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Monday Musings: A Strong Constitution

23 February 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Almost exactly a year ago, I was invited by my friend Malcolm Cain to attend a Cheltenham preview meeting on a Saturday evening in Central London, writes Tony Stafford. It was a great do, very close to the event itself, and much debate focused on whether Constitution Hill would be able to regain the Champion Hurdle he had ceded to State Man and injury the previous year.

Lydia Hislop was one of the panellists and she was wary about the present state of his jumping whereas I managed to get in a word suggesting he was the best hurdler I’d ever seen. As we all know, he fell in the Champion Hurdle a few days later when a 4/7 shot; tumbled over again at Aintree the following month, and stopped as if shot at Punchestown.

In the five-horse Fighting Fifth Hurdle on his comeback run last November he got only as far as the second hurdle when making it three falls and a submission in his four latest runs following an unblemished ten victories in a row and a total of 103 lengths to the good.

While the behind-the-scenes machinations that produced last Friday’s £40k 4yo and up novice race at Southwell over one and a half miles might well have had ulterior motives, the desired effect – a win for the nine-year-old – was achieved and spectacularly so.

What nobody expected – unless Oisin Murphy might have had an inkling, judged on his post-race comments about when he rode the horse a couple of weeks earlier – was the sort of performance that you rarely see in any flat race.

While there weren’t any superstars among the opposition, more than a few of them were anything but the proverbial trees. Nine and a half lengths was the verdict, so 11 career wins – 112 lengths in total, at ten lengths a time and no doubt we hope, much more to follow.

We’ll have to wait until midweek’s crucial schooling session for a decision. Nico de Boinville will be hoping that Nicky Henderson and owner Michael Buckley will agree with him to allow their extraordinary nine-year-old to return to his day job, before embarking on what could be a lucrative second career on the flat.

As a jumps trainer – not merely any jumps trainer but one who has won nine Champion Hurdle races and pretty much everything else – Henderson would no doubt love to make it a round ten. He’s 75 now, yet there’s no diminution in the ambition nor the uncanny knack of getting his horse right on the big day.

In some ways Southwell on Friday was a big day. The Arena publicity machine (and Simon Mapletoft on Sky Sports Racing – I didn’t watch ITV) was in full volume afterwards, talking up the “tremendous crowd”. I suppose 3,800 is a lot for a Friday night at Southwell. I’ve been there when you’d struggle to find 300 – including staff and jockeys!

There was no disguising the excitement though as Oisin and the wonderful gelding returned to weigh in. He had overcome so many new experiences. First time in starting stalls, a first time on a Tapeta surface, and, of course, the first time he didn’t need to jump an obstacle.

I know Oisin has experience over jumps. He was fulfilling an ambition when he rode the six-year-old Ike Sport for Neil Mulholland on Boxing Day 2024 at Wincanton. The pair never got involved and Oisin eventually pulled up his mount. No doubt he’ll be at Cheltenham as a guest of Michael Buckley and probably hoping Nico forgets to set his alarm and a substitute rider is needed.

Incidentally, my host at the Cheltenham preview last year was involved with Buckley in a Cheltenham Festival winner trained by Nicky Henderson. They were among the members of the Men In Our Position Syndicate that also included Victor Chandler.

We talk of the correlation between hurdles and flat race abilities in handicap terms as being between 45 and 50lb. Constitution Hill is a 170-rated jumper, so there’s no reason why that couldn’t translate as a 120ish flat horse. Initial estimates of the worth of the single romp at Southwell has him already well into the low 100s and if he’d have had another furlong, say, to travel, he’d have won by at least 15 lengths, so you can add a few pounds to that!

What would you do if you were Michael Buckley? He has already stated that he wouldn’t mind having a crack at the Melbourne Cup. Two miles on fast ground? Maybe.

If he did go to Melbourne and won, he would eclipse the record age of a winner. Joseph O’Brien sent the eight-year-old Twilight Payment to win the 2020 race and he thereby joined Toryboy in 1865 and the 1938 victor Catalogue as the joint-oldest winner.

Meanwhile, in Hong Kong yesterday, local history was made as Ka Ying Rising made it 18 wins in a row in the Queen’s Silver Jubilee Cup, taking the £693k Group 1 race by an easy three and a half lengths under Zac Purton, smashing the track record in the process.

The David Hayes-trained five-year-old beat the previous record of 17 in succession set by another great local hero, Silent Witness. He started at 1/20 and Hong Kong racegoers who like to back a favourite would never have had much doubt that he would triumph yet again. The question now is, how far can he stretch the elastic?

Reverting to what could await Constitution Hill when he does turn to a flat-race programme, there is no bar on older horses being successful on the level. Hughie Morrison’s Alcazar was at his best as a ten-year-old when his crowning glory was victory in the Prix Royal Oak (Group 1) at Longchamp under Micky Fenton.

My memory is not always accurate, but I do believe that a 12-year-old hurdler called Beau Caprice won a division of the Gloucestershire Hurdle, forerunner of the Supreme and run in the old days in two divisions, in 1966. I think he was trained by Fulke Walwyn. [He was – Ed.]

But I cannot remember any nine-year-old winning a flat race first time out, certainly not one of this quality and by such a wide margin. Even if de Boinville gets his way and Constitution Hill does run at Cheltenham in a couple of weeks’ time, that surely will be the finale to his stellar jumping career, but one which with luck might have already equalled the feat of such as Istabraq with his three in succession.

- TS

Monday Musings: Saudi Riches

16 February 2026/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

You might wonder whether the dream of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to dominate the world’s most watched sports at the highest level is wearing a little thin, writes Tony Stafford. Golfers and soccer players have been enticed by unfathomably large sums to join the Liv Tour and Saudi Pro League respectively, but even after no more than a year or two in some cases disillusionment is setting in.

In the Kingdom, horse racing’s attention is largely on one day and specifically one race. Last Saturday was the seventh instalment of the Saudi Cup, run on dirt over a mile and a furlong of the Riyadh racecourse at Janadriyah. A field of 13 included three Japanese competitors, six horses from the US and was filled out with a quartet of generally outclassed locals.

The race had a prize fund totalling £15 million, but despite facing decent opposition, the favourite and defending champion Forever Young started as short as 1/3 and duly did the business for owner Susumu Fujita, trainer Yoshito Yahagi and jockey Ryusei Sakai. The trainer also won the race in 2023 with Panthalassa.

Forever Young shared top spot in the dirt-race section of the 2025 International Classification with the US-trained three-year-old Sovereignty. Their mark of 128 was 2lb inferior to the overall champion, the French-trained turf specialist Calandagan, who was boosted to that mark when winning the Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse in late November.

Saturday’s opposition to Forever Young was headed by the Bob Baffert-trained Nysos, a far from negligible performer who had won six of his seven previous starts. One of those was at Grade 1 level and his sole defeat until the Saudi Cup was also at that level and then by only a neck.

His rating going into the race was 119, 9lb inferior to Forever Young’s, but after the one-length defeat, he is certain to have his mark adjusted upwards. The pair were almost four lengths in advance of the best of the rest, the Wathnan Racing-owned but US-trained Tumbarumba, partnered by Wathnan’s retained rider James Doyle.

Here’s the time to mention the lavish prizes. The winner collected £7,407,407; Nysos earned £2,592,592; Tumbarumba pocketed £1,481,481; fourth-home Bishops Bay (US) takes home £1,111,111. £740,740 was the prize for Japan’s fifth-placed Luxor Café, while Sunrise Zipangu, the next-home under Oisin Murphy, lifted £444,444. Murphy has often been associated with Japanese runners in international events over the years.

The money went all the way down to 10^th place. That position was held by one of the home contingent, Ameerat Alzamaan. It was well worth Ryan Moore’s time to travel over to Saudi Arabia, his mount earning £148,148.

Those massive figures explain what happens when the best part of £30 million in overall stakes is available. Do the authorities at the top in the Kingdon continue to feel that the £30 million for one day is value for money? As long as they do, the “have saddle will travel” community will be happy to join the party.

Moore, Murphy and Doyle are among that small group of UK-based riders (also including the absent Willliam Buick) at the forefront of the world’s jockeys and all three will return home with nicely enhanced bank balances. I’m not sure whether they cop the imagined ten per cent of total prizemoney in Saudi but even if it is a mere five per cent, it would represent a great way to divest the costs of family Christmases.

Overall, Murphy held sway, his £2 million and a bit total bolstered by two wins, in a Listed race (£370k) and more spectacularly in the £1,333k Turf Cup over ten and a half furlongs on the Karl Burke-trained Royal Champion.

Moore was third here on George Boughey’s Survie, carrying the Doreen Tabor colours, and the resulting £222k contributed to Ryan’s £700k haul on the afternoon. Later he teamed up with Tom Clover’s Tabletalk in the 1m7f Turf Handicap, bettered only here by Joseph O’Brien’s Sons And Lovers ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle. The Irish team’s reward? A cool £1.1 million.

Doyle’s nearest to a win came on the French-trained, Wathnan-owned speed merchant Lazzat, but he couldn’t match the US performer Reef Runner, trained in Florida by David Fawkes.

Another septet of UK jockeys was recruited mostly for a single mount and again normally without making an impact. David Loughnane and Danny Tudhope got lucratively among the place prizes once each, while the other five, namely Pat Dobbs, moving across from his winter base in Dubai, Jason Watson, Pat Cosgrave, Callum Shepherd and P J McDonald all went without a prize, but could well have been paid a guaranteed fee to attend.

Many years ago, when Saudi Arabia was just getting acquainted with organising top-class international sports events, a golf tournament’s first prize was exceeded many times over by the appearance money paid to Justin Rose.

We’re in that period of the season when most trainers will be holding their breath with Cheltenham in mind. One who will be going there with optimism is Ben Pauling after Saturday’s wonderful hat-trick in the first three races on the Ascot card. Novice hurdler Mondoui’boy; The Jukebox Kid, comfortably in the Reynoldstown Chase; and Fiercely Proud in the day’s featured handicap hurdle all won well to show his team is right at the top of its form.

Pauling is involved at the six-day stage in one of the most compelling events of the winter – and it’s a flat race at Southwell on Friday. With £40k added, it’s the “Let’s do Nicky Henderson and Michael Buckley a Favour novice stakes”, a race for four-year-olds and upwards over 1m4f.

Hughie Morrison was speaking to me about it the other day and mentioned that with that amount of money, it cannot be divided, and 32 horses were entered, with a maximum field of only 14 able to run. For a day Nicky must have been nervous that Constitution Hill could have a low ballot number and miss the gig.

I know loads of trainers who routinely get what they describe as “crap draws”, but the boffins (or AI maybe nowadays) that programme the machine that spews out the ballot order the day after entries, thus yesterday, gave Constitution Hill number 16 so only two of the 32 need to come out.

One bookmaker’s odds I saw had the former Champion Hurdler as the 4/6 favourite. Kevin Phillipart De Foy’s Amo Racing-owned Square Necker, a winner at Dundalk in December, is next best at 7/4 with Willie Mullins’ Daddy Long Legs, a 152-rated hurdler, next best at 7/2.

If you think I begrudge the Seven Barrows team being helped to find a non-jumps race for Constitution Hill’s quest to regain his Champion Hurdle crown, far from it.

Sixteen years ago, the season after his 2009 Champion Hurdle success, Nicky was struggling to find a suitable prep for Punjabi. Kempton was persuaded to stage an £8k to the winner hurdle race with advantageous terms, also at the end of February. Punjabi started 1/6 and won by 12 lengths, but his wind gave out in the big race a few days later and stablemate Binocular gained his revenge.

Ray Tooth’s star performer was never the same again. The year after Binocular’s Champion Hurdle win, Sandown provided another “gift” for him. It was gladly accepted at 1/10 but again a second title victory proved beyond the J P McManus star.

- TS

Monday Musings: Nobody Else

29 December 2024/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Who else could have handled it? Never mind Willie Mullins for all his mastery at winning championship races, writes Tony Stafford. Add those other Irish behemoths of jumps training, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead. You could probably slip Joseph O’Brien onto that list now he has renewed his love of collecting Grade 1 jumping prizes, notably last week’s King George at Kempton with Banbridge.

As to the UK, after Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton it’s hard to imagine anyone having the resources or flexibility to attempt Nicky Henderson’s Christmas equine gymnastics. He’s a man apart.

Go back to last month. He took two horses for a gallop at Kempton Park. One, the former Champion Hurdler Constitution Hill, was aiming at a third consecutive Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle having been absent since the last one. The other, the unbeaten four-year-old Sir Gino, was being prepared for an early first race over fences.

It was a publicised workout, so the racing press were there expecting to see Constitution Hill come out on top. Then, assuredly, to resume at Newcastle that daunting sequence of eight successive wins since being bought from Warren Ewing and former Seven Barrows stable jockey Barry Geraghty for €120k.

That represented a fair profit on the €16k they paid for him before he had his one racecourse defeat, possibly unluckily, in a point-to-point. What could match him? But Henderson never minds testing his best horses – “no point” he probably says, “sending them away from home to look good against trees”.

Anyway, this tree spread his branches and took exception to his sacrificial object role and came out on top. I pondered a few weeks ago here whether the gallop was possibly a fair representation of where they are now and there were, and since, elements in the form lines of some of Mullins’ best horses that back up that theory. More of that later.

But it brought an instant change of plan, Henderson with that nimbleness of thought that has kept him at the top of the tree – the fact he wins fewer trainer championships as the relentless Paul Nicholls to my mind has nothing to do with it.

“Constitution Hill isn’t ready” was the message followed soon after by a minor lameness issue, so Sir Gino, would-be chaser, would have to step in and continue his own unblemished Rules career record at Newcastle.

Although eight turned up at Gosforth Park, it was billed as a straight match between four-for-four Sir Gino and five-from-six Majestic Power from the Mullins stable. By Galileo out of Annie Power, Majestic Power has the most awesome pedigree and an equally redoubtable trio of owners, Mrs Ricchi, Mrs Magnier and J P McManus. It was widely held that the Mullins steamroller could not be thwarted.

In those top two-mile hurdle races, though, only a hint of inefficiency over the obstacles will leave any horse flailing in the wake of the rest and so it proved with Majestic Power. Ahead of him, Sir Gino, fluent from the outset, hit the front when Nico de Boinville wanted and drew away to an easy win.

The identity of the runner-up was almost immaterial, except that Sam Thomas’s Lump Sum picked up a more than useful £24k lump sum for his owners. It made everyone start looking at Sir Gino’s credentials for the Champion Hurdle, especially with Constitution Hill’s potential readiness in doubt at that stage.

Sir Gino hadn’t managed to get to the Triumph Hurdle last March so was unable to pick a fight with the septet of Mullins juveniles, the first two among them Majborough who beat filly Kargese by one and half lengths.

Majborough didn’t go on to Aintree for the Boodles Anniversary Hurdle, but Kargese did and Sir Gino beat her by almost four lengths.

Any suggestion that the Mullins filly was below par on the day has no credence as she easily won the Champion 4yo Hurdle at Punchestown in May. Meanwhile Majborough, with so much hurdles talent for Mullins to juggle, was sent straight over fences for his first run since Cheltenham and won easily at Fairyhouse last month.

It didn’t take long for any question whether Sir Gino would be aimed at the Champion Hurdle or taking the chasing path. Constitution Hill came right in the days leading up to Christmas when it was decided he would try for a third consecutive Christmas Hurdle. Waiting to destroy his unbeaten record was the 2023 Triumph Hurdle winner Lossiemouth, hard trained after a facile two-and-a-half-mile win over smart Teahupoo this month.

The French-bred mare came to Kempton with nine wins and a dreadfully unlucky 2nd in her first season on her card. Easy winner of both mares’ races at the Cheltenham and Punchestown Festivals, the latter at 2/11, she would be a stern test for the returning champion.

While Constitution Hill raced fluently close behind recent Greatwood Hurdle winner Burdett Road in the four-runner race, Paul Townend was content to allow Lossiemouth to sit a few lengths behind - perhaps he just couldn't go the speed of his rival. At no time did Constitution Hill look in danger.

De Boinville urged – no more - Constitution Hill to the front before the last flight at which Burdett Road made a horrible mistake and Lossiemouth wasn’t fluent either, but still the margin of two-and-a-half lengths didn’t reflect the winner’s superiority. At the same time, Lossiemouth’s own exceptional ability was not dimmed on a track where stamina, her main asset, wasn’t the prime requirement on the day.

But for me, the Christmas race of races was the Wayward Lad Novices' Chase on Friday. Here Sir Gino was unhesitatingly pitted against possibly the biggest talking-horse ever to come out of Ireland since Arkle - and “Himself” was racing more than 60 years ago!

As Ballyburn went through his season as a novice hurdler last winter, the publicity machine, in some degree initiated and fuelled by those closest to him and greedily latched on to by the media, earned him the status in some parts as “unbeatable”.

True he made mincemeat – appropriate for this time of year? - of the opposition at Cheltenham in the 2m5f Gallagher Novices' Hurdle, but two-thirds of the opposition, and handsome place prizemoney collectors, were from the Mullins stable. Two UK upstarts, one each for Ben Pauling, last of six to finish, and Nicky Henderson, pulled up, made this an open goal for the favourite.

An even easier victory came at Punchestown, and he returned to the same track for a debut win over fences last month.

So when they lined up on Friday at Kempton, it was a slight surprise to me that Sir Gino was comfortably preferred in the market in a race where again, as in the Christmas Hurdle, it featured two no-hopers in a field of four.

Ballyburn, with the experience and the need to make it a gallop over the two miles, was sent to the front by Paul Townend, but Sir Gino, all the way round, looked the more assured jumper and it was no surprise when he was allowed to take the lead going to three out. The last trio of Pendil-like leaps – look him up if you cannot remember the 1970’s – took him clear and the margin of seven and a half lengths again was no accurate reflection of their relative performances.

So once more Nicky Henderson has trumped everything that could possibly have been thrown at him. The noisy Ballyburn adherents will be wishing their trainer had kept him for one of the multitude of Grade 1 options that litter the four days of Leopardstown and even the odd one at Limerick over their joint Christmas programme.

The two Kempton defeats did signal more than a hiccup for Mullins. On Friday, in all he had 32 runners and, while it’s fair to say there were a few outsiders among them, it must have been a rare if not unprecedented experience for him to come home from Kempton in the knowledge that only one of the 32 had been victorious. That came in a chase at Limerick where two horses in front of his runner fell independently, allowing his to come through to win.

I think already we must regard Sir Gino as the next Altior. Altior won the Wayward Lad during 14 consecutive chase wins a decade ago. But Sir Gino’s achievement should be considered in the light that Altior’s win at 1/9 came on his third start over fences. Of course he won the Arkle. Of course, so will Sir Gino, unless Constitution Hill has any reason to miss the attempt at recapturing the Champion Hurdle from Mullins' State Man (and Elliott's Brighterdaysahead, who blitzed State Man yesterday), then no doubt he’ll go there and win that. See if you can back him for that, non-runner no bet!

- TS

Racing Insights, Thursday 13/04/23

12 April 2023/in Racing Insights/by Chris Worrall

Thursday's free feature, the Instant Expert racecard tab is one of Geegeez readers' most popular tools because it has the unique ability to condense the entire form profile of every runner in the race into a single, easily digestible, view covering the form in terms of wins (or places), runs, and win (or place) percentage for each of going, class, course, distance, and field size.

It also compares today’s official rating with the horse’s last winning official rating. The display is colour coded: green for a higher percentage rate, amber for a middling percentage, and red for a low percentage. Horses with no form under a certain condition have grey figures.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Where a horse has no UK/Irish form – i.e. it is having its first run in Britain or Ireland under Rules – it will not show up on Instant Expert at all.

We make this feature freely available to ALL readers EVERY Thursday for ALL races, including, naturally, our selection of 'free' races as follows...

2.45 Newcastle
3.30 Aintree
5.30 Chelmsford
8.30 Chelmsford

The best of those races is undoubtedly up here in the North West, where it's almost inconceivable that the 1/7 priced Constitution Hill would get beat, after winning all five of his Grade 1 starts to date with an average winning margin of over 14 lengths, but with all his rivals being priced up at 14/1 or longer, we could pick ourselves up a nice E/W bet or forecast from the 3.30 Aintree, a 6-runner, Grade 1, 4yo+ hurdle race over a left-handed 2m4f (+62 yds rail movement)...

CONSTITUTION HILL is 5 from 5 in Grade 1 contests without really breaking sweat. Yes, he's up in trip by the best part of 3 fulrongs, but the manner of his last two victories suggests another easy win.

I LIKE TO MOVE IT has won a Class 1 handicap and a Grade 2 contest this season, but was only 6th of 7 and 34 lengths behind Constitution Hill at Cheltenham last time out with the re-opposing Zanahiyr three places and 21 lengths ahead of him. he wouldn't be a contender for the top 2 on that run, but he has won here in the past, landing a bumper on debut back in November 2020.

SCEAU ROYAL wears cheekpieces for the first time today after going down by just a length and a half in a grade 2 event at Fontwell last time out. he was third here in 2022's Melling Chase and has won three grade 2 hurdles, but hasn't proven himself in seven efforts at this level.

SHARJAH might not be the horse he was, but he's won seven Grade 1 hurdle races in an illustrious career and was beaten by less than 3 lengths (4th of 24) in the County Hurdle at Cheltenham. You know he'll run his race, virtually all of his career has been over a two mile trip.

ZANAHIYR was running a big race in this contest a year ago when falling at the last under pressure from the eventual winner Epatante who re-opposes here. Another similar effort puts him right in the mix for a place, especially after getting within 13 lengths of Constitution Hill at Cheltenham last time out. Not many have got that close and the trip shouldn't be an issue.

EPATANTE is the only mare in the race and gets a useful 7lb concession. She is, of course a course and distance winner, courtesy of winning this very race last year. She beat all bar stablemate Constitution Hill in both the Fighting Fifth and Christmas Hurdle last winter before a routine win in a Doncaster Grade 2 in late January. She wasn't at her best at the Cheltenham festival, but reunited with her stablemate here could see another Nicky Henderson big-race 1-2.

At this point, I've got the battle for silver as a 2-horse contest between Zanahiyr and Epatante, but let's check collateral form via Instant Expert...

...which pretty much speaks for itself and is a tick for the mare Epatante, who also comes out on top on place form...

Based on recent pace profiles, I wouldn't be surprised if the favourite was allowed to set the tempo of the contest in afield lacking an out and out front runner...

...and I suppose the key here might be to see if you could stop him from running too far clear. The chances are that he'll be allowed to dominate, giving us a 5-runner contest for the £53k runner-up prize. As it happens, similar small field races here have been kind to those 'chasing' the leader(s)...

...although I suspect the chase will be at a distance here. Hold-up horses have done well enough too and there's not really much to choose between the bottom four on the pace graphic. I Like To Move It might well be the one who tries to go with the fav, but he weakened late on during his only other effort at this trip and going off too quickly would end his chances here.

Summary

Barring a disaster, Constitution Hill should be cantering home well ahead of the field. Is 1/7 value or not? I'll let you decide for yourselves, but at the stakes I play at, it's not worth bothering. The race for second, however, could be fascinating between Zanahiyr and Epatante with the latter hopefully prevailing. She's (LTO aside) in good nick, seems to run well whenever her stablemate Constitution Hill is around and is proven at track/trip. Both contenders are priced at 14/1, but Epatante shades it for me.

My 1-2-3 would be Constitution Hill/Epatante/Zanahiyr with me going E/W on the mare and doing the forecast.

Monday Musings: Big Priced Winners Hiding in Plain Sight

20 March 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Where to start about Cheltenham? Ever since the race following the Gold Cup on Friday afternoon, I resolved to write about a 66/1 winner that if we bothered (or had the time) to look closely at all the form, we could have been laughing all the way, if not to the bank, certainly to make a dent in our gas and electricity balances, writes Tony Stafford.

Earlier in the day a friend asked me to offer a shortie and a an each-way alternative for the last six races – Lossiemouth had already dotted in when he called. I won’t go into my unambitious, yet unsuccessful, calls, but I did have an opinion on the St James Place Festival Challenge Cup Hunter Chase.

I had a memory of the name Vaucelet, stablemate and chosen entry of three fancies for David Christie, whose Winged Leader was runner-up last year to the famed Irish standing dish Billaway, giving his Northern Ireland-based handler a change of luck. The old-timer Billaway was again in the field and was destined to fall before the action heated up.

Vaucelet had come over to the UK twice for races at the big May hunter chase showcase at Stratford. In 2021 he won the novice championship as a 6yo and a 4/1 shot, while a month after a Punchestown near-miss, behind Billaway, Vaucelet collected the Championship Hunter Chase, sponsored by Pertemps in the 63^rd running for the Horse and Hound Cup.

He preceded the first UK win with hunter/point form figures that season of 21111 and since it, he’s gone 113112111. No wonder, you (as I did) might say, he was the 9/4 favourite in the 23 runner field.

Yet hiding in that line up, freely available at 66/1, was a horse that had started 11/4 off levels with Vaucelet in that Stratford novice championship.

This horse, namely Premier Magic, made the running that day and had just been headed before stumbling after jumping the last. He rallied on the flat but could do no better than a close third. He was pulled up in last year’s Cheltenham race but had the excuse of being badly crowded coming down the hill.

When he came back for that second shot against Billaway and Vaucelet, he had since been confined to point-to-points by his Welsh-based trainer and rider, Bradley Gibbs.

If Vaucelet had busily been picking up the pots on offer in the pointing field across the water, our unsung hero had been similarly campaigned. From March 2020 to Stratford in May 2021, his form figures were 21111. Since the defeat there, it was 11111 before Friday. His last win came by 14 lengths in the open at Garthorpe in February when an 8/11 favourite.

Yet he started 66/1 at Cheltenham last week! He was lucky to be clear of the late scrimmaging caused by loose horses, but he battled on genuinely, hardly a surprise with all those wins on his record. Meanwhile Vaucelet was struggling home in seventh.

Take a bow, Bradley Gibbs and Premier Magic. Some of those point-to-point experts will have been either rubbing their hands or cursing their lack of faith having backed or missed such a potential goldmine horse. I must give Jonathan Neesom a call to ask him if he had a few quid on.

Bradley Gibbs trains the horse for his partner’s father and was publicly grateful for the support given to him in developing their yard in Wales. None of the big names at the other end of the ownership rainbow would have been more deserving of satisfaction at their work of the past three years with this son of Court Cave.

As well as a Welsh winner, there was also a better-known Scottish-trained winner as Corach Rambler repeated last year’s victory in the Ultima Handicap Chase off a 6lb higher mark. This was only his 3^rd run since and when Tom Scudamore came to the preview night in London he predicted this success, also that he would follow up in the Grand National.

Tom’s father, Peter Scudamore, is partner and assistant trainer to Lucinda Russell, so an element of insider information was involved there. On that preview event, at one point I was asked my bet of the week and repeated what I’d mentioned in my column here, Langer Dan on Thursday; but, by race day, I’d forgotten all about it.

So, what else from the week? I could go through the 18-10 Ireland domination over the home team, or talk about Constitution Hill, Honeysuckle and plenty more, but I imagine you’ve seen and read plenty about all of that. I’ll look for something different.

When the rain came, my thoughts were that on soft ground the potential for, if not catastrophe, then certainly mishaps, would be greatly increased. There were upwards of 400 runners over the four days and the quality of the preparation of these horses was such that only 12 were documented as having fallen. To those, you could add five unseated, with the odd horse brought down.

More predictable was the 80 pulled up, around 20 per cent of the total. Most unlikely was the Ultima which, as I’ve mentioned, was won by Corach Rambler. He headed home the Martin Brassil-trained Fastorslow, Jonjo O’Neill’s Monbeg Genius and another Irishman in The Goffer, the front four in the betting.

Notably unflattering outcomes for the home team were the opening Supreme Novice Hurdle on day one when the first eight home were trained in Ireland, unusually with Barry Connell the winning trainer (and owner) rather than Willie Mullins. The half-mile longer Ballymore on the second day provided a 1-2-3 for Mullins and he gained revenge on Connell, who predicted his Good Land would win. Eventually, with his horse fourth some way behind the Mullins trio, the status quo restored.

There was never a doubt that the Mullins fillies would dominate the Triumph Hurdle on Friday. Perhaps the most remarkable fact of this race was that all five of the expensively acquired arrivals from France in the spring last year stood their ground, never mind the soft ground.

Lossiemouth pulled almost from the off, but this time getting a clear wide course under Paul Townend, she had far too much class for stablemate Gala Marceau, who had beaten her when she got a nightmare run at the Dublin Racing Festival, and Zenta, a close third. Susanna Ricci, Honeysuckle’s owner Kenny Alexander, and J P McManus are the proud owners of the flying fillies. It was miles back to the first gelding, also Mullins-trained.

The trio of UK runners were 11^th, 13^th and pulled up.

But there was isolated and not so isolated fighting back where Paul Nicholls and former pupil dan Skelton were concerned. Nicholls won two of the Grade 1 races (Stage Star in the Turners’ and Stay Away Fay in the Albert Bartlett), backing up Champion Hurdle win number nine for Nicky Henderson with Constitution Hill. He was also an excellent second with Bravemansgame behind flying Gold Cup winner Galopin Des Champs from the Mullins team.

Once again Skelton pulled a couple of handicap rabbits out of the hat. It took Langer Dan three Festivals to win his race in the Coral Cup, but less expected was Bridget Andrews’ (Mrs Harry Skelton to her tradesmen) win on Faivoir, denying four Irish rivals pursuing her up the hill. She’s done it before – with Mohaayed, also in the County Hurdle, also at 33/1, and also trained by Dan Skelton – and is always a name to look out for in these highly competitive races with hosts of dangerous invaders to worry about.

In fact, the Skeltons do it so often, it’s almost as if it’s planned! Some operation that, and they know what’s needed to beat the Irish in any race at the Festival. We can’t wait for the next one.

- TS

Monday Musings: On Lord Oaksey and the Constitution

13 March 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

All those preview nights; all those column inches and television opinions and now, the ground, if you please, is soft, writes Tony Stafford. And if the forecast I saw on BBC weather on Saturday is correct - I still look at it first even though you don’t get much worth having for your licence fee these days, ask Gary Lineker - it’s bound to get softer.

Day by day, hour by hour, the rain will intrude. The same precipitation that wilfully stayed away in the autumn and for much of the winter, then suddenly decided to turn up. Ironically, it materialised just when trainers of soft ground horses were barely going through the motions of training them, so sure had been the long-range prognostications of fast ground. Now, though, we can expect buckets of the stuff.

Only two weeks ago at a preview evening when good/good to soft was the undercurrent, we had to be aware that while the course officials would do their darndest to maintain it, Cheltenham and its far too efficient drainage would surely sort/rule that out. Beware running soft-ground horses on it had to be the message!

Now, though, the capricious UK weather has shown its full force. Nicky Richards planned a five-horse raid at Ayr the other day. On the wet west coast of Scotland in early March, the ground was fast and three of the quintet stayed home.

Yet here we are after a few rain showers and a couple of blankets of snow, and it’s shaping up like those days of yore when the Irish used to come over and relish the sight of hock-deep mud and jockeys twirling their whips like shillelaghs.

It’s March 14 tomorrow and already trainers I talk to regularly are avoiding risking winning novice chases with potential high-class prospects as we’re getting dangerously close to the late April cut-off point for season 2022-23.

Something needs to be done about that. Most of the top stables don’t really get going until October bringing in their top horses. Cheltenham in March is not just the Holy Grail, for many it’s the Only Grail and when you look at this week’s cards, that fact is driven home ever more forcibly. Equally, after Aintree next month, there’s not much left, either.

I thought I’d check up on Willie Mullins. He has declared 24 horses for tomorrow’s opening phase. He has 43 entered for Wednesday, 22 on Thursday and 27 on Friday. I’m guessing he’ll win eight races. Just a guess, though.

To business, Constitution Hill will not worry if the ground is fast, good, soft, heavy or under water. He’ll win as he likes and write another page in his and Nicky Henderson’s legend.

I mentioned shillelaghs earlier, advisably because it reminded me of one Cheltenham Festival meeting when the late and more than great John (Lord) Oaksey penned one of his most memorable outpourings.

And outpourings they were! It started something like this – I subbed it in the office that night and wish I’d kept it in my inside pocket for the 46 years that have elapsed since that awful day.

“Only two stands blew down at Cheltenham yesterday, the Irish only won four <I think> races and two of England’s greatest ever jumps horses, Bula’s and Lanzarote’s careers came to an untimely end.”

Both horses were trained in Lambourn by Fred Winter, the multiple champion jump jockey who progressed to even more fame and success as a trainer of elite racehorses and future trainers, among them Nicky Henderson and Oliver Sherwood.

Both horses were coming to the end of distinguished careers. Bula, winner of the Champion Hurdle in 1971 and 1972, won 32 more races over eight seasons until his fall at the fifth fence in the Two-Mile Champion Chase on that fateful day. He sustained torn shoulder muscles. For a while as he convalesced it was hoped he could be saved but after two months, one leg became almost totally paralysed and he was put down, aged 12, robbed of an honourable retirement.

The denouement was even more stark for Lanzarote. Selected to run in the Gold Cup, which was thought to be Bula’s target, Lanzarote was an early casualty, broke a leg and was destroyed. He, too, was a Champion Hurdle winner, in 1974.

Imagine the trauma for Winter, his staff and the horses’ owners. Both horses were regarded as superior champions of the breed. In the highly respected assessment of the Best Horses of the 20^th Century, John Randall and Tony Morris rated Bula 5^th best hurdler, only behind fellow champions Night Nurse, their number one, Persian War, Monksfield and Comedy Of Errors and ahead of Istabraq. Timeform put Lanzarote in their top ten hurdlers of all time.

One person who will have been as devastated as anyone that day – the future Lord Oaksey included – was Nicky Henderson. He was Winter’s number one assistant at the time of those twin tragedies and didn’t start his own stable until the following year.

Tomorrow he can be in a position after almost half a century to write a new page in National Hunt history by sending out Constitution Hill to usurp all those wonderful horses, names I grew up with just as he did.

Mullins, Henderson, Elliott, De Bromhead, Nicholls and the rest. They all wait for the good horse, but first need to land the big fish who will pay for the privilege of having horses in their elite and winning-most yards.

I wrote a few weeks ago about the Willie Mullins stranglehold on Friday’s Triumph Hurdle. Of seven in the field, he still has two geldings and five fillies confirmed among 17 six-day declarations.

Gala Marceau, who won the juvenile race at the Dublin Racing Festival when original favourite Lossiemouth suffered a troubled run, now vies for the top spot, and Blood Destiny is the only other in the line-up on offer at less than 16/1.

All five fillies were bought from France, presumably for massive money and all have found their way into high-octane ownership. I hope all seven run and fill the first seven places. They pay down to eighth after all, although should any of the ten walk-on performers intervene, that would represent a slight on the Mullins method. Just joking, Willie!

I digress. Fundamental at the time was Oaksey’s concern with animal and rider welfare – he was a major figurehead in the original organisation of the Injured Jockeys’ Fund. He also found the flogging of horses to get every ounce from them in the typically near-waterlogged ground of those pre-drainage (and less global-warming affected) days to be total anathema.

I would imagine he might find the latest toughened whip rules to his liking, although Mullins and other top trainers seem to think that Cheltenham might be spoilt with jockeys concentrating more on counting than riding horses to their best.

John Oaksey was a force for good, causes and, above all, writing. As the son of the lead prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes trial, he could hardly have been anything else, never mind a wonderful colleague for many years. As they go up the hill for the first time tomorrow, his genial visage will slip briefly into the consciousness, before as he would wish it, thoughts turn quite rightly to the wonderful horses we are privileged to watch in action.

- TS

Monday Musings: The Future, via The Past…

6 March 2023/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

I got a call from Jonathan Powell the other day, writes Tony Stafford. He’d been at an Anthony Honeyball get-together attended by this site’s boss Matt Bisogno, who runs several syndicates with the trainer and others. The venerable Mr Powell also contributes his journalistic skills to Honeyball’s stable as well as doing, as he says, “plenty for Paul Nicholls” among others.

It seems he had been gently directed to these words by Matt and had even looked at half a dozen examples of them. We were colleagues for a few years at the Press Association at the end of the 1960’s before I got my marching orders from Bernard Jones, the editor, for some betting indiscretions, winding up at the Daily Telegraph after a troubling nine-month career hiatus.

Jonathan went ever onwards and upwards and, once or twice, asked me to step in when he was on holiday from the Sunday People which he graced for many years with his erudite columns.

On one occasion, I went into their sports room office and the sports editor said: “Hello Tony, sit over there in Fred’s seat.” I said: “Sorry, I’d rather not!”

Fred of course was their columnist, the great Freddie Trueman, bluff Yorkshireman, devilishly fast opening bowler for England and excused for his boorish excesses in behaviour because of his undoubted talent.

I’d been at an Essex – Yorkshire county cricket match in 1958, so maybe 15 years before Neville invited me to take Fred’s seat, at one of the possibly dozen local grounds that the nomadic Essex side used to drop into through every summer. I think this one was at Valentine’s Park, Ilford, and it rained all day. I remember half an hour before play was finally abandoned I saw Fred on the edge of the pavilion and took my life in my hands.

“Mr Trueman,” I began, summoning up what little courage I had then – it’s not altered much in the interim six and a half decades – “Could I please have your autograph?” Mr Trueman, with a look of disdain, restricted himself to a curt “Fook off suun!” I sat somewhere else.

In Jonathan’s call he said he noted that I write all the time about half a century ago. This week I’m going to write solely about next week and if you think me unqualified, I am armed having gone, along with said Mr Bisogno, to a very small, select (and much delayed on the night) Cheltenham Preview gathering.

The delay was caused by the traffic problems of the star guest, Tom Scudamore, recently retired top jumps jockey. We reasoned, and rightly as it proved, someone with a measured and riding-oriented view of potential happenings at the first Cheltenham Festival he’d be missing as a jockey for the latter half of his 40 years would add plenty of value to proceedings.

His views were counter-point to the multiple ante-post framed opinions – and my word he does have plenty of each! – of Cheltenham Festival fanatic, Scott Ellis, who starts preparing for the following year on the Friday night the previous four days concludes, if not before.

You could line up Scott’s ante-post vouchers from one end of the Horse and Wig public house where we met to the little alley just up from Chancery Lane station in Holborn, and they would reach the door. Most of them seem to be favourites trained by Willie Mullins backed at 50/1 or 66/1 like Facile Vega in the Supreme Novice Hurdle. I don’t bet ante-post.

The days when I had 100/1 Wayward Lad for three consecutive Gold Cups, taken after his first novice hurdle win for Tony Dickinson, but which had expired the year before he first ran in the big race, are long gone. When he did, by now trained by Tony’s son Michael, he never won it. He was of course one of the Famous Five, the first five home in the 1983 Gold Cup.

Wayward Lad was third, behind Bregawn and Captain John, owned by the remarkable Michael Mouskos, Greek Cypriot hotel owner in London’s West End, and ahead of Silver Buck, owned by William Haggas’ mum Christine Feather, and finally longshot Ashley House.

This speedy multiple King George hero didn’t really get up the hill at Cheltenham, famously succumbing three years later to the flying finish of the great Irish mare Dawn Run, only the second of her sex to win the race and unique in having already won a Champion Hurdle for Paddy Mullins, Willie’s father. But sorry Jonathan, I’m doing it again – pressing the history button. Small self-admonition!

Joining Tom on the Horse and Wig panel was Joe Hill, son and one-third partner in the Lawney/Alan Hill training triptych at Aston Rowant, much in the manner of Tony, wife Monica and son Michael Dickinson those four decades ago. The Hill yard, part Rules, larger part pointing and hunter chase- oriented, was described by panel chairman Charlie Methven as one of the leading pointing yards in the country. One of the yards also whose proprietors choose not to list its equine inmates in my annual gospel, Horses In Training, they are pretty much an unknown quantity for me.

Charlie, it turned out, was a colleague in my last few years at the Daily Telegraph around the turn of the century but in the sports room office perched on floor 14 in Canary Wharf, Docklands, while I was allowed to swan around at the racecourse from my at home in Hertfordshire – another lifetime ago!

Charlie is a bit of a mentor to young Joe, who I’d seen for the first time via my Racing TV screen 48 hours before. Charlie once bought a chunk of Sunderland F.C. and was a leading light at the admirable but short-lived Sportsman newspaper, conceived after the demise of another of Charlie’s former career stop-off points, the Sporting Life.

He is part entrepreneur, part informal village squire in the most expensive part of Oxfordshire and, on the evidence of Wednesday’s performance, something of a might-have-been matinee idol. But I digress – as is the common theme of this column. After the Hill yard supplied the 14/1 winner Hilnamix at Plumpton, Joe was interviewed, and he, too, looked the part. Hilnamix would have been the mount of Tom Scu but having ridden it all three times since it moved to the Hill yard, a new rider was needed. David Bass stepped it.

Adorned for the first time, on Scu’s advice, with a visor, it romped home only after “Bassy talked to Tom in the morning and got his instructions”, said young Mr Hill. The obvious question, with Tom free of any potential sanction for betting, was “How much did you have on, Tom?” The answer was predictable – “Not a penny!” Such is the normal fate of insiders in this always frustrating game.

Tom quickly settled into his stride, helped by the odd glass of wine as his driver of many years – a big lad! – watched on.

So here we go. Cheltenham 2023 and take my word for it, however good Willie Mullins’ State Man is, he won’t see which way Constitution Hill goes in the Champion Hurdle. That’s one 4/11 winner for you – don’t say you weren’t told!

The same opening day features the Supreme, where I take Barry Connell’s Marine Nationale to win at Facile Vega’s expense. Barry used to ride some of his own horses when Tony Mullins trained most of them and I remember having a bit of a touch on one when, in Brod Munro-Wilson style almost, he won a race at one of the non-Festival meetings there.

Jonbon got most of the panel votes in the Arkle to set up the Nicky Henderson Champion Hurdle spectacular, but it could be the turn of Willie and fast-going Dysart Dynamo. As ever it’s which of the Mullins squadron will win, not whether some will.

After the excesses of putting up three in one day – multiples being a dangerous tactic as I found to my cost on the day Punjabi won the 2009 Champion. That afternoon, resting home alone recovering from a detached retina operation, I fancied runners for my life through the card so linked the Ray Tooth hero at 33/1 in a full cover each-way multiple with the other five and none finished in the frame.

You would have thought I might have done a Lucky 63 where you get double the odds for a single winner to clear the win part of the bet at least, but no, just the Heinz sufficed: the £1 each way investment of £114 as a single would have raked in around four grand! Tom, I know how you feel.

We’re getting tight for space with all this talk of current events. Therefore, let’s just be content with Editeur Du Gite for Gary Moore in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and each-way on Klassical Dream (Mullins), if he gets there, in the Stayers for the Coleman family and Mark Smith.

Among a plethora of almost guaranteed Irish handicap winners, surely it’s time for an overdue Festival success for the Skeltons’ Langer Dan in either Wednesday’s Coral Cup or Friday’s Martin Pipe.

There you are Jonathan, hardly a mention of anything further away than last week at Plumpton. Who says I’m mired in the past?

- TS

(Late) Monday Musings: The Ol’ One-Two

28 December 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

You have a mare like Epatante, winner of a past Champion Hurdle, successful in 11 and placed in seven more of her 19 career runs and you now know – having witnessed Aintree last year, that she probably ought to be contesting races of 2m4f up, writes Tony Stafford.

With the weather as it has been and the Ascot course’s susceptibility to rapid changes of going, Nicky Henderson was pushed into allowing her to take on stable star – sorry, world phenomenon – Constitution Hill as the calendar compressed when the Fighting Fifth came along.

Instead of the queen, she became the high-maintenance Queen Consort, by her liege’s side until turning for home and then deferring graciously while accepting a £20k pay-day for her trouble.

Once the pattern was set, who was to complain when the old one-two was set in motion again for yesterday’s Ladbrokes Christmas Hurdle? While there were five starters, the box which brought the big two to Sunbury might just as easily have been transporting the elite pair across Lambourn for a routine gallop.

As they turned for home, Highway One O One had the temerity to sit in between his betters, still just second as the mare started to flex her muscles. You could not have predicted what happened from that point based on what you had seen until that point, but the evidence of Cheltenham last March and Gosforth Park last month gave the game away.

Mark Johnson’s commentary told it all. Just over a length before two out, three lengths from Epatante on the way to the last; stretched to eight at that final flight and once he met it running, a 17-length margin on a track where distances are never exaggerated unlike many courses in winter ground.

For two little spins behind Constitution Hill, Epatante has picked up around £50k this season and is now that amount short of £1 million in career earnings. Nicky Henderson seems to be favouring going straight to the Festival with this best hurdler I have ever seen and rightly so, I’m sure.

It’s that final kick that is other-worldly. Horses can finish well: he finishes them off and with no suggestion of any weakness; ground or track, style of racing – he has it all.

The Irish must be hoping that somehow his level of ability suddenly drops off, but if Henderson has acquired anything in a training career exceeding 40 years, it’s knowing how to win a big race with a favourite. And even he has never had a favourite like this one.

I was delighted when I saw him at the Horserace Writers and Photographers lunch after he collected his Order Of Merit award for his outstanding career. He was truly chuffed and I told him I thought it well deserved. The shy nature that often comes out in his dealings with the media was there all through that afternoon.

His reputation, already secured, will now have the added insurance, as with Sir Henry Cecil and Frankel, of having his best-ever horse towards the end of his career. It’s probably a case of how long he, Michael Buckley and the horse can be bothered with steam-rollering good (but not good enough) opponents.

I was less delighted to pick up Covid there, after two and a half years of escaping it. I got it mildly, but you never know what’s underneath. At least, it’s not like being a little bit pregnant!

It was a great day for heroes old and new at Kempton yesterday and if anyone thinks that Kempton is a sharp track, the result of the redirected Long Walk Hurdle, from a frozen this time Ascot, would have entertained second thoughts at least.

Here that great stayer Paisley Park came from the back of the field to out-finish Goshen – in the new long-distance role which he can adorn – and Champ by an emphatic margin in a domestic private affair. The Irish will be out in force at Cheltenham in March, but Andrew Gemmell’s heroic 10-year-old can be relied upon to keep his end up.

Times are often misleading but if you had an involvement with Rare Edition, the Charlie Longsdon novice who easily won Monday’s Kempton opener, you would be thrilled to see that his winning time was only two seconds slower than that recorded by Constitution Hill. A seven-length winner, it would be great if this initially non-winning graduate from the Irish point-to-point field, but now unbeaten in four for Longsdon, could challenge the stars next March.

One invader from Ireland that could be there to challenge him is the one-time Derby favourite, High Definition, who made a winning hurdles debut at Leopardstown from the Joseph O’Brien stable ten minutes before Rare Edition showed his paces.

High Definition had won his first two races as a juvenile, including a Group 2, before going into winter quarters with the endorsement of Joseph’s father Aidan ringing in the professionals’ ears. Even when he came back late and looking lazy in the Dante, the story still held over logic, but he never made it to Epsom and then never looked in with a chance when he did get his chance in a Classic on the Curragh in late June.

Until yesterday, High Definition had gone more than two years without winning – his best performance being a second to Alenquer in the Group 1 Tattersalls Gold Cup over ten furlongs in May.

Because there are so many horses that want for some inexplicable reason to take on Messrs Mullins, Elliott, de Bromhead and, yes, when he has a suitable one, O’Brien junior, you get the sort of field that faced High Definition. Twenty-seven runners around Leopardstown, but happily that’s a big, wide track, and it’s made easier as self-selection probably boils this down to three lots of nine.

The old instruction by the UK starters in the days of Gordon Richards either side of WW2 and the old 'gate' starts of “triers at the front” is an approximation to how it works in Irish (and some British) novice races today. They quickly sort out into manageable groupings – three races in one.

Just a look at the first seven there: O’Brien, from Jessica Harrington, Willie Mullins, Peter Fahey, de Bromhead, Mullins again and Gordon Elliott, tells a tale if not a definitive one. The other 20 have to look after themselves, although there’s some pricey types back there too on probably different time-schedules with handicaps in mind for many.

The Racing TV shrewdies – and Boxing Day’s lot, which included Dave Nevison, were sharp enough – noticed High Definition is still a colt, until next Sunday at any rate when he becomes a horse – of course! The Coolmore NH stallion roster is a highly lucrative end of the business and they reasoned that could be his magnum opus.

It was only on December 20th that High Definition morphed from the usual Coolmore owner group to Mrs J Magnier’s sole possession. I’m sure the others can come back in if and when they wish. I’d love to see High Definition at Cheltenham, possibly measuring up to the more NH-oriented Rare Edition, who showed his paces just 10 minutes later.

Those same Racing TV boys seemed to think the Triumph Hurdle is all but won already, a pretty complacent view at this stage. The Willie Mullins-trained Lossiemouth, another of those unbeaten French purchases, won her graded race for juveniles in almost five seconds slower time than High Definition earlier in the card, but she impressed Dave in particular.

She did win as she liked, making it three easy victories in three. A rare bargain from France at €14k before she had run, she is by Great Pretender, from the family of smart flat-racer Lord Glitters. She must be one of the cheaper buys to grace the Cheltenham-voracious Ricci colours.

Once more, Coquelicot has run in the couple of days before my article, at Kempton yesterday for a 3m mares’ handicap hurdle with six in opposition. She beat a Dan Skelton rival in West Balboa last time at Sandown and this time had the favourite Get A Tonic from the same source ten lengths behind. Alas, on revised weight terms and after a more contested early lead than she's recently encountered, she gave best to the aforementioned Charlie Longsdon-trained Glimpse Of Gala, the rest of the field strung out behind at five length intervals. Hard luck, Mr Editor and partners, but she'll be winning again soon.

- TS

Monday Musings: Vindication for the Absentee Triumvirate

4 December 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The fallout from that unfortunate Ascot meeting last month continued at Sandown on Saturday when the third member of the famed Absentee Triumvirate made just as emphatic a statement as the other two had signalled a week earlier at Newcastle, writes Tony Stafford.

In all, there were 14 non-appearances that frustrating Saturday afternoon, when faster than expected going was the principal reason for the wholesale withdrawals. But, for the crowds that descended as ever at the Royal racecourse, only three really mattered.

That Constitution Hill, L’Homme Presse and Edwardstone could all stay in their boxes on one day was a kick in the teeth for racegoers. For their owners, and respective trainers Nicky Henderson, Venetia Williams and Alan King, the decision has taken only two weeks to be fully justified in each instance.

Constitution Hill, thrillingly in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle, and L’Homme Presse, grittily and with authority in the Rehearsal Chase, both at Newcastle a week after Ascot, did their bit to a nicety. Then at Sandown on Saturday, last season’s Arkle Chase winner Edwardstone contrived to give a major shake to betting on the Queen Mother Champion Chase at the Festival next March.

His nine-length demolition of Paul Nicholls’ Greaneteen in the Tingle Creek Chase was only half the story. Six lengths further back was Shishkin, the one-time Great White Hope of UK jump racing and Nicky Henderson’s nominated successor to Sprinter Sacre and Altior and still highly enough regarded to start even-money in this deep Grade 1 field of top two-mile chasers.

Fourth just behind him was the Joseph O’Brien-trained Gentleman De Mee, the same J P McManus horse that had ended Edwardstone’s winning run of five at Aintree last year. (Aintree it was where L’Homme Presse’s Cheltenham-embellishing five-timer also culminated).

It wasn’t just Gentleman De Mee who got a revenge pasting. It was probably the fact that Edwardstone had been a cab-hailing 23 lengths behind Shishkin in the 2020 Supreme Novice Hurdle that first suggested to Alan King a switch to fences might be a strategic move to avoid that horse in the immediate future.

Edwardstone’s comeback run the following November brought an acceptable fifth in the Greatwood Handicap Hurdle, but the initial try at chasing, the following month at Doncaster, ended in a premature conclusion when he unseated his rider at the fourth fence.

After finishing off that season with some solid runs back in handicap hurdles, King was ready for a second shot, but again there was a non-completion, at Warwick. This time, though, it was no fault of his as he was moving in the style of a possible winner when brought down four out.

Since then, Aintree in April apart, it’s been a story of onwards and upwards and, with hindsight, the only shock about Saturday’s race is that he started 5/1. Now he’s only 7/2 second favourite for the championship among two-mile chasers, that market understandably headed at 6/4 by Shishkin’s nemesis, Energumene.

That Willie Mullins champion has yet to appear this term, but we did get a first sight of the season of the Cheltenham Festival (and even more emphatic Punchestown) Bumper winner, Facile Vega. He must rank as one of the best-named animals around, as every one of the five races he has contested has been a Walk In The Park, Facile indeed. Of course, mum was Quevega, who only stopped at six Mares Hurdle wins at Cheltenham because she was feeling broody!

Facile Vega started over hurdles at Fairyhouse on Saturday and the backers who accepted 1/9 about his chance never had a moment’s doubt that they would be collecting. A Gordon Elliott sacrificial object was offered up as token opposition. An Mhi, also by Walk In The Park and half-brother to top-class Slate House, might well be all right, indeed pretty useful, but Facile Vega had 14 lengths to spare with the rest of the 16 runners trailing behind, their presence more a case of autograph hunting than competition. He looks the same at the end of his races as at the start. A true phenomenon!

https://youtu.be/Vh2sR-3ULwQ

That’s the Supreme sorted then, and you must sympathise with Gary Moore, also on the mark on Saturday with one of the best from last season’s Festival Bumper. His Authorised Speed, in finishing fifth, was first home of the UK contingent, and before Saturday had won easily first time over hurdles at Lingfield late last month.

He got some more valuable match practice to open the Sandown card and, in spite of a last-flight blunder, still had more than six lengths to spare over a well-regarded Henderson newcomer who received 5lb.

Gary never shirks a challenge and will probably still target Authorised Speed at Cheltenham, as he will Hansard. The latter, a most impressive debut winner at Huntingdon yesterday in a hot novice hurdle on his first run since being bought for £48k out of Charles O’Brien’s yard after winning a Ballinrobe bumper, has obvious potential for a constantly upwardly mobile operation.

We mentioned last week the similarity between the conundrum Henderson was placed in the future campaigning of his two smart novice hurdlers from last season and that six years previously when Altior and future dual Champion Hurdle winner Buveur D’Air needed separating. Again there was a JP issue when Constitution Hill and Jonbon went to Cheltenham last year with mixed opinions in the yard as to which was the better. In the event, it was a no contest, Constitution Hill coming out on top by 22 lengths but with Jonbon second.

Perhaps surprisingly, that was still good enough to beat a trio of Willie Mullins challengers including the 2021 Festival bumper runner-up Kilcruit, third, and Bring On The Night fourth. Mullins might have had one in the first two though as Dysart Dynamo was going easily when falling three from home.

Henderson decided to go post-Cheltenham to Aintree with Jonbon, a mission he accomplished with a hard-fought victory, but there has been nothing hard-fought about his first two chase runs at Warwick and now Sandown on Saturday. In winning by eight lengths from Boothill, he was beating one of the beneficiaries of the Great Ascot Disappearing Act.

Harry Fry’s seven-year-old had been the recipient of the £65k first prize in the Hurst Park Handicap Chase, the race intended for Edwardstone.

Now that Aintree has separated its two previously joined at the hip big autumn handicaps over the Grand National fences, both the Grand Sefton, at the original date, and turn-of-the-month Becher Chase have attracted big fields.

Saturday’s version provided a big long-distance double in valuable handicap chases on successive weekends for the Skeltons. Their Ashtown Lad finally brought all his promise over several seasons to fruition in the style of a horse that could one day go well in a Grand National.

The success followed last week’s Coral Gold Cup win at Newbury for Le Milos, both horses getting exceptional rides from Harry Skelton, happy to have won a jockeys’ championship but happier still that all his energies can be put to the family business.

You could expect both horses to be among the entries for the 2023 Grand National, but I fear those two and pretty much everything else will have to work hard to get past the present incumbent Noble Yeats. He had a nice sideways look at some of the obstacles he encountered last April when he scooted round three miles, one furlong of the Mildmay Course on Saturday in the Many Clouds Chase, a £45k Grade 2 contest.

In the old days the perceived wisdom was that once horses win the Grand National, not only do they lose their speed, but they also find the hike in their ratings prohibitive. In out-speeding such smart performers as Dashel Drasher and Ahoy Senor in the last quarter mile on terms akin to their respective handicap ratings, Noble Yeats is clearly still improving – and fast! The Emmet Mullins-trained and Robert Waley-Cohen-owned seven-year-old could run up a sequence in the great race to challenge the memory of Red Rum and Tiger Roll.

Noble Yeats was the youngest winner of the race for more than 80 years. He is the first seven-year-old to have been successful since Bogskar in 1940. He was rated 147 going into the National this year and that had risen to 160 before Saturday. It looks sure to be set for another small increase, but weight may be less crucial than handling the fences at Aintree.

The two greatest Grand National exponents of my lifetime both began their careers in the race as eight-year-olds, which gave them plenty of time for multiple challenges and successive wins.

After all that I need to return briefly to one of the few races on infamous Ascot Saturday that wasn’t significantly affected by non-runners. That was the fillies’ hurdle race when many thought Coquelicot might have been flattered because basically Rex Dingle rode the pants off his rivals, getting a lead they couldn’t peg back.

Therefore, when she turned up again for another very strong mares’ race at Sandown on Saturday, they all knew what was coming – if they didn’t, they needed locking up! With Aidan Coleman taking over, ‘Cookie’ again made all the running, this time with some classy females snapping at her heels for the last mile. I told the owner/editor two weeks ago that Ascot was merely the start, rather than the end of her success story.

(Also, for the class of race, the £8k and not a lot more to the winner, looked meagre in the extreme for 0-130 animals. But the sporting owners that make up this fun syndicate operation put Saturday winners a long way over expensive dinners!). Don’t worry boys and girls, there will be other big days from this lovable mare!

Monday Musings: Of Champions – Past, Present and Future

28 November 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

The minute the decision was made to pull Constitution Hill out of a probable exhibition round that was going to double as his return to action at Ascot last weekend, you knew Nicky Henderson would merely shrug his shoulders and switch him to Newcastle, writes Tony Stafford.

What about 2020 Champion Hurdle heroine Epatante, long since pencilled in for a third consecutive challenge after one and a half wins (she shared the 2021 Fighting Fifth Hurd1e with Not So Sleepy)? Tough, she can run too, he reasoned. As I said here last week, he has plenty of previous.

The net effect: J P McManus, instead of collecting the owner’s share of £64,710, cedes that to Michael Buckley and gets instead £24,380. Lady Blyth, whose Not So Sleepy finished well to get within two and a half lengths of Epatante on ground faster than ideal, collected half of what would have been the case. Then again, J P has become used to that sort of thing over the years.

While Nicky looked on from Newbury, animatedly showing the cameras a real anxiety at the outcome, Buckers made the journey and shared in the wonder of it all with the viewers. Meanwhile, back at Newbury, Hendo was resplendent in the Cossack-style hat he had bought at the Peter O’Sullevan lunch on Thursday, a midwinter accoutrement for the master commentator, a man rightly still revered seven years after his death at the age of 97.

That generous gesture would have given Nicky some brownie points. J P is a leading light in the annual organisation of the charity event in memory of his late, great friend, which has provided so much welcome help to good causes, never needed more than in today’s straightened times.

For Henderson, the sight of Constitution Hill effortlessly drawing away from his older, female stable companion to the tune of 12 lengths must have been received with a mixture of pride and not inconsiderable relief. It may also mean that the three-year stranglehold on the top spot in hurdling by mares is about to end.

The trainer’s percentage remained whatever it is now of the £89k for Newcastle, on top of his automatic share in another £92k over two days at Newbury principally. On Friday J P McManus’ Champ – perhaps just as well – held off the fabulous finish of old adversary Paisley Park in the Coral Long Distance Hurdle, a win augmented by impressive novice winner Jet Powered earlier.

On Saturday, smart bumper performer Luccia stepped up in a very competitive fillies’ novice hurdle with a flawless performance on debut, almost in the Constitution Hill class, and First Street also impressed in the graduation hurdle against high class opposition. To complete the borderline obscenely successful weekend, Touchy Feely was an appropriate winner for Seven Barrows at Doncaster.

I have two post-scripts to the “do”. Ben Pauling was hard to reach on Friday morning, and when, finally he was contactable, he explained how tired he had been, understandable in view of the fact he got home from lunch at 1 a.m., replicating the sort of irresponsible behaviour that many used to exhibit at the annual Horserace Writers’ Awards lunch in London.

That pre-Christmas staple goes on at Lancaster Gate next Monday and I have received a welcome and most unexpected invitation. I promise I will make it home before midnight. (The following Monday we have family tickets for Cinderella. I better get into practice!)

The other amusing incident concerned a random meeting in the gents, mid-lunch between Henderson and Not So Sleepy’s trainer, Hughie Morrison. Hughie relates: “He wasn’t interested how Sleepy would run, just whether we would knock over one or other of his horses at the start or at the first hurdle.

“He asked, “which way does he hang?”, to which I replied: “Wherever the other horse happens to be!” That hardly placated him but, obviously, on the day he was as good as he ever has been and ran a blinder. Then again, going into last year’s Champion Hurdle, Sleepy was the highest-rated UK hurdler and his latest Cesarewitch run shows how unwise it is ever to under-estimate him.”

Top male hurdlers do not have an alternative championship race at the Cheltenham Festival, so trainers not keen to take on the now 4-7 shot Constitution Hill in the Champion, must either grin and bear it or wait for the 2m5f Aintree Hurdle. The mares have a couple of options at Cheltenham, and it would not be a shock if Epatante looked elsewhere after this summary lesson from her younger colleague.

What intrigues me more is the Honeysuckle situation that confronts Henry De Bromhead. His mare is on 16 wins unbeaten with two Champion Hurdles on the board. Does she carry on regardless and try for the hat-trick in the knowledge that her toughest challenge and most talented rival awaits? Or does she slip into a mares’ race to extend the unbeaten record?

You might almost wish her to have a hiccup in one of her prep races on the way. Such as being carried out at the start or first hurdle – don’t suggest Not So Sleepy! - so that it wouldn’t be numerically quite so vital. Then again there would be no shame or stud career implications in 16 and a couple more unbeaten and a second to Constitution Hill. If she did beat him – partisan Irish delirium and equine fame for as long as horses race over jumps awaits her. I hope they will meet next March for the Big Showdown on Prestbury Hill.

It's the big races that inevitably attract the most attention and are vital for the major stables that they collect their share of them. Over the past few years, the Dan Skelton stable has made a conscious decision to reduce its summer activity for a corresponding increase in concentration on the top end.

As the horses came to the closing stages of the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury on Saturday, Harry Skelton on his brother’s Le Milos was being vigorously pursued by two David Pipe-trained horses, Remastered and Gericault Rogue. Going to the last Gericault Rogue was seen to be tiring just as Remastered came on, seemingly about to atone for last season’s unlucky fall four from home when going like the probable winner.

Yet, hard as he strived, Le Milos found that little bit more to deny him. The £142,000 the horse brought his owners, the Jolly Good Partnership, tipped Skelton over the £1 million mark for the season, for the eighth time in succession. He has 54 wins to his credit.

That makes him the nearest to former boss Paul Nicholls, who had three victories over the Newbury weekend taking his tally to 70 and earnings of £1,161K. Most wins have been collected by Fergal O’Brien, nearer the old Skelton model with summer activity, but that alone cannot explain away 90 wins. It’s almost a rewind to the old Martin Pipe days.

Martin’s son has been doing extremely well this season already and despite missing the big one on Saturday, he’s now on a faster-than-recently 50 for the season. Had the Skelton horse departed at the last fence – not that anyone could have wished such an eventuality – Pipe would have been pushing £800k rather than £634k!

Nicky’s 35 wins so far have brought him neatly onto a shade over half a million and with the massive expectations of Constitution Hill, Luccia and novice chase prospect Jonbon, all set to clean up in their various categories barring mishap, he’ll be making up the ground rapidly from now on.

Henderson agreed that the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton would be the obvious step for Constitution Hill, and that was the next step for his 2008 winner of the Fighting Fifth, which was run at Wetherby as Newcastle was off games.

At that time Ian Turner, now racing manager for the McNeill family, was the man behind a sponsorship offering a £1 million bonus for a horse that won all three races culminating in the Champion Hurdle.

Punjabi won that Wetherby leg and by coincidence Turner was at the Yorkshire track last week to see his boss’s hurdles debutant Spartan Army (£170k, ex-Joseph O’Brien) win impressively for Alan King. He looks a natural for the Triumph Hurdle although Gary Moore’s Leicester winner, Perseus Way, looks smart too.

As to the £1 million, Punjabi fell at Kempton before winning the Champion Hurdle. That cost owner Ray Tooth, his trainer and the stable staff a chunk of money! Were they bothered? Not once Punjabi and Barry Geraghty claimed the Festival showpiece at 33/1 they weren’t!

Finally, while we’re talking in terms of millions, congratulations to Ryan Moore who early yesterday morning won his second Japan Cup at Tokyo racecourse. Riding 7-2 third favourite, Vela Azul, a five-year-old stallion, he won the £2,593,463.46 to the winner race for trainer Kunihiko Watanabe and owners Carrot Farm Co Ltd in daring fashion. After his wonderful Breeders’ Cup meeting earlier in the month, this makes 2022 a year to treasure for the former champion.

- TS

Monday Musings: You Can’t Make ’em Drink

21 November 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

You can take a horse to Ascot, but you can’t make him run, writes Tony Stafford. This November 2022 re-working of the old proverb, where opportunities are spurned by those to whom they are presented, fitted nicely into events at that most wonderful of British racecourses last weekend.

Top hats and fashion in high summer or Barbour jackets and a hot toddy as winter takes hold, are all the same to the British public, enticed by Ascot’s Royal-ness but equally by the imaginative marketing of its executive.

Often admission prices are moderated even if that doesn’t hold for the catering. I wasn’t there on Saturday and while some of the 14 equine absentees from the seven races, leaving a total to run of 30, will have gone to the track, their trainers for the most part will have made the decision not to allow valuable animals to run on ground faster than had been anticipated.

The magnet was the £615k total money on offer. The advertised amount beforehand might well have been more, but for some time now where there are fewer runners than available prizes – or indeed if non-finishers result in that happening – the old way of bumping up the winner’s prize no longer applies.

In any case, 615 grand was a fair enticement and even such as Michael Buckley, owner of the one horse everyone wanted to see on Saturday, would have liked to have picked up the £56,000 Coral Hurdle for an exhibition round by Constitution Hill.

Not so Nicky Henderson, trainer of the horse that, in three runs culminating in that scintillating 22-length demolition of stablemate Jonbon in the Supreme Novice Hurdle at Cheltenham in March, has even supplanted the unbeaten and present dual title-holder Honeysuckle in Champion Hurdle betting.

Henderson resisted the temptation of sending him on to Aintree last spring for the near guarantee of another big pot, but in hindsight, maybe the experience of connections of two more of Saturday’s elite absentees fully vindicated his decision.

Both Edwardstone, due to run in the 2m1f Hurst Park Handicap Chase (£65k to the winner) and L’Homme Presse, one of three pulled out of the Chanelle Pharma 1965 Chase, 39k; like Constitution Hill, were novice winners at the Festival.

L’Homme Presse won the Brown Advisory Chase over just a shade beyond three miles on the fifth start of a hitherto unbeaten season. Edwardstone’s coincidental fifth unbeaten run of 2021-2 came in the Arkle Challenge Trophy at the minimum trip that week.

Both, unlike the Henderson star, did go on to Aintree in April and each lost his winning sequence, Edwardstone only second to the Irish-trained Gentleman De Mee and L’Homme Presse finishing a well-beaten third of four behind Ahoy Senor.

The pair collected a few bob in defeat and brought the duo’s earnings for the season respectively to £245k (Edwardstone) and £225k for Venetia Williams’ horse. That little bit of money in the bank helped no doubt in Alan King’s and Ms Williams’ pitch to the owners that the wisest course on Saturday was to stand aside.

So far Constitution Hill has barely scratched the surface of the riches in store, those three victories amounting to £125k. But Buckley has seen it all before while Henderson still agonises about the time he allowed Altior to run in a three-horse race but a virtual match at Ascot over 2m4f. He believes adamantly that not only did it ruin Altior, but also his one serious opponent Cyrname and still regrets that he was persuaded in part by the clamour within the media for the race to be staged.

He will now need to shuffle his pack to bring the pre-Champion Hurdle lead-up for this horse, and previous winner Epatante, up to date. J P McManus’ mare has had the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on Saturday pencilled in for her return to action, as it has for the past two years.

She won it easily in 2020 but last year had to accept a share of the prize with Hughie Morrison’s versatile toughie Not So Sleepy. With options at the top level rather limited, who is to say that the Henderson big two might not take each other on? It wouldn’t be the first time the trainer has done that.

Indeed, he allowed Constitution Hill and McManus’ Jonbon to meet, just as six years earlier Altior and J P’s Buveur D’Air crossed swords in the same Supreme Novices’ Hurdle. Altior came out comfortably on top then with his team-mate in third. Henderson was adamant after the race that he would send Altior straight over fences which he did the following autumn with extravagant success. Buveur D’Air meanwhile remained over hurdles and won the Champion Hurdle in each of the next two seasons. Obviously, the best hurdler of his era was wasting his time winning his first 14 steeplechases!

The Cyrname defeat was followed with one more win, but two further defeats suggested not only was Henderson right about Altior’s being bottomed that day at Ascot, but also that it couldn’t be justified running on Saturday as the over-efficient Ascot drainage system allied to the very low water table after the summer drought, makes for rapid changes in surfaces after rain and then dry spells.

One man’s meat – it’s ages since I used or even thought of a proverb; how about a fool and his money, etc, says Mrs S? – is another man’s opportunity. Gary Moore, king of opportunism in racing, got an unexpected dividend with stable favourite Goshen.

It was entirely in character that this man, who along with Alan King can win any type of race any time of year – there are others who we should mention, of course, in the cause of wokeness – should not balk at opposing the putative champ, even if his horse had a reputation to repair.

Clearly not enjoying his first experience of chasing last month even though it was at Ascot, his favourite track, there had to have been a chance that being smashed up by Constitution Hill would leave the sort of scar in Goshen that Henderson feared for his horse.

In the event he was left with only the three to beat in the Coral Hurdle, and you would never have thought he had been away. As to Gary Moore, he also won the main back-up race to the Betfair Chase at Haydock with the ultra-tough Botox Has. I can’t wait to see this powerful six-year-old try chases, which must surely be on the agenda in the future.

Amid all the riches on offer for the remaining Ascot 30, the 0-130 handicap hurdle for mares was worth a derisory £6,753 to the winner. But that apart, I know, it was the happy culmination of five years’ expectation and some disappointments along the road for the proprietor of this website who also happens to be the man who finds most of my many errors each week.

Coquelicot runs in the colours of Geegeez.co.uk PA, and she was winning her fifth race in 14 under a fine ride by Rex Dingle. Matt Bisogno’s sponsorship of the jockey and support for the mare’s trainer Anthony Honeyball has been as constant as the many years I’ve been penning these words.

Matt related from the winner’s circle afterwards that Saturday provided the thrill of his racing life and he sent the photo of a proud younger-looking editor holding the Soldier Of Fortune filly’s bridle right after he bought her five years ago today (Monday) for €26k at Arqana’s Autumn Mixed sale. I hope he puts it atop this week’s posting.

Coquelicot, bought as a yearling at Arqana in November 2017

Coquelicot, bought as a yearling at Arqana, November 21st 2017

Coquelicot and Rex Dingle win the Mariner System Mares' Handicap Hurdle in the geezgeez colours at Ascot. 19/11/2022 Pic Steve Davies/Racingfotos.com

Coquelicot and Rex Dingle win the Mariner System Mares' Handicap Hurdle in the geegeez colours at Ascot. 19/11/2022 Pic Steve Davies/Racingfotos.com

A half-sister to Melbourne Cup second and, before that, Ebor winner Hearbreak City, she has a future as a broodmare awaiting her, but plenty of winning to be done in the meantime. Matt has had lots of winners with his syndicates, but never a day like Saturday. As he says: “Didn’t those big horses run? I hadn’t noticed!” Not really folks!

The big races will be coming on apace now and on the same day as the Fighting Fifth, Newbury’s highlight is the newly-designated Coral (recently Ladbroke, same firm) Gold Cup Chase – but still, to oldies like me, the Hennessy which it was until 2017. Sam Thomas is a trainer I rate very highly, and he couples a sure touch with his plans to a degree of patience.

In former times when analysing the race, I always started with the second-season chasers, and in particular the seven-year-olds and it was scary how big a proportion of winners at the time did fit that profile.

Protektorat, whose skilled handling by the Skeltons brought a wonderful win in the Betfair Chase, by 11 lengths from Eldorado Allen, is that age, but I doubt Dan will want to send him back out even for the chance of £142k. Now there are much bigger fish to fry and maybe at last we have a proper chaser after the time of Kauto Star and Denman to see off the Irish next March.

Sam Thomas was on Denman when he won the 2007 Hennessy Cognac Gold Cup as a seven-year-old and rode him into third two years later. Ruby Walsh got on him for the second win in between. Now as a trainer, down on 10st5lb and a rating of 141 he has Our Power, a comfortable winner at Ascot three weeks ago on his return, from the useful Danny Kirwan.

Victory for him would be a tonic for Sam’s main supporter and Our Power’s part-owner, Dai Walters, who was badly injured recently in a helicopter crash when Thomas was also a passenger. It all has a ring to it. This is one horse that will go to the races and happily stop to drink in the glory.

- TS

Monday Musings: Reflecting from the Sofa

21 March 2022/in Monday Musings/by Tony Stafford

Two years ago I happily trudged through four days of Cheltenham, impervious to the threat of Covid-19 which had yet fully to take a grip on this country, writes Tony Stafford. Allowing the meeting to go ahead was one of the biggest sticks the authorities had to deal with at that time as, by the weekend, lockdown was announced.

Last year’s eerie atmosphere when only the most closely connected – and the best of the well-tried chancers – were admitted went on without me and again last week I watched, by choice this time, the events unwinding from the sofa.

With an otherwise empty house it was no surprise that Champion Hurdle Day 2022 quickly morphed in my mind to 13 years earlier when Punjabi’s 33-1 win in the race was accomplished with barely a cheer from the chair: just a smile of satisfaction.

When Honeysuckle made it two out of two in the race, and 15 out of 15 in all, the smile was just as wide and, like everyone else, my mind was scanning forward to next year as we’d already savoured the extraordinary performance of Nicky Henderson’s Constitution Hill in the Supreme.

Over the years Henderson’s best animals have all enjoyed better ground and the first day after a dry spell provided a surface that enabled a spectacular course record in that Festival opener. Not only that, Constitution Hill was much faster than Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle – a race where we hadn’t believed the gallop to have been in any way pedestrian.

Second home behind Honeysuckle and Dame Rachael Blackmore – if you could have Sir Terry Wogan, then why not? – was Henderson’s 2020 winner, Epatante. Afterwards, Nicky ceded greatness to the winner and great merit to his mare. It’s possibly easy to be charitable after witnessing a performance from one of your own horses that promises to keep you near the top for another few seasons, but it was nice anyway.

Coming to race seven on the opening day, the score was UK four, Ireland two and W P Mullins zero. And at that stage there were only 22 races still to be contested. Willie and son Patrick supplied a fuss-free winner of the astonishingly denuded six-horse field for the National Hunt Chase, but who could have thought he would win ten of those remaining races?

There is no question that he is the greatest trainer of jumping horses since his late compatriot Vincent O’Brien. The first master of Ballydoyle used to win Gold Cups, Champion Hurdles and Grand Nationals in the early post-War years in much the way Gary Moore knocks off little races around Plumpton and Fontwell.

The first inkling of what was to come was in the opener on Wednesday when Sir Gerhard strolled home in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle. Last year’s Festival Bumper hero carried what was to be the first of three Cheveley Park Stud victories during the week and he was possibly the least spectacular of the trio.

Energumene was the next major Mullins winner, but sadly the anticipated re-match with Shishkin failed to materialise, Henderson’s hitherto unbeatable young chaser never going a yard and pulling up.

As I hinted earlier, the Seven Barrows maestro’s horses are usually better on faster ground – not that Constitution Hill minds mud, he was just as impressive up Sandown’s hill in desperate going on his previous Grade 1 start; but I can imagine the trainer’s thoughts on that evening when the new clerk of the course John Pullin decided to water, even though rain was expected in many forecasts.

It was almost as though Willie Mullins had sent the boys round to demand a level playing-field. UK four, Ireland three. That’s unfair!

“I didn’t think we would be getting the rain we did,” paraphrases the beleaguered new boy’s response to turning the previously pristine acres to a midwinter Thurles peat bog. The die was cast and the tide turned irrevocably.

The nice runs continued, especially for Venetia Williams whose strength every season comes in muddy midwinter. Even if it may more usually be in January at Hereford or Haydock, the hurricanes can happen at Cheltenham too as L’Homme Presse showed with a fine performance in the three-mile Brown Advisory – the Sun Alliance for old-timers like me.

The next day Venetia sent out two long-priced handicappers in the Kim Muir. This race, happily restored as an amateur riders’ event post Covid, went to her Chambard, a 40-1 shot. She also supplied the 66/1 third, the 3,000-1 plus forecast only denied by joint-favourite Mister Coffey, yet another Henderson horse to impress.

The Irish did not exactly replicate their total monopoly of the handicaps as had been the case in 2021 but the old chestnut of allowing the always questionable form in France for qualification in handicaps reared its ugly head once more.

I mentioned last week that contrary to an alleged inside source, I doubted Colonel Mustard would be running against Sir Gerhard again, trainer Lorna Fowler being much too shrewd to waste her breath tilting at that particular windmill.

The County Hurdle had to be the answer. By the morning of the race Colonel Mustard was down to second favouritism, but the snag was that Mullins had State Man, a horse with only three runs on his card in the field.

A win in France as long ago as May 2020; a fall switched to Ireland when 8-13 for a maiden on Leopardstown’s St Stephen’s Day card and then a facile maiden romp at Limerick brought a 141 initial mark. Incidentally that put him 1lb higher than the well-tested and openly raced Colonel Mustard.

Lorna’s horse actually hit the front between the last two flights but you could see State Man galloping all over the field. While at the line it was less than a two-length margin over First Street, another fine run by a Henderson horse, with Colonel Mustard (in the conservatory with the lead pipe), battling on for third.

Mullins had already come out on top in the opening Triumph Hurdle. His Vauban always had the edge over the Gordon Elliott pair Fil Dor and Pied Piper with the rest, and therefore the home team, nowhere. It seems even before Vauban carried the resurgent and always on the box Mrs Ricci colours, the Melbourne Cup was being mooted. You wouldn’t put that past him either.

Five wins on the final day for Mullins did not prevent the 2021 star turn Henry de Bromhead striking back in the most emphatic way. Last year in the Gold Cup Minella Indo gained a big enough advantage over stablemate A Plus Tard to hold off Rachael Blackmore’s mount up the final hill.

This time, as the Betfair Chase at Haydock virtuoso performance prepared us for, it was Pas Trop Loin rather than later that French-mangling turfistes might have greeted the Cheveley Park-owned chaser.

Richard Thompson, once a prodigal son who was perceived as having wasted some of the family fortune as briefly chairman of Queen’s Park Rangers but now restored in the bosom of the Cheveley Park management, was centre stage all week. But on Friday mum Patricia was on hand for the starring role.

She is the nearest to my mind in non-Regal terms to the Queen Mother in her status in horse racing. This has been achieved, not only through these great horses – to which we can add Ryanair winner Allaho – but also the wonderful flat-race breeding and racing operation in Newmarket. Lest we forget, she owned Party Politics when he won the 1992 Grand National.

Now, by winning a Gold Cup and a Grand National, she emulates L’Escargot’s owner, Raymond Guest. He did win a Derby, too, with Sir Ivor. I think Messrs Haggas, Stoute and the rest better line up one for that classic before too long.

- TS

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