Monday Musings: Plus Ca Change

Plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose, writes Tony Stafford. Save an accent or two – if cedillas and circumflex accents can be found on my keyboard, they’ve escaped me so far – but you get my drift. And I’m not going to lead off with Futurity win number 12 and an eighth British flat-race trainer’s title for Aidan O’Brien either.

It’s 25 years since my The Daily Telegraph Pocket Racing Guide, with the secondary title of the Inside Track on Horseracing, was published by Collins Willow, with a much-valued foreword by Henry Cecil.

Back then I took the opportunity to select three figures who I thought had been fundamental in making a major impact on the sport at the end of the 1990s. In bookmaking, it was Victor Chandler, who is no longer associated with the BetVictor brand that he developed.

Victor was far-sighted in transferring his business to Gibraltar, offering a cut-price betting tax rate of three per cent along with free telephone calls to his UK clients, rather than the nine per-cent prevailing at the time in the UK. Now, it seems, the desperate Rachel from accounts, Chancellor of the Exchequer, wants to bring back a tax on all betting on racing, off-course and on.

Then I picked Lord Hartington, who four years later inherited the title, Duke of Devonshire. ”Stoker” as he is universally known, was the man who presided over the transfer of racing power from the Jockey Club to the British Horseracing Board (now Authority), and as I suggested, was one of the trio that helped drag the sport from the 19^th into the 21^st Century.

Why plus ca change, then? Well number three was Peter Savill, then the recently appointed boss of the fledgling BHB, whom I described all those years ago as “much-criticised but highly independent … and the ideal man to preside over the technological revolution.”

Savill’s premise at the time was that racing needed to receive a greater share of betting revenue. Twenty-five years on, the issue remains the same and the news this weekend that Savill, along with UK racing’s most winning trainer Mark Johnston, have both joined the board of the Racehorse Owners Association, promises to shake things up.

He says he joined the board, on Johnston’s suggestion, as he felt it would give him more influence than he has managed to achieve with his own Professional Racing Association. He said that racecourses’ attitude seemed to be: “You’re not part of the industry.” “Well now we are!”

Savill, who ran the BHB for six years, promises to be unashamedly “strident”, a word often attributed to him as he enters his new role. The owner of Plumpton racecourse and a horse owner for many years, with a good few of them with Mark Johnston, he’s never been frightened of shaking a few trees, so the other disparate strands of racing’s establishment might well have a serious standard-bearer to line up alongside.

Peter’s aim remains the same: increasing prizemoney and he has firm ideas on how to move towards that ambition. I wish him well and have no doubt that he and co-new boy Mark of the 5,000 plus wins and the “Always Trying” slogan, will never give up in helping achieve their admirable objectives.

**

Okay, so now to Aidan O’Brien. It was salutary that only two UK-trained horses contested the final Group 1 race of the UK season at Doncaster on Saturday and even more so when those two had already been left toiling and trailing after the two-furlong mark.

The Futurity has now been won by O’Brien for his Coolmore partners in 12 of the last 27 years. This time, the one-two-three of Hawk Mountain, Action and Benvenuto Cellini pushed him comfortably over the £8 million plus earnings which put him £800k clear of the persistent Andrew Balding, The latter would have provided one possibly more dangerous challenger in Item, but unsuitably testing ground caused his absence.

Hawk Mountain was promoted immediately after to 8/1 favouritism for the Derby next June, supplanting Benvenuto Cellini, but with so many smart staying types in his stable, it seems foolish to want to commit to backing any of them at this stage.

To illustrate that point, the winner Hawk Mountain was one of 37 juveniles (25 colts) listed in the O’Brien team of juveniles to be sired by their recently deceased champion stallion Wootton Bassett. Second and third are among ten by Frankel in that list. Frankel, unbeaten in his 14 races for Sir Henry Cecil, is of course a son of the peerless Galileo who died three years ago. No wonder the team has been keen to acquire progeny from that Juddmonte stallion.

So then it was off to France yesterday and Saint-Cloud where the two feature races, both Group 1 contests for two-year-olds, were the target. The Criterium International and Criterium de Saint-Cloud, over one mile and one and a quarter miles respectively, each had multiple O’Brien runners. Also each carried a winner’s prize equivalent to £118k.

Unsurprisingly, Puerto Rico, the mount of Christophe Soumillon, started the short-priced favourite in the International following his easy success in the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere on Arc Day. He lived up to that with a comfortable success, by almost two lengths from Jean-Claude Rouget’s Campasite. It almost goes without saying that he is another by Wootton Bassett and will be a contender for next year’s 2,000 Guineas.

As I mentioned earlier, it might be foolish to move too soon in Derby betting. One at least as convincing contender must be Pierre Bonnard. The recent Zetland Stakes winner over 1m2f at Newmarket had the proven stamina to win the Criterium de Saint-Cloud over the same trip and showed it along with a great finishing burst to draw easily clear. A double then for Belgian rider Soumillon, at his best on his normal hunting ground.

While O’Brien has more than £8 million earnings when top in the UK and Euro 7m in his home country, yesterday’s double keeps him in a clear third behind Francis-Henri Graffard and Fabre with more than £4.5 million in France – thus in total around £20 million in Europe’s three main racing nations.

Earlier the Prix Perth went to a less fashionable UK-based team, that of trainer David Loughnane and jockey Laura Pearson. The Shropshire-based handler’s five-year-old mare Sparks Fly, a non-winner previously in 2025 but successful at this Parisian track last November, won this Group 3 race very easily from the Andre Fabre-trained favourite. Sparks Fly clearly loves it when the mud flies!

Incidentally, if you would love to own a colt by Wootton Bassett, there are five slated on the first day of Tattersalls October Horses in Training sale, due to be offered today. They are Choir Boy (lot 87), Grafton Street (91), Ex Animo (226), Estoublon (229) and Genealogy (293).

The highest-rated in the draft are Mount Kilimanjaro (by Siyouni), lot 300, rated 110 and Shackleton, a staying son of Camelot (296) who is officially rated 108. If you are planning a trip there to try to buy one of these, remember withdrawals are possible up until time of sale.

With some opportunities later in the year beckoning in the Far East, O’Brien is limbering up with a potent force for the Breeders’ Cup at Del Mar on Friday and Saturday this week. I’m sure the Editor has given you plenty of his thoughts to excuse my not delving into matters too deeply, but such as Precise, True Love, Gstaad, Minnie Hauk, The Lion In Winter and Bedtime Story offer lots of potential to say the least.

- TS

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