For once, the start of the new turf flat season at Doncaster is not left jettisoned out on its own, writes Tony Stafford. Thanks to the convenient proximity of Easter, Good Friday racing in the UK – they still have refrained from joining in on the holy day in Ireland – features three flat-race programmes this week.
Ranged conveniently geographically apart – in the far north at Newcastle; Home Counties at Lingfield and on turf in the west at Bath – all three are staged on Arena Racing tracks.
I always used to love the early morning Good Friday drive to Lingfield where the All-Weather Championships were held until 2021. Newcastle took over for the keynote fixture last April and for the second instalment, seven “championship” races again carry total prize money of £1,050,000 – one race of £200k, five worth £150k and an opening 3yo Listed of an even £100k.
The last part of the Lingfield approach involved a slow crocodile through the streets of Lingfield village and then location in a massive marquee with some average fare for the invitees. Now Lingfield has a lesser, but still good quality card, entirely of handicaps.
It’s uniform in terms of rating limitations – upper maxima of 80,85,90 or 95 - and with five races of the seven for four-year-olds and upwards, it has been designated the All-Weather Vase meeting.
Last year Chelmsford got the third spot but Bath, where early-season mud is often on offer compared with the hard-baked, non-watered ground that can occur in high summer as it did last year, is back again. This is again a uniform card, another level down in ability terms from Lingfield, with upper ratings respectively of 75, 70, 60, 3 x 55 and a lowest 52 for the seven races.
Lingfield has a total of 173 entered for its septet, with guaranteed money of £65k for four and £45k for the other three, making a total of £375,000 on the day. Maximum fields are guaranteed for five of the races, while a couple might fall a little short.
If anyone doubted how many ordinary horses are in training and how hard owners and trainers are willing to seek a chance to run them, let Bath tell its own story. In race order 42, 30, 72, 80, 66, 47 and 73 horses have been nominated – all handicaps with respectively 17 allowed in each of the first two contests and 14 in the other five. There is no provision for any race division. Total money available to be won here is a straight £200k, including £26,000 apiece for the 0-52 and 0-55’s, and making £1,625,000 for the three meetings on the day.
I wonder whether the Arena management team are happy with their change of venue for the big show. There have been compliments paid about the Tapeta track there in the past but there has not been universal approval of certain aspects of track management in the latest deep winter period. Some trainers have been telling me that the surface has been very different this winter, even vowing not to return.
Maybe that’s why, at Saturday’s five-day stage, only a total of 80 horses were entered for the seven races, collectively worth £1million-plus.
Last year 66 horses contested the seven races on the inaugural Newcastle staging and it does not take much imagination to suggest that it might be hard to match that after the 48-hour stage on Wednesday.
But the most disappointing aspect must be that only four horses are coming from overseas to Gosforth Park. Joseph O’Brien has recent Dundalk wide-margin winner San Andreas in the Mile race while Ado McGuinness has Hood’s Girl, also a Dundalk specialist, in the Fillies’ and Mares’ race, and Harry’s Bar in the Sprint.
Christopher Ferland has recent Chantilly winner Loubeisien entered, also for the Sprint, one of the races in the programme the French used to win for fun in the early Lingfield AW Championship. She is her country’s only entry this time around.
Last year five French and three Irish horses made it to Newcastle, Yann Barberot providing the 10/1 winner of a finish of two short-heads in the 6f Sprint. Joseph O’Brien’s San Andreas finished second in the mile race then, just nosed out by the William Haggas-trained five-year-old My Oberon.
Last week’s article majored on the fact that older horses can have a second rewarding life after being in training in the UK. A year on, San Andreas will be coming back to the North-East to aim at a nice prize. His conqueror from last year has since been moved on to Australia and Annabel Neasham’s stable. Ms Neasham was saying over the winter that she had a host of potential owners waiting to get into ownership of any the horses from Europe that she manages to acquire.
My Oberon was one of those and on Saturday at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, the now six-year-old, running in the ownership names of D F Degenhardt, Hirecha Racing Et Al, which probably encompasses a good proportion of those striving for a piece of the ex-British action, had his finest hour to date.
A winner first time on arriving Down Under in a Group 2 last October, he had a few less rewarding runs until this weekend. Annabel lined him up for the 20-runner Grade 1 handicap, The Star Doncaster Mile and again he was involved in a close finish.
Not quite a nose this time, but a short-head and it made a difference of £955k to D F D and company. Favourite Mr Brightside won it for the Hayes family and Lindsay Park Racing and partners who collected the first prize of £1,3778,000. Neasham’s team were left to slink home with a paltry £423,000 for their trouble and afternoon’s entertainment.
In his UK days, My Oberon took three runs (starting as a late-developing three-year-old) to get off the mark for William Haggas and after that first win he was already rated 109. He never dropped below 108 or reached higher than 114, thus a solid Gr2/Gp3 performer. In his 16 runs in the UK and France he won five and placed five times. He collected £350k, a reasonable figure, which averages out at just north of 20 grand a run, satisfactory enough you would say.
Five outings in Australia have, by comparison, brought spectacular riches to the new owners, who are already up to £563,000 with plenty more to come one would imagine.
Many believe UK and Irish racing are the best equine environments in which to develop talent, but rewards outside the top levels are simply falling behind many other administrations. Owners are almost forced to sell horses of the order of a My Oberon and with what can be earned elsewhere, they do carry a decent sell-on value.
Saturday’s Pertemps Network Lincoln looked an above-average version of the traditional Doncaster flat season curtain-raiser beforehand and the way the first three came away from the rest of the 22-runner line-up suggested it was. It was great to see a revival of form not just for David Menuisier and Migration, a seven-year-old top-weight running off 107, but also for owners the Gail Brown Partnerships.
Gail looks after the winning owners after every race at Goodwood all season but also runs syndicates based on Goodwood. These have been going through a quieter spell, but this big win will have cheered her up.
I say big win, but for a race with the tradition of the Lincoln and its place as the season curtain-raiser it’s a shame to be worth only the same as the average of all seven races at Newcastle on Friday. Migration’s previous most important win came fittingly in a near £40k to the winner race at Goodwood and no doubt if the ground is on the easy side for the May meeting there, he will be back for another crack at one of the bigger pots available.
Until Migration and Benoit De La Sayette breezed past up the stands rail, Awaal for Simon and Ed Crisford, looked like winning a big race on the Saturday after they also came up a little short in a rather more valuable contest in Dubai a week earlier. Their Algiers was second in the Dubai World Cup, picking up £2 million. No doubt Awaal, Arab-owned, will be plying his trade in the Middle East in the future after this fine run off 102.
Doncaster was hard work for the horses and everyone over the weekend, but isn’t it great to have flat racing on turf back again?
I’ll be going to Southwell tomorrow for the first run in the UK for Ray Tooth’s ex-French gelding Sea Urchin, trained by Ian Williams. The champion is booked to ride and I well remember William Buick coming clear down the middle of the track to win on Ray’s filly Catfish at the Glorious Goodwood meeting for Brian Meehan a decade or so ago. I think they will have their work cut out to beat the James Ferguson horse Zoology, but it will be great to see those grey and pink colours on the track again.
- TS
