Tag Archive for: coral eclipse

Monday Musings: Sue And The City

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You say it quickly and it does seem a little unusual, writes Tony Stafford. But it’s only when you put it in perspective - that it was Mrs Susan Magnier’s first visit to a UK racecourse for twelve years on Saturday at Sandown - you appreciate how remarkable it was.

Then you begin to understand how City Of Troy is regarded among the Ballydoyle owners, his trainer and jockey Ryan Moore He’s not merely another star racehorse. He’s something apart, everyone involved in his development believing from very early days on the home gallops that he is unique.

I can’t remember whether Vincent O’Brien’s daughter attended any of the 2012 Classic races. That was a memorable year with victories in the first four. Indeed, the clean sweep was only denied them when Enke – he of the failed dope test the following year which found steroids in his system when under the shamed Mahmood Al Zarooni’s care – denied Camelot the Triple Crown.

No doubt the very young Susan O’Brien/Magnier would have lived every minute of the last Triple Crown, her father’s horse Nijinsky coming over in 1970 to achieve the extraordinary feat - the first for 35 years since Bahram in 1935.

A named co-owner (rather than husband John) in almost all the earlier and subsequent triumphs for the non-related Aidan O’Brien team of Coolmore partners, it’s amazing to appreciate just how many major wins she had absented herself from before Saturday.

If we start with the Classic wins. From 2013 onwards, she, with Michael Tabor and Derrick Smith mostly, has won the 2000 Guineas three times, the 1000 Guineas five times, the Derby seven times, the Oaks six times and the St Leger four times; that’s 25 in all, never mind that 2012 quartet.

If we descend into all races, Aidan has sent over since 2013 around 1500 runners for a little more than 200 wins and prize money of £60 million The poverty of UK prizemoney in relation to that of other leading racing authorities is best shown by the last figure.

There’s no question that City Of Troy is the one horse racing today that would command the sort of money that football clubs pay for the best players. His value, like them, potentially soars above £120 million to my mind. Unlike footballers, though, stallion owners can get their money’s worth.

Some racehorses of recent times, especially Galileo, the principal equine power base behind the consistently astonishing Coolmore/O’Brien success of the past 20 years, have commanded stud fees reputedly close to £500k. When Coolmore list one of their stallions as “private”, just being able to inveigle a mare into his breeding shed has needed something of that dimension and the promise not to reveal how much has been paid for the privilege.

Multiply that by a conservative 125 or so mares covered each year; factor in a two or three-year span to retrieve all the money and you get the Coolmore formula – one pursued, usually in vain, by their imitators.

City Of Troy, while not a son of Galileo, does have Galileo on the dam side, through his mother Together Forever, a Group 1 winner at age two, and one of the many mares by their champion looking for worthy mates to keep the pot boiling at the highest level.

Step up (and he already has) Justify, one of two recent Triple Crown winners, both now operating from Coolmore’s Ashford stud in Kentucky.

City Of Troy has done enough to deserve to stand where Galileo did for so many illustrious years. Unbeaten and the European champion at two, he won the Derby impressively after that Guineas aberration, then on Saturday he beat his elders in the Coral-Eclipse, the first meaningful Group 1 battle between the generations of the 2024 season.

As in the UK, to illustrate how difficult that achievement has been, Justify, and American Pharoah a few years earlier, were also pathfinders after a 37-year gap since Affirmed won the 1978 Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes in the tough five-week schedule that series entails.

For a UK horse to win our Triple Crown, I suggest an even more difficult trifecta: he has to be quick and ready enough to land the 2000 Guineas at a mile in early May; stay 14 and a bit furlongs on the daunting Doncaster circuit in September; and in between have the adaptability to come home first around the difficult Epsom 12 furlongs with its gradients and cambers in the first week of June.

I think time will tell us that Sheikh Mohammed’s remarkable mare Oh So Sharp, the last filly to complete the female Triple Crown in 1985, with 1000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger, deserves much more attention than is generally afforded her.

The first element inexplicably eluded the team, Ryan Moore coming back visibly shocked at the unexpected reverse on Newmarket’s Rowley Mile. Yet so quickly does the racing year evolve that within two months we’ve already seen his rehabilitation – back almost to the sublime domination of his generation as a two-year-old – in the Derby and then the victory in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday.

Justify’s win over 12 furlongs on the US’s biggest oval, Belmont Park, where he completed the set in the Belmont Stakes, offered promise that his progeny would stay at least middle distances, without compromising the speed which won the two shorter distance Triple Crown races.

Had City Of Troy won the 2000 Guineas, he may well have missed Sandown, and gone instead to the Irish Derby and would now be gearing up for the St Leger. The combative John Magnier and friends, though, are always out to stretch the boundaries. After Sandown, presumably it’s the Juddmonte at York and if the Irish Champion Stakes is not then on his agenda, it seems that even the Breeders’ Cup Classic on dirt could be. Then again, maybe both.

There was no sign of weakening – quite the reverse – from City Of Troy in the Derby, and then when all looked potentially to be going wrong in the Eclipse, the will to win from horse and rider Ryan Moore, kept the opposition at bay.

A couple of incidents stayed in my mind from before the race. One of the closest inside the group said that after all the rain that had fallen on Sandown, had it been his decision to make, he would have pulled City Of Troy from the race. Two trainers, Brian Meehan and Hughie Morrison, did withdraw their runners on concerns about the going.

Next, standing quite close in the pre-parade paddock,while Aidan was, as he prefers, saddling his horse in the open in the middle of the paddock rather than in a saddling box, I remarked to a friend, “see how calm and placid he is,” at which exact moment his left hind leg flashed back and only Aidan’s nimbleness enabled him to evade it. Three or four further attempts to clean out his trainer were also unsuccessful and then it was on to the main paddock and a host of people anxious to see the superstar.

In the race, Wayne Lordan made the running on stable pacemaker Hans Andersen and, while Ryan was happy enough to follow him, Ghostwriter eased up on his inside as they reached the end of the back straight. Then around the home bend, any idea of serenity for the rider was eroding as City Of Troy seemed momentarily to lose his footing and he had a length quickly to retrieve on his opponent.

Up the straight, though, he gradually mastered Jeff Smith/ Clive Cox’s smart performer, but then had a more serious rival to deal with. The Joseph O’Brien four-year-old Al Riffa had sat last of all but came with the final challenge and one that from the stands looked likely to prove decisive.

I wondered afterwards whether Sue Magnier might have been looking on momentarily in horror, reliving the day when brother David with Secreto beat her father’s hot favourite El Gran Senor in the Derby of 1984. Here, though, City Of Troy’s battling qualities eliminated such horrors, kicking in and he had the race won by a full length.

When asked what had he expected beforehand, Ryan Moore answered, “I thought he’d win by ten lengths.” I’m sure Sue Magnier did too, but now everyone knows that for all the brilliance, there’s also a dogged will not to be beaten in that remarkable DNA. Roll on York!

In case you wondered, yes, I did get another chance to press the flesh. His lad kindly waited a few seconds as I got into position and this time, unlike at Epsom, his coat was a little wet to the touch. Maybe the Eclipse got to him rather more than the Derby did - and no wonder!

- TS

Monday Musings: St Mark My Words!

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The sports pages yesterday were dominated by a certain football match in Rome and, much earlier on Saturday, the 18-year-old world number 338-rated female tennis player wowing the home crowd at Wimbledon, writes Tony Stafford. At least on a par, ten miles down the A3 in Esher, St Mark’s Basilica was deservedly making his own headlines.

There is winning a Group 1 race, indeed one completed in slower time for the Sandown Park ten furlongs than the two handicaps over that trip on the card, and then there’s winning it like a potential champion.

You can list a big winner’s credentials but when it gets into the top level it is rare to find a horse running past fully tested Group 1 performers in a few strides and drawing away. That is what St Mark’s Basilica did in swamping Mishriff and Addeybb for speed once Ryan Moore unleashed him.

Afterwards there was the inevitable qualifying of the performance, commentators suggesting Addeybb, who battled back to wrest second off Mishriff, and the third horse may have both come to the race a little under-cooked.

Well here’s the rub. Both horses had already won Group 1 races this year, Addeybb continuing his Australian odyssey with another defeat of the brilliant mare Verry Elleegant in the Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Randwick in April while Mishriff earned his owner Prince Abdulrahman Abdullah Faisal just about £10 million when annexing his own country’s Saudi Cup and the Dubai Sheema Classic on Dubai World Cup night.

Those wins illustrated his versatility, the former over nine furlongs on dirt and the latter a mile and a half on turf, so Sandown’s mile and a quarter will have fitted comfortably within his parameters.

When Mishriff drew alongside Addeybb in the straight on ground possibly a little less soft than ideal for the leader, he looked set to win, but St Mark’s Basilica was poised in behind in this four-horse field and, when given the signal by Ryan, he sailed serenely clear.

Sandown’s tough uphill conclusion often provides sudden changes in momentum. By the line St Mark’s Basilica was, either from loneliness or simply feeling the effects of the sudden change in velocity that took him clear, definitely if marginally coming back to the rallying Addeybb.

But William Haggas’ seven-year-old is a battle-hardened winner of 12 of 23 career starts. Mishriff, handled skilfully by the Gosdens, has won six of 11, but until Saturday his only defeat in the previous six had been in Addeybb’s Champion Stakes where he appeared not to appreciate the very testing ground.

Saturday’s success makes St Mark’s Basilica the winner of four Group 1 races in succession starting with the Dewhurst. That normally is the race that signals the champion juvenile of his year and then he went on to hoard both French Classics open to males, the Poulains and Jockey Club, where his electric burst heralded the type of performance we saw on Saturday.

In a year where four-fifths of the Aidan O’Brien Classic winners have been four different fillies and none of them Santa Barbara, the fifth has been going a long way to eradicate the overall disappointing showings – so far, and remember it is a long season – of the other colts.

A son of Siyouni – also the sire of Sottsass, the 2020 Arc winner, now standing his first-year stallion duties for €30k a pop at Coolmore Stud – his two French Classic wins made him an obvious object of admiration for French breeders as previously mentioned here.

Unfortunately, their pockets will need to have become much deeper than anticipated with each successive Group 1 victory and if the speed that has characterised all his wins remains or, as is more likely, intensifies with experience, he will easily outstrip his sire’s appeal – and stud fee.

Any thought that he will end up anywhere other than Co Tipperary is fanciful and with all those mares needing partners he will have an enviable stream of potential mates. One slight difficulty is that his dam, Cabaret, is by Galileo.

Cabaret was an unusual product of Galileo on the racetrack, atypically precocious enough to win twice including a Group 3 by mid-July of her two-year-old season but never nearer than seventh in four more races. Sold for £600k at the end of her four-year-old season – double the yearling price at which she joined Coolmore – she has been the dam not only of St Mark’s Basilica but also Aidan O’Brien’s 2,000 Guineas winner Magna Grecia, by Invincible Spirit.

Post-race quotes of 6-4 for the Juddmonte International look just about spot on in a year when you get the impression that Aidan is being more confident in narrowing down his candidates for the biggest races to the single most deserving.

Of course, there’s still Love as a possible for the Juddmonte as she won reverting to ten furlongs at Royal Ascot, but why wouldn’t O’Brien prefer to keep her in her comfort zone for a second Yorkshire Oaks at a mile and a half? Then it is the small matter in three weeks of the King George, for which in a vastly over-round market, Love and the Derby winner Adayar are vying for favouritism at around 2-1 or 9-4, with St Mark’s Basilica moving in close at 4-1 if Aidan wants to stretch him out to 12 furlongs as soon as that.

And what of Snowfall? A 16-length Classic winner is not one to ignore wherever she runs. It’s great having a lot of good horses: the trick is knowing where to run them.

One trainer who never seems to be at a loss in choosing the right target for his equine inmates is William Haggas. With 67 wins from 266 runs, but more pertinently having won with 49 of the 106 individual horses he has run this year, the Newmarket trainer operates at a better than 25% strike rate despite many of his horses having to run in high-class handicaps.

If they sometimes are not raised as rapidly as those of his fellow trainers who might have a much less healthy strike rate, the economy with which they often win is at least a contributary factor.

But they are invariably well bet, so for Haggas to be losing under a fiver to level stakes for those 266 runners is miraculous. I saw Bernard Kantor, a patron of Haggas, again last week and we were musing as to whether his Catterick winner Sans Pretension – remember she was DROPPED 2lb for that! – would ever be reappearing.

The next day, Bernard excitedly told me, “She is in at Yarmouth on Wednesday,” about his Galileo filly. I’m sure he will have seen a later and much more high-profile entry in a fillies’ race at Ascot on Friday. I could be tempted as there’s another horse on the same card I really ought to go to see. I had planned to wait until post July 19, so possibly the King George, but maybe I will try to go this week. I bet Sans Pretension will not be too far away in whichever race the shrewd Mr Haggas decides upon.

There are some jewels that one’s eye will often pass over when looking for something in the Racing Post records. While Haggas has had nine winners from 41 runs in the past fortnight there is another area where he has plenty to prove.

Like Ryan Moore, who won a hurdle race first time on the track for his dad before ever riding on the Flat and who has not revisited that discipline since, Haggas had a go at jumping. I know he had at least one winner over jumps, Fen Terrier on October 20, 1995, at Fakenham, but possibly only one.

The 6-4 second favourite, a daughter of Emerati owned by Jolly Farmer Racing, won narrowly with the 5-4 favourite Dominion’s Dream, trained by Martin Pipe, ten lengths behind in third.

William has had a further seven runners over jumps in the intervening 9,389 days without another win. I wonder if he considers he has something to prove. Probably not!

Another of my favourite meetings will come and go without my attendance this week. Whenever I think of Newmarket July I go back to the day when Hitman broke the track record in the competitive ten-furlong three-year-old handicap for owners the Paper Boys, and Brough Scott insisted I do an interview for the telly.

My then wife was blissfully unaware of my association with the Henry Cecil colt, that was until a colleague on a day off who was interested in racing congratulated her on the win in the office the next morning. Other similar offences were digested and clearly taken into account before the eventual inevitable domestic rupture!

- TS