Monday Musings: Nicholls Clunk and National Disaster?

Last weekend we had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, writes Tony Stafford. In the proceeding Monday’s piece I referred to Willie Mullins’ win haul, speculating without adding that a million Euro plus would have been won. Overall, there was €2 million on offer.

UK trainers and their owners have become so defeatist about the annual annihilation at Cheltenham every March that the thought of challenging them on their home turf at Leopardstown five weeks before C-Day is anathema at best, the road to suicide at worst.

So, even with the riches on offer there, only two UK horses were dispatched across the water, one on each of the days. Nigel Twiston-Davies offered up Weveallbeencaught for the opening 2m6f Grade 1 novice hurdle.

A winner at Cheltenham on New Year’s Day, he started the 7-2 second favourite, just half a point longer than the Barry Connell-trained Good Land, but after making the running under son Sam, he stopped quickly and finished last of eight. In the subsequent veterinary inspection, he was found to have a skinned knee but otherwise no physical abnormalities.

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Day two last Sunday also brought a single runner, the Alan King-trained and double-greens owned Sceau Royal, a 9-1 shot behind 4-1 on favourite Blue Lord in the same ownership. As expected, he couldn’t match the market leader, finishing almost four lengths in arrears, but the other Willie Mullins horse, Gentleman De Mee, did to the tune of seven lengths. Sceau Royal earned connections a handsome consolation €13,500 for his third place in a field of five to bring career earnings to a few quid short of £700k.

Over recent seasons, Paul Nicholls has been loath to travel across to Ireland, scene of so many major triumphs in the past, and he also seems very cautious about sending his best horses to Cheltenham in March. Instead, he favours saving some of the best for Aintree the following month where the invaders do not quite match the ferocity and numerically overwhelming strength of Cheltenham.

But, while an advocate of Aintree generally, his defeatism where the Irish hold sway is also shown with only one entry among 85 in the Grand National, run this year on April 15th. His lone candidate, Threeunderthrufive, was last seen finishing a well-beaten sixth in Warwick’s Classic Chase. More of the Grand National later.

The domestic trials days for Cheltenham in March are mainly at the same track at the end of January – a fixture which almost surreally survived the prevailing frost – and Saturday’s well-endowed card at Newbury.

Nicholls had his team primed for the latter, with nine runners on the seven-race Betfair Hurdle card. His sole entry in that tough handicap hurdle (which he had won with Zarkandar and Pic D’Orhy previously) was Rubard. He was a well-fancied 8-1 shot but, in finishing only tenth, was just one of a series of severe disappointments for the Ditcheat handler.

The Betfair Hurdle was won with determination by Aucunrisque, reverting to hurdling after some good runs in novice chases. He held off the plotted-up favourite Filey Bay, trained by Emmet Mullins and running in the McManus colours, by a hard-fought length. The Gary Moore pair Teddy Blue and Yorksea were a long way back close together in third and fourth but will have big race wins to come I’m sure.

Aucunrisque, well handled by Nick Scholfield, is trained by Chris Gordon, who was once a bit of a comic turn around the Southern jumps tracks and a magnet for the Sky Racing TV cameras and interviewers both before and after his runners performed. He is now anything but – a serious and highly successful trainer who knows how to win big races.

That was the only race in which Nicholls did not send out the favourite and he must have had an early hint that maybe things might not go to plan when McFabulous, 4-6 for the three-runner limited handicap chase which opened proceedings, was never travelling under Harry Cobden and was pulled up a long way from home as Coeur Serein won, Jonjo O’Neill junior for his father taking gleeful advantage. Unfortunately, McFabulous was found afterwards to have an irregular heartbeat.

Next up was Barbados Buck’s in the much-loved Andy Stewart colours, going off 7-2 best in a handicap hurdle. He ran well enough for second and that was the finishing position, too, for Hitman in the Denman Chase, but the Philip Hobbs 16-1 chance Zanza galloped all over him to the tune of seven lengths. This would hardly have encouraged hopes for the Ryanair.

If Hitman’s run was disappointing, Greenatean’s in the four-runner Game Spirit Chase must have been simply demoralising in the Nicholls yard. Rated 15lb superior to Venetia Williams’ Funambole Sivola (off levels), he couldn’t go with him on the run-in and even lost second place to the Tizzards’ Elixir Du Luxe, rated 25lb inferior and only getting 6lb here. The Queen Mother Champion Chase seems to be receding into the distance.

There was another second place from 7-4 favourite Holetown Boy, annihilated in the novice hurdle by a smart Gary Moore debutant, Love Is Golden, recruited from the Johnston stable. Big things can be expected from him.

They can also be anticipated by the winning trainer of the final race, Aslukgoes, who retained an unbeaten record when battling home under Jack Quinlan in the valuable Listed bumper. Nicholls ran two here, 9-4 jolly Meatloaf, who was fifth, and Fire Flyer, 4-1 in seventh. The total prizemoney on offer for the fixture was paltry – in relation to the Irish trials meeting’s riches – at £365k. Nicholls’ owners collected less than ten per cent of that, just over 30 grand.

The Bumper winner was just the second success of the fledgling training career of Ben Brookhouse, whose father Roger owns and bred the horse. I met Ben first when he was assistant to Ian Williams, but last summer he and his father’s horses moved into the yard Wiilie Musson owns in Newmarket. He has followed, among others since Willie retired, James Ferguson, now a Group 1 winning trainer.

Aslukgoes won twice for Williams in summer bumpers, but the style of this success suggests he can be a force for the Brookhouse duo going forward in good company over jumps, maybe stopping off for the Festival Bumper and the Mullins hoards first.

I gave a passing reference to it earlier and on the evidence of this year’s entry for the Grand National, most English, Welsh and Scottish-based trainers can do little more than that these days either.

No race has had a bigger turn-around in the relative fortunes of home and Irish trainers than this greatest of all steeplechases and the unbroken sequence of winning raiders through the past five years looks almost guaranteed to be extended.



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Of 85 entries, only 31 are trained in the UK and no domestic trainer has more than two horses in the field, those twin-prongers being Dan Skelton, previous winner Venetia Williams, Joe Tizzard, Henry Daly and Sam Thomas.

Lucinda Russell was the last UK winner with One For Arthur in 2017, following Mouse Morris a year earlier, but the decade before that was bereft of Irish success. Following Gordon Elliott’s explosion onto the scene with the 2007 winner Silver Birch, I seem to recall before he’d even had an Irish winner in his name, David Pipe, Venetia Williams, Jonjo O’Neill, Donald McCain, Paul Nicholls, Sue Smith, Dr Richard Newland and Oliver Sherwood won in succession.

Now the pendulum has swung so violently to the West that in the 2022 race won so impressively by UK-owned but Irish-trained Noble Yeats, he led home six more Irish and only two home runners in the first nine. Santini, fourth for Polly Gundry then, is not entered this time, but Fiddlerontheroof, fifth, is involved again and has not been seen since disappointing in the Coral, late Ladbrokes, even later Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury last November.

Three-time winner Gordon Elliott, two with Tiger Roll, alone has 21 entries, Willie Mullins eight and the rest of the Irish the remaining 25.

But to my mind, as I’ve said before, eight-year-old Noble Yeats is the one to beat once more. His stamina is outstanding and while we must wait for him to run at Cheltenham in the Gold Cup first, the 10/1 available now looks a gift. Help yourselves!

- TS

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