Monday Musings: Divided

There are different opinions as to whether it was Oscar Wilde or George Bernard Shaw who suggested England and America were two nations divided by a common language, writes Tony Stafford. Once again over 14 races at the Breeders’ Cup in Del Mar, California, horse racing was the common theme, but American dirt is as foreign to European trainers as their own turf seems to be to the Americans.

All weekend, European horses mopped up where they ought to have done but among the stream of fantastic performances in either discipline, I have to nominate Willie Mullins and his extraordinary achievement in winning the Breeders’ Cup Turf with Ethical Diamond.

I never stop hearing from my friend Maurice Manasseh that his son David, who owns half of the top hurdler Ballyburn, swears by anything Willie Mullins tells him. Indeed, if he’d phoned that morning to say he’d walked across the Irish Sea rather than catch a plane to come to Cheltenham, he probably would have believed that too.

I’m sure that the Heffernan family, two of whose members that own Ethical Diamond would also believe that and anything else you told them about Ireland’s greatest jump trainer. His achievements even outdo those of Vincent O’Brien for the few years the great man and former incumbent at Ballydoyle bothered with the winter game.

In May 2022 at Arqana sales, Mullins and his talent spotter Harold Kirk paid €260k for the 11-times-raced Absurde from the stable of Carlos Laffon-Parias on behalf of the same Heffernan-based syndicate that was to own Ethical Diamond.

Within three months the then five-year-old had easily won a novice hurdle then was second to his star stable-companion Vauban in the Copper Horse Handicap at Royal Ascot. Unplaced then at the Galway Festival in a novice hurdle, he beat the high-class stayer Sweet William for the Ebor Handicap and its £300k prize at York.

The following year, 14 months after the other inspired purchase, the magical duo shelled out 320,000gns at Tattersalls July sale for the three-year-old Ethical Diamond a couple of weeks after he had broken his maiden at the third attempt for trainer Michael Wiliam O’Meara.

It took a little longer for him to match the achievement of Absurde, indeed he finished 51 lengths adrift of stable companion Majborough in the 2024 Triumph Hurdle on his third attempt in juvenile hurdles for Mullins. Yet after one run back on the flat, he was backed down to 7/4 for a handicap at Royal Ascot.

He didn’t win that day under Ryan Moore, but he put that to rights again under Ryan at 3/1 this June, and I remember David (and Maurice) telling anyone who would listen that “he’s a certainty”. Ryan was committed to riding a Coolmore horse in the Ebor, so William Buick stepped in and Ethical Diamond gave him an armchair ride in achieving that eye-watering double within two years for trainer and owners.

Moore, no doubt still bemoaning his luck at missing all the rides for Coolmore at the meeting – one winner from the top-class juvenile Gstaad was their return – will probably have been amazed by the performance of his former partner. The same will have gone for William Buick, especially as when he and Rebel’s Romance shot clear in the straight in the attempt to win the Turf race for the third time, it was the horse he’d ridden in the Ebor only a couple of months earlier that denied him.

I mentioned earlier the two nations that are divided by a common language. The otherwise well clued-up main US television experts dismissed the Ebor as “not even a Stakes race”. No boys, it’s just the most valuable handicap in Europe. Also, Jessica Harrington, one of whose former inmates is now being trained in the US, might not have been delighted to learn it “had been trained in England”.

While he has made a habit of winning flat-race races like the Cesarewitch and Ascot Stakes along with the Queen Alexandra Stakes, also at Ascot, Willie is still regarded as a jumps trainer per se. Not now though and I’m sure that while many UK trainers admired his achievement on Saturday, with his first runner at a Breeders’ Cup at the age of 69, they will be dreading his name appearing in many more of our valuable handicaps from now on.

The 28/1 winner was ridden with great confidence, coming from the widest draw of all by Dylan Browne McMonagle, the newly crowned, youthful and very articulate Irish champion jockey, who has been a mainstay of Joseph O’Brien’s team for a few years now.

Meanwhile Mullins and the two Heffernan boys were quickly out to San Diego airport to fly to Australia where Absurde runs in the Melbourne Cup on Tuesday. There’s no reason why the £2.2million prize there should be beyond this versatile performer who has a County Hurdle win at Cheltenham on his dance card.

Kerrin McEvoy, who spent time with Godolphin in the UK, comfortably manages his 8st6lb weight. Vauban, now with Gai Waterhouse and her training partner Adrian Bott, is also in the 24-runner field in the race that stops the nation.

I thought the win of Forever Young for his Japanese connections in the $7 million Classic was tremendous, not just for the result but the fact that the same three horses filled the first three places as they did a year ago.

Then, Forever Young had finished third behind fellow three-year-olds Sierra Leone and Fierceness. Here he overtook Fierceness coming to the last furlong and held off the strong and expected late finish from Sierra Leone. As he had also been only narrowly denied by Mystik Dan and Sierra Leone (nose and the same) in the Kentucky Derby on his earlier US sortie, this was due reward for trainer Yoshito Yahagi, who in 2021 had given Japan two other Breeders’ Cup wins on the same Del Mar track.

The alteration to the programme which has brought the Classic from its place as the climax of the card to having three more races to follow isn’t to everyone’s taste. The last of them, the Filly and Mare Turf, went to the pin up boys of French racing, Francis-Henri Graffard and Mickael Barzalona.

They had teamed up to win the Arc last month with Daryz and the Champion Stakes at Ascot two weekends ago with Calandagan. Now they struck again here with the filly Gezora, winner of the French Oaks in the summer but unplaced in unfavourably soft ground and from a very difficult draw when partnered by Tom Marquand in the Arc. She had been the morning line favourite on Saturday but drifted alarmingly in the market on the race, starting at a rewarding 9/1 as she ran down She Feels Pretty in the last half-furlong, winning by half a length.

She Feels Pretty will travel straight across to Kentucky where she will be offered for sale. Having already collected more than £2 million from eight wins and three second places in only 13 runs, She Feels Pretty will be on most of the big players’ sights.

It was good to see a smart ride by William Buick and a brilliant tactical plan by Charlie Appleby pay off with an easy, drawing-away win for 2024 2,000 Guineas victor Notable Speech in the Mile turf race. He was unluckily beaten a neck behind Diego Velazquez in the Prix Jacques Le Marois at Deauville in the summer.

Sam Sangster and the National Stud where Sangster’s shrewd acquisition will stand as a stallion next year will be delighted to advertise him as having beaten Classic winner Notable Speech in a Group 1 race. Sam won’t be bothered at all that had William Buick got him out of a tangle a couple of strides earlier, that crucial Group 1 win probably would not have happened.

- TS

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