Tag Archive for: Alphonse Le Grande

Monday Musings: A Mishap for Martin

/in /by

It wasn’t Mullins, Willie or nephew Emmet; nor Gordon Elliott; neither O’Brien, Aidan or Joseph; nor even tricky old Charles Byrnes that was slipping away silently to collect the proceeds from a 33/1 winner of the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch at Newmarket on Saturday, writes Tony Stafford. No, it was that man Martin again.

Tony of that ilk is a mastermind at, in racecourse parlance, having it off. He did under his own name in the Chester Plate (Cup consolation) in May; lost his licence but still had the brass neck to stand grinning alongside his sister Cathy O’Leary – the trainer in name – after the same horse, Alphonse Le Grande, also picked up the Northumberland Plate consolation at Newcastle in June. Martin must have had more than a little influence in Saturday’s even more spectacular coup de grace on Dewhurst Stakes Day.

I would imagine those closest to the horse won a few bob – it’s difficult not to when the SP is 33/1 and presumably in a race that was at least ten short of the optimum figure - and no better for it - they must have got longer than that in the build-up.

It was almost with glee then that on the TV coverage after the photo-finish verdict was announced, Lydia Hislop and Nick Luck counted the whip strikes administered by apprentice rider Jamie Powell and came up with ten, the magic number which would normally be construed as the borderline for disqualification.

Nothing will be finalised until tomorrow when the whip offences committee reviews a case that seemed to satisfy the local stewards and young Powell himself, namely that he did indeed hit Alphonse Le Grande ten times.

The £99k first prize will be a significant loss to the owners, the appropriately named Bet Small Win Big syndicate, but their respective sibling trainers have done them proud collecting three very tough handicaps in the UK this year. Pretty rough justice for the rider, too!

The hapless jockey is no novice. Before this year he had amassed 59 wins in three seasons at home. In that context, only seven more from 171 rides in 2024 when an acceleration might have been expected along with experience, is quite an anomaly.

But nothing like the anomaly where riding for Saturday’s trainer, or indeed her brother when he still held the licence, is concerned. Cathy O’Leary has had an almost equal number of domestic runners on the flat and over jumps in the past period. Until September 5 when En Or won a two-mile handicap at Clonmel, she had not trained a single domestic winner and, until now, it’s En Or from 37 runs. Over jumps, it’s nought from 30, so one from 67 in all.

As to the possibility of a rider/trainer(s) connection, forget it. Young Powell, as I mentioned earlier, has had 171 rides in Ireland this year, yet none from either Mrs O’Leary or her brother. I wonder if the disqualification is confirmed tomorrow whether he’ll be asked to get up on another of their plots.

Plots they surely are. One report suggested Alphonse Le Grande had been down the field in his previous race in Ireland as though it was a rubbish run. His eighth of 30 in the Irish Cesarewitch, worth almost 500k to the winner, represented a very good performance. I just watched the replay, and he was almost the only runner staying on in a race won by Aidan O’Brien’s The Euphrates

In the last furlong and a half, he passed at least half a dozen high-class handicap stayers, many like him laid out to try to win the massive prize. Had there been another 100 yards to run, he would have been fifth.

Anyway, one win in 67 at home: yet two in five for Cathy in the UK. Her Zanndabad came over for the Queen Alexandra at Royal Ascot, started 9/2 favourite and finished sixth under William Buick. Belgroprince accompanied Alphonse Le Grande to Newcastle and finished seventh behind him.

Her final UK runner in that time is probably one to write down in your notebooks or trackers. The 47-rated Jackie Brown came to Hamilton in August and was unplaced in a low-grade handicap.

Since returning home, the filly has had three runs and started 25/1 each time. First it was 14th of 17; next 5th of 12; then last week at Navan she was beaten only half a length in an 18-runner handicap. Remember the name and watch out UK, Cathy might well be coming!

If the result is amended tomorrow, it will mean that never mind the 12-horse Irish assault, the UK will have ended two years of their domination in the race with a 1-2. The Crisfords’ Manxman won the race on the far side by half a length from Ian Williams’ Aqwaam, who looked all over the winner a furlong out. Strong-finishing Alphonse Le Grande nosed ahead on the near side of a race shaped into two halves by Ryan Moore’s guiding Queenstown across as they entered the ten-furlong straight.

Ryan and Aidan had earlier had the disappointment of the withdrawal of overnight odds-on shot The Lion In Winter from the Darley Dewhurst Stakes.

In his absence, once raced, and that only a week earlier, Expanded made a brave battle of it with Godolphin’s Ancient Truth up the stands rail while Shadow Of Light, the other Charlie Appleby runner, switched over from the far side group to get up late in a battle of heads.

All three colts will probably be aimed at a Guineas, though whether it will be in Newmarket, Longchamp or at the Curragh is anyone’s guess at this stage. It didn’t appear there was another City Of Troy in there this year, but you never know and it was a great effort for Shadow Of Light to come back so soon after his emphatic Middle Park Stakes win over Whistlejacket two weeks earlier.

Saturday’s racing for the big teams was almost a half-term break after the excesses of three days of Tattersalls October Yearling sale Book 1.

The board behind the auctioneers shows several currencies in addition to the UK guineas bidding, with Euro, US dollar and Yen to the fore. I am grateful to the Blood Horse for revealing that Newsells Park Stud, owned by Graham Smith-Bernal, grossed almost three times as much as any other vendor, his lots accruing more than $23 million. That’s 17.6 million guineas!

The median figure (the middle when all 400 are laid out from top to bottom was an astonishing 250,000 guineas and the average 340,000 guineas, both records, as was the total turnover of 128 million guineas. That figure beat the 2022 record when 120 more yearlings were catalogued.

Sixteen lots exceeded one million guineas, and two buyers dominated throughout. Amo Racing, in a concerted effort to break into the territory that Kia Joorabchian described as “the province of the home-breeders like Coolmore, Godolphin, Juddmonte and Shadwell”, paid a total of 20 million for 17 yearlings.

Godolphin might be prolific breeders these days, but Sheikh Mohammed and team were also very active, even exceeding Amo Racing’s tallies with 18 yearlings at just over 22 million guineas.

Smith-Bernal, happy for the international break so he could concentrate on his lovely yearlings rather than Tottenham Hotspur FC, sold the most expensive of the lot at 4.4 million for a filly by stallion of the week Frankel, naturally to Amo.

Lots of love, as the ancient Romans and Latin scholars might have said, going around at Tattersalls. And plenty of Amo too!

- TS

Monday Musings: Suspension

/in /by

When is a suspension not a suspension?, writes Tony Stafford. When it is handed down to an Irish trainer, even when at the second attempt the authorities do try to add a little sting to what was originally deemed insufficient punishment. It seems effectively it’s little more than a rap on the knuckles.

We had the Gordon Elliott episode a few years back when Ireland’s second most successful jumps trainer had to give up his licence. With her stable conveniently close by, Mrs Denise Foster, the chosen one to carry on business at Cullentra Stables, had her transfer rubber-stamped and approved by the authorities. She recorded 17 and 32 wins in the seasons 2020/21 and 2021/22 which spanned Elliott’s 12-month ban.

A licence-holder since 1997/98, Denise must have shown something to Gordon that the stats did not reveal. Her seasonal tallies since that opening date had been 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 1, 3, 1, 1, 1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2, 3, 4, 2, 0, 1 and 1. Since the Elliott days it’s been back to normal with 2, 2, and 0 so far in the early phase of the 2024/25 campaign.

Therefore, Mrs Foster recorded a total 38 wins in 26 seasons in her own right, against 49 in the segments of seasons that Gordon left her.

I remember thinking at the time, maybe there should be a “cooling-off” period when – say another season – when while the returning trainer can seek out new owners - and horses to train for them - those animals left with a substitute, and clearly not a “serious” trainer in terms of an Elliott or Willie Mullins, would need to find elsewhere for their horses to be trained for that period. Maybe even to stay with the “convenient other” that had them before that period.

Elliott, at least, was fully remorseful for his actions and vowed never to repeat anything like that again and has certainly come back keeping to that promise. He is now firing again and if not managing, as had seemed possible in the past, to wrest the champion title accolade away from Willie Mullins, he continues to make a decent show of it. That was something that had seemed most unlikely at the height of his “dead horse on the gallops” picture infamy.

If the Elliott ban had its irritating elements through the Foster months, even more so was the brief suspension of Charles Byrnes, king of the unsighted gambles. He lost his mandate but was still able to lead horses around the paddock while one of his sons held the licence and another rode it to victory. What part of that was “not training” the horse.

But now, Tony Martin has eclipsed all of that with Saturday’s victory of Alphonse Le Grande in the Northumberland Vase, consolation race for the Northumberland Plate at Newcastle.

Initially given only a suspended six-month ban for a third drug-related breach of regulations within four years, the Irish racing powers relented in face of criticism of the leniency of the judgment and imposed three of the six-month ban to start on May 15.

Martin had time therefore to bring Alphonse Le Grande over to Chester a week or so earlier to mop up the valuable consolation race to the Chester Cup and after his performance there, few at Newcastle on Saturday expected anything other than another success and almost £40k more of UK prizemoney for the Hollie Doyle-partnered stayer.

It was almost laughable how easy it was, and additionally it was notable for the fact that trainer Cathy O’Leary was having her first flat-race winner for 15 years and only the fourth in 20 seasons with a licence. And who is Mrs O’Leary? Tony Martin’s sister of course!

By contrast with Ms O’Leary, Denise Foster’s career had been almost prolific.

The sight of Martin standing alongside a couple of the winning owners and Hollie Doyle on the rostrum, evoked a “Sod you lot” attitude. I’m not sure whether it was before or after the presentation that one of the owners, asked what the plan was, said: “We’ll give it a couple of weeks and then sit down with Tony”. Martin’s ban still would have a month to go at that stage – no mention of the official trainer.

Martin, no doubt, would love to target next month’s Ebor at York, with its massive prizemoney. He won it eight years ago with Heartbreak City, half-brother to the Geegeez.co.uk money-spinner Coquelicot, but having won here off 81, he would need at least a stone’s hike to get into the York race and even then, it would be a stretch.

Maybe Goodwood’s valuable 1m6f Coral Handicap could be an obvious target with another potential £51k on offer to the winner. That would entail a 4lb penalty for York, but unless the first hike is more extravagant than is likely, even with a win at Goodwood he would still likely be left on the sidelines. Never mind Tone, the richly-endowed Irish Cesarewitch, worth £324,000 to the winner last year and a race he would probably squeeze into off a mark in the low 90’s, might be the way to go.

After his ban, in an interview recalling how his career had developed, Gordon Elliott said: “When I first sat on a horse at Tony Martin’s 30 years ago, I could never have dreamt what was in store”. Maybe neither could his then youthful first employer.

Sanity resumed in Ireland’s premier Classic yesterday when Los Angeles battled to turn around Epsom form with Ambiente Friendly to give Aidan O’Brien and part-owner Michael Tabor each their 16th triumph in the race.

There was a battle between the pair up the home straight and it was not until the last half-furlong that Los Angeles and Ryan Moore got the better of his brave rival, ridden by Rab Havlin, to clinch the €712k first prize. Late on, fast-finishing Sunway, partnered by Oisin Murphy for David Menuisier, edged out Ambiente Friendly. Fourth home Matsuri, for Roger Varian/James Doyle, was also staying on well. That late run increased Sunway’s prize from €112k to €237k.

Initially, the result gives a major boost to the Derby form when City of Troy had the placed pair well covered, and that will have added confidence to his chance of beating his elders in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.

But Sunway’s performance, following his 7th last time in the Prix du Jockey Club, is also an advertisement for the unbeaten winner of that race, Look De Vega. In traditional Gallic fashion, this potential champion can do the favoured French thing over the summer – waiting for the Arc while the other main contenders beat their brains out at Sandown, Ascot and York. Intriguing.

- TS