Monday Musings: Chinese Takeaway

So Oisin Murphy didn’t stay home this autumn/early winter for a full English, but instead filled his boots with the ultimate Chinese takeaway, writes Tony Stafford. Oisin didn’t follow my suggestion he might challenge for the 26-times champion Sir Gordon Richards’ best of 269 in a single year, and stands marooned on 215 in the year of his fourth championship. Put another way, Oisin, you have only 23 titles more to go!

I’m sure he and his agent will be content with the £150k or so he picked up in Hong Kong yesterday, courtesy of a win on Giavellotto and fourth on The Foxes in his two rides on the richly-endowed Longines-sponsored card at Sha Tin racecourse. I expect it took Sir Gordon a fair few of his 4,870 winners to match Oisin’s haul over the 2min 27.53 secs of the Vase.

The Marco Botti-trained Giavellotto picked up £1.3 million and change for winning the Vase over a mile and a half. He had the William Haggas world traveller Dubai Honour two and a half lengths behind in second under Tom Marquand with Luxembourg, second to the Hong Kong supreme champ Romantic Warrior in the ten-furlong Cup last year, only fifth for Aidan O’Brien and Ryan Moore.

Giavellotto can lay claim to being one of the most publicly underrated and indeed under-noticed of performers, if not by the handicappers who have him on 119. This year, he won the Yorkshire Cup over 1m6f at York in May and the Princess Of Wales’s Stakes over yesterday’s trip at Newmarket in July. He warmed up for his trip to the Far East with a third over 1m6f, three lengths behind the peerless Kyprios in the Irish St Leger in September.

As an entire he could presumably have been trained for the King George at Ascot in July and/or the Arc early in October – that’s already nine weeks ago! – and maybe next year his realistic trainer might give those races a whirl.

Italian-born Botti quietly goes about his business in Newmarket from where his 93 horses to run picked up 49 wins, 87 places and earnings of £921,714. Yesterday’s victory easily more than doubled that sum on its own.

The big day for Hong Kong racing also provides a showcase for its own champions and the afore-mentioned Romantic Warrior made it 17 wins worth almost £18 million in 22 career starts following a third successive victory in the Cup race with its £2.25 million to the winner prize.

Andrew Balding was rewarded for his enterprise in sending The Foxes to Hong Kong, the four-year-old finishing just under five lengths back in a lavish (£240k) fourth place under Murphy. The Foxes had beaten Dubai Honour when they met in Newcastle’s Churchill Stakes, appropriately so as he’s a colt by Churchill.

Romantic Warrior was almost unbackable but, to the Sha Tin and World Pool adherents, also just about unbeatable at 10/1 on and won as he and his rider liked, the identical price as Sprint winner Ya King Rising, that one less far down the road but getting there. He stands with nine wins from 11 starts. Ya King Rising won a shade cosily under Zac Purton, one of the regular top Australians that have made Hong Kong their own along with that race’s runner-up Hugh Bowman.

But it’s the New Zealand-born James McDonald who really has the game sorted. One of the leading riders in Australia for many years, he manages to organise his trips to Hong Kong to coincide with Romantic Warrior’s runs and has been on him for his past eight races, the last seven wins in a row starting with the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in October last year.

They also won a Group 1 race together in Tokyo on June 2 this year, one of only four 2024 runs before yesterday. The son of Acclamation was sold as a yearling at Newmarket by his breeders Corduff Stud, fetching 300,000 Guineas to the bid of the Hong Kong Jockey Club. Peter Lau Pak Fai, his owner, will be eternally grateful that it was his number that came up when the annual ballot for owners and horses was enacted.

James McDonald also picked up the winning rider’s share of a second £2 million to the winner race on the 8/5 favourite Voyage Bubble in the Mile. Bizarrely, he was in the television booth when last month’s Melbourne Cup was being run, having no ride in the race, after which he set straight off for his regular Hong Kong stint. Even when he won the Melbourne Cup three years ago on the mare Verry Elleegant, his pickup from the £2,584 million first prize would not have matched yesterday’s combined bounty.

Saturday’s racing at home was massively affected by the latest hurricane to trouble our shores, ending hopes of Aintree staging the Becher Chase over the Grand National obstacles, in which Kim Bailey was denied a run for his smart emerging talent Chianti Classico.  Kim woke up on Saturday morning with two fancied runners each at Aintree and Chepstow and instead none got a run. Usually in the winter, when potential winning opportunities are withheld in this way, they only rarely get a suitable race to make up for it.

Jumps trainers must be getting so frustrated. The wet summer when the big horses weren’t generally in action proved difficult for the fast-ground regulars. Then as the early autumn became very dry, many trainers waiting for a first run for their good horses were understandably worried about sending them into action on quick ground.

Then came another very wet spell, with meetings lost and good-ground high-class horses also being put at a disadvantage.

Sandown survived on Saturday but surely it’s a reflection on these problems that the Grade 1 Henry VIII Novice Chase at Sandown attracted a final field of four. These were the Dan Skelton-trained favourite L’Eau du Sud; two from Gordon Elliott, Touch Me Not and Down Memory Lane; and just one more from the UK, the Kieran Burke-trained Soul Icon, the 16/1 outsider.

L’Eau du Sud didn’t have as much to spare as when winning on comeback and chase debut by 11 lengths at Cheltenham, but this race has always been a decent guide to the Arkle Novice Chase at Cheltenham. He will be going there certainly as one of the best of the home team.

The money on offer for that race was 56k, 20k, 10k with more than five grand for the horse that brought up the rear. You wonder sometimes how owners that moan about prize money as I feel they are entitled to most of the time, explain a case like this when so few found their way to such a historic novice race. All the novice chasers in the UK cannot be rubbish, or can they?

An hour later it was the Grade 1 Tingle Creek Chase and Jonbon won this for the second year in succession for the McManus/Henderson/de Boinville team.

The Tingle Creek was worth almost twice as much as the Henry VIII, Jonbon picking up a few quid short of £100,000 for his eight-length defeat of Irish raider Quilixios. Two of the three remaining UK runners fell, including Edwardstone, so again each of those that did get round got a handy prize, around 40k, 20k with 10 grand for fourth.

It’s hard to believe with the recent flat season still so fresh in the memory that when my article appears in two weeks’ time, the days will be getting longer again. Some people are counting down to Christmas, but there may be many that will be sensing Cheltenham 2025 coming over the horizon. Three months? It’ll go in a flash!

- TS

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