Tag Archive for: Chris Waller

Monday Musings: Sistina’s Aussie Fortunes

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Who would have believed it? Three hundred and twenty-five days after buying the then five-year-old mare Via Sistina for 2,700,000 guineas at Tattersalls December sales, new owners Yu Long Investments were already in the black, writes Tony Stafford.

On Saturday at Moonee Valley racecourse, Via Sistina tackled the Ladbrokes Cox Plate over ten furlongs. She won, beating the Japanese-trained favourite, the six-year-old entire Prognosis by eight lengths in track record time, taking her earnings in Australia to £2.9 million.

It’s common knowledge that Australian trainers know how to prepare for the Melbourne Cup, Tuesday week’s (November 5) biggest prize and “the race that stops a nation”, but before we get too excited about Via Sistina’s chance in the big one, there is a small hurdle for her to overcome.

Moonee Valley and Flemington may only be 3.1 kilometres apart, so less than the Cup’s distance of two miles (3,200 metres), but the double in the same year of these two highly prestigious races has been only rarely achieved. Phar Lap, the greatest Australian horse of the Inter-War period, did it in 1930, while the dual Melbourne Cup heroine Makybe Diva did the Cups double 19 years ago. Time flies.

She was a six-year-old, and that second Melbourne Cup win proved to be her racing swansong before retiring to stud.

The Cox Plate is acknowledged to be Australia’s premier non-handicap Group 1 race and it carried just over £1.6 million to the winner on Saturday. It was Via Sistina’s fourth Group 1 victory in six starts since travelling down to Australia, to which can be added one second place in another £1.6 million to the winner extravaganza.

Chris Waller, best known for his training of Winx, never asked that great mare to go further than the 1m2f of the Cox Plate. She won the second of her consecutive quartet in the race by eight lengths, mirroring Via Sistina on Saturday, and won 37 of her 43 career starts.

Should Waller decide to go for the Cup. Via Sistina will clearly challenge for favouritism and while like Winx she has never won at beyond 1m2f, she is a staying rather than the speed type of Winx at the trip. If she runs it would add massive excitement and a completely different aspect to an already compelling race.

Two people at least that will be looking on wanly should she run, will be previous owner Becky Hillen, daughter of the late David Wintle, and her initial trainer Joseph Tuite, who handled the five grand yearling as an unraced two-year-old and progressive three/four-year-old.

George Boughey had her in his yard at the latter part of her four-year-old season and then at five, where she began the startling progression, that culminated (so far) in that Cox Plate tour-de-force. Some selling owners cannot bear watching their former horses win for the new connections. Until Saturday, Becky and husband, bloodstock agent Steve, were probably happy enough. After Saturday and maybe next week, it might be a different story.

But for Joe Tuite it can only have been two years of turmoil and what might-have-been after he relinquished his licence in late August 2022. Clearly, studying Via Sistina’s career from the comfort of my office, Tuite had a major part in developing a late-maturing filly into the colossus she now is.

Unraced at two, Via Sistina won second time out as a three-year-old, by five-and-a-half lengths in a Goodwood maiden fillies’ race. She added a Newmarket handicap off 89 by four lengths in October of that year. Such was her obvious potential at that stage, that when Tuite targeted a fillies’ Listed race at Doncaster the following month, she went off as the 11/4 favourite, but finished in the ruck, only 13th of 18.

Clearly at the start of her four-year-old season, her training hadn’t gone smoothly, and it wasn’t until August 27 that Via Sistina made her debut. She appeared in the Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor, a Group 3 race open to colts and geldings as well as fillies. She was a 33/1 shot and in finishing fourth she probably exceeded expectations.

By now though, the die was cast and Joe had already made up his mind to give up the unequal fight of trying to keep himself financially afloat. A report in the Racing Post the day after the filly’s promising return to action tells how it was almost with a measure of relief that he was finishing. The story went thus:-

Joe Tuite felt a mix of sadness and nerves as he saddled the final runner of his 11-year training career on Saturday, yet he stands by a decision to retire due to financial difficulties. Via Sistina outran her 33/1 odds to finish fourth in the Sytner Sunningdale & Maidenhead BMW Winter Hill Stakes at Windsor.

Tuite revealed he'd had a "few offers" for a future job in racing but no decision had been made.

Tuite said on Saturday morning: "It's a bit of a weird feeling – I can't really describe it. It's a bit of sadness I suppose.

"There are a lot of times where you go racing and there's not much of a worry but today I'm on tenterhooks about it all."

The trainer said a difficult season, with just two winners, and financial issues heightened by escalating costs were behind his reasons to retire.

He added: "It's definitely the right thing to do. I was down on numbers, and it was putting square pegs into round holes. I'd be worried looking down the road what the future would be like for the lower-tier of racing, that's for sure.

"It's tough but business is tough for everyone, not just racing, it's in all walks of life.

"I know my decision surprised a few people, but a few people that were closer to me weren't, as they could see the way things were going."

Within not much more than a month, Via Sistina was already showing Joe that maybe if he had held on for a short while, things might have sorted themselves out for him. Transferred to George Boughey, Via Sistina was quickly off the mark for him, running 2nd in the Group 3 Pride Stakes at Newmarket at the beginning of that October and then going across to Toulouse and picking up a provincial Group 3 in November.

She ran five times for Boughey last year as a five-year-old, starting off with a six-length win in the Group 3 Dahlia Stakes at Newmarket in May, before going across to the Curragh for the Group 1 Pretty Polly on July 1 where she beat Hughie Morrison’s slightly unlucky in running Stay Alert by two lengths.

She didn’t win again in this hemisphere, but third as the even-money favourite in the Group 1 Falmouth at Newmarket 13 days later when dropping back to a mile probably wasn’t her ideal task. Then it was 2nd, beaten a nose in the Prix Jean Romanet (ten furlongs) at Deauville before that sale-exploding run behind King Of Steel in the Champion Stakes at Ascot a year ago.

The luck was certainly just as much with Becky Hillen in terms of the timing with the December sales and all that Aussie money, barely a month ahead. Just as the luck had been notoriously absent when Joe Tuite had to make the awful decision to cut his losses and hand in his licence even as the filly he nurtured so carefully was about to come into full bloom as a late-developing racehorse.

For each of her 121 seconds of action around Moonee Valley on Saturday, Via Sistina earned her new (ish) owners £13,000.

In 11 years as a trainer in the UK, Joe Tuite had a best tally of 30, but usually picked up between 15 and 20 or so wins each year. From 1,881 runs over those 11 seasons, on the flat he won 173 races and total earnings of £1,552,585. Put another way, it represented a return of £825 per runner.

It must be salutary to think that his former inmate, the one that he brought to a position where she was equipped to make the giant strides she later managed as she had not been rushed or abused, won more in those 121 track-record-breaking seconds than he did in all those 11 years.

We keep saying it. Something’s rotten about English racing that we can afford to lose people with the skills of a Joe Tuite because he can’t manage to make it pay. Our only point in world racing seems to be to provide the proven material that can then go back to countries with many times more prize money to spread around and clean up – like Via Sistina!

One footnote. Cheltenham’s winter season proper started on Friday and Saturday and, as usual, it proved a bonanza for the Irish. They had six winners over the two days, including the first four races on Saturday. Henry De Bromhead had the 1-2 in the £100,000 featured chase, his pair mopping up £75k as they careered well clear of the rest up the Cheltenham run-in. Here we go again!

- TS

 

Monday Musings: A Right Royal Week

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We’ve just been through five days of the most wonderful racing – and, until Saturday, flawless weather – at Royal Ascot, but for many the experience was incomplete, writes Tony Stafford. For my part, I don’t think I managed to make a single phone call on my mobile on any of the four days I attended.

Others fared better but the internet, and especially punters attempting to put on bets via their devices, proved a generally difficult and frustrating process.

One friend not in attendance said: “It’s just the same at West Ham. As soon as you get to half-time 60,000 people take out their phones and it’s just impossible.”

But going to a Premier League football match is nothing like spending six hours watching the racing and fashion and arranging to meet up with friends. You might be able to suggest a point to gather, but when as on Saturday there is a crowd of more than 69,000 that’s not so easy. Surely it’s not beyond the wit, or the finances, of Ascot to improve communications.

I described my feelings as the week progressed – not improved on Saturday when my glasses disappeared while eating lunch – as being in solitary confinement.  Not that I ever have been!

The racing started with a bang with world best Baaeed in the Queen Anne, quickly followed by a performance full of promise from Bradsell and Hollie Doyle for Archie Watson in the Coventry, and it went on from there.

Quite by chance I had the ear of Chris Waller for a little while before racing started on Tuesday and, as well as appreciating his confidence in the chance of Nature Strip in the Group One King’s Stand Stakes, which he won as a champion should, I also got some interesting stuff on the post-racing life of his great mare Winx.

Owners of many outstanding racemares have found that life in the breeding shed has not been as straight-forward as they might have hoped. Winx has had her setbacks, losing one foal, following which she had a tough time according to Waller.

If I understood him correctly, he believes extreme activity on the racecourse often inhibits the development of the reproductive systems making such mares immature in that regard. Winx deserves to get a foal or two to pass on her magical ability.

Then there was the narrow success of Coroebus in the St James’s Palace Stakes, William Buick bringing him with one of many well-timed challenges during the week.

Buick competed toe to toe throughout with Ryan Moore just as Godolphin did with Coolmore and while it was honours even in terms of good rides and victories for the two major powers, Ryan had the edge numerically. His riding this season is as good as it ever was.

Over recent seasons we had become accustomed to Ryan vainly trying to make up ground in the latter stages of Royal Ascot races after Frankie Dettori had made the first move. This year he seemed much more intent on riding closer to the front.

Once the field gets round the home turn at Ascot there is not much more than two furlongs for a rider to develop a winning run and, with crowding often to be expected, jockeying for position is more important there than on many tracks.

I did think Ryan’s riding of Kyprios in the Gold Cup was a masterpiece. It’s one thing making sure you keep your main rival boxed in when you can. At least twice as Dettori searched for a gap to start his move on Stradivarius, Moore, level and on his outside, kept the door shut.

But when Frankie’s race as far as winning was run, Moore still had saved enough on Kyprios for the Coolmore/O’Brien horse to deal with the dangerous challenge of Mojo Star around the outside. Last year’s Derby and St Leger runner-up, resuming for the Richard Hannon team after a long break, loomed up in the Amo Racing colours, looking sure to prevail.

Sadly for Amo boss Kia Joorabchian – in the paddock on Saturday with a football-oriented entourage that included Rio Ferdinand – none of his 16 runners at the meeting could win. This fastest-growing team in racing will win some big ones, that’s inevitable. How long, though, the emotional Kia can balance expectation with the inevitable disappointments that racing at this sort of level brings, is the interesting question.

Amo Racing’s support was a major factor in George Boughey’s rapid advance in the first couple of years of his career so it came as quite a shock for me to discover that of the 82 horses to have run from his Hamilton Road stable in Newmarket this year, only three have been in Amo Racing ownership.

Already successful at Classic level with Cachet in the 1,000 Guineas this year, Boughey now has two Royal Ascot wins to his name. Inver Park won Thursday’s concluding handicap, but a much more impressive winner showed the trainer’s sure touch on Saturday.

The Golden Gates Handicap, a three-year-old contest over ten furlongs, is a recent addition as Ascot went to a full five days of seven-race cards. Boughey’s Missed The Cut could not have been a more convincing winner.

I have mentioned before how significant it was for the UK racing and breeding industry that so many potentially high-class horses from the Shadwell stable were made available because of the economies needed after the death of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoun.

Missed The Cut, a son of the top US sire Quality Road, never raced as a juvenile and went to the February sale at Newmarket where he was snapped up by former jockey, Ed Babington. A successful businessman in garden furniture, he is also developing his racing interests, having involvement in the Roger Varian stable as well as with Boughey.

Missed The Cut cost 40k, which might not have looked a bargain when he first set foot on the track running fourth at the Craven meeting. But easy wins by eleven and then five lengths in two novice contests brought an opening mark of 95. He was heavily backed, as many of Boughey’s horses are – down to 5-2 on Saturday - and defeat never looked a possibility.

He stormed to the front two furlongs out and stretched the margin to almost five lengths, He’s already at least Listed class as we’ll see tomorrow when the new ratings appear. I reckon he’s a Group horse and maybe a top-level one.

Dettori did get some joy from the returning win of one-time 1,000 Guineas favourite Inspiral in the Coronation Stakes, but most people found his public “calling out” over the Stradivarius ride by joint-trainer John Gosden left a sour taste. You would think the number of winners the prince of racing has ridden for the stable, many at the top level, would have deserved a little more understanding in the face of one less than perfect ride on a horse for whom he has so much affection.

Nobody will ever worry in the fulness of time that Stradivarius, already a three-time Gold Cup winner, did not make it four. It was a shame for owner Bjorn Neilsen and no doubt Gosden senior would have liked another Gold Cup to his name, but that’s racing and for once Ryan rode the socks off Frankie.

Gosden was much more positive about the winning ride on Nashwa – like Inspiral a daughter of Frankel – in yesterday’s Prix De Diane at Chantilly. The Oaks third took the quick turn-around well when winning nicely under Hollie Doyle, who thus became the first female jockey to win a major European Classic.

I must say I have been dismayed all year once it became known of the departure of Tony Nerses from his role as the long-time manager of Nashwa’s owner. Initially for Saleh Al Homaizi, then for the partnership between Saleh and Imad Al Sagar, to Imad’s outright ownership when Al Homaizi bowed out a few years ago

I always believed Tony had a big input in the suggestion that Hollie might become the retained jockey for the team. Now we learn it was Mr Gosden’s idea all along. Just as it was when William Buick first went to the US, no doubt!

- TS