Charlie Appleby and William Buick picked up where they left off on day two of the July Festival at Newmarket, with King’s Charter swooping late to land the £100,000 Bet365 Handicap.
Following a Thursday treble for the Moulton Paddocks team that featured Buick’s 2,000th winner in Britain, King’s Charter was the 9-4 favourite for Friday’s curtain-raiser, having opened his account at the third attempt on his first start as a three-year-old at Doncaster last month.
Charlie Johnston’s Marhaba Ghaiyyath kicked for home a long way out and proved a tough adversary, but Buick timed his challenge to perfection aboard King’s Charter, who just proved speedier in the finish and passed the post with three-quarters of a length in hand.
Appleby said: “We felt the step up to 10 furlongs would hopefully see a bit of improvement, which was going to be needed at a meeting like this, and he’s duly obliged with that.
“I’d probably say he’s still a handicapping type at the moment. We’ll see what the handicapper does and see where he lines up with (going to) Meydan.
“It’s that time of year – from July onwards we start to put our team together for Meydan. Whether he’s a horse that fits that bill, we’ll see.
“Is he a Group horse? Probably not really, but he’s a nice handicapper.”
Appleby and Buick were denied a double in the other £100,000 handicap on the card after Endless Victory was reeled in by Oneforthegutter (12-1) in the bet365 Trophy.
The winner would have been an unlucky loser with Silvestre de Sousa all locked up with nowhere to go at one stage – but when he brought Ian Williams’ charge, who had been second in the race last year, down the centre of the track he quickened up to win by half a length.
Williams also saddled the third home Real Dream, while his 11-4 favourite Dancing In Paris weakened into eighth place after making much of the running.
The trainer said: “Unfortunately Dancing In Paris got very keen with Marco (Ghiani) and I was actually tearing my hair out and not really noticing the other two were creeping into the race.
“Oneforthegutter is an amazing little horse. We bought him as a breeze-up, he won his first start as a two-year-old and he’s still going in one-mile-six-furlong races now at six.
“He was a fantastic third in the Ebor last year, the problem is the handicapper is probably going to put up a few pounds now and I didn’t think he was particularly well handicapped coming into today.
“Things will only get tougher for him, but there’s plenty of opportunities for these horses and we’ll make the most of them.”
David O’Meara and Rossa Ryan combined to land the Dubai Racing Club Handicap with Leadman (12-1), with the concluding debenhams.com Handicap going to 17-2 chance Emperor Spirit, trained by Michael Keady and ridden by Marco Ghiani.
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Charlie Appleby will continue to take “baby steps” with Opera Ballo after the exciting colt claimed his fourth victory from five starts in the Edmondson Hall Solicitors Sir Henry Cecil Stakes at Newmarket.
The son of Ghaiyyath made a huge impression winning his first two starts on the all-weather at Kempton and while he disappointed behind the brilliant Field Of Gold when well fancied for the Craven Stakes in April, he bounced back with a comprehensive Listed success at Sandown the following month.
Having since sidestepped Royal Ascot, Opera Ballo was the 11-8 favourite to continue his progression on the July course – and while he was giving 3lb to some smart rivals under William Buick, the result never really looked in doubt as he cruised two and three-quarter lengths clear of Seagulls Eleven.
Appleby said: “It’s easy to say after the event, but I’d have been disappointed if he’d got beat to be honest. He’s a very exciting horse we thought a lot of in the spring and even in the winter to be fair.
“He shows signs of his father as he’s a strong-minded horse, but he’s a great galloper and has got a big engine.
“People asked why we didn’t run him over seven furlongs in the Jersey (at Royal Ascot), but if you come back in trip and try to put speed in these sort of horses you can lose them and that’s the last thing I want to do, because I think he’s actually going to end up being a 10-furlong horse.”
Considering future plans, the trainer added: “He’s a horse we’ll keep taking baby steps with.
“At home you can put him in front or put him in behind and he just does as he’s asked, but when he turns up here (on a racecourse) he’s a different beast.
“He’s got to learn to do it the right way, I think he’ll have learnt a lot today and we might take him to Deauville for a Group Three.
“I know it sounds boring and people have asked why we haven’t been a bit punchier, but I’m very much working back from next year with him and I want to nurse him along so next year we have a horse that we can go to war with.
“This horse can gallop, there’s no doubt about that, but he’s got to learn to do it the right way on the racetrack.”
Opera Ballo rounded off an excellent day’s work for Appleby and Buick, with the pair enjoying a treble on the card and Buick riding his 2,000th winner in Britain aboard El Cordobes in the feature Princess of Wales’s Stakes.
The middle leg of the hat-trick was provided by Crimson Rose (7-2), who confirmed debut promise with a four-length verdict in the British Stallion Studs EBF Maiden Fillies’ Stakes.
“The highlight of the day has been William riding his 2,000th winner in Britain and from our point of view it’s been a great day for the team,” said Appleby.
“Crimson Rose is a filly who has obviously stepped up from Chelmsford with experience. We came here hopeful more than confident, she’s a neat little filly who shows a bit of natural pace at home and the experience under her belt from Chelmsford has probably stood her in good stead,” said Appleby.
“I wouldn’t be bold enough to say she’s a stakes filly, so we’ll see how we go.”
Marco Botti’s Prince Of India (7-1) was a decisive winner of the Bet Boost At bet365 Handicap and the Newmarket-based Italian feels there could be more to come from his charge in the autumn.
Botti said: “For a while I thought this would be the race for him, but beforehand I had my doubts with the ground. We had a little bit of rain on Monday, but since then it’s been so hot and I hoped it wouldn’t be too quick for him.
“I think with the stiff finish up the hill he got away with it, but when he gets a little bit more give in the ground I think he has a little bit more to offer and there’ll be a bit more to come from him.
“Six furlongs is probably about right – he’s definitely got plenty of toe.”
The concluding Federation Of Bloodstock Agents Handicap went to Charlie Johnston’s 14-1 shot Dutch Decoy, with Jack Mitchell the winning rider.
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/2.80958646-scaled.jpg12802560Geegeez Newshttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngGeegeez News2025-07-10 16:52:362025-07-10 16:52:36Opera Ballo ‘very exciting’ – but Appleby determined to take it slowly
Charlie Appleby’s Notable Speech is to have his first race over six furlongs in the Al Basti Equiworld July Cup at Newmarket on Saturday.
Last year’s 2000 Guineas winner impressed connections enough in a gallop over the weekend to earn his place in the premier sprint.
A post on Godolphin’s X account read: “Update from Moulton Paddocks: Following a very pleasing piece of work over the weekend, the decision has been made to supplement Dubawi’s 2,000 Guineas hero Notable Speech for the G1 July Cup @NewmarketRace.”
🇬🇧 Update from Moulton Paddocks: Following a very pleasing piece of work over the weekend, the decision has been made to supplement Dubawi's 2,000 Guineas hero Notable Speech for the G1 July Cup @NewmarketRacepic.twitter.com/pPIA1MoBuW
Since he made his debut on the all-weather in January 2024, Notable Speech has been campaign exclusively over a mile, with his career highlight coming on the Rowley Mile last May.
At the time he was still unbeaten and while he has found things tougher since then, he did win the Sussex Stakes at Goodwood.
This season he has been fourth in both the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury and the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot.
Notable Speech features among 16 contenders for the July Cup following the confirmation stage and is one of two supplementary entries for owners Godolphin, with Sheikh Mohammed’s operation also stumping up the required £36,000 to add John and Thady Gosden’s Jersey Stakes runner-up Spy Chief to the field.
Symbol Of Honour (centre) is another leading contender for Charlie Appleby (Steven Paston/PA)
The Godolphin blue could also be carried by Notable Speech’s stablemate Symbol Of Honour, who has won four of his five starts this year and was last seen edging out Arabian Dusk in the Group Two Sandy Lane Stakes at Haydock in May.
Andrew Balding’s Flora Of Bermuda, who finished third in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes at Royal Ascot, is one of three potential runners for Wathnan Racing along with the Tom Clover-trained Rogue Lightning and Night Raider from Karl Burke’s yard.
The latter faltered after making much of the running in the King Charles III Stakes at the Royal meeting and his trainer hopes he can fare better over a furlong further this weekend.
Burke said: “Night Raider is a very quick horse, there’s no doubt about it, but I think he’s a horse that likes to get into a rhythm and he’s more chance of getting into that rhythm over six furlongs than he does over five.
“I think over five at the top level they jump and go so hard early and he’s a horse that likes to jump and get into a nice rhythm, which I think he has more chance of doing over six and he obviously can stay seven as well.
“Six is the ideal trip, whether he’s up to a Group One at this stage of his career we’ll find out on Saturday.”
Other leading hopes include Kevin Ryan’s Inisherin, Aidan O’Brien’s Whistlejacket and top-class mare Believing, who is in foal to Frankel and is set to make her final career start before retirement for trainer George Boughey.
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A belated step up in trip is likely for Ruling Court following his Royal Ascot reversal, with both the Coral-Eclipse and the Grand Prix de Paris under consideration.
Charlie Appleby’s 2000 Guineas hero was slated for an immediate leap up to a mile and a half for the Derby before being withdrawn on the day at Epsom and subsequently remained at a mile for an all-star rematch with Newmarket runner-up Field Of Gold in the St James’s Palace Stakes.
However, after seeing his Rowley Mile rival turn around the Guineas form in style, Appleby is now relishing the next stage of his career up in distance, despite also being eager to see how the cards fall into place before playing his hand.
“We’re very much letting the dust settle but the signs are he has very much come out of the race well,” said Appleby.
The son of Justify already has a Classic to his name (David Davies for the Jockey Club/PA)
“We’ll see where respective winners from the whole meeting go in respects to where we may head. Ombudsman was of course very impressive in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and it will be interesting to see where John and Thady (Gosden) steer him towards.
“We’ve mooted an Eclipse with our fellow but I’m not afraid of going straight up to a mile and a half which we were going to do in the Derby and we have got the option of the Grand Prix de Paris.
“It’s your last option against three-year-olds so that could be a nice race to take a look at, but we’ll let a bit more dust settle before we confirm a plan.”
While Ruling Court may be heading up in distance, it appears likely Appleby’s other Classic scorer Desert Flower will be dropping back in trip after her third at Epsom in the Oaks.
Desert Flower was beaten when favourite for the Oaks (David Davies for the Jockey Club/PA)
Sent off the 11-10 favourite after a sublime performance on her return in the 1000 Guineas, the challenge of Epsom on rain-softened ground ultimately proved too much, with the Moulton Paddocks handler happy to give her as much time as necessary to recover from her Oaks exertions.
“You know she’s had a race at Epsom for sure and as I’ve said previously the ground and the track were the undoing of us,” added Appleby.
“It might have looked like she stayed but I don’t think she did being brutally honest, or didn’t stay well enough for that level.
“I’m going to give her a little bit of time and there’s plenty of options for her at a mile and a mile and a quarter. She’s a filly who owes us nothing and for now we will give her plenty of time.”
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2.79963142-1-scaled.jpg12802560https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.png2025-06-22 10:22:352025-06-22 10:22:35Ruling Court to step up in trip after Ascot defeat
Globetrotting star Rebel’s Romance belatedly got Charlie Appleby off the mark at Royal Ascot this year with a typically determined display in the Hardwicke Stakes.
A dual winner of the Breeders’ Cup Turf, a multiple Group One victor in Germany and also successful at the highest level in Dubai and Hong Kong, the seven-year-old secured his biggest victory on home soil to date in last month’s Yorkshire Cup and he was a 6-4 shot to follow up under William Buick.
Favourite backers will have had few concerns, with Rebel’s Romance travelling strongly throughout and he found plenty up the straight to score comfortably by a length and three-quarters from Al Riffa, with Ghostwriter third.
Appleby, who had not saddled a Royal Ascot winner since 2022 and had seen well-fancied horses like Notable Speech, Ruling Court, Cinderella’s Dream and Treanmor beaten this week, was relieved to get himself into the big-race winner’s enclosure.
REBEL'S ROMANCE wins The Hardwicke Stakes for Charlie Appleby. Congratulations to connections. pic.twitter.com/yZACYlrGzq
“Rebel’s Romance is a worldwide superstar. I’ve got a picture of this fellow on my bedside table. He means that much to us all,” said the Moulton Paddocks handler.
“He’s the only horse I know that you can take to Hong Kong and he’ll get you into any bar and restaurant! You can get in anywhere on the back of Rebel’s Romance.
“As William says, he’s his best friend and they have that great rapport there. You couldn’t get two more willing partners together.
“I have to give credit to the team at home. When you have an older horse, to keep them sound and keep them going, for him to have his enthusiasm year after year at this level.
“As they get older they all taper, as we all do, that’s expected. He might get a bit slower but his enthusiasm and his heart does not falter one iota.”
Rebel’s Romance and William Buick return to the winner’s enclosure (John Walton/PA)
Reflecting on the week, Appleby added: “You can come here thinking you’re fully loaded and have great chances, and you can walk away with excuses, but that’s racing. I would like to think that we compose ourselves well, we take it on the chin and then we look forward to moving on.
“Once something comes to Rebel’s Romance, he finds. You very rarely get a horse that when it gets into the red, he still goes.
“If there was one horse that you were having to roll your last dice on in this game, it was going to be him. Win, lose or draw he’s going to go out there and go out on his sword for you.”
Joseph O’Brien was proud of the performance of runner-up Al Riffa, saying: “Fantastic run, probably unlucky to meet a horse like Rebel’s Romance in that race, but we’re very proud of our horse, who is a real star for us and he’s run his legs off for us again today.
“Hopefully there will be plenty more big days with him to come this season. He’s a beautiful horse and he always runs to a rating not too far off 120, and it’s hard to find horses like that.
“I wouldn’t be against trying a little bit further with him – he’s got plenty of stamina in his pedigree. I think we’ll probably think outside the box with him a little bit now.”
The Clive Cox-trained Ghostwriter was sold for £2million on the eve of the Royal meeting and shaped with plenty of encouragement in his first start in the Amo Racing colours.
Kia Joorabchian now owns Ghostwriter (Mike Egerton/PA)
Owner Kia Joorabchian said: “That was the first time at that trip (mile and a half) and I think he has handled that trip very well.
“I’m definitely not disappointed because probably that’s one of his best runs ever. Clearly he’s got very strong heart and I think he’s going to give us a lot of fun.”
On what the future holds for the four-year-old, he added: “He like the (fast) ground so maybe somewhere like America, Australia, those kinds of places he’d relish.
“No decisions from us, but we are very pleased with his run and I think he’s managed to prove that the amount that we invested in him was worth it.
“Of course you’d like to win, but being beaten by a horse that has won the Sheema Classic, the Breeders’ Cup, big races in Qatar, that horse is a massive horse and I’m happy for Charlie – he’s broken his duck before me!”
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Saba Desert made no mistake on debut to take the British Stallion Studs EBF Maiden Stakes for Charlie Appleby at Sandown.
The Godolphin-owned and bred colt is by Dubawi and out of Finespun, a daughter of Luca Cumani’s Irish 1,000 Guineas winner Gossamer.
Godolphin and Appleby chose the same race as a career starting point for Native Trail in 2021, who went on to win two Group Ones by the end of his two-year-old year and was the Irish 2,000 Guineas winner the following term.
Now then … 👀
Dubawi colt 𝐒𝐚𝐛𝐚 𝐃𝐞𝐬𝐞𝐫𝐭 makes a most impressive racecourse debut @Sandownpark 🔥
Those are big shoes to fill, but under William Buick the 4-7 favourite looked potentially nice in prevailing by three-quarters of a length to get his own juvenile campaign under way.
“It was important to get some cover on him and do everything as you’d want to first time out,” Buick said.
“He’s a very fast horse, with a good attitude and a good mind in everything he does. I was very pleased with what he did there.
“He’s got plenty of pace. When you ask him, he’s there for you. He’s a very talented colt.”
Rising Power also made a winning start in the British EBF Novice Stakes, to give Godolphin, Appleby and Buick a double.
The Wootton Bassett colt was sent off as the 1-2 favourite over a bare-minimum five-furlong trip.
Rising Power kick-started a Godolphin double (Adam Davy/PA)
He found an adversary in Rod Millman’s 2-1 chance Killavia, but after the two locked horns it was Rising Power who took a three-quarter-length verdict.
“He was very gutsy. It was a little bit harder work than I probably would have liked or expected, but he’s a horse that probably wants six furlongs now, or even seven,” Buick told Racing TV.
“He ran against some speedy types there and showed his quality, that’s always good to have, he battled on and kept responding the whole way.
“He’s not the biggest horse, but he’s got a big heart.”
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After the thrills and many spills of the Cheltenham Festival attention now turns to the start of the turf flat season, writes Dave Renham. Saturday 29th March is the starting date this year and the crowds will descend on Doncaster for a card that includes the first big handicap of the season, the Lincoln. In this article I am going to look at some early season trainer form and trends. Data are taken from 2019 to 2025, although in 2020 there was no flat racing in the early part of the season due to Covid.
Selected Trainers: First Ten Runs
We see in the racing press plenty of stats connected with a trainer’s recent form, be it the last seven, 14 or 30 days, or their last ‘x’ number of runs. For some punters this information is really important and forms an integral part of their selection process. With that in mind, one question I am keen to address in this article is connected with recent trainer form. I want to try and establish whether the first few runs of the season from a particular stable is indicative of how their runners perform up to the end of April. Also, I will be looking at whether a similar level of performance each year is achieved by trainers up to the end of the first full month of the season. I just would like to clarify that the data shared in this piece has been collated starting from the day of the first turf flat meeting through to the 30th April in each season.
In order to make this piece manageable I have decided to focus on a selected group of trainers who tend to have a good number of entries in the early weeks of the season. This includes some of the big guns, namely Charlie Appleby, William Haggas and John/Thady Gosden.
My starting point was to work out the PRB (Percentage of Rivals Beaten) figures for each trainer over their first ten runs of each season. I felt that using the PRBs would be the most accurate way of determining how well a stable was performing over those ten runs. Clearly, I could have used win strike rate but over such a small sample size we could potentially get a blurred picture of how well the horses are actually running. Here are my findings.
N.B. I have combined the figures for the Johnston stable although of course Charlie Johnston is now in sole charge:
Early Season Trainer Form: Selected trainers' PRB figures
Before doing a comparison with their records up to the end of April for each year, the table does highlight that we cannot guarantee exactly how well each stable will get out of the blocks each season. Taking Richard Hannon as one example, in 2023 his first ten runners of the turf season hit a PRB of only 0.46, but last year in 2024 it was up at a huge 0.83. Likewise, the Johnston stable has seen wide variances with three PRBs below 0.35 and two hitting 0.65 and above. Now of course ten runs is a small sample but by using PRBs it does give us a better idea of the very early form of a specific stable compared with other metrics. I believe the numbers shared in this table also help to highlight that each year is different and even if stables traditionally start the season quickly, there will be years that for whatever reason things will progress more slowly. And of course, vice versa.
Selected Trainers: To End of April
Let's now take a look at the annual PRBs for each trainer covering the start of the turf flat up to the end of April. Essentially, for most years this equates to roughly the first five weeks of the season.
Early season trainer form: up to end April annually
As might be expected, fluctuations year by year in the PRBs are now less pronounced due to the much bigger datasets, although two of Charlie Appleby’s figures differ quite markedly - from 0.81 in 2022 down to 0.63 in 2024. Likewise, the Gosden stable saw a big difference between their 2019 figure of 0.71 and their 2023 one of 0.51.
Now that we have these two sets of figures we can try to address the earlier question of whether the first few runs of the season from a particular yard are indicative of how their runners will perform up to the end of April. In order to do this, I have picked out some of the trainers to analyse in more detail.
Specific Trainers: Early Season Form
Charlie Appleby
If we look at Charlie Appleby’s performance with his first ten runners in 2019, 2022 and 2024 we can see he has quite well aligned PRB figures (0.62, 0.64 and 0.66). In 2019 and 2024 he maintained a similar level of performance up to the end of April hitting 0.66 and 0.63. However, in 2022, his PRB figure for the longer timeframe soared to 0.81. That year he had 23 winners from 55 runners up to April 30th equating to a strike rate of just under 42%. From those similar starting PRBs in 2019 and 2024 he managed a longer-term strike rate of 29.2% and 29% respectively. It is difficult to say why those early five or so weeks of 2022 panned out so well for the stable compared with 2019 and 2024 when they started off in the same vein. It perhaps underlines how challenging it can be to predict future trainer form based on a smallish sample of runs.
Mick Appleby
Next for the microscope is Mick Appleby. The graph below shows the comparison:
Mick Appleby: early season form, 2019-2024
The graph shows that Appleby has been consistent in terms of overall performance in the weeks up to April 30th (the orange line) - four of the five years saw PRB figures within a very small band ranging from 0.44 to 0.46. In 2022 he did have a better overall start to the season hitting 0.53 over those first few weeks, and that year he had started fast with a 0.63 figure for his first ten runners. The 2023 season saw an even better start with a 0.66 10-run figure, but that form tailed off quickly ending up at 0.46 for the longer time frame. Looking at this data tells me that the first ten runs of the year for Mick Appleby would not necessarily have given us a good guide to how the next few weeks would have panned out for his runners.
Going back to his PRB figures for all runs up to 30th April, despite having similar ones, the correlation with the win strike rates is not completely ‘positive’ as the graph below shows:
Mick Appleby: early season win strike rate comparison
Yes, the best year was 2022, (16.1%), which correlates with the highest PRB figure of 0.53, but there is a big variance between 2019’s strike rate of 14.3% compared with 2023’s 3.2% figure. This is despite having very similar PRB figures in those two years (0.44 and 0.46 respectively).
As with all metrics, any single one does not necessarily give us the best picture. Clearly in 2019 and 2023 the Appleby runners were generally running at the same level overall – the PRB figures show that. However, in terms of winning races 2019 saw many more winners than 2023.
This type of number crunching is an excellent reminder of why racing can be difficult to profit from. Let’s imagine for example we back 20 horses to win in one month, if all of them run really well but all finish second, we still would have lost all 20 bets.
Andrew Balding
Next is Andrew Balding. Again, I have graphed the comparison between the PRB of the first ten runners with that of all runners to the end of April each year.
Andrew Balding early season form: comparison of first 10 runs with all to end April
2021, 2022 and 2023 mirrored each other with both the 10-run PRBs and the all runs to end of April PRBs very close together. In 2019 and 2024 we saw a similar pattern, with the stable flying out of the blocks in those first 10 runs and then slipping back to more normalised figures based on a larger sample.
When looking at those early weeks of the season up to the end of April, Balding does tend to perform at a similar level year on year. If we look at his win strike rate from the start of the season up to the end of April, we can see that in four of the five years they were between 17 and 19%:
There is positive correlation between the PRB figures and the win strike rate in those four years. We saw earlier with Mick Appleby that we don’t always get that positive correlation, and for Balding the 2022 figures paint a similar story. That year saw a lower strike rate despite a similar PRB figure to other years. This highlights once again why it is a good idea, where possible, to look at more than one metric when analysing a set of results in order to get a broader and better overview.
Tim Easterby
Tim Easterby has a lot of runners but his overall strike rate year on year is quite low, both early in the season and taking the season as a whole. Hence his first 10-run PRB figures are the lowest of the trainers mentioned taking the five years as a whole. 2022 saw a poorer start than usual but, by the end of April, he had pulled back to very similar five-week figures as achieved in other years.
Looking at his PRBs for those early weeks up to the end of April, we can see that there is only 0.04 between the highest and lowest ones. Essentially, at the beginning of the season, Easterby has followed a similar pattern every year with similar outcomes. Not surprisingly his win strike rate up to the end of April each year has been low as the table shows:
Tim Easterby early season win strike rate
Personally, I rarely back Tim Easterby horses even if they appear to have ticks in several boxes. For me, finding good value in his team is tricky. On the plus side, his patterns of performance rarely surprise us.
William Haggas
William Haggas has had very consistent longer-term PRB figures (up to the end of April) ranging from 0.60 to 0.67 over the five different years. His PRBs for the first ten runs are more varied as we would expect given the smaller sample size. However, it seems that, year on year, runners from the Haggas stable perform in a similar fashion. Again though, the win percentages up to the 30th of April have varied much more as the table shows:
William Haggas early season metrics
As we can see, the two highest PRB figures of 0.67 in 2019 and 0.64 in 2023 did not produce the two highest win rates. In fact, they produced the lowest win rates by some margin. 2019 was definitely unlucky for Haggas in those first few weeks as they had 12 second places from their 42 runners that year. Against that, Haggas had only six winners hence the 14.3% strike rate. We talk about luck in racing, and regardless of how good a punter one is, luck and variance are ever-present, sometimes massively.
I would not worry too much about what sort of numbers Haggas posts after his first ten runners this season. We can be fairly confident that his team over the first month or so will run to a similar level to previous years. Whether they win at around 27% or 14% I cannot say, but for readers that back any of his, let’s hope it is nearer 27!
Richard Hannon
For Richard Hannon I want to compare the two sets of PRB figures side by side as I did for Mick Appleby and Andrew Balding.
Richard Hannon early season PRB figures
The orange line represents the longer-term figures up to the end of April and, aside from the 0.47 figure for 2022, the rest lie between 0.51 and 0.59 showing that Hannon's runners perform at roughly the same type of level at this stage of the season year on year.
What I find interesting is the difference between the first 10-run figures for 2023 and 2024, which was huge. 2024 was his best start at a massive 0.83 PRB, 2023 was his worst at just 0.46. However, by the end of the first month although 2024 ended up ‘better’ in PRB terms, the gap was quite small at 0.06 (0.57 v 0.51). Indeed, looking at the win percentages for these two years there was less than 2% in it. 2023 saw a 10%-win rate, 2024 stood at 11.8%.
This is another reminder that looking at a handful of races may not be as important or as useful as some punters/pundits may think; and I am not just talking about the first ten starts of the year. It is essentially the same thing when looking at any 7-day trainer form snapshot throughout the season when a trainer has had ten runners or so during that period. Is that really a reliable enough sample on which to judge how the next few weeks are going to go for the yard in question?
Charlie Johnston
The final yard I want to look in more detail at is that of Charlie Johnston (and its recent incarnations), formerly run solely by father Mark, then by Mark and his son Charlie, and since 2023 by Charlie on his own. Here are the two sets of PRBs:
Charlie Johnston / Johnston yard early season form
I mentioned earlier the huge variances in their opening 10-run figures (the blue line), but despite that the longer term PRBs are all in the same ballpark lying between 0.50 and 0.57. I don’t think the performance of the first ten runners will be that relevant again this year when it comes to predicting what will happen in the subsequent weeks to the end of April. However, we can be fairly sure how they will perform over the longer five-week time frame.
*
Selected Trainers: Win Strike Rates to end April Annually
To finish off let me share the win strike rates for all trainers for each of the five years based on their runners from the start of the turf season to the end of April:
Selected trainers: early season win strike rates 2019-2024
These percentages can vary markedly year on year, as I meantioned earlier when looking at the performance of the Haggas yard. Luck plays its part for all trainers every year, be it good luck or bad. A few bobs of the head in a finish can make a big difference to the win rate; hopefully Geegeez members will be on the right end of tight finishes more often than not!
That is almost it for this week but for before closing I will put my head on the block and predict the win strike rates and PRBs for all of the stables mentioned in this article from the start of the Doncaster Lincoln meeting this year to the end of April. Here goes:
Projected early season win percent and PRB figures for selected trainers
Hopefully, most of these projections will be close to their mark.
Until next time,
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2016/08/charlieappleby2-1.jpg320830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2025-03-26 05:29:552025-03-26 08:53:01Early Flat Season Trainer Form
The second Saturday in September illustrated how trainers and jockeys’ agents need to be expert jugglers at this time of year, writes Tony Stafford. We had the Irish Champion Stakes, worth a total €£1.15 million (€712k to the winner) and the Betfred St Leger, £830k and £421k to the winner, yet three UK champion jockeys were riding more than 3,000 miles away from either venue.
The trio - Oisin Murphy, William Buick and Frankie Dettori - all lined up in the Grade 1 Natalma Stakes for 2yo fillies over a mile and worth £177k at the Woodbine racetrack in Toronto, Canada. Buick was on the 4/5 favourite for Godolphin and Charlie Appleby, the dual early-season winner Mountain Breeze, but she could only manage eighth place.
Ahead of her were Murphy, fifth on 65/1 shot Ready To Battle, for dominant local trainer Mark Casse despite being the outsider of his trio; and Dettori was one place behind on the Christophe Clement filly Annascaul, the race second favourite.
He was the only one of our itinerant trio to have a ride in the next Graded race, the Ontario Matron (G3) on the Tapeta track. He finished fourth for Casse who again had three runners without securing the win.
Only five turned up for the E P Taylor Stakes for fillies and mares, run on the turf track. In the past the E P Taylor was a frequent target for UK and especially French runners. It honours the Canadian breeder Eddie Taylor. He stood Kentucky Derby and Preakness winner Northern Dancer, the stallion who first tickled the fancy of Vincent O’Brien and led, with Robert Sangster and John Magnier’s help, to the legacy of Sadler’s Wells and, through him, to his even more influential son Galileo.
This year, the E P Taylor was a tame affair considering there was £266k for the winner. Oisin got a ride here but could do no better than fourth of five on Blush for French-based trainer Carlos Laffon-Parias. All three of the visiting riders had been previous winners of the race.
Charlie Appleby and Andrew Balding staged a rematch from a Listed race on King George Day at Ascot in July, with Al Qudra, the winner of that race for Charlie and Will, going into the bet365 <they get in everywhere!> Summer Plate over a mile on the turf as favourite, having beaten New Century by just over two lengths then.
Here Oisin turned the form around on identical terms, winning by one and a quarter lengths from Al Qudra in another Grade 1 again worth £177k, as with the juvenile fillies earlier. The share of the spoils made Oisin’s awayday worthwhile and even in defeat Buick got his mitts on a portion of the 60 grand for second.
The principal reason for the Appleby/Godolphin attack was presumably the featured Rogers Woodbine Mile, with a hefty £355,000 to the winner. The Buick mount, Naval Power, was the 11/20 favourite but finished only fourth to a couple of Mark Casse runners, siphoning up between them a good deal more than half a million Canadian bucks. Naval Power had been a very close second on his previous start when Dettori had the mount in a valuable supporting race on Kentucky Derby Day at Churchill Downs in early May.
If you feel sorry for Frankie, the pensioner (in jockey terms) started out the previous weekend looking forward to a hatful of Aidan O’Brien mounts at Kentucky Downs, but only Greenfinch, who finished fourth, ran, the others being withdrawn. But then, a week yesterday at the same track, May Day Ready won a £483k first prize and that was supplemented by a double at the same track on Wednesday. Dettori won the £238k Gold Cup with Limited Liability and then the Dueling Grounds Oaks Invitational with Kathymarissa and another £720k.
His win prizes amounted to £1,323,000 over the week. No wonder he loves being in the US!
What did they miss while waiting for Saturday in Canada? At Doncaster there was an eighth St Leger win for Aidan O’Brien as the inexperienced and in some ways still green Jan Bruegel edged out Illinois in a thrilling tussle up the Doncaster straight. Both colts are by Galileo and at the final opportunity, his sons dominated yet another English Classic.
Impossible to separate in the market, it looked like a potential dead-heat in the race until Sean Levey, who started out life as an O’Brien apprentice before relocating to the UK, forced his mount’s head in front close to the line.
Behind in third and fourth, also locked together, were Deira Mile and Sunway who crossed the line only a nose apart. I thought it a mealy-mouthed decision by the stewards to turn the form around, denying Deira Mile’s ever-adventurous Ahmed Al Sheikh of Green Team Racing another placed run in the English Classics of which he is so enamoured.
Bay City Roller was a good winner of the Champagne Stakes that opened the card, but it might have been a different story had not Chancellor prematurely burst out of the gate. The Gosden colt, a smart scorer at the track last time, was third at Ascot in the race where Al Qudra beat New Century.
The raft of unlikely horse/trainer/jockey partnerships on this unusual day continued in the Portland Handicap, one of my favourite races with its intermediate sprint distance of around five and a half furlongs.
Here, the unluckiest horse in training, Peter Charalambous’s Apollo One, got the services of no less a partner than Christophe Soumillon. The Belgian, a multiple champion jockey in France, had just got his mount’s brave head in front of a gaggle of horses on the far side when the favourite American Affair flew down under the stands rail under Paul Mulrennan to beat him by a nose.
It was a notable win for Jim Goldie and, given the way he finished on Saturday, the Ayr Gold Cup in five days’ time must have its appeal. Peter Charalambous is adamant he would never ask Apollo One to run in the likely soft ground at Ayr, but it would be nice to think he would win a big sprint handicap before too long.
Over the past two seasons he has finished second in four big sprints, the Wokingham and Stewards’ Cup last year and the Stewards’ Cup and Portland in 2024. His total losing distance is barely two and a half lengths in those races.
Irish Champions Weekend featured a fine return to form by the slightly unpredictable but undeniably ultra-talented Auguste Rodin. He ran a great race in the Irish Champion Stakes but just failed to cope with the tenacious favourite Economics.
It had been a brave decision by William Haggas to resist running his colt in the Derby after his sensational <I use the word advisedly> Dante Stakes romp at York and, nicely rested, Haggas had given him an ideal warm-up run at Deauville last month for his main target here.
Economics came from some way back, as did Auguste Rodin. Tom Marquand sent his mount into the lead halfway up the short Leopardstown straight, when it appeared that Ryan Moore on the dual Derby winner was going marginally the easier, even getting his head in front in the last hundred yards. Economics, to his credit, pulled out extra and, despite battling all the way to the line, Auguste Rodin had to be content with an honourable second place.
The path for both horses is set in stone. Economics will now go to the Qipco Champion Stakes for what will be only his sixth career start. Auguste Rodin has the Breeders’ Cup Turf, which he won last year, as his autumn objective.
Just behind in third and fourth were the Japanese horse Shin Emperor, who should make a bold attempt at being the first from Japan to win the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe, and fast-finishing Los Angeles, who probably would have fully extended his two stablemates at Doncaster.
His range of entries, from the Champion Stakes (ten furlongs) at Ascot to the British Champion Long Distance Cup (two miles) the same day and, a fortnight earlier, the Arc over one mile and a half reflect his untapped potential and versatility. I’d go the stayers’ route if he were mine – wishful thinking in the extreme!
Yesterday, Messrs Buick and Murphy made it back to the Curragh for the second day of the Irish Champions Weekend. They might not have won as they rode respectively Vauban and Giavellotto into second and third in the Irish St Leger, but at least they got a close-up view of the remarkable Kyprios.
Aidan O'Brien's six-year-old entire was taking his earnings past £2 million with an authoritative performance under Ryan Moore. It was Kyprios' 13th win in 17 career starts. After last year's injury problems and a curtailed season of only two second places, he has now repeated the same first five victories of his unbeaten four-year-old campaign and in the same races.
That year (2022) he ended the season with victory in the Prix Du Cadran over two and a half miles - by twenty lengths! If he goes there and wins in three weeks it would be a double unbeaten six-timer, four of them at Group 1 level, surely a record, and one that will be exceptionally difficult to match in the future. He deserves to be regarded as at least the equal of Yeats as a stayer. Many will think him superior.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/09/JanBrueghel_StLeger2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-09-16 06:49:042024-09-16 06:56:23Monday Musings: The Jugglers
The Appleby “brothers” were at it at Goodwood last week, with Charlie first to the fore, winning the Sussex Stakes with the revived 2000 Guineas winner Notable Speech and the Group 2 Vintage Stakes with improving juvenile Aomori City, writes Tony Stafford.
You can always identify a Charlie Appleby runner, the Royal blue silks only ever modified by different-coloured caps when there are multiple entries. At Goodwood he ran only four horses over the five days, when hot sunshine and the avoidance of any of the promised thunderstorms [I found one on Thursday going home around the almost-flooded southern portion of the M25] were the theme of the meeting.
Charlie has one owner, Godolphin, and, according to Horses in Training 2024, 233 horses to pick from. The same publication at the time of the snapshot before the season started listed 102 for Michael Appleby, a journeyman who made his way out of the Andrew Balding stable into his own business around 20 years ago. At the end of last week, it was Mick, rather than Charlie, or indeed Aidan O’Brien, that was declared Champion Trainer at the meeting.
That 102, bolstered since by additional juveniles, is the result of hard graft, ever-improving results and continually punching above his weight. Local businesses, clubs and syndicates with shrewdies like the Dixon brothers through their Horse Watchers horses [and geegeez.co.uk! - Ed.], have hastened the upward trajectory. The weaving together of these strands has provided the cocktail of horses that benefit from the “Mick” treatment, with sprinters the foundation of it all. And, of course, he isn’t Charlie’s brother!
If ever there was a moment to evidence the culmination and flowering of the effort of those two decades, it was Big Evs’ winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint at Santa Anita last autumn in a battle of three Europeans. He and Tom Marquand held off runners from the Adrian Murray and Ralph Beckett yards.
That was a fourth win in six starts, Big Evs having collected previously the Flying Childers at Doncaster, after sinking in the Nunthorpe at York the previous month.
One obvious observation in the aftermath of his finishing 14th of 16 against the top older sprinters is just how insensitive and crass it was of the stewards at the meeting to ask Appleby for an explanation for his “poor performance”. He’s a two-year-old for pity’s sake! Do you know nothing about horses?
Back home and with the US win on his scabbard, Big Evs made a winning return in a Listed race at the York May meeting. Royal Ascot the following month was a lottery for the most part in the week’s sprints so while ‘only’ 3rd to the Australian speedster Asfoora in the Group 1 King Charles III Stakes, he ‘won’ his race on the unfavoured far side.
The ultra-valuable King George Stakes last week was his first run since Ascot, and it gave him the chance to avenge the defeat. He duly gained that revenge - though only by a short-head - as the Australian mare was hunting him down in the final yards.
Big Evs was the sixth Mick Appleby runner at Goodwood last week and the fourth winner. The only two losers at that point were Billyjoh, second in a seven-furlong handicap – the longest trip any of the team attempted all week – and Mr Lightside in the Molecomb Stakes.
Mr Lightside went into that race as the better fancied (11/1) of the stable duo, but 25/1 shot Big Mojo, having dwelt at the start and raced in rear early, had the pace to come through and win under Silvestre de Sousa. Mr Lightside was a close third and will have plenty of wins to come given that sharp speed he showed.
Going into the Molecomb as a maiden – Big Mojo had, like Big Evs prior to his Listed Windsor Castle win at Royal Ascot last year, been runner-up on debut at one of the Yorkshire tracks, Beverley in his case – he was an expensive buy for the yard, and owners Paul and Rachael Teasdale, at his 175,000gns yearling price. Bought from Derek Veitch of Ringfort Stud, he clearly holds a high place in Appleby’s estimation. “He could be as good as Big Evs,” he said. Praise indeed.
Handicappers Kitai over seven furlongs and Shagraan, at the minimum trip, completed the winners’ roll for the stable, but there was still to be one last hurrah, planned for the earlier second finisher Billyjoh.
If Appleby could have moaned about the draw for Big Evs at Ascot, he would have been entitled to have regretted the one that got away after the also very well-endowed Stewards’ Cup on Saturday. Twenty-five of the 28 declared kept the engagement and Billyjoh, drawn four, led into the final furlong on his side of the race – they did edge across - finishing best of the 16 that kept up the middle.
Meanwhile George Baker’s six-year-old Get It had grabbed the near rail from the outset, leading clearly, and held on all the way, with major sprint handicap regular Apollo One getting closest for a staying-on half-length second.
Peter Charalambous earned a not insignificant £60k for his troubles with Apollo One but he must be despairing of the big win his wonderful servant at age six deserves. He couldn’t complain of the luck of the draw though – the first six came from 28, 27, 4 (Billyjoh), 24, 26 and 20! Peter pretty much is training just the single horse under the Charalambous/ Clutterbuck ticket, and the gelding is now up to £350k in earnings, 80% of it for places.
Get It was a notable local success for genial George Baker, once a wet-behind-the-ears writer for the long-defunct Sportsman newspaper, but ever the mine host over Goodwood’s entire week. He is entering a new phase of his career with a stable to be based in Bahrain over the coming winter.
I still remember pulling up at one of my 2009 trips down to the west of France, availing myself of the late Roger Hales’ driving skills. We were there at Le Lion d’Angers to watch the second of French Fifteen’s three consecutive wins down there and who should we bump into before racing but George, who had a runner in another race. Ever the ground breaker is George!
As usual, Ryan Moore’s skills were in evidence all week. Kyprios in the Goodwood Cup proved easy enough and was a testimony to Aidan O’Brien and the team’s skills to rehabilitate him from the severe injury problems of 2022 into 2023 to be the revived master stayer of his time.
Ryan had predicted he would be too good for what he described as horses that were “much of a muchness”, but in truth were decent 110-plus rated stayers all. Moore needed to be much closer to the peak of his powers though when completing a big-race double on Thursday aboard Jan Breughel in the Gordon Stakes and last year’s champion juvenile filly Opera Singer in the Nassau Stakes.
Each time it looked as if his nearest challenger might be about to pass him but Ryan seems to mesmerise his fellow jockeys in such situations. Opera Singer was the sixth winner of the Nassau Stakes – but only the fourth for Aidan O’Brien - for the Coolmore owners, starting in 2007 with the remarkable Peeping Fawn. Minding and Winter were the other two of Aidan’s within that 17-year period.
Like City Of Troy, her male counterpart as juvenile champion last year, Opera Singer is by Triple Crown hero Justify; and it seems the plan is to go for the Arc with this highly-talented filly. City Of Troy, of course, is pencilled in for the Juddmonte International at York this month.
Later, the juvenile newcomer Dreamy, by the Coolmore team’s other Triple Crown winning stallion American Pharoah, overcame greenness to win the fillies’ maiden under the same jockey to make it a Ballydoyle/Coolmore hat-trick, though each wearing different silks such are the extending tentacles of the co-ownership edges of the operation these days.
Eight years ago, the same maiden race was won by Rhododendron, but she had the benefit of a run in Ireland beforehand. A multiple Group 1 winner, she is, of course, the dam of Auguste Rodin. If Horses In Training is correct, Dreamy is the only American Pharoah two-year-old among the one hundred-plus juveniles at Ballydoyle. Someone knows how to pick which goes where!
Finally, as if three wins on the day for the team weren’t enough, Mrs Doreen Tabor had a winner in her colours that same afternoon at Nottingham, trained by Ralph Beckett!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/08/BigEvs_KingGeorgeStakes_Goodwood2024.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2024-08-05 07:36:032024-08-05 08:52:15Monday Musings: Mick’s the Man
At any time over the past 20-odd years you would never have believed it possible, writes Tony Stafford. But when Tower Of London came with a breathtaking run from the back under Ryan Moore to win the Dubai Gold Cup, there was a beaming Michael Tabor on hand to welcome the Aidan O’Brien-trained colt into the winner’s enclosure.
Back home in the UK, I needed a second take as Nick Luck came across to interview him. “Congratulations”, said Luck. “Thank you, it’s my first time here”, replied Tabor.
“Your first time at Meydan?”, continued the interviewer. “Not just at Meydan, my first time ever in Dubai. It’s fantastic, not just the racecourse, the whole of Dubai!”
Whether Michael would have been quite as amiable following a third career bomb from Auguste Rodin in the £2.7milion to the winner Sheema Classic just over three hours later is immaterial. He said it and if the £400-odd grand victory for Tower Of London was chicken-feed in relation to the riches on offer later on, it still made the journey a success for Tabor and a number of elated fellow travellers celebrating the victory in the unsaddling enclosure afterwards.
For those two decades at the start of the millennium, Coolmore, especially Michael Tabor, had been sworn racecourse adversaries of the men from Dubai, largely in the person of Sheikh Mohammed Al Rashid bin Maktoum, Ruler of that Emirate.
Their mild-mannered if ultra-competitive trainer Aidan O’Brien would never have viewed the rivalry with anything like the fierceness of his owner, but I think we should applaud one man for the emollient qualities that made Saturday’s moment possible.
Step forward Charlie Appleby, the always-amiable Devonian who took over the training of half of Godolphin’s UK team. This occurred as a result of the misdeeds of Mahmood al Zarooni and his proven use of illicit means to propel his already formidable horses even further forward. Saeed bin Suroor was, and remains, supervising the other gradually shrinking portion.
One of the horses found to have been doped – but not at the time of his biggest success – was the 2012 St Leger winner Encke. It was in the spring of the following year that the eight-year punishment was handed down to the Dubai national. Ban served, he started to train again domestically with a much smaller team.
Appleby was al Zarooni’s assistant at the time of Encke’s St Leger and the biggest effect of that victory was that it denied Camelot, winner of that year’s 2000 Guineas and Derby, of what would have been the first Triple Crown in the UK since Vincent O’Brien and Nijinsky in 1970.
Al Zarooni’s ban came following a BHA inspection the following year after the St Leger found 11 horses testing positive to the presence of anabolic steroids in their systems. The steroids, he said, were brought back in his suitcase from the UAE, adding he “didn’t know they were prohibited”.
By the time of the ban, al Zarooni had won three races, two at the 2013 Craven meeting and another in the same week at Wolverhampton. Appleby took over soon after and sent out 80 winners that season. After almost two years off the track after his Classic success, Encke, still an entire, had three placed runs under the Appleby banner before disappearing without a trace.
The Appleby-Coolmore thawing of relations began with the mutual respect that Charlie and Aidan O’Brien invariably showed each other for their respective successes in major races. Also, Appleby’s and Ryan Moore’s children know each other very well. Charlie had no qualms about regularly congratulating Aidan and the owners, most often Michael Tabor, for their successes and Aidan responded in kind. Images of their mutual celebrations at Santa Anita and the like are still fresh in the memory.
Last year, there was the usual triumphal season for Coolmore and Aidan with yet another Derby, and other achievements, for Auguste Rodin. Contrastingly, it was the first time for a while that Appleby’s Classic generation had been below par. Last year’s two-year-olds will need to step up in the major races in 2024.
It didn’t take long though for Appleby to enjoy himself on his own terms. Despite struggling with periodic absences through his career, the Dubawi gelding Rebel’s Romance had proved himself a high-class performer, making the Breeders’ Cup Turf race in October 2022, his ninth win in only 12 starts.
After three disappointing performances last year he got back on track in a Listed race at Kempton in December and even though he followed up with a £1 million-plus pot in Doha last month he was allowed to start at 25/1. So now it’s 12 wins in 18, and £6.173m in prizemoney. Not bad!
While Auguste Rodin languished at the rear, reminiscent of his Guineas and King George meltdowns from last year, William Buick always had Rebel’s Romance in touch behind the front-running duo of Point Lonsdale, Auguste’s pacemaker, and the Japanese Stars On Earth. That Point Lonsdale, a 100/1 shot, could finish 6th, picking up almost £100k, shows just how far below expectations the favourite ran.
Hopefully, as last year, that first comeback run will be forgotten when he gets fully into stride. Nowadays it’s more a case of what a potential stallion has won rather the times he has lost that govern his marketability and, as a son of Deep Impact, there’ll always be room for him in Japan. They can afford him too!
Back in the Sheema Classic, Buick merely had to go past the front pair and wait for the expected late runners, but none came. Then a half-hour later, Charlie was just as delighted when the former Bob Baffert-trained Laurel River, now handled in Dubai by Bhupat Seemar made a mockery of the £10 million Dubai World Cup, never looking like relinquishing the long lead jockey Tadhg O’Shea initiated early in the ten-furlong dirt race.
The first prize of £5m should equate to about half a million quid for the rider who a decade or so ago regularly came to ride work for Brian Meehan at Manton, ostensibly in his job as he recalls it as number two (or more accurately surely three behind the late Hamdan Al Maktoum’s first jockey Paul Hanagan and recently retired Dane O’Neill). I always found Tadhg a friendly young man. It was a surprise at the time when he decided to go – like so many other fringe jockeys – to Dubai. He’s Beyond the Fringe now.
Laurel River was allowed to start at 17/2 amid a deluge of money for the Kazakhstan entry – sounds more like one of the heats of the Eurovision Song Contest – Kabirkhan, winner of 11 of his previous 12 starts.
A son of California Chrome, the 2014 Kentucky Derby and 2016 Dubai World Cup victor, Kabirkhan was a $12k buy from bargain basement Book 5 at Keeneland yearling sales in 2021. Sent to Kazakhstan where he went unbeaten at two, he was similarly never finding anything remotely to test him in his three-year-old season in Russia.
Now in the care of legendary locally based American handler Doug Watson and ridden by another of the long-term second-string jockeys Pat Dobbs, he was perfectly poised on the rail as Laurel River took off.
While Laurel River just went further and further away, the favourite faded and it was left to last year’s winner, the Japanese Ushba Tesoro, who came from miles behind to take second. Not quite the riches from 2023, but still worth nigh on £2 million for connections of the seven-year-old entire.
Frankie Dettori was back in ninth on Bob Baffert’s Newgate but, earlier, restored to the Godolphin blue, because amazingly he, unlike Buick, can ride at 8st5lb – given a few weeks’ notice, of course – he rode Appleby’s filly Star Of Mystery into second place behind six-year-old California Spangle, trained in Hong Kong by Tony Cruz, in the Al Quoz Sprint.
It wasn’t all gloom for Baffert. His colt Muth, by Good Magic (2nd Kentucky Derby) won the Arkansas Derby comfortably at Oaklawn Park. That race was worth £620k and Baffert used it successfully as the prep back in 2015 when his American Pharoah became the first US Triple Crown winner since Affirmed in 1978.
Justify in 2018 is the most recent of 13 horses to achieve that feat. He, like American Pharoah, is based at Ashford stud in Kentucky, Coolmore’s US base. Justify’s sons and daughters are already showing extraordinary ability, led of course by City Of Troy.
The winter 2000 Guineas favourite had his first look at a racecourse in 2024 at Leopardstown (re-scheduled from waterlogged Naas) a week ago. From the time he did what he did to his useful opponents in the Superlative Stakes at Newmarket last July, I’ve been convinced he’s the best two-year-old I’ve seen.
The Dewhurst win was just as emphatic, his all-the-way near four-length margin earning a 125 rating. Roll on May!
Talking of the Derby, there was a hark back to another time when an old-style “chalk jockey” won the race. Back in the height of Covid, the 2020 running was won by Serpentine, 25/1, ridden by the unknown, possibly even to his parents, Emmet McNamara, to the quietest ever reception for a Derby winner. I’m sure Bernard Kantor would have been quite bemused, consulting his race card as he supervised formalities after the race.
Serpentine, now a seven-year-old, won a 10-furlong Group 3 race at Rosehill, Australia, over the weekend. By Galileo, he was having his 18th race and first success since his Derby triumph, the last twelve following a gelding operation in March two years ago. He is now trained by close Coolmore friend Gai Waterhouse and joint licence-holder Adrian Bott.
This is the second of two articles looking at two-year-old runners (2yos) on their second career starts. The first piece looked at last time out (LTO) performance, LTO course, market factors, sires, damsires and some jockey stats. You can read that here. This one focuses exclusively on trainer data. I have collated stats from UK flat racing for six full years, from 2017 to 2022, and this includes both turf and all weather data. I have calculated profit and loss to Betfair SP (BSP for short), with commission of 5% taken into account.
Overall 2yo second run stats for trainers
I am going to start with a full table with all trainers who have had at least 100 two-year old second starters in the past six seasons. I have ordered the trainers by win strike rate:
* C Johnston in 2023; ** Jack Channon in 2023
A familiar face heads the list – Charlie Appleby. His 37%-plus strike rate is remarkable but, despite that whopping win percentage, he has failed to make it into blind profit. This is, naturally, because many of his runners start at short prices. Seven other trainers have secured strike rates of 20% or higher with juvenile runners making their second career starts, which again is extremely noteworthy. Just one of these seven in profit though: Hugo Palmer.
In terms of A/E indices Messrs. Palmer, Dods, Dalgleish, Osborne and Tinkler are above the magic 1.00, although Nigel Tinkler, with a strike rate of under 5%, is not a trainer for the faint of heart to follow.
At this juncture it makes sense to compare the performance of trainers' 2yo debut runners with their 2yos having a second run. In the following table I have broken this down by strike rates and A/E indices for each trainer. I have ordered them by trainers who have seen the most improvement in strike rate from first to second start:
In the final column I have divided the second run win percentage by the debut one to give us a type of Impact Value. I call it a Comparison Strike Rate (CSR) and I also used this idea in the previous article when comparing sire stats. The higher this figure the more improvement the runners show on their second run compared to their debut. I have highlighted any CSR figure of 2.00 or more in green as these are much higher than the average. The CSR figure to bear in mind is 1.52. This is the average CSR figure when looking at the strike rate comparison for second starters compared with debutants; that is, on average a two-year-old is 1.52 times more likely to win on its second start compared with its debut (7.96% vs 12.08% in case you were curious).
Ed Dunlop has a very high CSR figure but that is because his debut runners having won less than 0.6% of the time. His second starters still only win on average once in every 15 or 16 races. Ed Walker, Michael Dods, William Haggas, Hugo Palmer, Charlie Hills, Sir Michael Stoute and Andrew Balding are the group of trainers who I would be expecting to see excellent improvement between first and second runs. Some of their runners should offer us decent value.
Brian Meehan is one specific trainer whose second starters look poor value, especially when comparing the stats to his debut runners. With debutants his A/E index stands at an impressive 1.36, for second starters this drops markedly to 0.76. Eve Johnson Houghton has a similar slide (1.38 to 0.79) which is also worth noting. Ths is essentially saying that Brian and Eve have their two-year-olds ready to fire on day one, which in itself is well worth noting.
Distance breakdown: trainer performance in 5f and 6f races
I want to split the trainer data by distance now and for this piece I am combining the sprint distances of 5 and 6f, and then will be looking at races of 7f or further. This is because it gives better sized data sets. So, to start, here are the win strike rates for trainers who have had at least 75 two-year-old second starters over 5f / 6f. I have split the data into two graphs – the first with strike rates of 16% or more:
William Haggas stands head and shoulders above the rest in terms of win record. He also has an A/E index in excess of 1.00 (1.09), as do three others - Michael Dods (1.24), Andrew Balding (1.15) and Clive Cox (1.02). For the record these three have made decent profits to BSP, while Haggas would have just about broken even. Of the remaining trainers, all made a loss bar Tom Dascombe, who made a small profit. Dascombe will be interesting to follow this year in his second season after the move from Cheshire to Lambourn and without the support of Chasemore Farm.
Now for those with strike rates under 16%:
There are still some relatively decent strike rates here as well, on the left-hand part of the graph at least, although only Keith Dalgleish managed a BSP profit. No trainer in this group had an A/E index of 1.00 or more and, for the record, Richard Hughes and Tim Easterby had the poorest A/E indices (0.64 and 0.54 respectively) with both making significant losses.
Distance breakdown: trainer performance in races of 7f or further
There are 10 trainers who have secured a strike rate of 16% or more in these longer distance races:
Charlie Appleby strikes at a preposterous close to 40% and backing his runners would have seen you break even to BSP. Here are these trainers' A/E indices which give us a better indication of overall value:
Hugo Palmer, Archie Watson and the Charlton stable have figures above 1.00 and they are trainers who, over 7f or more, I think we should keep on the right side (more often than not).
At the other end of the scale, these are the trainers with lower strike rates over 7f+. As there are quite a few I’ve put their results in tabular form rather than in a graph.
Andrew Balding’s bottom line looks impressive but he had a 232.24 BSP winner in 2020 which accounts for most of his profit. Having said that, even without that outlier, Balding still made a positive return. The three trainers at the bottom – Richard Fahey, Sir Mark Prescott and Tim Easterby - are trainers I think should be swerved with 2yo runners at 7f or beyond when making their second start.
Before moving on there are a few points worth making.
Firstly, Clive Cox has a vastly contrasting distance record: over sprint distances his second starter strike rate is 21.9%, over 7f+ it is just 8.8%. A/E indices also have a chasm between them at 1.02 vs 0.60.
Secondly, Richard Fahey has a similar bent to his stats with much better sprint results: strike rates of 15.6% compared to 6.9%; A/E indices of 0.88 to 0.59.
And third, Roger Varian’s stats are somewhat remarkable from the point of view that his strike rate has been exactly 20% for both distance groups and his A/E indices are almost identical, too, at 0.67 and 0.68.
Market breakdown: trainer performance with top three in the betting
As we know, profit figures can be easily skewed by big priced winners. Hence it makes sense to analyse trainer data where it is a more level playing field – or at least where we can perform a fair price comparison. Here are the data for trainers when their 2yo second starters have figured in the top three of the betting. A minimum of 75 runs has been used as the cut-off point:
It seems right that Charlie Appleby hits a small profit considering his overall figures.
Any trainer with an A/E index of 0.90 or more I feel can be considered much more a positive than negative when it comes to their more fancied runners. Ten trainers have achieved that, of which six have edged into profit. These are Charlie Appleby, the Johnston yard, Archie Watson, Team Crisford, Hugo Palmer and Tom Dascombe. The other four - William Haggas, Charlie Hills, Clive Cox and Richard Fahey - made losses and only Cox had losses of worse than 7 pence in the £.
On the other side of the coin, Saeed bin Suroor’s record is surprisingly poor with qualifiers from the top three in the betting – a win rate of roughly one in six, but losses close to 30p in the £ and a very poor A/E index of 0.56.
So far in this article I have looked at more general trainer stats – but now I want to focus in on a few specific trainers starting, not surprisingly, with Charlie Appleby.
Individual Trainers with Second Start Two-Year-Olds
Charlie Appleby
We have seen already that Charlie Appleby has an impressive overall strike rate, but this does not mean he is a money making machine for punters. If only it was that simple! Strike rate is important but betting is essentially about getting a value price - having 50% of winners at 10/11 keeps you in the game but loses you money, whereas 15% of winners at 8/1 means long losing runs but wins you money. Such is the challenge for us punters: winners, or profit?
From my personal experience it is harder to find value with short prices and this is why one cannot just blindly back Appleby runners, or indeed almost any other short-priced 'no brainer' angle. This is perhaps neatly illustrated when we breakdown Appleby’s profit with horses from the top three in the betting. As the previous table showed, these runners did make a small 5p in the £ profit for him. However, all the profits came from horses second and third in the betting. These combined to produce returns of just under 26p in the £, whereas favourites lost just over 4p in the £.
I have dug deeper into the Appleby stats and one angle that does stand out is jockey based. I touched upon jockeys in the first of these articles when I compared second starters that were ridden by the same jockey who had ridden them on debut, with those who have seen their jockey change. As a general rule I found that horses ridden by the same jockey outperformed those which were not. For Appleby this bias is pronounced as the table shows:
William Buick has been responsible for 72 of these 103 ‘same jockey’ runners. His strike rate was 45.8% and backing these runners would have returned you £16.06 (ROI +22.3%). James Doyle has had an even better strike rate albeit from a much smaller group of runners. He had a success rate of 52.2% (12 win from 23) for returns of 19p in the £. Hence any 2yo second starter from the Appleby yard who is ridden for the second time by either Buick or Doyle is a horse that potentially offers some value.
We have seen good consistency before with Appleby runners and his second starters seem no exception. They have proved versatile by going / ground conditions as the graph below shows:
All the strike rates are above 30%; it should be noted that the highest one (tapeta) is from a small sample (7 wins from 15) so this may be artificially high.
Here are some additional Charlie Appleby stats, both positive and negative:
Appleby 2yo debut winners have a relatively modest record when running for the second time. They have backed up this win just 14 times from 60 (SR 23.3%) for a loss of £25.02 (ROI -41.7%).
The value in terms of debut performance has come from horses that finished 5th or worse on debut. On second starts Appleby has secured 19 winners with these runners from 58 (SR 32.8%) for a profit of £10.59 (ROI +18.3%).
At the highest level (Class 1 races) Appleby's runners on second start have won just 7 from 41 (SR 17.1%) for a loss of £18.07 (ROI -44.1%).
Second time runners returning to the course where they debuted have done well, scoring nearly 50% of the time. 16 wins from 33 (SR 48.5%) have created a BSP profit of £17.36 (ROI 52.6%).
Appleby has done well when sending second starting 2yos to Newmarket. He has been rewarded with 24 wins from 53 (SR 45.3%) for a healthy profit of £19.48 (ROI +36.8%).
Richard Hannon
I have chosen Richard Hannon next as he has had the biggest number of second starters in the past six seasons.
The eagle eyed of you would have seen already that his record in sprint events is better than 7f+ races; specifically, he has a strike rate of 17.3% for sprints compared to 10.6% for longer races. Here are some other Hannon second starter stats I would like to share.
Just like Appleby, having the same jockey on board that rode the horse on debut has been a plus. These horses have won 37 of their 224 starts (SR 16.5%) for a small profit of £11.29 (ROI of 5.0%); the record of horses with new / different jockeys is 53 wins from 450 (SR 11.8%) for a loss of £73.50 (ROI -16.3%).
2yos returning to the track within two weeks of their debut have a surprisingly good record. 40 have won from 244 (SR 16.4%) for a healthy profit of £90.27 (ROI +37.0%). Amazingly, Hannon has made a profit with these runners in five of the six years which shows good consistency.
Horses that finished first or second on debut have a good record with 26.1% of them winning on their second starts (35 wins from 135) for a profit of £40.06 (ROI +29.9%).
Hannon has scored nearly 41% of the time with second time starter favourites, making the smallest of profits, £1.93 (ROI 1.8%).
Richard Fahey
Another Richard and another trainer who has had a decent number of runners. His overall strike rate with second starters stands at just under 13% and I have found a handful of useful stats – positive, negative and neutral.
Clear favourites for Fahey have secured 33 wins from 73 2yo second starters (SR 45.2%) for a profit of £11.68 (ROI +16.0%).
2yos that won on debut have proved profitable on their second starts thanks to a strike rate of 17.9% producing returns of 56p in the £.
Second starters who race at Beverley have scored 26.5% of the time (13 wins from 49) for a break even scenario.
Having the same jockey on board as on debut has once again seen a big difference in performance, just as we saw with Appleby and Hannon runners. Fahey horses retaining the same jockey for the second run have won 19.8% of races (A/E index 1.06); those horses whose jockey has changed have won just 8.4% of their races (A/E index 0.60).
Second starters racing on all weather tracks have a poor record with only 7 wins from 104 (SR 6.7%). Losses have been steep at 54p lost for every £1 staked.
2yos that have had their second start in September or later in the year look worth avoiding. Just 11 wins from 153 (SR 7.2%) for a loss of £67.11 (ROI -43.9%). For the record, if the horse was not favourite or second favourite Fahey saw just 3 wins from 121 runners.
Other trainers
Here are some individual stats that I have unearthed related to other trainers:
Andrew Balding has an excellent record with horses that finished 1st, 2nd or 3rd on debut. On their second starts they have gone onto win 25 times from 89 (SR 28.1%) for a profit of £31.68 (ROI +35.6%). Balding has secured profits with these runners in four of the six years.
Kevin Ryan has reverse stats compared to Balding. Horses that finished in the first three on debut would have lost a whopping 46p in the £ if backed blindly on second start.
Sir Mark Prescott has sent 99 2yo second starters to all weather tracks, and only one has managed to win.
Tim Easterby has a dreadful record with horses running again within two weeks of their debut, with just one win from 104 runners.
William Haggas has a good record with 2yos that have dropped in class since their debut. He has secured a 34.2% strike rate thanks to 26 winners from 76. These runners have returned a profit of £9.84 (ROI +12.9%).
Karl Burke is another trainer that does particularly well when retaining the same jockey who rode on debut – 36 wins from 150 rides (SR 24%) for a profit of £45.34 (ROI +30.2%).
MAIN TAKEAWAYS
Below is a summary of my main takeaways from this article; but there may be stats above that are far more important to you, so keep that in mind!
Ed Walker, Michael Dods, William Haggas, Hugo Palmer, Charlie Hills, Sir Michael Stoute and Andrew Balding all enjoy much higher strike rates on second starts compared to debut runs.
Brian Meehan and Eve Johnson Houghton are two trainers whose second starting 2yos offer relatively poor value, especially when comparing second runs to debuts.
William Haggas, Michael Dods, Andrew Balding and Clive Cox have good records with 2yo second runs in 5-6f races. In contrast, Tim Easterby looks a trainer to avoid.
Hugo Palmer, Archie Watson and the Charlton stable do well in races of 7f or more with their second starters.
Charlie Appleby, the Johnston stable, Archie Watson, the Crisford stable, Hugo Palmer and Tom Dascombe have good records with second starters when in the top three in the betting. Saeed bin Suroor has a particularly poor record with these fancied runners.
Charlie Appleby runners have a very good record when the same jockey who rode on debut rides on the second start. In particular, look out for William Buick and James Doyle. Appleby also does well with horses that finished out of the first four on debut, as well as horses that ran at Newmarket.
Richard Hannon does well with horses that return to the track within two weeks of their debut. He also does well with debutants that won or finished second on debut.
Richard Fahey second starters that start clear favourite have a strong record. On the negative side, avoid second starters if racing on the all weather, or if racing after August.
There is a fair bit to get your teeth into in this article and hopefully it has started to point you in the right direction, as well as steering away from some treacherous paths. For those readers who do not generally bet in 2yo races, I hope this, and the previous three articles, may have changed your mind.
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/DapperValley_RichardHannon2yo_winner_Newbury.png319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-05-02 06:45:392023-05-02 06:45:39Two-Year-Old Runners on 2nd Start: Part 2
This is the second in a two-parter looking at two-year-old (2yo) debut runners, writes Dave Renham. The first part - which you can read here - looked at market factors, gender, sires and damsires. This concluding half hones in on a plethora of trainer data. I have collated data for UK flat racing for six full years from 2017 to 2022, and this includes both turf and all-weather. I have calculated profit and loss to Betfair SP (BSP), with commission of 5% taken into account.
Overall 2yo debut stats for trainers
I am going to start with a full table of trainers who have had at least 75 two-year old debut runners in the past six seasons. I think it is important to share as much raw trainer data as possible. I have ordered the trainers by win strike rate:
* C Johnston from 2023; ** Jack Channon from 2023
Any trainer from Eve Johnson Houghton upwards deserves credit, with ten of those eleven in profit as well as having a decent strike rate. Sticking with strike rate, Charlie Appleby stands head and shoulders above the rest and I will be digging deeper into his stats later in the piece.
2yo debutants in 5f races
I want to split the data by distance so I am looking at the minimum trip first. There are fewer 2yo races over 5f compared to six and seven furlongs, so that does need to be taken into account. Here are win strike rates for those trainers who have had at least 50 debut runners over 5f:
There are three trainers with excellent strike rates of over 20% (Archie Watson, Clive Cox and the Johnston stable); at the other end of the scale Tim Easterby is a pretty dismal 1 from 118. Not surprisingly Watson, Cox and Johnston have all made a blind profit with their runners to BSP. Having said that, I would personally be a little wary about Watson as the last three seasons have been less good than before with only three winners from 27 (admittedly he has had a few near misses).
Another trainer worth mentioning is Michael Bell. He did not have enough runners to qualify for the graph above, but of his 39 juvenile debutants over five furlongs, 10 won (SR 25.6%) for a BSP profit of £17.41 (ROI +44.6%).
2yo debutants in 6f races
Up an extra furlong now to three-quarters of a mile, or six furlongs if you prefer. Again, a trainer must have saddled a minimum of 50 qualifiers to appear in the table. Here are all the trainers who qualify, this time in tabular form:
As can be seen, the profit / loss figures are all over the place – you only have to look at the stats for Jamie Osborne to see that. Just one decent priced outsider winning can turn a very poor run of results into a profitable set.
Richard Hannon has comfortably secured the most winners, but he has had the most runners over this trip. Four of the six study years have actually turned a profit, with only one poor year which was 2020. Hannon's profits have come from maiden races rather than novice events and he has recorded a 19% win strike rate in the month of May. In fact his winning percentage when combining May, June and July results is almost double that of his August to December figure (13.9% versus 7.2%).
2yo debutants in 7f races
Onto to 7 furlongs now. The data is based on 50 runs minimum once more and the focus is on the trainers with the highest win percentages:
Charlie Appleby remains head and shoulders above the rest, but one other stat that stood out was for the Johnston stable. Their record in June in 7f races has been excellent with 14 debut winners from 49 (SR 28.6%) for a BSP profit of £40.41 (ROI +82.5%). Not only that, 12 further horses were placed. I am wondering if this is down to excellent race placement: June is the first full month of 2yo 7f races and many of the big juvenile stars of the future tend to be seen later in the season. Hence the standard of 7f races in June are likely to be weaker in quality compared with later in the year.
Before moving away from the June Johnston data, it is worth sharing that 12 of his winners figured in the top three in the betting from 32 runners returning an impressive over 90 pence in the £.
2yo debutants in 1m+ races
A look at the longest distances now. The furthest distance a two-year-old runs is 1 mile 3 furlongs and that has only occurred twice in the last six seasons. Just over 70% of races at 1 mile or more are actually raced at a mile.
Let’s look at the trainer splits (50 runs or more):
These are the only trainers to qualify, mainly because longer distance races for 2yos are less common. Indeed, there are nearly twice the number of 7f races compared to races of 1 mile and up.
Charlie Appleby again tops the table to make it a clean sweep at distances from six furlongs to a mile, so now it is time to dig deeper into his record with 2yos making their racecourse debut.
Charlie Appleby's 2yo Debutants
To begin with let us look at the yearly breakdown in terms of win percentage / strike rate:
As the graph shows he has struggled to maintain those staggeringly high figures from the first three years in the review window. However, the figures for 2020 to 2022 are still pretty darn good.
I want to look at jockey data now; William Buick and James Doyle are the two riders Appleby uses the most as the table shows:
As punters, these type of findings are clearly important. Buick and Doyle have scored twice as frequently when compared to all other jockeys that have ridden 2yo debutants for Appleby. Clearly we should focus our attention on the mounts of Buick and Doyle only.
In terms of price, most of Appleby’s runners are at, or near, the head of the market. I have split his results by different Industry SP price bands but with the results calculated once again to BSP.
The table suggests that the very shortest priced runners are poor value. From this past data it seems better to focus on horses that are likely to be priced between 13/8 and 7/1.
Here are some other Appleby stats I would like to share:
2yo debutants over 5f are rare which is why he did not appear in the 5f stats earlier. However, from his 20 5f runners, an amazing 13 won (SR 65%) for a BSP profit of £26.95 (ROI +134.8%).
Appleby has a similar strike rate with male and female runners – male runners have won just over 28% of their starts, females just under 27%.
He does not send that many runners out early in the season. However, if we combine April and May data he has secured 22 victories from only 51 first starters (SR 43.1%) for a profit of £26.48 (ROI +51.9%).
He sends more debutants to turf courses (245 versus 99) but again has similar strike rates. On turf it is 28.6% and on the sand it 26.3%. The A/E indices are almost identical as well (0.91 and 0.92).
Trainers and 2yo debutants in the top three in the betting
Moving away from a specific focus on Charlie Appleby now, I want to examine trainer records when their debutants start in the top three in the betting. This avoids big-priced winners skewing the profit and loss figures. It also makes it a relatively fair comparison between the trainers. I have used 50 or more runs once again as my qualifying mark:
I find this type of table illuminating. Considering the prices (96% of all the qualifying runners were single figure prices), any trainer in profit has fared extremely well. The top five in terms of strike rate - Appleby, Charlton, Watson, Bell and Cox - have secured a profit, and I feel these trainers are worth noting this season when one of their runners is in the top three of the betting.
At the other end of the scale, Andrew Balding has a really poor record: of his 18 favourites just one has prevailed. In Balding's defence, the stable is very much known for horses improving through their early starts. His runners won just 8.2% on debut in the six-year study period, but that shot up to 17.4% on second start, 22% on third start and 26% on fourth start. Not strictly 'on topic' but worth noting.
The A/E indices are shown in the table but I think it worth graphing them as well to see which trainers have been the best ‘value’ according to this metric:
The seven trainers with the highest A/E indices are also the seven trainers with the highest strike rates (albeit not perfectly in the same order). The trainers with the lowest five A/E indices (all under 0.65) are the trainers that fill the bottom five places in the strike rate order. As a general rule, you would expect to see that type of correlation with strike rates and A/E indices, but it does not always happen like that.
Trainer Jockey combinations with 2yo debutants
Earlier we saw the importance of jockey booking when looking at Charlie Appleby debutants. Well, there are a couple of other trainers where we find similar stats. Firstly Archie Watson:
Oisin Murphy has not ridden for Watson for over a year due to his suspension, but it is clear from this data that if he, Danny Tudhope, or Hollie Doyle especially is on board then a good run is expected. The 11.1% figure for ‘All other jockeys’ is poor in comparison.
Likewise when we examine the Gosden stable we see a similar pattern. Robert Havlin has ridden 220 of the 512 2yo debutants and his win record far outstrips the rest:
There is a huge difference in A/E indices, too, with Havlin at an impressive 1.07 and all other jockeys combining to average out at 0.76. The final stat to mention here is that Havlin / Gosden runners have proved profitable over the 220 debut rides to the tune of 34p in the £ at Betfair SP.
Trainers and Courses for 2yo debutants
Data is a little limited here so I would not go headlong into backing every combo in the table. However, I still want to share the most impressive course stats for some trainers. The vast majority have produced a six year profit and all bar one have produced a strike rate of 20% or more. The one that did not was close to that mark (19.35%) and, due to a good sample size (62 runs), I thought it was worth including:
This table is a bit of a 2yo debut Trainer Track Stats, to use Matt's previous trainer-based report terminology. Personally, during this upcoming season, I will be taking note of any of these combinations that have secured a double figure number of wins – I will not back them blind, but I will look at the relevant runners in some detail in order to determine whether I would deem them to a potential bet or not. The Gosden / Yarmouth combo is one I will certainly look out for.
Before I finish, let me summarise some of the key stats this article has highlighted:
MAIN 2yo DEBUTANT PART 2 TAKEWAYS
Charlie Appleby has by far the highest win percentage and he is consistent across all race distances. His 13 wins from 20 runners in 5f races is arguably the highlight despite the smaller sample size.
In 5f races the stables of Archie Watson, Clive Cox and Charlie Johnston have the best strike rates of those with 50+ runners over the six-year period.
Over 6f Charlie Appleby and the Crisford stable are the only ones to have secured strike rates in excess of 20%.
The Johnston stable has had an excellent record in the month of June in 7f races.
Over 1 mile+ Charlie Appleby, Ralph Beckett and the Gosden stable have the strongest looking stats.
Charlie Appleby, Roger and Harry Charlton, Archie Watson, Michael Bell and Clive Cox are trainers who have secured good strike rates with 2yo debutants from the top three in the betting. In addition they have all secured individual profits.
Saeed bin Suroor, Sir Michael Stoute, Charlie Hills and Andrew Balding have poor records with 2yo debut runners which start in the top three in the betting. All are famously patient trainers.
Charlie Appleby does twice as well with juvenile debutants when either William Buick or James Doyle are on board when compared with all other jockeys.
Archie Watson and Hollie Doyle, and the Gosden stable with Robert Havlin are positive trainer / jockey combos.
There were 12 wins from 41 2yo debutants from the Gosden stable making their racecourse bow at Yarmouth. These runners have produced profits of over 92p in the £.
----
I hope you have found the two articles on 2yo debutants useful. I certainly enjoyed uncovering these interesting angles. 2yo debutants will now take a back seat, editorially speaking, with my attention switching to 2yos on their second starts. That is next on the agenda for researching and next week I will be sharing my findings with Geegeez readers.
Until then...
- DR
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/EternalPearl_Newmarket.jpg319830Dave Renhamhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngDave Renham2023-04-10 19:23:142023-04-10 19:23:14Two-Year-Old Runners on Debut: Part 2
After the past two weeks of sales and racing at Newmarket, no wonder Charlie Appleby looked frazzled just after 4.15 p.m. on Saturday as he sat down for a welcome cup of tea, directly opposite my vantage point in a box in the grandstand at Ascot, writes Charlie Appleby.
I said, “You are champion trainer again!”, and the look of brief bewilderment on his face showed that until that point the significance of the outcome of the Qipco Champion Stakes clearly hadn’t properly sunk in.
“Really?”, he asked. I outlined how the £248,000 his Modern Games had earned for second in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes had significantly stretched his lead over close second but overwhelming title favourite, William Haggas. Bayside Boy, a 33-1 shot trained by Roger Varian had got the better of the Godolphin horse while Haggas watched on helpless as he did not have a representative in Europe’s mile championship.
That meant it was all down to the horse of a generation – or so we thought he was.
We had all dutifully turned up at Ascot expecting a coronation. The Queen Consort was there, but it was Baaeed who was supposed to be crowned King of the Turf after what was to be his 11th win from 11 career starts.
So little were his eight rivals considered as serious opposition that he was sent off the 4-1 on favourite. To appreciate the depth of that market confidence, he was entering Frankel territory. His admirers had already attached to him near-Frankel mystique, or even hysteria.
Frankel had been only a marginally shorter price when completing the last of his 14 unbeaten career wins in the same race ten years earlier. He was 11-2 on against five rivals, best of whom were the veteran French gelding Cirrus Des Aigles and his contemporary and old rival, Nathaniel. He beat them readily enough, but it was a performance far less in keeping with his nine prior, mostly spectacular, Group 1 victories.
The question had to be would Baaeed stroll through this final task before following his predecessor to stud? The previous weeks had shown Frankel as the most potent living stallion, comfortably heading for a sire championship with the victory of his daughter Alpinista in the Arc a performance fresh in the memory.
He had also completely dominated the recent Tattersall’s October Yearling Book 1 auction with a string of big-money sales up to the top price of 2.8 million guineas. Nobody in their right mind would believe they could send a mare to him next breeding season for the 2022 fee of £200,000. He’ll be in the Galileo league, probably at least double that figure, neatly spanning the generations from his recently deceased sire and having grown to full maturity and power in the breeding shed.
Her Majesty did the honours in the QE II, presenting Richard Ryan, racing manager of Teme Valley Racing, the prize for Bayside Boy’s unexpected win. Teme Valley were also in action in the Caulfield Cup in Sydney earlier in the day where their Numerian was a close fifth beaten barely a length.
A one-time Joseph O’Brien-trained gelding, Numerian was bred by Joseph’s mother, Anne-Marie O’Brien, and he will no doubt have more paydays in Australia. Last October, State Of Play, trained by Joseph, won the Cox Plate at Moonee Valley in the Teme Valley silks.
Ian Williams, who has had a fruitful connection with Richard Ryan, expressed surprise that his friend had not been able to be in both places at once. “He’ll work it out for next year, no doubt”, said Williams.
The QE II was a tasty if unpredictable aperitif to the main course. Ranged against the Haggas star was the 2021 Derby winner, Adayar, at 6-1, who was fifth in last year’s Champion after a fourth in the Arc, and now back with a bang fresh after that long absence with a smooth win in conditions class at Doncaster. Appleby vowed after that he wanted to take on Baaeed at Ascot. Then there was Sir Michael Stoute’s Bay Bridge, a 10-1 shot and Group-race winner earlier in the year at Sandown but held in his forays into top class since.
Add the Irish pair, Stone Age from Aidan O’Brien and 2021 Classic winner Mac Swiney from the Jim Bolger yard and you have a far from negligible task for the favourite. Baaeed’s form leading up to Ascot had been blemish-free, but whereas Frankel had spaced his 14 races over three racing seasons, the later-developing Baaeed raced only from May last year.
Haggas himself had two back-ups, My Prospero, who despite three wins in four this year and a close third, a neck behind Appleby’s ill-fated Coroebus in the St James’s Palace Stakes at Ascot, was a 22/1 shot. His third runner, Dubai Honour, had less obvious claims, starting 33-1.
If before racing the fear was that the ground would be a potential worry for many horses on the day, the times were very much in line with Chris Stickels’ good to soft, soft in places, assessment. Any attempt to assign Baaeed’s rather stale fourth place behind Bay Bridge, Adayar and stablemate My Prospero to the going therefore makes less sense than simply the cumulative effects of a long, tough season racing at the top level.
The money, expected to be sufficiently in Haggas’ favour via his three contenders, panned out thus. Bay Bridge got £737k for winning, Adayar £279k for second. All three Haggas runners picked up a cheque, but My Prospero’s £139k, Baaeed’s £69k and Dubai Honour’s £17,000 for sixth left them 53 grand short in that single race alone.
Baaed will now retire to stud at a time when Shadwell Farm is starting to resume activity in a buying mode at the sales after the initial selling-off of many hundreds of racing and breeding stock following Hamdan Al-Maktoum’s death. His daughter, Sheikha Hissa, has been a noted presence over here recently and it would have been a fitting send-off for her much-admired father if Baaeed had emulated the feat of Frankel and remained unbeaten.
Racing at the top level is very attritional. The old champ Stradivarius has gone off to stud and his Goodwood Cup conqueror Kyprios bypassed the Champion Long Distance Cup but Trueshan duly turned up and completed a unique hat-trick in the race for Alan King, the Trueshan Owners Group and Hollie Doyle.
The team had been almost inconsolable after the star gelding, in Alan King’s opinion still remembering his ordeal by fast ground and Kyprios at Goodwood, swerved away his chance late on in the Doncaster Cup, going under by a neck to Coltrane. That day, with the trains back to London all screwed by first world problems, I gave a lift to their best-known member, Andrew Gemmell, and his mate Tony Hunt, and all the way back to town Andrew was as despondent as I’ve known him.
The mood was rather different in the winner’s enclosure after Hollie conjured a thrilling rally from her tough, determined ally to avenge that defeat after Coltrane had looked likely to maintain the edge. This time the verdict was a head in the other direction. Two very brave stayers, but Alan King has done wonders to bring his horse back after that chastening experience on the Sussex Downs.
Anyway, to return to the point of the matter. At close of play on Saturday, Appleby had earnings of £5,959,450, a lead of £364,000 give or take a few quid, over Haggas’ £5,595,524. While the title runs to December 31, incongruously with the Jockeys’ title race already done on Saturday, nothing can change its destination.
One major UK flat race remains, next weekend’s Vertem Futurity at Doncaster. Charlie doesn’t think he’ll run anything there, while William doesn’t have an entry, so the £118k will likely go to Coolmore and Ballydoyle who always target the race with a 2,000 Guineas contender. They have plenty of possibles, but their stranglehold could change if Chaldean takes them on. The Dewhurst hero would be the one to beat if Andrew Balding goes for a race in which he has done very well.
In 2021 William Buick battled to the last day of the season before finding Oisin Murphy holding too many aces. This year, with his rival out of the way, it was a cakewalk. Oisin’s return in 2023 will be eagerly awaited. A revived Murphy, three times champion already, would make it a thrilling competition, but if that does not materialise, the prospect is that ever-improving Buick could be in for a long period of supremacy given the power of the Appleby team.
The quality of the trainers at the top of the racing industry in the UK is outstanding. Add Roger Varian to the first two this year and you have three upwardly-mobile Newmarket-based handlers who I’m sure could have succeeded in any other field, as of course could their Berkshire counterpart, Balding. The fact that they have such powerful teams suggests the quartet will be at the forefront of their profession for years to come.
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/EternalPearl_Newmarket.jpg319830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-10-17 07:14:252022-10-17 07:14:26Monday Musings: Charlie the Champ
By this time next week it will all just about be done, writes Tony Stafford. The 2022 flat limps on for another three weeks after Saturday’s Champions Day at Ascot, but William Buick will have collected his first Champion Jockey trophy and Baaeed will probably have brought his career-ending tally to 11 from 11 – three behind Frankel – and be ready for a glittering career as a stallion.
If we thought the deaths in recent times of Prince Khalid Abdullah, Frankel’s owner-breeder, or Hamdan Al-Maktoum, who never lived to see his best-ever horse race, would mean a curtailment of two of the three giant Arab racing and breeding teams, evidence last week in Newmarket, both on the track and at the yearling sales, would have confounded that view.
Much was made of the first sales purchase by Hamdan’s daughter, Sheikha Hissa, of an expensive yearling; and then on Saturday, Chaldean, bought as a yearling by Prince Khalid’s successors for 550,000gns from Whitsbury Manor, won the Dewhurst Stakes. That made it four wins in five career starts and enough to stake his claim as champion juvenile of the year.
As Ryan Moore prepared to ride Coolmore’s Aesop’s Fables in that race he made little secret of the fact he expected the other Juddmonte contender, the home-bred Nostrum, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, to prevail.
Ryan would have been surprised had he been in the stands rather than on the back of the Aidan O’Brien runner on his way to the start to see the lack of confidence in Nostrum in the face of sustained support for Chaldean. The Andrew Balding horse was ridden by 51-year-old Frankie Dettori, able to take advantage of the Group 1 meeting exemption from on-going riding bans.
The Italian had been on board when Chaldean won the Group 2 Champagne at Doncaster in emphatic fashion last time out and he must have been worrying that he might not be fit to take the ride when he made an unscheduled flying dismount three furlongs from home in the opening Zetland Stakes: his Gosden-trained ride, Liftoff, clipped heels and fell. Rarely has there been a more appropriately named casualty.
Frankie said as he was still hot after his exertions in the big race he felt all right, but that those half-century old bones might be suffering a bit the following morning. Reprieved as he was, once he drove Chaldean to the front after a furlong, he was never going to let go, quickly seeing off Nostrum and Richard Kingscote before the last furlong. Here, Royal Scotsman proved a more resolute challenger, and the winning margin over the Jim Crowley-partnered and Paul and Oliver Cole trainee was just a head.
While the three days of Tattersalls Book 1 were never dull, it was still very much a private party between Godolphin and Coolmore, only relaxed to let in the next level of buyers when they condescended to leave the stage to the rest.
Suffice to say that the near 400 yearlings that found new owners over the piece, did so at an average of almost 300,000gns with plenty exceeding a million quid and one at £2.8 million. The total aggregate was £125 million. Tatts can count themselves satisfied at their commission on that first part; look forward to a less dramatic but also far from negligible Book 2, today to Wednesday, leaving Books 3 and 4 to mere mortals in the second half of the week.
Of course, then we have the December Sale, featuring top-class racing and breeding fillies and mares at the end of next month and into the first days of December. One of the busier young men at the sale last week was Ollie Sangster, son of Ben and Lucy and grandson of the late Robert.
He was seeking out potential owners and yearlings to join in his new venture training from one of the smaller yards at the spectacular Manton Estate, previously owned by his grandfather and, on his death, his sons. Now the property of Martyn Meade, who trains there in conjunction with his son Freddie at one end of the farm, while Brian Meehan continues having been on site for two decades, Ollie will have use of those wonderful downland gallops. As the backdrop to his entire life so far, no wonder he is excited at the prospect.
Ollie has done all sorts of jobs in the racing and breeding business considering his relative youth, but the last three years have brought plenty of excitement as he owns a minor share in the top-class filly Saffron Beach.
He shares the Jane Chapple-Hyam-trained four-year-old with his mother and James Wigan. It’s a real family affair as Jane is his step-aunt. Congratulating him on managing to get a piece of such a smart filly, he said, “I was in her from the start.”
The records show Saffron Beach changed hands as a foal for 55,000gns and since then she has won six of her 13 starts, two at Group 1 level and total earnings of £805,000. A daughter of the exciting young sire New Bay, she has been a late addition to the December sale and I reckon she is guaranteed to be one of the most desired lots on offer, almost certainly well into seven figures.
Ollie’s father Ben has, over the past few years, re-centred his Swettenham Stud breeding interests close to Manton House which remains his family home. He hopes that if Ollie’s training project takes off, he might have to find a new base for the mares and young stock.
A final note on the Newmarket Future Champions meeting which, apart from high-class two-year-old races, also included a cash-depleted Cesarewitch. Club Godolphin stepped in as sponsors otherwise what would it have been worth? As it was, £103,000 to the winner for such a major race was a disgrace, considering that was only one-third the amount the winner received four years previously.
There was yet another Irish winner, but this time not for Willie Mullins who had switched his better stayers to the Irish Cesarewitch the weekend before. Handicap ace and recently banned and reinstated Charles Byrnes was successful with the 147-rated hurdler Run For Oscar, who strolled home under David Egan more than three lengths to the good from the Hughie Morrison pair of Vino Victrix and star hurdler Not So Sleepy, who was adding a third place to two fourths in 2019 and 2020.
They provided a joint 72 grand to the Morrison owners. Second and third in 2018 would have brought 138k, almost twice as much. Only 21 horses, rather than a ballot-requiring 32, bothered to turn up, while the reinvigorated Irish Cesarewitch, worth seven times as much as last year, carried a similar payout to the winner as ours had been in 2018. Willie Mullins didn’t win it, that race going to Aidan and the three-year-old Waterville, who got up late to beat the Mullins pair Echoes in Rain and Lot Of Joy.
With the wonderful Kyprios apparently done for now, and Stradivarius finished – don’t worry Bjorn Neilsen isn’t looking for food banks yet, he sold a Frankel yearling last week for 2 million gns – Trueshan is left as the top candidate for the British Champions Long Distance Cup. At least, that was, until Aidan decided against running pre-race favourite Waterville at Newmarket and now has Ascot in mind for the improving young stayer.
While the jockeys’ title race finishes at Ascot, the trainers’ championship continues to the end of the year. But, the Vertem Futurity the following weekend at Doncaster apart, all the action for the big stables will be overseas.
Charlie Appleby’s remarkable winning spree in recent weeks has got him back a few quid in front of William Haggas. We can expect Baaeed to pick up the £737k for the Champion Stakes but if last year’s Derby winner can follow him home and Modern Games can pick up the £623k in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes – Inspriral will be tough of course – it might not be quite all over. It probably is though, in all consciousness!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/Chaldean_Dewhurst2022.jpg320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-10-10 06:46:022022-10-10 06:46:03Monday Musings: Almost, but not quite, done
Some weeks, I worry right until the moment when I finally open the keyboard, wondering what to put into these rambling epistles, writes Tony Stafford. Often, it’s a lottery, with random episodes of equal, often minimal, importance to weigh. Other times, like this weekend, I’m spoilt for choice.
Monday Musings is not an organ of record, unlike my long-term employer, the Daily Telegraph, its great rival the Times, or another of my early parking places, the Press Association. Even before then, on a local paper it was instilled in me to chisel out the “who, what, when, where, why, how and to whom” coda for story compiling half a dozen years before the start of my DT days half a century ago.
Among the formula’s most exacting adherents of PA vintage was David Thomas, son of the Sporting Life’s celebrated Chief Racing Reporter, Len, who had been for decades and still was a doyen of the 'paper. If his issue was a doyen of anything, it was repetition, as upon confronting a winning trainer after a race, he would ask, bright bowtie to the fore, “how many do you have in this year?”, “where does the owner come from?” and, more acceptably, “where will he go next?”
In fairness, the domicile of the owner was important, too, as local papers needed those lines from the exciting world of horse racing and sport to flesh out their parochial coverage of robberies, brawls outside public houses and the misdemeanours of local politicians. How I loved Police Calls at Leyton nick in metropolitan Essex in my first newspaper job on the Walthamstow Guardian! Up to a point! I presented “Tommy” with a 1972 copy of Horses In Training one day and dared him to ask another trainer his worn-out trilogy. He defied me, but not until the next day!
There are more than enough “proper” stories elsewhere in this comprehensive, authoritative electronic publication to keep everyone on point, and to allow me an old man’s self-indulgence. In reverse order, in best Miss World mode – if we’re still locked in the 1970’s – the heroes are Hughie Morrison, Charlie Appleby and Roger Varian.
Hughie has been around the longest of the three and equally I’ve known him the longest too. A shade chippier than the others, he finds plenty not to admire about the administration of the sport, and trains at his own pace. He takes any injury the horses sustain as if it were to himself and opportunities for his horses are minutely sought out. On Saturday, his scouring of the Pattern programmes led to two of his progressive fillies collecting Group 3 races, at home at Newbury and in France at Chantilly. The latter foray Hughie declared necessary as he reckoned there was such limited domestic opportunity for the cross-Channel traveller. “Just one other suitable race before Christmas,” he said.
She was Mrs Fitzherbert, a Kingman filly owned by Sonya and Anthony Rogers. Her emphatic success at Chantilly earned €40k for the win and a decent multiple of that in inherent paddock value for her legendary owner-breeders.
The Arbibs, father and son, were the happy beneficiaries of the earlier winner, Stay Alert, as her jockey David Egan needed to, for she was apparently securely trapped on the rail inside the last furlong. But after belatedly worming a small gap, his mount got him out of trouble with instant acceleration to be ahead and back hard held before the line.
Before this challenge against the boys, which brought not just a similar prize but also the promise of much more to come, Stay Alert had been in line for the big fillies’ race on Champions Day next month, and the way she accelerated will make her a threat to even the top fillies at Ascot. “Had she not,” Hughie reminded me beforehand, “given Nashwa a real battle at Newbury earlier in the summer?”
Egan, with confidence emanating from last weekend’s St Leger win on Eldar Eldarov, rather than shrink after the sacking following Mishriff’s too-late finish into second behind Vadeni in the Eclipse, was riding the second of four consecutive winners on the day, more of which later.
I wouldn’t say replacing him has been a conspicuous success – the Eclipse was by far Mishriff’s best run of an unproductive year! The many millions he won for owner and trainer back in Saudi Arabia early last year obviously counted for nought in the face of that one slight misjudgement on a track where any jockey – the best down - can get into trouble even in a three-horse race.
Egan had his day in the sun while William Buick was off travelling to North America for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin. The champion-elect had two mounts at Woodbine in Canada, while as Buick can only sit on one horse and be in one place at a time, former Godolphin habitué, a certain L Dettori, had the gig at Belmont at the Big A – presumably Aqueduct was needed to fulfil some of its near-neighbour’s dates. [It was/is, as Belmont is under reconstruction - Ed.]
The three horses, Nations Pride at the Big A, and the juvenile Mysterious Night and French 2,000 Guineas winner Modern Games in Toronto, all bolted up. They showed, as if we didn’t know already, that North American turf horses are a pretty crummy bunch, relatively speaking at least. Each of the trio won by at least five lengths – cumulatively just over 17 – and picked up a combined $1,450,000 - £920,000 according to the Racing Post. However, with the pound at a long-time low against the dollar, it currently converts at a shade more than £1,250,000, and so made it a very worthwhile trip indeed for all concerned.
Buick will not have been even a trice concerned at Egan’s clean-up job, which also encompassed an impressive Mill Reef Stakes victory for Sakheer, who looked one of the fastest juveniles so far seen out. By common consent that put a classy gloss on an astounding day for his trainer Roger Varian.
With a second St Leger in the bag, Varian has been flying up the trainer charts in recent weeks, but even he would not have anticipated a seven-timer on a single day. The wins came nicely spread around the nation with three each at Newbury and at Ayr’s Western meeting and one at Newmarket. Had Cobalt Blue not been caught on the run-in at Wolverhampton it would have been an eight-timer!
I know I’m putting it at the bottom, but my race of the day, and one of amiable Roger’s septet, was Dusky Lord. This was his eighth run of the season and second win. I’d travelled a total of 1,800 miles to see each of the previous seven, in representing Jonathan Barnett, the football agent, one of those in the Partnership in whose colours he runs.
Six days earlier he had raced from the worst stall of all in the Portland at Doncaster, frustratingly as it was a target I’d suggested for him all year, and he was never able to overcome the disadvantage. David Egan, who won on him at Newmarket in the spring and finished a close second on the four-year-old at Glorious Goodwood, was adamant. “He ran well.”
Armed with that intelligence, Varian declared him for Ayr, happy he had not had too hard a race thanks to Egan’s sensible ride. While he missed by only a few horses and a couple of pounds to make the Big Show, he slid in almost at the top of the Silver Cup, albeit with a massive weight – 9st 11lb.
So, in front of the TV, I was happy to see Jack Mitchell, who had won on Dusky Lord at Newcastle last year, get him away well in the middle group. From then on it was 70 seconds of regret that I’d not taken another road trip – this time 975 miles, there and back.
From here let me leave you in the hands of Timeform. They reported: "Dusky Lord turned out again quickly, having been drawn out of things in the Portland, proved a revelation back in headgear <cheek-pieces>, showing much improved form, rare to see a handicap of this nature won with such complete authority; midfield, tanked along, quickened to lead over 2f out, drew clear, impressive; it’s hard to see even a big rise in the weights being enough to stop him being of interest again."
The Silver Cup has been an adjunct of the Gold Cup for at least a decade. I checked the last eight and each time the Gold Cup, as one would expect, has been run in the quicker time, always between 0.2 sec and 0.8 sec faster. Saturday’s big race went to now 15-time winner Summerghand, trained by David O’Meara. His time was 0.93 sec slower than Dusky Lord’s.
The Racing Post, to my mind, often does a fair bit of massaging of their speed figures. Summerghand’s figure was 72, compared with Dusky Lord’s 95, which represents a second and a half or seven and a half lengths' difference. Yet to arrive at such a low mark on what is clearly Summerghand’s best run of the year, they felt obliged to give him his smallest time performance of the season after 79, 75, 88, 76 and 85.
They clearly felt they had to minimise the figure for Dusky Lord as it would have been in the stratosphere. After the way he won, without being slightly challenged by his 24 rivals, the margin of the win and the fast time, Timeform have raised his mark from the high 90’s to 109. Phil Bull, Timeform’s founder whose whole ethos was based on the accurate interpretation of times, will be turning in his grave!
I think the partners have a Group horse of the future. What a day for Roger Varian, David Egan, Charlie Appleby, William Buick and Hughie Morrison! Not too shabby for Dusky Lord and his owners either!
- TS
https://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/duskylord_ayrsilvercup2022.jpg320830Tony Staffordhttps://www.geegeez.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/10/geegeez_banner_new_170x78.pngTony Stafford2022-09-19 07:19:142022-09-19 08:59:38Monday Musings: A Dusky Beauty
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