decades is that infectious smile and a love for West Ham United. No doubt he was coming home ready to sit down with the family to watch the Spain-France Euros semi-final.
There must have been a moment, when the BBC’s coverage of racing was already confined to radio, that brought him to a crossroads as to whether to stay with them. At the time Cornelius Lysaght was the correspondent and John just did the commentaries.
These were often restricted to the last few furlongs of a major flat race or the final obstacles over jumps as the Saturday afternoon programme producers deigned to leave a Premier League game for one precious minute. John never cribbed about it even though it must have been utterly frustrating.
After Lysaght was moved on, Huntie’s status increased and then came the swimming commentaries at the Olympics and other major events. His eagle eye, developed from watching high-speed horse racing finishes, made him outstandingly better than the Olympic gold medallists that were previously the Beeb’s imprecise eyes on the pool.
Even soccer and other equestrian activities at the Olympics have since come within his range, at the same time never interfering with his initial job as a race commentator or increasingly in the Sky Sports racing studios as a genial and impressively fluent, knowledgeable presenter.
I hope John will feel able to resume that Olympic Games role this month. It might be a little easier than having to bump into all the regulars he would see if his first resumption was to be at the races.
We all, of course, wish him well, and wonder how such wickedness has come into our world: bodies in suitcases killed by someone from Colombia allowed to be living here, left on a bridge in Bristol, and an assassination attempt on a presidential candidate.
*
The world and racing go on and on Saturday we were back to the bizarre fixture clash of Newmarket’s July Cup, York’s John Smith’s Cup, both Premier Racing fixtures, and Ascot’s non-Premier card which carried the Group 2 Summer Mile. It must have seemed a bit of a joke at Ascot that they could put on a programme with £200k in winners’ prize money and be the least important of three meetings on the day.
There was additionally in previous years Chester, but they were forced by the authorities to revert to a teatime start and apparently didn’t like that too much. Salisbury and Hamilton made up the numbers at more conventional evening start times.
Then yesterday, when Chester, Hamilton or Salisbury might have been able to stage a nice Sunday afternoon card, instead it was jumps only at Perth in Scotland where the weather was rubbish and Stratford, at least under sunshine in front of a decent attendance.
Newmarket on Saturday featured the latest example of Jane Chapple-Hyam’s expertise (as if it were needed), the Australian-born step-daughter of the late Robert Sangster, landing the £340k first prize for the Group 1 July Cup with the progressive Mill Stream.
The four-year-old son of Gleneagles is still a colt and, boasting also a Group 2 win at York earlier this year in his locker, he could be a potential stud prospect when his racing career is deemed to have finished. It was a major triumph for Peter Harris, once famed for top-class jumpers and a former trainer, but now happy to have Jane do the work while he supplies the raw material (and the cash that is needed to acquire it).
Earlier, the Chapple-Hyam stable was also on the mark in a £25k to the winner fillies’ handicap at HQ. Asian Daze had been bought out of Johnny Murtagh’s stable at the Goff’s London Sale on the eve of Royal Ascot for £200k on behalf of Australian Gai Waterhouse and co-trainer Adrian Bott.
She ran well in the Sandringham Stakes, when her 9th of 30 would have been improved considerably with a clear run. Transferred after Ascot to Jane, this was her first run since, and her fellow Aussies will be looking forward to Asian Daze clocking up some serious money when she gets Down Under.
Talking of money, I made only one visit to the July HIT sale at Newmarket, the Brighton escapade draining my physical resources, and I thought three days at Newmarket races would be enough to cover Thursday onwards.
That just left me with Thursday evening. As I arrived half an hour before the action started, in time to find my old sparring partner John Hancock in his customary seat in the buffet, I bumped into Dylan Cunha. The South African trainer has made a great impact over the past two years, and he has been particularly sharp at spotting bargains at the yearling and HIT sales.
I asked him, “Have you anything in mind? I’ll keep an eye on whether you get something.” He turned to his left at the same time pointing out three bench seats backing onto the pre-parade walking area. He said, “Do you see those gentlemen? They are all from various parts of the Middle East” – so nine in all. “They’ve been there for ages and when one stands up, someone else comes across and takes his place.”
Buyers from Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, Dubai, Qatar and increasingly Bahrain all want to buy horses from the UK, Dylan said. “It works both ways. I sold a horse yesterday <Wednesday> that I valued at 4k and he went for 18 grand. Unbelievable!”
The common view was that if a horse was worth ten thousand it would fetch 25k, if 20, treble it. So it proved.
Some of it is down to the system where three horses are needed to fill a crate for export – one, two or three on the crate costs the same. Buyers may have bought two to bring home and will be desperate to secure a third. It seems that they will always be able to find someone back home to believe it’s worth the money.
Tonight, I’ll be off to Windsor hoping for a repeat Monday night win there for the Jonathan Barnett/ Newsells Park stud-owned and Michael Bell-trained Wootton’s Jewel.
To give you an idea of horse prices these days, especially for those aged three as he is: at Windsor last time on his first start of the year, Wootton’s Jewel was a short-head winner over the Andrew Balding-trained Star Runner and Oisin Murphy didn’t look too chuffed that Hector Crouch had got the better of him. Last week, Star Runner, rated identically on 77 with his Windsor conqueror, was sold to William Durkan for 105,000gns, presumably to go jumping, rather than for export to the Middle East. When Wootton’s Jewel wins again tonight, what will he be worth, 150 grand?!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/black.png320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-07-15 07:35:522024-07-15 07:35:52Monday Musings: A Desperate Week
You say it quickly and it does seem a little unusual, writes Tony Stafford. But it’s only when you put it in perspective - that it was Mrs Susan Magnier’s first visit to a UK racecourse for twelve years on Saturday at Sandown - you appreciate how remarkable it was.
Then you begin to understand how City Of Troy is regarded among the Ballydoyle owners, his trainer and jockey Ryan Moore He’s not merely another star racehorse. He’s something apart, everyone involved in his development believing from very early days on the home gallops that he is unique.
I can’t remember whether Vincent O’Brien’s daughter attended any of the 2012 Classic races. That was a memorable year with victories in the first four. Indeed, the clean sweep was only denied them when Enke – he of the failed dope test the following year which found steroids in his system when under the shamed Mahmood Al Zarooni’s care – denied Camelot the Triple Crown.
No doubt the very young Susan O’Brien/Magnier would have lived every minute of the last Triple Crown, her father’s horse Nijinsky coming over in 1970 to achieve the extraordinary feat - the first for 35 years since Bahram in 1935.
A named co-owner (rather than husband John) in almost all the earlier and subsequent triumphs for the non-related Aidan O’Brien team of Coolmore partners, it’s amazing to appreciate just how many major wins she had absented herself from before Saturday.
If we start with the Classic wins. From 2013 onwards, she, with Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith mostly, has won the 2000 Guineas three times, the 1000 Guineas five times, the Derby seven times, the Oaks six times and the St Leger four times; that’s 25 in all, never mind that 2012 quartet.
If we descend into all races, Aidan has sent over since 2013 around 1500 runners for a little more than 200 wins and prize money of £60 million The poverty of UK prizemoney in relation to that of other leading racing authorities is best shown by the last figure.
There’s no question that City Of Troy is the one horse racing today that would command the sort of money that football clubs pay for the best players. His value, like them, potentially soars above £120 million to my mind. Unlike footballers, though, stallion owners can get their money’s worth.
Some racehorses of recent times, especially Galileo, the principal equine power base behind the consistently astonishing Coolmore/O’Brien success of the past 20 years, have commanded stud fees reputedly close to £500k. When Coolmore list one of their stallions as “private”, just being able to inveigle a mare into his breeding shed has needed something of that dimension and the promise not to reveal how much has been paid for the privilege.
Multiply that by a conservative 125 or so mares covered each year; factor in a two or three-year span to retrieve all the money and you get the Coolmore formula – one pursued, usually in vain, by their imitators.
City Of Troy, while not a son of Galileo, does have Galileo on the dam side, through his mother Together Forever, a Group 1 winner at age two, and one of the many mares by their champion looking for worthy mates to keep the pot boiling at the highest level.
Step up (and he already has) Justify, one of two recent Triple Crown winners, both now operating from Coolmore’s Ashford stud in Kentucky.
City Of Troy has done enough to deserve to stand where Galileo did for so many illustrious years. Unbeaten and the European champion at two, he won the Derby impressively after that Guineas aberration, then on Saturday he beat his elders in the Coral-Eclipse, the first meaningful Group 1 battle between the generations of the 2024 season.
As in the UK, to illustrate how difficult that achievement has been, Justify, and American Pharoah a few years earlier, were also pathfinders after a 37-year gap since Affirmed won the 1978 Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in the tough five-week schedule that series entails.
For a UK horse to win our Triple Crown, I suggest an even more difficult trifecta: he has to be quick and ready enough to land the 2000 Guineas at a mile in early May; stay 14 and a bit furlongs on the daunting Doncaster circuit in September; and in between have the adaptability to come home first around the difficult Epsom 12 furlongs with its gradients and cambers in the first week of June.
I think time will tell us that Sheikh Mohammed’s remarkable mare Oh So Sharp, the last filly to complete the female Triple Crown in 1985, with 1000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger, deserves much more attention than is generally afforded her.
The first element inexplicably eluded the team, Ryan Moore coming back visibly shocked at the unexpected reverse on Newmarket’s Rowley Mile. Yet so quickly does the racing year evolve that within two months we’ve already seen his rehabilitation – back almost to the sublime domination of his generation as a two-year-old – in the Derby and then the victory in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.
Justify’s win over 12 furlongs on the US’s biggest oval, Belmont Park, where he completed the set in the Belmont Stakes, offered promise that his progeny would stay at least middle distances, without compromising the speed which won the two shorter distance Triple Crown races.
Had City Of Troy won the 2000 Guineas, he may well have missed Sandown, and gone instead to the Irish Derby and would now be gearing up for the St Leger. The combative John Magnier and friends, though, are always out to stretch the boundaries. After Sandown, presumably it’s the Juddmonte at York and if the Irish Champion Stakes is not then on his agenda, it seems that even the Breeders’ Cup Classic on dirt could be. Then again, maybe both.
There was no sign of weakening – quite the reverse – from City Of Troy in the Derby, and then when all looked potentially to be going wrong in the Eclipse, the will to win from horse and rider Ryan Moore, kept the opposition at bay.
A couple of incidents stayed in my mind from before the race. One of the closest inside the group said that after all the rain that had fallen on Sandown, had it been his decision to make, he would have pulled City Of Troy from the race. Two trainers, Brian Meehan and Hughie Morrison, did withdraw their runners on concerns about the going.
Next, standing quite close in the pre-parade paddock,while Aidan was, as he prefers, saddling his horse in the open in the middle of the paddock rather than in a saddling box, I remarked to a friend, “see how calm and placid he is,” at which exact moment his left hind leg flashed back and only Aidan’s nimbleness enabled him to evade it. Three or four further attempts to clean out his trainer were also unsuccessful and then it was on to the main paddock and a host of people anxious to see the superstar.
In the race, Wayne Lordan made the running on stable pacemaker Hans Andersen and, while Ryan was happy enough to follow him, Ghostwriter eased up on his inside as they reached the end of the back straight. Then around the home bend, any idea of serenity for the rider was eroding as City Of Troy seemed momentarily to lose his footing and he had a length quickly to retrieve on his opponent.
Up the straight, though, he gradually mastered Jeff Smith/ Clive Cox’s smart performer, but then had a more serious rival to deal with. The Joseph O’Brien four-year-old Al Riffa had sat last of all but came with the final challenge and one that from the stands looked likely to prove decisive.
I wondered afterwards whether Sue Magnier might have been looking on momentarily in horror, reliving the day when brother David with Secreto beat her father’s hot favourite El Gran Senor in the Derby of 1984. Here, though, City Of Troy’s battling qualities eliminated such horrors, kicking in and he had the race won by a full length.
When asked what had he expected beforehand, Ryan Moore answered, “I thought he’d win by ten lengths.” I’m sure Sue Magnier did too, but now everyone knows that for all the brilliance, there’s also a dogged will not to be beaten in that remarkable DNA. Roll on York!
In case you wondered, yes, I did get another chance to press the flesh. His lad kindly waited a few seconds as I got into position and this time, unlike at Epsom, his coat was a little wet to the touch. Maybe the Eclipse got to him rather more than the Derby did - and no wonder!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/CityofTroy_SueMagnier_CoralEclipse2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-07-08 07:14:032024-07-08 07:14:03Monday Musings: Sue And The City
When is a suspension not a suspension?, writes Tony Stafford. When it is handed down to an Irish trainer, even when at the second attempt the authorities do try to add a little sting to what was originally deemed insufficient punishment. It seems effectively it’s little more than a rap on the knuckles.
We had the Gordon Elliott episode a few years back when Ireland’s second most successful jumps trainer had to give up his licence. With her stable conveniently close by, Mrs Denise Foster, the chosen one to carry on business at Cullentra Stables, had her transfer rubber-stamped and approved by the authorities. She recorded 17 and 32 wins in the seasons 2020/21 and 2021/22 which spanned Elliott’s 12-month ban.
A licence-holder since 1997/98, Denise must have shown something to Gordon that the stats did not reveal. Her seasonal tallies since that opening date had been 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 0, 1 and 1. Since the Elliott days it’s been back to normal with 2, 2, and 0 so far in the early phase of the 2024/25 campaign.
Therefore, Mrs Foster recorded a total 38 wins in 26 seasons in her own right, against 49 in the segments of seasons that Gordon left her.
I remember thinking at the time, maybe there should be a “cooling-off” period when – say another season – when while the returning trainer can seek out new owners - and horses to train for them - those animals left with a substitute, and clearly not a “serious” trainer in terms of an Elliott or Willie Mullins, would need to find elsewhere for their horses to be trained for that period. Maybe even to stay with the “convenient other” that had them before that period.
Elliott, at least, was fully remorseful for his actions and vowed never to repeat anything like that again and has certainly come back keeping to that promise. He is now firing again and if not managing, as had seemed possible in the past, to wrest the champion title accolade away from Willie Mullins, he continues to make a decent show of it. That was something that had seemed most unlikely at the height of his “dead horse on the gallops” picture infamy.
If the Elliott ban had its irritating elements through the Foster months, even more so was the brief suspension of Charles Byrnes, king of the unsighted gambles. He lost his mandate but was still able to lead horses around the paddock while one of his sons held the licence and another rode it to victory. What part of that was “not training” the horse.
But now, Tony Martin has eclipsed all of that with Saturday’s victory of Alphonse Le Grande in the Northumberland Vase, consolation race for the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle.
Initially given only a suspended six-month ban for a third drug-related breach of regulations within four years, the Irish racing powers relented in face of criticism of the leniency of the judgment and imposed three of the six-month ban to start on May 15.
Martin had time therefore to bring Alphonse Le Grande over to Chester a week or so earlier to mop up the valuable consolation race to the Chester Cup and after his performance there, few at Newcastle on Saturday expected anything other than another success and almost £40k more of UK prizemoney for the Hollie Doyle-partnered stayer.
It was almost laughable how easy it was, and additionally it was notable for the fact that trainer Cathy O’Leary was having her first flat-race winner for 15 years and only the fourth in 20 seasons with a licence. And who is Mrs O’Leary? Tony Martin’s sister of course!
By contrast with Ms O’Leary, Denise Foster’s career had been almost prolific.
The sight of Martin standing alongside a couple of the winning owners and Hollie Doyle on the rostrum, evoked a “Sod you lot” attitude. I’m not sure whether it was before or after the presentation that one of the owners, asked what the plan was, said: “We’ll give it a couple of weeks and then sit down with Tony”. Martin’s ban still would have a month to go at that stage – no mention of the official trainer.
Martin, no doubt, would love to target next month’s Ebor at York, with its massive prizemoney. He won it eight years ago with Heartbreak City, half-brother to the Geegeez.co.uk money-spinner Coquelicot, but having won here off 81, he would need at least a stone’s hike to get into the York race and even then, it would be a stretch.
Maybe Goodwood’s valuable 1m6f Coral Handicap could be an obvious target with another potential £51k on offer to the winner. That would entail a 4lb penalty for York, but unless the first hike is more extravagant than is likely, even with a win at Goodwood he would still likely be left on the sidelines. Never mind Tone, the richly-endowed Irish Cesarewitch, worth £324,000 to the winner last year and a race he would probably squeeze into off a mark in the low 90’s, might be the way to go.
After his ban, in an interview recalling how his career had developed, Gordon Elliott said: “When I first sat on a horse at Tony Martin’s 30 years ago, I could never have dreamt what was in store”. Maybe neither could his then youthful first employer.
Sanity resumed in Ireland’s premier Classic yesterday when Los Angeles battled to turn around Epsom form with Ambiente Friendly to give Aidan O’Brien and part-owner Michael Tabor each their 16th triumph in the race.
There was a battle between the pair up the home straight and it was not until the last half-furlong that Los Angeles and Ryan Moore got the better of his brave rival, ridden by Rab Havlin, to clinch the €712k first prize. Late on, fast-finishing Sunway, partnered by Oisin Murphy for David Menuisier, edged out Ambiente Friendly. Fourth home Matsuri, for Roger Varian/James Doyle, was also staying on well. That late run increased Sunway’s prize from €112k to €237k.
Initially, the result gives a major boost to the Derby form when City of Troy had the placed pair well covered, and that will have added confidence to his chance of beating his elders in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.
But Sunway’s performance, following his 7th last time in the Prix du Jockey Club, is also an advertisement for the unbeaten winner of that race, Look De Vega. In traditional Gallic fashion, this potential champion can do the favoured French thing over the summer – waiting for the Arc while the other main contenders beat their brains out at Sandown, Ascot and York. Intriguing.
It’s so difficult if you aren’t sure where to look, writes Tony Stafford. I’ve got a 2002 Directory Of the Turf and a few Horses In Training to help me and also the BHA web pages, but can I find a copy of the latest Weight For Age scale? No, I can’t. At which point, dozens of people – if that many read this, of course - will be jumping up and down and saying, here it is you idiot. [Here it is, you absolute gent - Ed.]
The nearest I got was to project forward two months to a race I know allows two-year-olds to compete with their elders. Of course, it’s the Coolmore Wootton Bassett Nunthorpe Stakes over five furlongs at York’s Ebor meeting.
Two-year-olds carry 8st 3lb and three-year-old have 9st 11lb. You’d think that would be more than enough for a juvenile to take advantage and beat his/her elders. The last two to do so were Lyric Fantasy (7st 8lb for Michael Roberts) in 1992 for the Richard Hannon senior stable, Lord Carnarvon’s filly beating stable-companion Mr Brooks and Lester Piggott by half a length.
The last male winner of the race was the John Best-trained and John Mayne-owned Kingsgate Native 19 years ago and I remember thinking him a good thing. He and Jimmy Quinn did the business that day and these are the only two since Ennis in 1956!
The WFA allusion is significant. If the scale requires a concession of 22lb by older horses to their juniors over five furlongs in August, then extending that to seven furlongs and going back even earlier into the season, to mid-June, surely must take the number past 30lb [it's 38lb from the start of July - Ed.].
On Saturday at Royal Ascot, the very high-class Haatem was shrewdly directed from the Group 1 company he had been keeping down to Group 3 for the Jersey Stakes for three-year-olds. The 2000 Guineas third, behind Notable Speech and Rosallion, his stable-mate and the only horse to beat him in the Irish 2000, left the St James’s Palace to that horse and dropped back a furlong.
He won, but was all out in a race where there were three in a line as they passed the post and the first ten were all at it hammer and tongs in the last 100 yards. Haatem recorded a time of 1 minute 26.85 seconds.
Two hours earlier, the opening race on day five, the Chesham Stakes, a seven-furlong Listed race for juveniles, threw up the most spectacular performance of the week. Here, Bedtime Story, a daughter of Frankel out of dual Nunthorpe winner (at age four and five) Mecca’s Angel, making her second start, was simply sensational.
Ryan Moore waited until just before the two-furlong pole before sending her into the lead and she sauntered further and further clear right to the line. The winning margin was nine and a half lengths, despite Ryan’s having no need to do more than keep time with her action.
Neither did he bother to correct the slight coming off a straight line in the last furlong, moving maybe three or four horse widths to the left. Her winning time? 1 minute 27.01 seconds, just one-sixth of a second slower than Haatem, carrying 6lb less. The fillies in the Jersey Stakes carried 5lb less than Haatem.
In form terms, Bedtime Story’s run was far in excess of Haatem’s once the scale is considered and was a reminder of the day last summer when the same Hannon horse saw the backside of City Of Troy in the Superlative Stakes.
He did get his revenge at Newmarket on City Of Troy’s baffling - even to Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore - run in the 2000 Guineas but it was back to normal as City Of Troy romped home in the Derby and also for much of last week for the Ballydoyle team.
Before the week started, Ryan had confided to a friend that Auguste Rodin, Opera Singer and Kyprios were his top three. Opera Singer hardly let the side down with second place in the Ribblesdale, but Auguste Rodin and Kyprios were both right back at their best. Judging how the former’s stylish success was celebrated by some of the visiting Australian contingent, his future, either on the track or in the breeding shed, might well be interesting.
My meeting began with one of those omissions that could easily have spoilt the whole five days. I stood in the paddock chatting to Sam Sangster and Brian Meehan as the juveniles for race two, the Coventry Stakes, waited to go into the stalls.
Brian had told me in the morning how he expected a big run from Rashabar, who was drawn on the far side, running in Sam’s Manton Thoroughbreds colours. Before the race it would have been guesswork as to which side would be favoured. As Rashabar detached himself from his group coming to the last furlong, you could see there were challengers aplenty on the near side.
They flashed over the line together but wide apart and it was by a nose that Rashabar prevailed with the next nine home all on the other flank. Eleventh home but second on his side was the Coolmore favourite Camille Pissarro, four lengths behind.
Brian Meehan has begun to specialise in 80/1 winners; he also had one, Monkey Island, at Newbury during York’s Dante meeting. The 80/1 here stretched to 129/1 on the Tote, of which I foolishly forgot to accommodate myself on the way down from the stands. Billy Loughnane, only 18, deserved all his glowing comments for an excellent ride.
Meehan also was successful later in the meeting in a Group 3 with the lightly-raced three-year-old Jayarebe, owned by Iraj Parvizi, back with the trainer after a longish gap. Brian won the Breeders’ Cup Turf for the owner with Dangerous Midge in 2010 at Churchill Downs.
It’s always nice to record successes by friends, but in the case of Wilf Storey it’s almost becoming an embarrassment. Probably last week or maybe the one before, I recounted the tale of Edgewater Drive and his win at Carlisle.
Last Monday, now faced by older horses and from a 7lb higher mark, the Dandy Man three-year-old gelding bolted up again under the much-underrated Paula Muir. I had mentioned the absurd disqualification of a recent winner of Paula’s at Wolverhampton, one which carried the added injustice of a two-day ban.
Paula learnt before Edgewater Drive’s race that the Wolverhampton disqualification had been overturned as had her ban. A double bubble for her.
On Saturday evening at Ayr, nicely sandwiching the entire Royal meeting, she and Wilf Storey were reunited with the seven-year-old Going Underground. Winner of just one of his 32 previous races and off through injury for a year until a recent comeback run, he came from miles back to win on the line. You rarely see that type of finishing speed in 0-50 Classifieds. If his old wheels can handle it – Going Underground not Wilf - he should win again.
Earlier this year, Paula was considering giving up and had been training for a future career as a dog groomer, but five wins in short time for Storey have no doubt helped change her mind. Much of the credit for the team withstanding owners wishing to replace her at several stages in the past have been met firmly by Wilf and granddaughter Siobhan Doolan, the assistant trainer.
As to the Storey story. My friend of almost exactly 40 years has run four individual horses on the flat this year – all picked up for a total of less than 20k at various Newmarket sales. Between them they have had ten runs in 2024 and won five of them. There can’t be many trainers, let alone this veteran, well into his 80’s, with a 50% strike-rate!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/BedtimeStory_Chesham2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-06-24 07:31:212024-06-24 07:31:21Moday Musings: For Age
Over the best part of twenty years, colts by Galileo have been the mainstay of the incredible Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore operation, winning Derbys and other Group 1 races, it seemed almost to order, writes Tony Stafford.
In truth, though, it took a lot of equine firepower and financial clout to retain the biggest proportion of those coveted animals. Even last year, two years after his death, the 2001 Derby (and plenty more else) winner still had 17 three-year-old colts to represent him at Ballydoyle.
The sort of hundred-plus generations of new intake, mostly animals by the Coolmore partners’ own stallions, have required ruthless cutting back of the fringe animals every year. From last year’s 17, just two, smart stayer Tower of London and the so far yet to reappear Espionage, winner of two of his five races last year, remain.
The better performers among the surplus animals have often been privately sold, like Victoria Road, the 2022 Breeders’ Cup 2yo winner, but never able to repeat that level after sustaining a winter injury when he had the 2000 Guineas as his target. He is now racing in Australia. The lesser lights, though, often rated in the 100’s, generally go to the sales.
The powers that be at Coolmore pretty much get it right most times, but nothing is certain where horses are concerned. It now seems obvious that Prague, by Galileo out of a Group 3 winning mare, simply slipped through the cracks.
Racing for the first time on Saturday in a 20k to the winner GBB maiden race against 3yo’s to whom he was conceding under the weight for age scale either 13lb (colts) or 18lb to the fillies, including the favourite Chorus. Always nicely placed, Prague led halfway up the straight and drew away to win easily by four lengths, a margin that could have been extended if jockey Jack Gilligan had wished.
Jack was probably too amazed to do anything other than wait for the winning line. As to his trainer, Dylan Cunha, and owner Mr Amadao Dal Pas, they would have been shell-shocked. They were probably watching on in disbelief however well their colt – yes, he is still a colt! – had been working at home. His starting price of 40/1 suggests whatever he had been doing, he managed to keep it from prying eyes on the Newmarket gallops.
Prague was one of the unwanted Ballydoyle nine that had entries for last October’s Tattersalls Autumn HIT sale, although they didn’t all turn up in the end. His presence coincided with Dylan Cunha’s concerted effort to enlarge his string. The South African, a successful trainer including at Group 1 level as far back as 2007 in his homeland, had transferred to the UK the previous year.
Aiming at a new challenge, Cunha realised that starting from scratch in a training centre like Newmarket would take a lot of hard work. He took a small yard in the town and had his first runners in the latter half of the season, winning one race from his 28 starters.
Last year, he accelerated to 16 wins from 111 runs and £205k, largely thanks to the efforts of his smart grey Silver Sword. We ought to have taken the hint. Silver Sword, a son of Charm Spirit, had been one of his initial intake. He refused to race in his first two juvenile starts, but after a 60-day break and some intensive schooling, recovered well enough to be placed in his next two before the end of that year.
He won first time at three In April and, in all, from a seven-race programme, won three times, including the final race at the York Ebor meeting, worth £52k to the winner.
Silver Sword has yet to find his form as a four-year-old, but Cunha certainly has. The promising score of 16 encouraged lots of new investors to the yard and persuaded Dylan to be extremely active mainly at the lower end of the sales markets, both for yearlings and second-hand horses. One of those, the ex-Michael Bell-trained Mart has won five times since late October.
The necessary expansion had to be done. He had taken out a lease on the historic Phantom House stables, made available upon last year’s retirement of the highly-respected William Jarvis. In some ways it was a sad day when William retired as it ended an unbroken line of training Jarvises in Newmarket.
But William will be delighted that the winners are still flowing from his former base. Now Dylan, armed with almost 20 juveniles (unless he’s added to that more recently), has a nicely balanced team of 50 or so. Already in 2024, he is on 15 wins with prizemoney within 30k of last year’s entire tally.
As to Prague, if he can keep sound, he could have a big future still as a racehorse. Further down the line, he also has the possibility of making a stallion somewhere one day. There are still plenty of people who would love to have a Galileo stallion of their own especially one with Prague’s obvious talent. How about the Czech Republic?
Meanwhile, this week Tower Of London, one of the retained two, has two Royal Ascot entries. He is, with Point Lonsdale, backup to the six-year-old Kyprios, the 4/5 favourite for Thursday’s Gold Cup. Winner of the race two years ago, he’s yet another Galileo entire, and like several before him, he will have the Coolmore NH sires team leave a space for him when he eventually retires. Tower Of London also has the option of the Hardwicke Stakes.
Coolmore will be eagerly anticipating a form revival from last year’s Derby winner Auguste Rodin in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes. He didn’t run too badly on his return to home racing when second in the Tattersalls Gold Cup three weeks ago. Certainly, it took away a degree of the hurt from his abject run in Dubai in March.
From one emerging stable via the world’s most powerful operation, I would now like to refer to a horse that keeps turning up at the big meetings. If he did manage to win Saturday’s Wokingham Handicap, Apollo One would probably be the only horse ever to have won at the fixture effectively from a one-horse stable.
Peter Charalambous has been in the racing owning/breeding/training game for many years. In recent seasons he has joined forces with James Clutterbuck on a shared licence but as his own interest in and enthusiasm for the sport has dwindled, his section of the yard has become solely centred on Apollo One.
Every time he has a run – and it’s always in important handicaps like at the Guineas meeting and on Derby Day – this six-furlong specialist is consistency personified.
Peter has kindly invited some people to join him as co-owners of the horse on Saturday: my friend Steve Howard and three of his Dutch mates, two of whom are filmmakers, will be going in full-on Royal Enclosure garb. Spoilsport Steve will be wearing a normal suit, but the boys from Holland are going totally Moss Bros. No doubt, Apollo One will run his usual race getting in the money. If he happens to win though, I’m sure Pete will be suggesting the story of Apollo One as one that is eminently suitable for the cinema goers of Amsterdam!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Prague_DylanCunha_SandownMaiden.jpg320828Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-06-17 06:17:092024-06-16 18:21:24Monday Musings: One that slipped through the net
There’s just over a week to Royal Ascot, therefore we’ve an extra few days to fill this year because of the vagaries of Easter, writes Tony Stafford. Not much happened in the last week, and I doubt too much more of any great moment will occur in the coming one, so we can concentrate of some of the more obvious ills (or rather frustrations, to me) of the sport.
Without too much investigation I’ve got a gripe about a few things. Sunday racing, Race Planning, handicap marks and unfathomable stewards’ decisions are all fertile places to start. Then maybe after examining an example of each over recent days, we can see whether that constitutes an article. I hope so because otherwise I’ve Nothing To Say.
Let’s start with Sunday racing. The experiment with Sunday evening cards was abruptly dropped over the past couple of weeks. High summer is here – at least the sun shone yesterday where I am – and Saturday proved an attraction around the country.
The stands were, as one Racing TV presenter in the north, so either Catterick or Beverley, “heaving”, and the gogglebox pictures confirmed the same at both tracks and at Goodwood.
Mick Fitzgerald reminded Sky Racing viewers on Saturday, that there are no stands at Bangor to be “heaving”, but the bank was extremely well populated. That brought to me a time when Bangor, as the last UK track I had still to visit two decades ago, was the scene of a runner in which I had an interest.
Noted stud owner and youngstock producer Richard Kent kindly told me he had saved me two badges “for my box in the main stand. I can’t get there, but I’ll make sure they look after you royally.”
They do that anyway there, in a ground-floor building next to the paddock. Richard was there actually, to bask in my embarrassment. Anyway, with the first sight of sun around the country, the punters, for all the extravagant cost of going racing, were out in force.
As I mentioned when I started, the BHA promise had been for enhanced Sundays. Goodwood yesterday lived up to that with a card that should have ensured another good attendance, but anyone else other than in the south of the country who wanted to watch live racing would have been stymied.
According to Google maps, Perth, the nearest and only other horse racing – point-to-points apart – being staged, is 511 miles away. Even from Scotland’s two biggest cities, Edinburgh (47 miles away) and Glasgow (62 miles) the one-way drive takes around an hour and a half. Better than nothing I suppose, that is unless you don’t like summer jumping.
Goodwood offered just over a quarter of a million pounds on a strong card, designated a Premium Raceday and I was gratified to see a selling race for juveniles offering a £10k first prize. The disappearance of so many selling races down the years has been a major negative.
What was the problem of owners having a win and getting a nice few quid on then having the option of getting rid of an unwanted horse or trying to buy him back in the auction? My dad – I was stuck in the DT office - once got bid up to a record 14 grand to buy back my horse Bachagha after he easily won a selling hurdle by a distance at Fontwell. Isidore Kerman, then owner of Fontwell and the Kybo horses – as a boy he was always advised “Keep Your Bowels Open” – didn’t flinch from telling Dad, about the record not his ablutions, so afterwards.
My first ever winner was at Beverley, one of my favourite tracks. Charlie Kilgour was a moderate animal I’d bought via a friend of a friend from Alan Spence, probably then still at primary school it was so long ago. I always wondered who Charlie was, but Alan told me years later he didn’t have a clue: “He was already named when I got him,” he said.
Ridden by 7lb claimer Simon Whitworth and trained by Rod Simpson, Charlie won. I backed him, got the prize money and the selling price. A day of days. Not being one to wish ill of anyone I was delighted when, for the new connections, a very truncated career ended without a win. I’d like to think I’d be more charitable nowadays. What I do believe, though, is that often the action in the ring after a seller enlivens proceedings and I’d love to see a lot more tracks including sellers in their cards.
Goodwood have made a big effort and there’s nothing better than a day on the downs close to the Solent which can be seen on a bright day high up from the back of the stands – albeit away from the action.
I mentioned Race Planning. I’m involved with a so-far maiden three-year-old rated 74 after three runs at two but, for one reason or another, he hasn’t managed to get back on the track in 2024.
His trainer seems happy that at last we’re enjoying a clear run towards a race, and he has been looking for one for three-year-olds only at around 1m2f. On the Monday after Royal Ascot – Eureka, there’s a 0-75 three-year-olds only over ten furlongs at Windsor. Wait a minute, there’s also a 0-75 three-year-olds only half an hour later over 1m3f and a few yards! Take Your Pick. At a time when it’s very difficult to find any race that suits, here’s two within half an hour with the same conditions.
Depending on field size, couldn’t they bring the two fields together, move the stalls to a position midway between and run for double the money?
A senior trainer said recently in a conversation with me that the RCA holds all the cards and the BHA is helpless to argue with them. Maybe that’s the problem.
Now to handicapping. It’s always been a subjective thing and some trainers seem to be more skilled at keeping their horses’ true and potential ability under wraps as they move them through the grades.
Sir Mark Prescott was always the master at getting favourable initial marks for his younger horses, then when putting them up in distance. Sometimes, he would win four or five in midsummer when the fields started to thin out, before challenging for important handicaps or even Pattern races in the autumn.
One trainer has recently been enjoying Prescott-like spectacular achievements but with an animal of a markedly different profile. Phil McEntee’s five-year-old mare Jacquelina had already raced 26 times (two wins) before her sequence started, that after amazingly having run 14 times for one win between late October and early March.
Jacquelina’s mark had been largely unchanged throughout the period, remaining in the mid-50’s, and two narrow wins in her first two runs back on turf early in May gave little indication of the explosion that was to follow. Also, the implications for at least one horse that had never raced within 150 miles of her would prove irritating at least.
In the second of her recent wins, she beat Anglesey Lad, who was receiving 10lb (8lb of that weight for age), by a neck. Her mark went up by 2lb, his by 1lb. Then Jacquelina took off. Thirteen days ago at Brighton, she carried a 5lb penalty to an easy two-length success. Three days later, this time under a double penalty, her weight of 10st 6lb (less daughter Grace’s 3lb allowance) made no difference, the mare winning this time by more than three lengths.
Now running off another new mark of 70, three days ago at Thirsk, she probably would have made it five in a row but for Grace’s dropping the reins at a crucial stage and she was caught close home. Not to be deflected by her latest rating of 75 coming into play, McEntee took her on to Chepstow. There, Jacquelina had no trouble in easily winning an apprentice race, Grace’s claim keeping her weight below 10st 10lb!
Her progress makes Phil McEntee an early challenger for some kind of trainer’s award and no doubt owner Trevor Johnson and breeder Nicola Kent, Richard’s sister, know where their votes would go if they had one!
I had to look to see how many more races Phil had in mind for this amazing mare who no doubt will go up a further 10lb tomorrow. With no penalty to be incurred for the latest apprentice success, surprisingly, McEntee hasn’t made any. Slipping there, Phil.
But if you like the look of Jacquelina’s form, you can instead wait until Thursday at Yarmouth and Anglesey Lad. As I said earlier, just 1lb higher than when beaten by the mare at Brighton on May 21, he runs in a modest handicap. Anglesey Lad has appeared once since, when beaten by 1.75 lengths by Edgewater Drive at Carlisle. That margin should equate to 5lb at the time-honoured equation of 3lb to a length in sprints.
Edgewater Drive was instead raised 7lb without any action deemed necessary for Anglesey Lad. When Wilf Storey questioned the handicapper, she cited the Jacquelina element, even though she hadn’t done anything with Anglesey Lad’s mark, while the mare he had got so close to kept winning.
My last gripe is on behalf of Laura Muir, Edgewater Drive’s jockey. She came home a nose in front after a straight-long duel with the runner up in a race last week at Wolverhampton.
Even though her mount Prince Hector never touched the runner-up High Court Judge (maybe an omen?) and only deviated marginally in the closing stages, the result was overturned, much to the amazement of all the media and television pundits on the day. To add to what seems an unfair verdict, Paula also got a two-day ban, an appeal about which is being funded by the Professional Jockeys’ Association.
How many times have you seen big race finishes where one horse carries the other across the track and the verdict is left alone. Having watched it a few times, and all the other matters I’ve touched upon, I wonder why this great sport wants to shoot itself in the foot in so many ways. Apart from that I’ve Nothing To Say!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/Bangor_MainStand.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-06-10 07:18:112024-06-10 07:18:11Monday Musings: Nothing To Say
Who is Celia? What is she? Or rather where is she? The one-time lady amateur rider and walk-on or pub-customer extra in Eastenders (and other TV series) played a massive part in my life, writes Tony Stafford. I’m sure she had/has no idea and even the Internet didn’t help me track her down. But Saturday relegated her to the second half of this two-in-one article. You’ll see why shortly.
Having made almost fanatically-extravagant judgment based on his two-year-old performances – the best two-year-old I’ve ever seen, I suggested – the abject failure of City Of Troy in the 2000 Guineas five weeks ago could surely only bring an early hasty rush off to stud. That would have been the normal obvious course of action.
But then his trainer is Aidan O’Brien. Never did he – outwardly, at least – question his horse, just himself for not putting in the required amount of tough work into a potential Classic winner in the weeks leading up to Newmarket.
So, they gathered at Epsom, for some reason suggesting the draw in stall one was a big disadvantage. Why? Didn’t Oath win from there in 1999, causing your correspondent and the Henry Cecil/ Thoroughbred Corporation horse’s groom to dance around in delight. We’d watched his win on the tiny TV screen on the jockeys’ room glass wall just behind the unsaddling circle that has been home to the greats: Nijinsky, Shergar and Galileo himself in 2001, the first of ten winners for Aidan and the Coolmore partners.
Only two of those came before Camelot in 2012, a ten-year gap for O’Brien from High Chaparral in the year after Galileo, but eight of the next 13 giving testimony, if any was needed, of the trainer’s uniqueness.
Two of the Coolmore ownership group also had a bonus win with Pour Moi in 2011, trained by Andre Fabre, putting Sue Magnier (the great Vincent’s daughter) and Michael Tabor ahead of the trainer as the winning-most pair in the race’s 240-year history.
By the time Aidan has finished, he will have set records never to be broken - of that I am sure - as by the time it could be possible, racing will be staged on AI tracks with AI horses - with no trainer or jockey in sight.
First the race. Ryan Moore on the only lightly-backed favourite (3/1 about a horse that was odds-on for the Guineas, “unbelievable”) as Jonno Mills of the Rabbah (Godolphin-lite) operation reflected afterwards, though not before – was allowed to start slowly.
In all his races – the three as a juvenile and the Guineas, he raced towards or at the front. Now, tackling another half-mile, he had to learn on the job, coming from behind as his stablemates Euphoric and the previously unbeaten Los Angeles set a strong pace.
He came down the hill nicely, switched inside early in the straight and had the speed to stride through gaps where an ordinary staying horse might have been less malleable.
Passing Los Angeles between the two and one-furlong poles, he was quickly clear and just needed to be kept going by Ryan (Derby number four for him) to remain almost three lengths ahead of the Bill Gredley/James Fanshawe Lingfield Derby Trial winner Ambiente Friendly.
Third was Los Angeles, six lengths in the end behind his stable-mate and then the two Ahmad Al Sheikh horses, one each for Andrew Balding and Owen Burrows. Sixth, having come from miles back but then looking like he didn't quite get home, was Roger Teal’s Dancing Gemini who must be a banker for a big prize in a Group 1 over ten furlongs.
Bill Gredley, at 91, had to have been hopeful as his colt came there cantering, but Ryan on his inside was always finding that little more speed. Still, it was great that Rab Havlin, parachuted in to replace his Lingfield rider Callum Shepherd, enjoyed such a wonderful ride in a Derby.
Havlin, so often the back-up to Frankie Dettori – did we miss him as he won a couple of races across the Atlantic? I think not - gave his mount an impeccable ride through. Rider was as flawless as his always flamboyant owner had looked resplendent in the paddock in the only bright red trousers on view. You’d probably have had to scour the well-patronised funfair areas on the inside of the track to find a pair to match them!
As I’ve mentioned before, Bill Gredley started life in Poplar, East London, not far from Michael Tabor’s birthplace in Forest Gate – Stratford coming in between. Joining Michael as ever, were his racecourse pals, all of whom he has known since the 1980’s at least, including Maurice Manasseh, even with him for the Florida Derby that Thunder Gulch achieved under 'Money' Mike Smith for D. Wayne Lukas in 1995, before adding the Kentucky Derby, Belmont and Travers later in the year.
Just two years later, having been (as ever, shrewdly as it turns out) identified by John Magnier as a potential partner as the old Robert Sangster/ Vincent O’Brien era at Ballydoyle/Coolmore was starting to unravel, the two-man ownership team won successive 2000 Guineas with Entrepreneur and King Of Kings. I’ll never forget the former as my eldest grandson was born at 3 a.m. the next morning less than an hour’s drive away.
The succession at Coolmore seems firmly in place. MV Magnier does most of the recruiting and brother JP also has plenty to say behind the scenes. John and Sue’s son-in-law David Wachman, a highly successful trainer before retiring as a younger man, is also in the back-up team. David’s young family are all outstanding in the field of equestrianism, so much so that Grandpa John prefers watching their exploits than some of even the biggest race days his horses contest.
Derrick Smith, delighted to be in attendance on Saturday, as he had been in Louisville when Sierra Leone gave the partners a close second on the same evening as the Guineas debacle, has son Paul and enthusiastic grandsons – all there on Saturday - to pass on the baton when the time comes, as it inevitably will.
Meanwhile, also on Saturday, I detected a new element to the possible Tabor succession.
Over the many years I’ve known him, I hasten to say, no more than to chat for the few minutes our paths would have crossed in various winner’s enclosures, Ashley Tabor-King has been almost distracted, enjoying his father’s success but more involved in developing his interest in the music industry. His mother Doreen is a noted supporter of emerging classical musicians, and while Ashley has been largely into pop music, the influence is clear.
Having successfully turned the Global Group, of which he is boss, into the biggest in commercial radio in the UK he has also overseen its many charitable contributions especially to younger disadvantaged people. Now, though, he seems to be taking rather more interest in the sport.
On Saturday, before the Dash, he was looking over the balcony through binoculars aiming to get the focus right, asking where was the start? I pointed back up the track and said: “You’re looking the true professional, can you give me a commentary?”
Then, around an hour later, when the owners were called to the podium to accept the most-desired trophy in UK - some may say, world - racing, for all its modest value compared with many races elsewhere, Ashley and husband George took their places to the left of the group.
It’s been a joke between us that he might have considered himself a Jonah on the rare times he went to the big events. “You’re not a jinx, you’re a lucky mascot,” to which he replied, “I always thought I was a lucky omen. It was just MV and JP who joked otherwise!”
As he is such a great friend with all the people in the next generation, I’m predicting that this truly engaging man will find that learning about the game his father knows inside out might well appeal as a new challenge for him.
Now the form from last year with Haatem - City Of Troy twice beat him easily - is looking better after the places by Haatem in the 2000 and Irish 2000 Guineas. Rosellion, second at Newmarket, first in Ireland, and Notable Speech, unraced since his win in Newmarket for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin, will be contesting the big mile races. Neither Appleby nor Hannon stopped smiling as they called in on the Coolmore box after the big race – as with almost everyone around the winer’s circle as he came back in.
City of Troy in the Winners' Enclosure at Epsom after winning the 2024 Derby, attended by Ryan Moore and Tony Stafford (right)
I watched the race just by the winning line – my friend and former Daily Telegraph colleague George Hill reminded me that was where we saw Reference Point’s big win for Henry Cecil – and it gave me plenty of time to get first into that famed circle.
Eventually, everyone crowded in, but somehow, I managed to get close to City Of Troy. Remembering when I went to Coolmore and met Galileo with Harry Taylor and Alan Newman a few years back, I’d stood with my hand on his near-side flank. Here I was able to do a similar thing with City of Troy. While Ryan was cuddling his neck, I pressed my hand gently on the other side. After the horse’s exertions, you might have expected an agitated animal - he was anything but. Whenever I’ve touched one of the horses I’d been involved with as a racing manager or owner in the past straight after a race I’d always come away with a wet hand.
Not on Saturday – it was bone dry, his body warm, but he stayed motionless as the photographers assailed him from the front. Racing finally is back page and television news for the right reasons. As for me, I will never forget that full minute when I touched greatness!
*
Back in the mid-80’s I somehow inveigled a horse for a cup of tea – and an equine replacement of him. He had been designed to be a riding horse, but thankfully, the intervention freed him from that dull fate, allowing him to resume his proper job as a racehorse.
Sent to Rod Simpson, he won a couple of races in the same week, at Folkestone and then Lingfield on a Saturday evening, before finishing fourth in the Lady Riders’ race at Ascot on King George Day. He hadn’t a prayer against some smart, developing three-year-olds from the likes of Barry Hills and Michael Stoute. Fourth then and a spot on the edge of the old Ascot winner’s enclosure was an achievement in the days the race wasn’t a handicap.
I’d been willing to sell before the winning spell started, and the fact that he might still be for sale persuaded Celia Radband to tell a couple of her lady rider friends – in those days quite a small community - about him
I was in the DT office one day when a call came in. "Mr Stafford?", asked Wilf Storey, "I understand you might want to sell Fiefdom", by now a five-year-old, who had been talented enough to finish fifth in the Cambridgeshire for Bruce Hobbs two years before.
He was just about the most polite person I’d ever heard, certainly in the hubbub of a sports room of a national newspaper in those days. He told me his daughters Fiona and Stella had been told by Ms Radband that he would make a lovely jumper. I hadn’t thought of that – his form when he initially started jumping was awful, but anyway.
I had to say, sorry no, adding if I changed my mind he would be my first call. Fiefdom ran well again at Ascot that autumn, after which I decided to call Wilf, offering him at 5k rather than the original 6k.
In the meantime, he’d taken another two of Rodney’s horses after one morning when they played up. I should have them shot, said a furious Rodney. I thought maybe Wilf, primarily a sheep farmer, would take them and the arrangement was duly done.
Within a couple of days, one of the two had indeed been moved on, having almost killed Chris Grant first day on the gallops; but the other one, Santopadre, was fine. These were two of a ten-horse deal I’d done with Malcolm Parrish, whom I first met at the Cashel Palace Hotel, close to Ballydoyle where he was with David O’Brien, who I’d arranged to visit.
David had recently won the Derby with Secreto, beating his father’s El Gran Senor in a massive upset which briefly threatened the stud deal that Sangster/O’Brien had already negotiated. Secreto missed the Irish Derby, El Gran Senor duly won, and the world moved on as imagined.
Also in that Parrish bunch was Brunico, later 2nd in that season’s Triumph Hurdle having been sent to Rod. Two runs later he won the Group 3 Ormonde Stakes at Chester for Terry Ramsden, beating top-class Shahrastani. Santopadre was offered around. I asked Wilf if he had anyone with two grand to buy him. Answer: “no!”
Oliver Grey rode him first time on his last day’s riding in the UK at Musselburgh before going to India. We thought him moderate, but Oliver gave him a tap around the home bend. “He flew,” he said, “so I put the stick down.”
So, the plan had to be three runs, achieved so his rating was a lowly 26 or so – they went down a lot further in those days!
Then, having told me, “Never mind the flat, I’ve never had a novice jump so well", I said there’s a weak race at Hexham coming up. He replied, “I’ve done nothing with him – you told me not to.” Despite his misgivings he won.
He won again in a fair claimer at Newcastle soon afterwards. Now, going from that company into an open juvenile novice with a 10lb penalty might have seemed a step too far, but he gave 15lb and a 15-length beating to Buck Up, a Peter Easterby filly that eventually finished runner-up in the Schweppes Gold Trophy.
Santopadre was fifth in the Triumph for Wilf, three places behind Brunico. His reward? To have him taken away to Simpson. Not by me, but Ramsden had paid many times the initial fee for him and did as he wished.
So to Fiefdom, with Santopadre already in the team. He arrived off the wagon and Wilf’s fears were unfounded. "He’s a great big beauty." He bolted up – well backed – first time at Sedgefield, running off a much lower jumps mark than his 71 on turf. In all he won three Ekbalco Hurdles at Newcastle for Wilf and ended his working days as a rider.
They were the start. In between, with younger daughter Stella doing most of the riding on the Muggleswick gallops, the winners kept flowing, the most important Great Easeby, a £2k purchase unraced from Robert Sangster. He won races all over the place, including the Pertemps Final at Cheltenham.
Another to come from Manton more recently was Card High. I’d watched him being completely outpaced as a juvenile in all his gallops for Brian Meehan and the decision was made between Ben and Guy Sangster, Robert’s sons, to get rid. I made sure I was standing nearby and when I heard the magic words, I was there. “I know someone!” – he won six and only retired last year.
Stella had to withdraw a year or so ago from the action after suffering many bad falls, but fortunately her sister Fiona’s daughter, Siobhan Doolan, was able to step in. I was watching the HIT sale last year and noticed that an Ollie Sangster two-year-old was unsold at 1,000 gns.
I checked with Ollie whether he had left the sale – he hadn’t, “but be quick!”
I was nowhere near, but old sales pal Richard Frisby came to the rescue and did the deal. The horse was called Edgewater Drive, a son of of Dandy Man. At first, the gelding, who had injured a foot before the sale, "could hardly walk up the gallop, never mind run", says Siobhan. Gradually, after several weeks’ careful handling, he was able to break out of a trot.
All that part was unknown to me as I tried to get ten shares sold at £100 each. With good friend Keven Howard trawling the pubs of mid-Essex, between us we must have asked 30 people and managed to sell not one share.
Siobhan got going. She had managed to syndicate the mare Shifter to the same people that had owned Card High – oil rig workers offshore in Scotland - and that mare won twice last year. Many of them eventually joined up as Edgewater Drive gradually came right.
Eighth in a decent mile race at Wetherby on his first run where not quite getting home, everyone was enthused when Shifter won another twice recently as Edgewater Drive had worked nicely behind her up the late Denys Smith’s gallop.
Expectations were bright, then, on Friday at Carlisle and, under a lovely ride from the underrated Paula Muir, Edgewater Drive sailed through a gap and won by almost two lengths. No City Of Troy, but at £100 a pop, pretty good value. If Aidan O’Brien can turn water into wine, Wilf Storey might not be able to do that, but the old alchemist almost turns base metal into gold! And none of it would have happened without Celia Radband.
Come on in Celia and watch Edgewater Drive win again next time out at Redcar of June 21, unless of course you are at Royal Ascot!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/06/CityofTroy_Derby2024_Celebrations.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-06-03 08:12:212024-06-03 09:58:11Monday Musings: Of God and the Alchemist!
Four weeks after the 2000 Guineas at Newmarket and seven days after the Irish 2000 Guineas, with all the recognised trials sorted in between, we come on Saturday to Derby Day, writes Tony Stafford.
It’s as early as it can be, and for those stables yet to strike form, it’s always a frightening thought that within 46 days of what most professionals believe is the true starting point of the 2024 turf season – day one of Newmarket’s Craven meeting – we will have knocked off four-fifths of the UK Classic complement.
We’ve had Chester, Lingfield, the French 2000 and 1000 Guineas, York and the two Irish Guineas this past weekend. Sometimes we get the odd one coming on to Epsom for the Derby or Oaks from the two Irish Guineas races. Realistically, though, with the races only one week apart, it seems an abrupt tactic to switch from one mile up the Curragh to the 12 furlongs with its twists, gradients, and cambers of the Derby course.
In times gone by there was also Goodwood, a three-day midweek fixture, following on from York’s Dante meeting. In 1979 Major Dick Hern had two fancied runners at Epsom, the Queen’s Milford, and Sir Michael Sobell’s Troy, with stable jockey Willie Carson staying loyal to the latter – seen as traitorous in some parts.
Troy had begun his three-year-old season with a narrow win in the Classic Trial at Sandown, a performance that Hern thought needed another race to bring him to the boil. To wait for the Predominate Stakes, Goodwood’s colts’ trial, was reckoned in most quarters to be a risky policy, with so short a time between that race and the Derby.
Nowadays, Goodwood’s two Listed races for three-year-olds, one for colts/geldings and the other for fillies, are both staged on the same day as they were on Saturday. At first glance, the narrow win of Meydaan, third behind Ambiente Friendly in the Lingfield Derby Trial, might have been regarded as a boost for the form. I didn’t see the race live so took that as evidence backing my recent excessive praise for the Lingfield success of the James Fanshawe colt.
However, a review of the race replay told me otherwise. At least two in the seven-horse field could have finished much nearer. Space Legend, the William Haggas-trained favourite after two promising runs, was a fast-closing second after extricating himself from crowding and could almost certainly have won had he been able to start his challenge a little earlier. More worryingly for the form, fourth home Lavender Hill Mob also might have finished much closer.
This Michael Bell horse is rated a modest 79 having won a handicap last time. It’s hard to see how Meydaan, always in the clear on Saturday, deserves to go higher than his present 97. There’s no realistic scope for an Ambiente Friendly upward rating adjustment in tomorrow’s listings. I thought he ran a brilliant race at Lingfield, but yesterday morning, Rab Havlin, who will be replacing his Lingfield winning jockey Callum Shepherd this week, was worrying about the chance of soft ground at Epsom. “He has such a daisy-cutting action”, said Havlin, after working on Newmarket’s Limekilns yesterday.
Nowadays, the Predominate, downgraded some time ago to a Listed race, is known as the Cocked Hat Stakes and I think yesterday’s form could be put in a cocked hat! In 1979, Troy won that race by seven lengths and followed up by an identical margin in a devastating performance at Epsom. He ended as Racehorse of the Year, despite not matching his best form when third in the Arc having won the Juddmonte at York in August.
The old timers always used to say, fourth in the Guineas, first in the Derby, and as Paul Cole would be quick to remind us, that was the route taking by his and Faad Salman’s Generous in 1991. This year’s fourth, the Clive Cox-trained, Jeff-Smith-owned Ghostwriter does have a Derby entry – the Irish version at the end of next month.
He, along with the first three home at Newmarket, headed up by Godolphin’s impressive winner Notable Speech, has the one-mile St James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot as the next step on the agenda.
There is already some serious Classic solidity to the Newmarket form with Rosallion and Haatem, respectively second and third for Richard Hannon behind Notable Speech, making it a stable one-two in the Irish Classic on Saturday.
The only defeated horse in the 2000 Guineas expected to be running at Epsom – we can still have a surprise supplementary today - is the present favourite City Of Troy. He was a humbled ninth of eleven at Newmarket, 17 lengths behind the winner.
Since last week’s words here, Economics, the runaway Dante winner at York for William Haggas, has not been supplemented for the Derby, his wishes, probably reluctantly, acceded to by his owners.
With River Tiber finishing just behind the Hannon pair in third on Saturday, at least there is a semblance of hope for anyone with long-standing vouchers on City Of Troy for the Derby. There’s no doubt that he has always stood far above his stable-mates at Ballydoye. Interestingly, the one reason I’ve heard Aidan O’Brien giving for the flop last time is: “I treated him too much like a god over the winter.” Even God will have had to do some proper work, maybe even on Sundays, since!
O’Brien of course also had the top juvenile filly of 2023 in Opera Singer, a status guaranteed by her victory in the Prix Marcel Boussac on Arc Day at Longchamp last autumn. Like City Of Troy, she is by unbeaten US Triple Crown winner Justify, and all the assumptions as to her and her stablemate’s stamina possibilities are presumably based on Justify’s 12-furlong win in the Belmont Stakes, third leg of the US Triple Crown.
If City Of Troy comes back as Auguste Rodin did in last year’s Derby, it would still be no guarantee of champion racehorse status at the end of the season. Economics has the imminent target of the King Edward VII Stakes at Royal Ascot, a race that has projected its winner to stardom in the past. Shareef Dancer, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, had a quick follow-up in the Irish Derby back in the 1980’s.
There are four of the six horses outclassed by Economics still entered before today’s five-day stage. Ancient Wisdom and War Rooms were second and third at York, and victory for either would propel Economics into the “unbeatable” firmament – just as last year’s Dewhurst romp did for City Of Troy. I will leave the predictions and the talking to the horses on Saturday – I’ve had more than enough to say already. I’m just hoping for a clean race and a worthy winner.
To show that unpredictability in racing at Classic level is not exclusively for these shores, yesterday’s Japanese Derby (Tokyo Yushun) carried a winner’s prize of more than £1.8 million. Hot favourite at 6/5 was the previously unbeaten Japanese 2000 Guineas winner Justin Milano, but he had to give best in the straight to two-length winner Danon Decile, who started at 46/1!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NotableSpeech_2000Guineas_2024_2.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-05-27 05:01:312024-05-26 20:35:10Monday Musings: Galloping Through The Classics
They say you can’t keep a good man down, writes Tony Stafford. Well, I promise you, if that good man has a chosen profession as a racehorse trainer, it’s the easiest thing in the world to do. Simply cut off his access to horses of talent and potential and he’s gone in a year.
Some, often against their better judgment (not to say their other halves and more importantly their bank managers) can struggle on with diminishing returns and in many ways embarrassment at to where they have slipped. The always fashion-fickle world of racing is quick to dismiss them, forgetting the knowledge in forging those fantastic careers they already have on their record.
Thank heaven, then, for the Racing Post which retains such a history in its Big Race wins section under each trainer’s statistics. One of the mostly forgotten, but now bouncing back with renewed vigour and optimism is Brian Meehan, who can point to three full pages under his name, that is were it not for his modest character.
I’ve known Brian for a long time, seen his traditional Thursday galloping days at first hand for several years and always admired the ability to assess a trio or quartet of horses flashing past right in front of his nose. I’m sure every successful trainer in the country has that facility, but Brian has it in spades.
Trawling back through those Racing Post lists, it is striking just how successful he was in training two-year-olds, then equally how adeptly he developed middle-distance horses. Red Rocks (from Galileo’s first crop) and Dangerous Midge won at the Breeders’ Cup, and another globe-trotter, David Junior, picked up a host of races with the massive prize of the Dubai Duty Free in one of the early editions of the Dubai Carnival.
Then owners either aged and cut back, or of course sadly died, inevitable over a 30-plus year career. Where he used to manage up to 140 horses in the period of his biggest achievements in the first decade of this century, the numbers ebbed away.
Results too, so last year for the first time, nine wins represented a nadir. Then again, he still produced the Sam Sangster buy Isaac Shelby to win the Greenham Stakes, then finish a close runner-up in the French 2000 Guineas before being sold lucratively (to stay in the yard) to Wathnan Racing.
Isaac Shelby has yet to reappear, but a couple of this year’s crop have already moved onto the big-time scene. Jayarebe won the Group 3 Feilden Stakes in the manner of a high-class performer last month. He disappointed at Chester next time, but it would be a mistake to condemn him for that as plenty of horses struggle around the Roodee.
Incidentally, the vastly experienced and accurate commentator Mike Cattermole showed at the meeting that anyone can make a mistake. Mike referred during one race there as being on Town Moor – an extreme blip in Mike’s case as two tracks could hardly more different than the one-mile round of Chester and the extreme gallop of Doncaster’s Town Moor, almost twice its circumference.
As I hinted earlier, Brian quickly won such races as the Prix Morny with Bad As I Wanna Be and the Cheveley Park with Donna Blini. Incidentally, Donna Blini, winner of three from four as a juvenile didn’t stay the 1000 Guineas trip, finishing last to Speciosa, and had just one more win, over five furlongs at the Newmarket July meeting. She was to have a much bigger part to play, though, in the international scene than anyone could have believed.
Sold for 500k to Katsumi Yoshida, that was only the beginning of her story. In Japan, one of her first matings, to the immortal Deep Impact, produced the filly Gentildonna, winner of nine of her 17 races. Two of them, at age three and four, were in the Japan Cup, Japan’s greatest race, the second time ridden by Ryan Moore. In all she won £12 million in stakes, also beating the top-class French gelding Cirrus Des Aigles in the Sheema Classic in Dubai.
I’m sure Brian’s career and optimism have been saved for a large part by Robert Sangster’s second-youngest son, Sam, still only in his early 30’s. He resolved to use his many connections to set up Manton Thoroughbreds, selling shares in yearlings which he and Brian had sourced at the sales. Initially, the prices were modest (mostly around 50k), but now the odd six-figure sum has been creeping in as the team has become more confident.
On Saturday at Newmarket – always one of Brian’s favourite tracks – his newcomer Invincible Song, a 140,000gns acquisition, showed excellent speed before being overtaken by Ascot-bound Godolphin homebred Mountain Breeze, who had the benefit of an earlier win on the course.
Invincible Song, by Invincible Spirit, flashed that speed but also inexperience almost in equal measure, making the running while edging first right then left. She kept on nicely in this valuable (20k to the winner, almost five grand for third) fillies’ race. She will step up on that.
Twenty-four hours earlier at local track Newbury could have been a day of days for the Manton stable. It started with the unraced Organ. Condemned to the unfavoured one draw in a field of 22, he kept pace with the leaders on the stands side and was only edged out late from second into fourth place close to home. Had he been anyway near decently drawn, he might well have won the race – at 80/1!
The decision of Martyn Meade, to hand in his training licence and concentrate on his stallion operation, brought Organ and around nine others of his team to Brian. Meade is the owner of the 3,000-acre estate where Ollie Sangster, Sam’s nephew but in age almost a contemporary, has made such a bright start.
So, you ask, what was special about an 80/1 fourth, however unlucky. I’ll tell you. Half an hour later, Monkey Island, reappearing for the first time in 2024 having had a gelding operation, made all the running over the straight seven furlongs, winning at, you guessed it, 80/1. If Organ had won, that’s a 6,560/1 double. The place part at 288/1 would have been highly acceptable – it was for a couple of my pals who had their bet with a bookie paying out on the first four. Grr!
Last weekend, for the second year in a row, Meehan went very close to winning a French one-mile Classic. His filly, Kathmandu, a 50k buy for Sam and one he’s kept a half-interest in along with raffia-furniture magnate Ed Babington, was caught in the last strides at Longchamp.
I reckoned the Coronation Stakes would be the obvious target but when I looked, having hastily added the words to last week’s missive as I’d unbelievably been oblivious to the race, her only Royal Ascot entry was in the Commonwealth Cup over six furlongs.
Brian said she would probably miss both, settling on the Prix Jean Prat, a Group 1 race for three-year-old colts and fillies over 1400 metres (seven furlongs) at Deauville, the week after Ascot. “She almost made it at Longchamp”, said Brian. “But she’ll never get up the hill for the last furlong at Ascot”. No stranger to the three-year-old Group 1 races at the Royal meeting, Meehan won the St James’s Palace Stakes with Most Improved.
I also made a nonsense of Roger Teal’s plans for his French 2,000 Guineas runner-up Dancing Gemini, a strong runner into second behind Metropolitan. Of course, Mr Obvious suggested the St James’s Palace would be the way to go. Speaking to him the following day, he said: “I had a word with Aidan (O’Brien) and he said that breeding never lies.
“He’s by Camelot and never mind the fact that Aidan always wants to win it for Coolmore and at the time had the favourite, he encouraged me to go to Epsom. I’m torn between the Derby and the Prix du Jockey Club over 10.5 furlongs the following day at Chantilly.”
Last Thursday’s Dante Stakes set the cat among the Derby pigeons, Economics showing not a glimmer of economy in slaughtering his opponents including the prominent in ante post betting Arabian Wisdom. Economics’s trainer William Haggas had taken the big colt out of the Derby believing the track would not suit him and, despite the manner of his victory, his opinion hasn’t changed though he fears the decision will be taken out of his hands. I know whose opinion I’d be listening to!
The day before was a red-letter day for the Meades’ stallion Advertise. I had sat enjoying the excellent lunch in the York owners’ room before racing with a well-known and long-established bloodstock agent referring to Advertise, top-class sprinter as a racehorse, as unlikely to make much of a stallion.
Less than two hours later, after Advertise’s daughter Secret Satire had bolted up in the Group 3 Musidora Stakes at 22/1, we exchanged a few smiles as the Andrew Balding filly returned to unsaddle. It’s always dangerous to have an entrenched position in racing and good luck to the Meades who also stand Aclaim.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/Rouhiya_Kathmandu_French1000Guineas_2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-05-20 05:32:382024-05-20 05:32:38Monday Musings: Brian’s Back
Thirty-three years ago this week, James Fanshawe, age 30 and only a year into his career as a trainer having previously been assistant to (Sir) Michael Stoute, was preparing for the Dante Stakes at York, writes Tony Stafford. His charge, a late-developing colt running in the colours of Bill Gredley, was 20/1 shot Environment Friend. The distinctive grey stormed home in the Classic trial under George Duffield by an eye-opening five lengths.
He was unable to carry that form into the Derby, finishing 11th of 13 behind Generous, but then solidified his reputation by beating his elders in the Eclipse Stakes as a 28/1 shot next time out. Strangely, kept in training for the next four years he failed to win again, mostly with Fanshawe and then in at least two more yards in between – N C Wright and G Rimmer – before ending his active time with Clive Brittain.
In those 25 unsuccessful races – although with some nice placed efforts which brought his prize tally close to £400k – he contested 17 Group 1 races. No mistaking Bill’s ambition.
But then when you started out in the middle of the depression in 1933 in Poplar, East London, you either sank or swam. Bill Gredley swam to the extent that his family-owned Unex Group can point to major developments often close to his two homes: Stratford, adjacent to the Queen Elizabeth Park, and in Cambridge, a few miles from his adopted base of Newmarket.
For a 91-year-old, he is admirably sprightly both in mind and body and an amusing episode is usually played out when Bill comes into the dining room at the Tattersalls Newmarket sales. My pal John Hancock, still keen to get his insurance hat on after the sudden disappearance of his most recent alliance – taken over by a bigger, less sensitive outfit – is ready for their customary exchange.
“How old are you, Bill?”
When he answers, John has to concede he was born a little later the same year and the master of Stetchworth Park Stud, breeder of Environment Friend and most notably dual Oaks winner User Friendly, almost skips out of the room, his competitive spirit to the fore as usual.
Now much of the contact to trainers with the Gredley Family’s horses as they presently are billed falls on son Tim, who has a varied experience in the saddle. He was a top show jumper, in a winning GB Nations Cup team having previously retired from the sport; rode a winner of the Newmarket Town Plate (almost four miles) for Nicky Henderson, and lots of point-to-point winners too.
User Friendly came along the year after Environment Friend. She was trained by Clive Brittain and not only won the Oaks and Irish Oaks, but also went on to collect the Yorkshire version that August and then saw off the colts in the St Leger, all with Duffield on board.
She just failed to complete the set in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, a neck behind Subotica, but that could hardly be adjudged a failure. Behind in fourth was St Jovite, the 12-length Irish Derby and six-length King George hero for Virginia Kraft Payson/Jim Bolger; Peter Chapple-Hyam’s Dr Devious, winner of that year’s Derby over St Jovite whom he also beat narrowly in the Irish Champion Stakes; and Arcangues, stable companion of the Andre Fabre-trained winner and later the 133/1 victor of the Breeders’ Cup Classic. Phew!
Amid the cluster of Group-designated spring trials, especially for the Derby, one downgraded race stands out as possibly deserving of being restored to its former Group 3 status at least. It was five years ago that Anthony Van Dyck collected the Lingfield Derby Trial en route to success at Epsom for Aidan O’Brien, and the Irish supremo usually sends a couple to establish their suitability for the similar twists and cambers of Epsom three weeks later.
Saturday’s line-up contained the requisite Ballydoyle pair, and they finished second and fourth behind the Gredley-owned and Fanshawe-trained Ambiente Friendly. Ryan Moore was in the leading trio from the start and wrestled the awkward-looking Illinois into the straight at the head of the field.
Meanwhile Callum Shepherd had buried Ambiente Friendly in the middle of the pack, but as Illinois and Ryan edged wide, he came even wider. It took just a nominal shake of the reins for Ambiente Friendly to take control and, several strides before the line, Shepherd was pulling him up.
Still the margin was four-and-a-half lengths with more than three after Illinois back to third in the 11-horse field. If Callum had wished, it could have been nearer six and it’s slightly a shame that he didn’t.
On the day, raced on good, good to firm in places ground on the Round Course, it was the only time below Racing Post standard. Additionally, it was just 0.14sec slower than Night-Shirt on midsummer firm ground back in 1990, earlier even than the exploits of Environment Friend and User Friendly, achieved in setting the course record.
Former jockey and now Sky Sports Racing pundit Freddy Tylicki has the distinction of having made the successful bid for the son of Gleneagles at 80k when he went through the ring at the 2023 Craven Breeze-up sale – so not a home-bred then.
Of the trials we’ve seen so far for the Derby, none has been as impressive as this one. A winner on debut as a juvenile, Ambiente Friendly reappeared for the season when fourth to Jayarebe in the Feilden Stakes at Newmarket last month.
Jayarebe disappointed at Chester last week, but his run was another of those where a horse sits outside a leader half a length back on a turning track and seems to get fed up with the idea. It certainly looked that way to me as Ryan controlled the pace on Capulet, going on to win with Jayarebe only third. I don’t think we should condemn him on that.
The twelve horses entered for the Dante Stakes will need to run to a good level to impress in the way Ambiente Friendly has from first run to second. His time was comfortably the best in the race for the past decade, and if the weather stays fair until Epsom, you’d have no fears of ground, trip or hills and cambers about this horse.
Fanshawe has had a wealth of high-class horses through his care, not least two Champion Hurdle winners in Royal Gait and Hors La Loi. He was also closely involved in the training of Stoute’s 1988 winner of that race, Kribensis, when assistant to the master trainer. There is no doubt that Ambiente Friendly represents both the owners’ and trainer’s best chance of winning the Derby, for which he is now an 8/1 chance, third only behind restored favourite City Of Troy (3/1) and Arabian Crown (7/2).
While there was all the excitement going on at Lingfield, I preferred to go to watch one of my favourite handicaps over at Ascot, the Victoria Cup, and with all 21 runners coming in a single group towards the stands side, it had an element of fairness not always associated with the straight track there.
I’d been in contact with Charlie Fellowes earlier and he reckoned his new recruit The Wizard Of Eye had shown so much speed at home he worried it would stay the seven furlongs. Held up at the back by Tom Marquand, who must have had a magic wand rather a whip, so adept was he in finding the gaps, he wended his way to get up on the line. Don’t be shocked if we see him in graded sprints, probably stopping off at the Wokingham on the way at the Royal meeting.
If Jayarebe hadn’t come up to expectations last week, another of Sam Sangster’s spectacularly successful yearling buys certainly did. The Showcasing filly Kathmandu went to Longchamp for the Poule d’Essai des Pouliches (French 1000 Guineas), set a fast pace and was only caught on the line, losing out by a head.
The 45/1 chance, trained by Brian Meehan, had been third last time in the Nell Gwyn Stakes at Newmarket when a 40/1 shot. She picked up more than £100k for second place, double her purchase price. Sam owns the filly in conjunction with Ed Babington and they can expect to make a huge profit at the sales even if she doesn’t win anything more. No doubt the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot is on the agenda.
In the colts’ Classic half an hour later Roger Teal’s Dancing Gemini came fast but half a length too late to catch Metropolitan. The St James’s Palace Stakes is his obvious target.
When they get beat, the Coolmore Classic hotpots, especially in the 2000 Guineas, they make a proper job of it, writes Tony Stafford. Auguste Rodin’s capitulation a year ago, preceding as it did two Derby victories, had a variety of explanations to soften the apparent finality of it. City Of Troy’s tame drift away from the action from a long way out, may be less easy to explain.
I wasn’t the only one with egg on my face, having championed his two runs on the same piece of Suffolk real estate, albeit a few furlongs apart, last year. The Superlative Stakes win from Haatem was, well, superlative. His Dewhurst romp was a tour de force, leading all the way then sprinting up the last furlong with Haatem again well behind.
So how could Haatem turn that around so emphatically, third behind only previously unbeaten Godolphin horse Notable Speech and his own stable-companion, second favourite Rosallion? Just over three lengths behind Charlie Appleby’s second and William Buick’s first 2000 winner, he was now 13 lengths in front of the odds-on favourite, who trailed in ninth of eleven.
Aidan O’Brien professed himself shocked and so would most of the massive crowd, one which gridlocked the always slow-motion Newmarket High Street for hours before the 1.10 p.m. meeting start. Talk might have been of records but there were a few there when Nijinsky started his Triple Crown journey more than 50 years ago, too, and not quite as many cars either!
The filming media behaved as if they were there to attend a Royal family meltdown or a PM taking his leave in front of Number Ten. Apparently unflappable as he was being saddled, there was a paparazzi feel as the lenses pointed his way right in his eyeline as the final touches were being completed. Agitated Newmarket staff shooed away many of the regular Coolmore supporters across to the other side of the horse path, but the cameras were allowed to stand their ground.
Considering this was a race with several previously unbeaten opponents, including the winner – three for three at Kempton, so making his turf debut – his price was either dangerously short (as it proved) or even a little generous, given the expectations.
If anyone can bring a horse back from such an unexpected reverse, Aidan O’Brien is the man and he has before, but talk of another Frankel now looks fanciful.
It’s four weeks to the Derby and we were all talking in the paddock beforehand that his pedigree is more that of a Derby horse than a Guineas type. We’ll have to see. He’s 8/1 now. Last year after a similar reverse, Auguste Rodin was only 3/1 and we know what happened at Epsom with him!
The Coolmore boys stayed up late on Saturday night to watch the Kentucky Derby in which they had two interests, a 100% involvement in second-favourite Sierra Leone and 75% of the Todd Pletcher-trained Fierceness. Todd’s runner faded away after a prominent start but the Chad Brown trainee Sierra Leone must be rated a very unlucky loser.
Held up on the rail around a dozen lengths behind the pace set by Track Phantom until making a move at the end of the back straight, jockey Tyler Gaffalione found himself in a tight position around the turn and was forced to go very wide.
Meanwhile Mystik Dan under Brian Hernandez made a run for home on the rail while Sierra Leone began his wide, late and rather erratic surge in company with the Japanese-trained Forever Young on his inside.
By the time they reached the post, the camera showed there were pixels between the trio and a verdict of nose, nose in favour of Mystik Dan, trained in Lexington by Kenny McPeek, gained the verdict. That nose makes a massive difference: initially £1.7 million between the two top prizes but also his potential as a stallion when he departs racing, presumably to Coolmore’s US branch, Ashford Stud in Lexington. Ashford is home of the only two Triple Crown winners of the last half century, American Pharoah and City of Troy’s sire Justify. They expected two more – one here and one over there.
It truly was the Maktoum family’s weekend, for after the success of Sheikh Mohammed’s Notable Speech on Saturday, Ahmed Al Maktoum, his younger brother won the 1000 Guineas with 28/1 outsider Elmalka, trained by Roger Varian and ridden by Silvestre De Sousa.
In a wide open market, in contrast to the one-eyed appearance of Saturday’s Classic, the fillies’ equivalent offered the prospect of a quintet of potential winners as they came to the last furlong. Until just before the line, two young overseas trainers were entitled to believe their fillies would win.
Ramatuelle (Christopher Head, France) looked sure to hold on but she was challenged late, initially by Porta Fortuna, Donnacha O’Brien/Tom Marquand, but only too briefly as Elmalka finished fastest of all having trailed the field early in the 16-runner contest.
Two others merit a mention. Fourth under a typical, but in this case just too late, Jamie Spencer ride was the David Menuisier filly Tamfana, while Ylang Ylang kept on well for fifth under Ryan Moore, the Aidan O’Brien inmate not getting the clearest of runs. She’ll be set for running over further, maybe in the Musidora next time at York – just guessing on that one.
Elmalka, a daughter of Kingman, was third previously in the Fred Darling Stakes (or whatever appellation it now goes by) at Newbury, where she had rallied to finish close up behind Folgario and Regal Jubilee. The Fred Darling runner-up also started at 28/1 yesterday but finished well down the field for the Gosdens. No doubt Marco Botti, trainer of Folgario, must have wondered why she wasn’t in the line-up.
Unbeaten in five starts as a juvenile initially in Italy (four wins) and then one in France, trained by Marco’s relative Stefano, she has the Coronation Stakes as her sole entry at this stage. Six races unbeaten will make her an interesting wildcard into that always-significant Royal Ascot midsummer Group 1.
I must thank the Editor for drawing my attention to, and therefore helping me follow, this tortuous link. Back in 2007 the most impressive winner of the Coronation Stakes, and a filly that never raced again, was Indian Ink. Trained by Richard Hannon senior, ridden by Richard Hughes, and in the colours of Raymond Tooth – she won by six lengths slaughtering such as Finsceal Beo, and the rest.
Yesterday, in the colours of Clipper Logistics in the 40k newcomers’ race for 2yo fillies, her daughter River Seine (by Soldier’s Call) ran a highly promising second for Karl Burke to Godolphin’s Mountain Breeze, Buick’s pick of three for Charlie even if she sported the nominally third-choice red cap. River Seine could well make a visit to the scene of her mother’s finest hour, but she will have to find a fair bit to turn yesterday’s form around. Karl Burke will give it a go, no doubt.
Of all the performances over the two days at Newmarket, I have to point to Hughie Morrison’s Ben and Sir Martyn Arbib homebred Stay Alert, who ran away with the 1m1f Dahlia Stakes, tracking the Gosdens’ 6/4 favourite Running Lion into the dip and then drawing away with the rest trailing behind.
Hughie Morrison kept her to high-class opposition last year when her best performance had been a two-length second to Via Sistina in the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh. Most observers thought she was an unlucky loser that day and the subsequent exploits of the winner which precipitated a sale for 2.7 million guineas at last year’s December sale made her the one to beat yesterday.
Via Sistina was bought by Australian interests and has already won and been second, the latter in the Queen Elizabeth Cup at Randwick in Sydney last month. Her debut win at £310k was worth more than either Guineas race and her second place of £454,000 in the QE Cup was only 130 grand short of the combined total of our first two Classics.
If she had won, the prize would have been £1,577,000. No wonder my good friend and one of the most experienced observers of the racing scene here and overseas for many years says, “We’re a laughing stock! Just get rid of off-course bookmakers – they won’t let anyone have a proper bet anyway – and our racing, which is the best in the world, will take off.”
* Just a note. While talking of bookmakers who won’t take a proper bet, I’ve just received a copy of well-known former Rails bookmaker Stephen Little’s entertaining autobiography. He was someone who did take a bet as “From Bicycle to Bentley” reveals.
The foreword is by his long-time friend Sir Mark Prescott and it’s published by Pen and Sword Books in Barnsley S70 2AS. My pal Sir Rupert Mackeson has been instrumental in getting Pen and Sword to fill what had become an alarming gap in the production of books with a horse racing theme. Well done, Rupert. As much of it overlaps my time in racing, for me it’s a great reminder of those wonderful days.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/05/NotableSpeech_2000Guineas_2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-05-06 08:22:442024-05-06 08:26:07Monday Musings: Of Bubbles Burst
We knew when he won the Grand National it would be tight, writes Tony Stafford. The differential between Willie Mullins, devouring his first (of many, no doubt) UK trainers’ titles and runner-up Dan Skelton, was in the end just the £344,717, more than enough to see off Kerry Lee, whose 18 winners at a fine strike-rate of 24% earned in total £309k. She was 43rd in the table with some very big names finishing considerably south of her.
I read somewhere that it was remarkable that Mullins could achieve his feat with so few runners in the UK. If you talk of total numbers fair enough, but apart from the money – expertly plucked out of the vagaries of the programme book where he has such an advantage – his numbers weren’t as great as you could imagine.
Let’s start with strike-rate, just 18%, lower than Paul Nicholls – third overall, and £95k behind Sketon, but Paul’s 169 wins came at a rate of 23%. Nicky Henderson, who belatedly enjoyed his own time in the spotlight thanks to Jonbon’s destruction of Willie’s El Fabiolo in the Celebration Chase, with Edwardstone just behind, perhaps surprisingly bettered last season’s tally of 90, by one, achieved at 21%.
Mullins sent over 115 individual horses to the UK – I kid you not! They were mostly targeted at the best of the best, running until the last week’s blitz, for the best money on offer. His 28 winners in all were provided by 26 individual horses.
Only nine trainers raced as many individual animals through the season. Top with 210 was Skelton, winning 120 races. Fergal O’Brien ran 171, winning 107 but still at a better strike-rate of 20% compared with Willie’s 18%. Then it was Nicholls, 169, Donald McCain 167 and Henderson who, for all his peak-season travails, still had 144 to run.
The only others to run more were Olly Murphy, 135; Lucinda Russell, 130; Jonjo O’Neill 126, and Ben Pauling 123. Murphy ought to be eternally grateful to Sure Touch, the geegeez.co.uk-owned horse, who with three successive wins, culminating in defeat of a Mullins raider at Perth signalled his own growing status among the training community as well as helping to clinch the ton.
I’ve gone on over the past two weeks about the relative risk/reward situation with the Grand National under the latest mollified fences but also the mechanism that means hardly anything other than the top Irish stables can get a horse into the contest. Not much risk, but plenty of reward!
I’ve just identified the nine UK-based trainers with the strongest and most effective teams in the land. Between them in the now-denuded 34-runner Grand National, they had two of the seven UK runners, the Irish having the remainder.
Half of their interest went at the first fence when last year’s Lucinda Russell-trained winner Corach Rambler unseated Derek Fox. Dan Skelton’s Galia Des Liteaux ran a creditable eighth.
Contrastingly, the top four Irish NH trainers supplied 20 of the 32 (two were taken out in the morning). Mullins had eight including the eight-year-old winner I Am Maximus; Gordon Elliott, also with more than a century of UK runners in the season just concluded, had seven; Henry De Bromhead three and Gavin Cromwell two. That’s 63% of the field.
Further scrutiny showed that two each of the Mullins and Elliott runners started at 100/1 or more and none finished the course. The effect, if not intentionally, was to minimise the potential danger to the pair’s leading contenders by excluding others (maybe even trained here!). Of course, it’s nice to get hold of owners’ tickets on a day like that.
The simple fact is that without the 500 grand collected by I Am Maximus, not only would Mullins not have beaten Dan Skelton, he might well not have bothered to bring a proportion of the runners that came principally to Aintree and Sandown, leaving it more a traditional last-day Skelton/Nicholls tussle.
Now he’s won it though, the appetite will be there to win it again. All the middle to major prizes will now be on his agenda, and I’ve even heard in the last few days that a satellite yard in the UK might be in the planning.
He did comment that when he asks his owners to fund the travel of his horses across the water, he invariably gets their blessing. How much easier to be based in the middle of the country somewhere like Ian Williams, close to the Midlands motorway hub. Trainers here, say in Newmarket, metaphorically have to get down on their knees and beg to send a horse further than York!
It will be interesting when he does expand his operations from Ireland or if indeed he does take another yard here. The one time that I can remember such an inferiority complex – I was still very young when Vincent O’Brien used to take home Grand Nationals and Gold Cups to order – was in the days of Arkle and Flyingbolt.
Actually, it was more the home trainers afeared of the Tom Dreaper pair. For all Arkle’s greatness, he was still only rated 1lb superior to Flyingbolt, who was the more versatile of the pair, and the Irish handicapper even used to make separate handicaps for some of the biggest races with and without the pair.
The implications for jump racing over here if Mullins was to target mundane day-to-day cards is frightening. Three odds-on shots per meeting would be unappetising, the rest having to trail around like half the fields in Irish novice events to ensure competitive starting marks. But then he has the owners, most of whom are active here anyway.
I’ve no doubt he could easily assemble a team almost as numerically strong as is the case back home. Prospective owners would flock to him, but he could afford to put stringent requirements on them. Maybe with Nicky Henderson as his assistant? Sorry, that’s silly. Without the Grand National, Nicky would have been close to Mullins this time around and with 142 according to Horses In Training in his care, the future after Saturday’s revival, is bright enough with such as Constitution Hill, Jonbon, Sir Gino and the rest to keep him cool through the summer.
What must Nick Skelton, father of Dan and new parent Harry Skelton, be thinking? His project in Warwickshire has developed to the extent that his son has mastered his former boss Paul Nicholls as well as Henderson and yet he must accept only second place. Harry is a former champion jockey: Dan sorely needs to join him as a champion.
It’s a reminder of the days when Adrian Maguire expected to step up after his tussles with Richard Dunwoody for a first UK title only to be confronted by the comet that was Tony McCoy. Last time I saw him he was riding out at Ballydoyle for Aidan O’Brien, but I gather he has moved on since.
McCoy, Aidan and Willie Mullins all started their careers around the same time three decades ago with Jim Bolger. Many since have made a similar journey, some with great success, but none will match the achievements of this Holy Trinity.
Bolger has made an impact on the flat of course, with his homebreds. Two, Poetic Flare and Dawn Approach, won the 2000 Guineas and I expect to see another Irish-trained colt win next Saturday’s race. City of Troy made a marked impression on me (and everyone else I’m sure) when coming over twice last year to Newmarket, for the Superlative Stakes on the July Course and the Dewhurst Stakes over seven-eighths of the 2000 Guineas mile in October.
His two flawless performances had many thinking back to Frankel and I hope he will deserve to be regarded in the same breath as that great unbeaten champion after Saturday.
The biggest boost to his chance, apart from the Coolmore, Aidan O’Brien, Ryan Moore connection, is that his sire Justify is proving as potentially good in the breeding shed with his first crops around the world as he was as an unbeaten colt in the USA. Only the second Triple Crown winner there since the 1970’s, he should build stamina as well as lightning speed into his horses having won the 12-furlong Belmont Stakes.
The form of City Of Troy’s two wins over here is solidified by Haatem, winner in between them of Goodwood’s Group 2 Richmond Stakes and, this April, the Craven Stakes over the full 2000 Guineas distance, but slaughtered each time by the Guineas favourite. He is regarded as inferior to his Richard Hannon stable-mate Rosallion, who won the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere at the Arc meeting last year. It could be tough, but that’s how the greatest reputations are made.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/WillieMullins_UK_TrainersChampionship202324.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-04-29 05:36:072024-04-29 05:47:19Monday Musings: A Cakewalk for Willie
I was going to try to demean a little Willie Mullins’ amazing Saturday at Ayr, his four-timer surely guaranteeing him a first and unique UK NH trainers title for an overseas stable, writes Tony Stafford.
My line was: where were the Gordon Elliott hordes, seven in the previous week’s Grand National and, who can forget, 14 in the Troytown Chase at Navan in November?
I thought maybe the two dominant forces (one rather more than the other it’s true) might have had a chat, but on further research, I see Gordon didn’t run anything in the Ayr race last year either!
So it was left to Willie to run six, mostly horses that had been slogging through heavy ground all winter and now faced with a much faster surface. The shortest-priced, Mr Incredible, refused to jump the first fence from miles behind, and another unseated there, but that was it.
The remaining quartet finished first, for £110k, then fourth, fifth and sixth in the 26-runner race – if they can run 26 around Ayr, why not 40 at Aintree? Only one horse fell.
Here, it’s about time we started to marvel at the skills of Paul Townend, for so long dismissed in some circles as merely an inferior replacement for Ruby Walsh. Like the big-race win on Macdermott, ridden by Danny Mullins, the following three-mile handicap hurdle success on Chosen Witness was also by a nose, clinched in the last stride.
Earlier, multiple Grade 1 hurdle winner Sharjah was coaxed to stay a previously never attempted three miles under 12st in a novice handicap chase in the patient hands of Townend. Might we see the winner in next year’s Grand National as a 12-year-old?
There was a marmite-like divided reaction to the no-fall Grand National debate last weekend. The BHA and no doubt the top Irish trainers, for; others, like Chris Cook of the Racing Post and Geoff Greetham, former boss of Timeform, sharing my view that it’s not really a Grand National anymore. Probably, if anything, the once-feared fences will remain at best as they were last weekend, or even become easier to placate the ever-closer attention of the Animal Welfare adherents.
Gordon Elliott does have entries for Sandown’s end-of-season party on Saturday but unlike in the earlier days of the Pipe/Henderson and Pipe/Nicholls last-day cliff-hangers, his will only add to the potential Irish domination on the day.
The four Mullins horses that took chunks of the money on offer in Saturday’s big race would generally have been hard to assess, mostly stepping up in class. The trainer has an abundance of horses already at the top but many more coming through the grades. How can you (or maybe even he) put a figure on such potential for improvement?
After Sandown, there’s Punchestown of course. I wondered how many of our top trainers will be involved in a competitive way? Nicky Henderson has ten entered at the opening stage, including Aintree winners Jonbon and Sir Gino, slipped in surreptitiously almost into a Mullins-dominated meeting often with up to ten potential contenders in each race.
Mostly, none of the stars was needed to collect the two biggest prizes at Aintree and Ayr.
Dan Skelton seems to be giving it a miss while Paul Nicholls’ trio includes the so far unraced for him but eagerly anticipated €740k buy Coldwell Potter. Jonjo has a quartet in one bumper and we might see Aintree bumper runner-up Tripoli Flyer for Fergal O’Brien. Less likely, there’s an entry for Corach Rambler.
As I said last week, Willie Mullins takes his success with great dignity, but it does tend to get on one’s nerves after the continuing monopoly!
*
The 2024 flat-race season finally got going with Newmarket and Newbury last week and now it’s less than a fortnight to the first two Classic races. If anyone was expecting the Craven Stakes to indicate a potential threat to City Of Troy, they would probably be thinking again.
Richard Hannon had his Haatem ready to make a winning return and last year’s Group 2 Richmond Stakes scorer added another good prize to his tally with an authoritative three-and-a-half length verdict over the Gosdens’ Eben Shaddad. Sighters from the Charlie Appleby and Aidan O’Brien teams were well behind.
When Haatem won the Richmond, it followed an earlier six-and-a-half length demolition by the O’Brien colt in the Superlative Sakes on Newmarket’s July Course. Haatem’s final run coincided with City Of Troy on his next appearance, an all-the-way victory in the Dewhurst Stakes by almost four lengths from Alyanaabi – Haatem was eight-and-a- half lengths back in fifth.
You can still get 4/6 about the brilliant Coolmore horse, his price only buttressed by second favourite Rosallion, trained by Haatem’s handler Richard Hannon. His horses have made a great start to the season, not least winning nice races for long-standing stable owner Julie Wood.
I love her strategy. Rather than keep her good horses, she enjoys racing them and then, even the fillies, sells them on. Last week she had two first time out winners on the same Newbury card, Voyage in the ten-furlong maiden, and Star Style, a Zoustar filly in the seven-furlong newcomers’ race.
Stretching more than five lengths clear of some well-related if less talented fillies, Star Style filled the usual Julie Wood sourcing pattern.
Preferring to buy on her own judgment as foals rather than wait for agents to tell her what’s nice a year later, she happened to take a liking to this filly, who is out of a mare she raced, Sweet Cicely. Star Style will, I’m sure, more than live up to her name.
One agent who is becoming ever more prominent is Sam Sangster, with his horses with Brian Meehan. Last year they had Isaac Shelby as an example of his skills at the sales and, at Newmarket last week, Jayarebe romped home in the Feilden Stakes in the manner of a guaranteed high-class performer.
Up with the pace throughout, he strode clear of some smart types to win by almost four lengths in the fastest time of the day on the drying ground.
Half an hour later Godolphin’s five-year-old Ottoman Fleet gained a repeat victory in the Group 3 Earl of Sefton Stakes, fully extended to hold fast-finishing Astro King, winner of last year’s Cambridgeshire under a record weight, and Hi Royal, last year’s 2000 Guineas runner-up. The two winners carried the same weight of 9st2lb which makes the three-year-old’s performance 10lb superior, allowing for weight-for-age.
He carries the lucky (for Meehan) colours of Iraj Parvizi, whose Dangerous Midge won the 2014 Breeders’ Cup Turf for Meehan at Churchill Downs. Jayarebe has no Classic entries, but the likelihood is that he could be supplemented for the Prix du Jockey Club (French Derby) at Chantilly.
Later on the card, there was a suggestion of yet another great buy by Sam Sangster when the three-year-old filly Kathmandu outran her 40/1 odds to finish third in the Group 3 Nell Gwyn Stakes behind Pretty Crystal, trained by Richard Fahey, and 1000 Guineas hopeful Dance Sequence, trained by Charlie Appleby.
It was a messy race and many thought Dance Sequence ought to have won. She’s still only 7/1 for the Classic on May 5.
Before the race, Kathmandu’s connections – they go by Sangster and (Ed) Babington and she runs in Robert Sangster’s colours - were already on a winner with their 50 grand purchase. The previous evening, Kathmandu’s two-year-old half-sister by New Bay was bought for 525,000gns to join Godolphin on the first stage of the Craven Breeze-Up sale. That and black type, too.
“We’ve always thought she was good, so we entered her three weeks ago for the French 1000 Guineas. The decision on whether she runs, as ever, will be left to Brian.” Quite right too!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/WillieMullins_attheyard.png319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-04-22 07:43:012024-04-22 08:05:07Monday Musings: Willie’s Big Nose(s)
We wait all year for the Grand National, anticipating the sternest examination in jump racing anywhere in the world, writes Tony Stafford. Such is the conditioned attitude that the great race has engendered over so many years, owners who have been around for a while, when lucky enough to own a top steeplechaser, are more often than not terrified of taking up the challenge.
We, or rather they, consider the fearsome fences, like the Chair, Becher’s Brook and the rest, and shrink away. Are they wise? Well let me give you a definitive if an admittedly after-timing answer. No, they are not!
The three races over said fences, Thursday’s Fox Hunters, Friday’s Topham and Saturday’s Randox-sponsored £1 million feature, carried big fields by day to day standards, even if the latest modification (or rather mutilation) of the big race has reduced the maximum field to 34 – denuded further with two on-the-day defections on Saturday - more about that later.
The Chair did prove too much of a jumping test for two of the 24 runners among Thursday’s hunter chasers – we were used to seeing 30 - two of them falling at that point. Then again, one was a 50/1 shot, the other was 66’s.
So the biggest of the 16 obstacles and which, along with the water in front of the stands, is one of only two to be jumped once, would surely take more fallers over the next two days. It didn’t, and nor did any of the other 15 obstacles over all three.
Thus, I’m sure we had the first ever Grand National where there had not been a single faller. True, four horses unseated their riders, ironically one of them was last year’s winner Corach Rambler, who continued only briefly having left Derek Fox on the deck at the opening obstacle days after the jockey had recovered from injury just in time to aim for the repeat. Corach Rambler actually did fall, unencumbered by a jockey, at the very next fence and then was seen veering to the right having refused at the third. Three-in-one, unseated, fell and refused at the first three obstacles!
Seven were pulled up, so that left 21 of the 32 starters to complete the course. In the Fox Hunters, in addition to those two fallers at the Chair (fence three), three unseated and seven pulled up, leaving ten finishers. The Topham also had 24 starters, one of which unseated and six more pulled up leaving an almost unfathomable 17 (71%) to get round. These are unprecedented figures, especially on soft or heavy going.
In my usual way of securing a comprehensive analysis, I thought a quick look back two decades to one of my most memorable races, 2004, the year that Graham Lee rode that wonderful race on Ginger McCain’s Amberleigh House, would provide a useful yardstick.
Graham’s ride that day was the Grand National performance I always considered the best I’d seen. He coolly took a pull when most jockeys would have gone hell for leather at the third-last, saving enough in the testing ground to come out on top. Graham rode quite a few winners for me in his Wilf Storey days and it’s a poignant thought that he suffered his horrific injuries after switching to the flat.
The ground was testing that week twenty years ago, but times for the three respective races, the Fox Hunters, Topham and Grand National were all significantly faster than the 2024 versions. This year’s Fox Hunters took around 18 seconds longer to complete; the Topham 12 seconds more and the Grand National seven seconds more even though the course had dried significantly over the previous 24 hours.
The 2004 Fox Hunters had six fallers, two brought down and two pulled up. The Topham that year had eight fallers, two brought down and one refusal while four horses pulled up. In Amberleigh House’s Grand National, nine fell, two were brought down, two refused, seven unseated rider and eight pulled up.
All the modifications have done is to make it little more than a park race. High-class chasers, especially those so redolent of the Irish steeplechasing scene, can continue year to year, mopping up the many Graded and Listed races around their country and maintaining a status that guarantees a place in next year’s field.
Here, the good horses have to run in the few well-endowed but ultra-competitive high-class handicap chases in the calendar like the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury in early December or the Welsh Grand National, also sponsored by Coral at Chepstow on the day after Boxing Day.
Nassalam has been the unwitting vehicle for the grossest example of a handicapping error from his win in the Welsh National, and for once I’m not blaming the official it concerns, but our system. Nassalam had already won a handicap chase at Chepstow a month earlier when he went back to the track for the 3m5f feature. Gary Moore’s gelding was always in contention but in heavy ground, as they moved out of the back straight, his mastery was already evident.
In an eerie foreshadowing of Saturday’s big race, there were no fallers that day at Chepstow, largely because by the time most of them had got to the end of the back straight, they had already given up. Of the 19 horses that set off, five completed, with Iron Bridge off levels with the winner, nearest but beaten 34 lengths.
Iron Bridge, trained by Jonjo O’Neill in the Hemmings Racing colours, and at eight two years senior to Nassalam, hadn’t won a race for some time and his best chase form, far from in top races, had been in novice handicap chases. If the handicapper had been able to wait until the four other horses that completed ran again, he might have acted a little less extravagantly. None of the quartet has done a thing since. All of them were probably bottomed by their run behind Nassalam, so to rate that as a 16lb improvement was simply horrific.
I think Gary Moore, brave enough to let him take his chance in the Grand National even after pulling up in between at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup, has a very strong case to appeal. By going to 161 he was giving weight to a former Gold Cup winner in Minella Indo on Saturday. That one finished third, behind and just ahead of the Gordon Elliott pair Delta Work and Galvin, both habitual competitors at the top level, as well as winner I Am Maximus. Last time out, he had given Vanillier, the 2023 runner-up 12lb and a 14-length beating in a four-runner Grade 3 chase at Fairyhouse.
I Am Maximus received 2lb from Nassalam on Saturday, but had the Grand National weight assessor had available evidence of Fairyhouse to hand, he would have been conceding 3lb to Nassalam. I think having seen him start at 50/1 and after making a couple of mistakes, yet still valiantly completed, the UK handicappers might start adjusting their reaction to what have been hitherto perceived as key races.
If in a 19-runner handicap like the Welsh National it is obvious that only a few horses handled conditions, a more measured approach might be in order. Horses like I Am Maximus, Delta Work (close to dual Grand National winner Tiger Roll more than once), Minella Indo and Galvin should not be receiving weight from a horse with a single performance that sticks out like a sore thumb.
Elsewhere, great credit must go to David Maxwell. Most 45-year-old estate agents would have been in the hospitality area if inclined to visit the Grand National. Instead, he bought Ain’t That A Shame, 105 lengths behind Corach Rambler in last year’s National under Rachael Blackmore and pulled up more recently in the Munster National and guided him into sixth place – and a £30k instalment on the purchase price - only 15.75 lengths adrift of I Am Maximus. Rachael, on the third Minella Indo, still had the edge in the Henry de Bromhead team, so a good piece of business all round.
Most interesting for me, having put forward one of J P McManus’s other runners, Limerick Lace, as my selection last week, it was a shock to see her price contract to 7/1 joint-favourite with the winner.
She finished tenth after making some mistakes, beginning when interfered with, as far as I could see on a single viewing, at the Canal Turn first time round. She was going on very well at the finish, and if she does come back next year, whatever happens in the meantime (almost) I’ll be with her.
Changing tack, something though has to be done about a situation where two trainers can know from months out they can share half the Grand National field between them without fear of serious challenge. This also prevents other potential candidates lower down the handicap scale – usually the best chance for one of ours – to get in. I do think a cap on the maximum number of runners for a trainer or owner, or both, might well need to be an interim measure before trainers here totally pull up the white flag.
Dan Skelton, Ben Pauling and a few others have stepped forward to bolster the long-established leaders Nicky Henderson and Paul Nicholls. Irishman Fergal O’Brien is well entrenched in Gloucestershire and all five of those talented men had winners over the three days last week.
In a way the £500,000 first prize, along with £200,000, £100,000 and £65,000 for the next three places does nothing for the race, except in enabling people to say it’s the biggest prize in UK jump racing. So what?! It’s our race and we need our top and highly skilled trainers and their owners to have a shot of winning it.
A first step would be to let owners know that the old antipathy against running in the race for fear of an early end to a jumper’s career is no longer valid. If it always gives an imbalance to the trainers' championship too, that’s a side effect. When Aidan O’Brien habitually contests the flat trainers' title with the Gosdens and others, he needs to win Classics and numerous Group 1 races to make up for the numerical advantage of his British counterparts. There’s no such balancing act in jumping – it’s Willie first, the rest nowhere!
On the point of non-runners, Gordon Elliott reduced his big team by one via a vet’s certificate, but Chambard, trained by Venetia William, was withdrawn on a self-certificate. For a normal race I would say the self-cert rule is fine, but for a race like the Grand National, surely not. For contests of a certain value and status, specific reasons should be required. Two horses were denied the chance to run for the big pot and I bet their connections are fuming!
It’s a horrible thought, but if all the horses eligible to run before today’s five-day stage for the Randox Grand National stood their ground and then took up the engagement on Thursday morning, only six of the drastically reduced field this year, from 40 to 34, will be trained in the UK, writes Tony Stafford.
Even more salutary, between them, Gordon Elliott (ten) and Willie Mullins (eight) will have more than a 50% chance of knocking off the £500,000 first prize and the better than acceptable place money from second, £200k, down to five grand for tenth.
The inertia once horses get to a certain level – and this time there’s no fault being found about handicapping on either side of the Irish Sea - means it takes a lot for, say, a 150-rated animal to drop out of his guaranteed place in the line-up from year to year. That’s why they race so infrequently – where else can you have a shot at half a million?
The lucky six this time would be supplemented if the big two fine down their options. Six of the next ten are trained over here so it could at least bring, if not a level playing field, one that offers a hint of promise. Of the guaranteed sextet, connections of the 11-year-old Latenightpass will be on a winner even before the gelding lines up.
Fourth under multiple champion and overall point-to-point lady record holder Gina Andrews in last year’s Foxhunters at the National meeting over the same fences, the gelding will be her first ride in a Grand National. He’s safely in on 24, and Gina, the multiple point-to-point champion and by far the winning-most lady rider in that sphere, rides the family gelding for husband Tom Ellis, king of the point-to-point trainers.
In racecard order as they stood this morning, the top two from the UK are number 3 Nassalam and number 8 Corach Rambler. After his excellent third behind Galopin Des Champs in last month’s Gold Cup, Corach Rambler is only a 4/1 shot to repeat last year’s victory for Lucinda Russell. Nassalam concedes him 2lb because of two spectacular performances around Chepstow in December but was then pulled up in the Gold Cup, so the market’s preference is understandable.
But such was Nassalam’s astonishing demolition job on the Welsh Grand National field in his last race before Cheltenham – unfortunately causing Gary Moore’s gelding that abrupt jump in his rating – he must be a contender especially as we’ll be having heavy ground bar a miracle with the weather by Saturday.
Nassalam also looked good around the big Aintree fences in the autumn, staying on well from a long way back in the Grand Sefton over a woefully inadequate 2m5f, gathering momentum as the race neared its climax. He’s one of the best equipped to handle both ground and distance in the field and although he did carry a big weight in the 3m6f Welsh National, his mark soared another 16lb after that.
I reckon every 1lb will be worth two under these conditions, so with regret I’ve been looking down the list. Sadly, apart from the obvious claims of Corach Rambler – and repeat winners aren’t exactly unheard of - even if the ground might not be totally to his liking, I’ve landed on an Irish contender.
The same age as Nassalam, that’s seven, and significantly the 2022 winner Noble Yeats was also that age at the time, I find it hard to get away from the Gavin Cromwell-trained and, need I say it, J P McManus-owned mare Limerick Lace.
Limerick Lace would be the first of her sex to win the race since 1951 and indeed only three mares, Shannon Lass (James Hackett) in 1902, 1948 Sheila’s Cottage (40/1) trained by Nevile Crump, and Nickel Coin (50/1) for Jack O’Donoghue, won the race in the entire 20th Century. It will take something special to quell that statistic but maybe Limerick Lace is that entity.
She had the effrontery to intrude on Elliott’s second most heinous action as a trainer when he supplied 14 of the 20 runners in Navan’s Troytown Chase in November. Limerick Lace didn’t win the three-miler on heavy ground but got within a couple of lengths of Coko Beach, who did, a fair old run for a 6yo.
She will meet Coko Beach on 2lb better terms, fair enough, and equally being put up 6lb for that was entirely understandable. But she’s run twice and won twice since then, both in the UK. Firstly, she came over to Doncaster for a mares’ chase and bolted up by six lengths with her mark already on the 147 allotted after Navan, and that remained unchanged.
Then she took in the Grade 2 2m5f Mares’ Chase at Cheltenham last month and won it nicely from Willie Mullins’ Dinoblue, who was rated 13lb her superior. Cromwell’s mare did a touch of tail-flashing but showed plenty of resolution and her official mark is now 153, but a bargain 147 for this early closing race only.
In all she has five wins from ten starts over fences with three seconds and a third as back-up. I’m going for a rarity, but one that did happen twice in the first five years of my life – I wasn’t out quite in time for Shannon Lass! Limerick Lace to beat Nassalam and Corach Rambler.
**
My copy of Horses in Training finally came on Friday and I’ve enjoyed trying to work out which stable has the most horses, which isn’t as easy as it sounds. Inevitably, we have to guess a bit as two of the biggest strings each year decline sending full lists. The Gosdens have 149 three-year-olds and up but are keeping their two-year-olds a secret while Richard Fahey won’t tell us a thing.
Generally, the boys with more than 200 in their care are the ones that will be challenging for top honours most of the time. But while not yet at that rarified atmosphere numerically, one intriguing name which has a lasting place in Grand National history, is undergoing a re-vamp.
I noticed his list on first skim through but then when wanting to look again, couldn’t find it. The book is in alphabetical order, but Dr Richard Newland and joint licensee Jamie Insole are sandwiched between Tina Jackson and Iain Jardine.
Ten years ago, I backed the doctor’s Grand National winner, Pineau De Re. Now he and Jamie have 100 horses in their care and are obviously going much more seriously at the flat. Last year’s 73 were all older horses. This time, of their 100, 20 are juveniles and all bar one was acquired at the sales, at prices between 16 grand and 110k.
They joined forces late last season, by the end of which they had four wins from their first six runners on the flat. A further four have come at the more sustainable rate of ten per cent this year. The jumpers have provided the partnership with five wins from 77 runs. Until the switch-around, Dr Newland alone had 18 jumps wins from 158 runners.
Insole, 26, is from an Irish family with plenty of NH riding history behind it. He grew up, some might say, curiously in Billericay in deepest Essex but has been involved in the sport for most of his life from adolescence. After jobs with such as Alan King, he went the whole hog into flat racing as a pupil assistant to Charlie Hills.
Of all the stables that have caught my attention, in Grand National week I can’t stop thinking that if someone like the doctor (and his owners) have invested the best part of £1million at the sales to get this embryo partnership under way, they must have the utmost faith in their new recruit. I can’t wait for their first juvenile runner. Royal Ascot maybe?
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/04/LimerickLace_MaresChase2024.png318830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-04-08 06:59:102024-04-08 07:36:15Monday Musings: My Idea of the National Winner is…
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