Monday Musings: Fours, and All Sorts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

- TS

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