Tag Archive for: Coronation Cup

Monday Musings: Aidan’s Hat-Trick Heroics

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So Aidan and the boys won the Betfred-sponsored Coronation Cup, Oaks and Derby last weekend, picking up around £1.5 million in the process, writes Tony Stafford. Lambourn, the well-backed third favourite on Derby Day, far out-performed his much more talked-about stable companions The Lion In Winter and short-priced favourite Delacroix in almost a repetition of Serpentine’s all-the-way easy victory under Emmet McNamara at the height of Covid five years ago.

Ryan Moore had selected Delacroix from the gang of trials winners rather than Chester Vase hero Lambourn and, in retrospect, it was maybe a little strange as Aidan always sends his best candidates to Chester, its timing best suiting Epsom.

People may question the suitability of a one-mile always-turning circuit as a recipe for revealing Epsom Classic talent, but I know Henry Cecil always reckoned that a big horse would be fine around the Roodeye if he was well-balanced. Lambourn certainly is.

He was picked up almost by default by Wayne Lordan, the apparent third string – Colin Keane, the regular Irish champion was on Dante flop The Lion In Winter. But the stamina Lambourn showed in winning the Chester Vase (just beyond 1m4f) last month convinced Wayne to go hard in the first furlong out of the stalls – to wake his mount up as much as anything – as he knew, unlike many in the field, his mount would not fail through lack of staying power.

Auguste Rodin (2023) and City Of Troy last year were fully expected winners but two other runnings in the last decade have gone to perceived third or higher strings. Wings Of Eagle, the fifth choice in terms of expectations in 2017 was a 40/1 shot when Padraig Beggy guided him home.

Beggy has been rarely seen since on the racecourse, but he did return to Epsom two years later to partner outsider Sovereign as a pacemaker in the Derby and finished tenth. He then rode him as a 25/1 outsider in the Irish Derby and won it!

McNamara might not have seen much riding action after Serpentine’s triumph, but it’s hardly surprising as he had been combining his riding with studying at Griffith College, Dublin. He graduated from there in 2018 with first-class honours in accountancy and finance in 2018 and works in that capacity in the Coolmore operation. Talk about top-class staff!

Moved across to Ballydoyle when David Wachman, John Magnier’s son-in-law, stopped training to take a behind the scenes role in the Coolmore machine, Lordan was third string to Ryan Moore and Seamie Heffernan until that veteran left the team a couple of years or so ago.

Lordan, one of those outdated characters, a true lightweight, had a serious injury during the 2023 Irish Derby which took eight months to overcome. As he said after Saturday’s triumph, he has a wonderful job. It was only a neck that denied him the Oaks-Derby double when Moore’s mount Minnie Hauk just edged out he and Whirl after another flawless front-running ride around Epsom’s tricky 1m4f course the previous afternoon, showing what jewels are available to the Coolmore number two on which to demonstrate his skills.

The modest Mr Lordan affirmed that he will have been in for work at 7 a.m. as usual yesterday and after no drunken celebratory stupor. Like the trainer he’s a teetotaller.

Aidan O’Brien has now won the Derby and Oaks eleven times each and, for good measure, ten Coronation Cups after Friday’s determined triumph for Jan Brueghel over the odds-on French four-year-old Calandagan. The Francis-Henri Graffard-trained horse was adding to his string of half-hearted second places (now four in a row) behind a typically tough O’Brien stayer.

In all, it’s 47 UK Classics from the 139 that have been contested since his first winning attempt in the 1,000 Guineas in 1998. That’s around 33 per cent. At least everyone else has been able to share the remaining two-thirds although, as time goes on, the dominance if anything is strengthening.

Aidan’s 22 Epsom Classics have all come this century, thus 22 of the 52 to have been run, or 42%! When Michael Tabor and Mrs Sue Magnier add their joint win with the Andre Fabre-trained Pour Moi, they are on 12.

To add to the winner, Coolmore’s partners also own Tennessee Stud, who finished fast from off the pace for the Joseph O’Brien stable. This son of Wootton Bassett was bred by Joseph’s mother Anne-Marie. Wootton Bassett has been the runaway star of the Coolmore firmament of late and his fee for this year was raised to an almost unthinkable €300k.

But even at that lofty price, in this Derby line-up he wasn’t the most expensive of the 14 sires (New Bay, Ghaiyyath, Sea The Stars and Frankel were doubly represented). Juddmonte’s Frankel’s fee is £350k. Dubawi, with one runner yesterday, has the same fee for his services at Darley Stud.

Every November the stud fees for Coolmore’s stallions are made public. I was shocked in 2023 that Australia, the 2014 Derby and Irish Derby winner and a son of another outstanding Epsom hero in the peerless Galileo, had his fee for 2024 reduced to €17,500. If potential clients needed any further encouragement, his dam is the Oaks winner Ouija Board.

I mentioned it to one of Coolmore’s stallion sales team at the time, who said it reflected his lack of popularity, probably because his progeny often needed time. He added that the only people that seemed to have confidence in him still were Aidan and Anne-Marie who sent a good number of mares to him.

Checking on my facts, I was further stunned that the 2025 fee was down to ten grand (Euro, about £8,400). Aidan and Anne-Marie sure know their stuff. It’s not too late for Australia to start going back towards the €50k at which he began his stallion career. Note, for example, that he is still at Coolmore while others have been sent elsewhere due to the hard-nosed realism that characterises the stud’s management. Of the 20 published stallion figures for flat race rather than jumps sires, only one was listed at a lower figure.

Watching from home due to entirely foreseen but inescapable circumstances, I was momentarily fooled into thinking that Lester Piggott had come back to ride in the Derby in the second running after his death. As the horses walked around, I noticed just how similar Rossa Ryan carries himself on a horse. When you get the chance, have a look. No doubt he’ll win the race one day, but the Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras never looked in with a chance.

One fact that certainly didn’t fool me was the dispiriting sight of the sparsely populated Hill. Every first Saturday in May, in Louisville, Kentucky, upwards of 100,000 squeeze in, a tradition in US racing that goes back to the days of the famed War Admiral/Seabiscuit match race at Pimlico in November 1938, where upstart Seabiscuit met his regally bred Kentucky Derby-winning rival and humbled him.

When I used to go to Epsom with my dad in the 1960s, there were more people there during the three-day (now one) Spring meeting in April than deigned to turn up on Saturday.

All the years I used to go there when with the Daily Telegraph, I arrived for breakfast in the old lads’ canteen, waiting for a glimpse of a few of the contenders having a leg shake in the morning, and the crowd was already building up. Many scores of buses lined the straight and the Hill was packed. On Saturday there was a sprinkling of people and even Ollie Bell and former England hockey goalie Sam Quek couldn’t disguise the fact that there was enough room for kids to play impromptu football matches.

Apparently, the Jockey Club, who run Epsom, is considering how to deal with the problem. The remedy is simple. Charge a tenner for cars and allow free admission. Then people will begin to flock back, find it an enjoyable experience and one that will develop as the years go on. I’ve never been so embarrassed. Derby Day once was a great British tradition. For most of our much-changed society, it’s an irrelevance. Thank goodness ITV think it’s worth making the effort.

Many say switching from Wednesday was a big mistake but, since Covid, it seems so few people these days have physically to GO to work, that simplification is a red herring.

It’s not as if there’s loads of competition from other sports at this time of year. On Saturday, England played a World Cup qualifying match against Andorra. Who? Our brave boys, rated number four in the world, hammered the opposition (rated 173 – I didn’t know there were that many countries) by a single goal to nil. Some of them are on £300k a week. Worth every penny I’d say.

- TS

Monday Musings: New names in Epsom frame

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There are Classic trials and Classic trials, but never before, I suggest, has there been a situation like that which leads into Friday’s Oaks, writes Tony Stafford.

I was about to trot out “Investec” as usual but checked and it’s now the Cazoo Oaks– yes, I wondered who they were too! There are 15 acceptors and it is possible to line up all bar one of them running in one of four races and all within a ten-day time-frame.

So there should be no excuse on whether the filly in question has trained on or indeed whether she will be fit. Only one of the 15 finished out of the first four – Martin Meade’s Technique, fancied for the Lingfield Oaks Trial but only seventh of eight behind the Archie Watson-trained 28-1 shot Sherbet Lemon.

Five of the eight that ran there, including runner-up Save A Forest, Ocean Road and Divinely reunite: the 1-2-3-4 that day are in the line-up.

There seemed only minimal evidence why the Aidan O’Brien filly Divinely should have attracted a gamble from an early last week’s 50-1 to one-fifth those odds, so a fraction of the 33-1 available about the first two home at Lingfield. But then she is a full-sister to Found, winner of a mere £5 million in prizemoney and a consistent improver throughout her three seasons’ racing.

Then again maybe a leaked whisper of a sensational Ballydoyle gallop might have had something to do with it. Anyway, the races in question in time order and in number of days before Friday start with the one-mile 1,000 Guineas (33) from which runner-up Saffron Beach and fourth home, the beaten Newmarket favourite Santa Barbara, come.

Three days later, the Cheshire Oaks at Chester, the race which first indicated Enable’s outstanding potential, revealed three more Oaks possibles and a more predictable outcome. The Mark Johnston filly Dubai Fountain, a daughter of Teofilo, beat Zeyaadah by a length with O’Brien’s La Joconde fourth in what was clearly a scouting mission for the girls back home.

Lingfield, which we dealt with above, was three days after Chester and the final link in the Classic chain came another four days on, so just over three weeks before the big race. The Musidora Stakes at York, run over slightly more than ten furlongs provided a surprise O’Brien winner in Snowfall, living up to the tradition of abrupt form progression from two to three for horses from that stable. The daughter of Deep Impact – do not worry, the dam is by Galileo – swamped the principals in that market leaving Noon Star, Teona and Mystery Angel to fill the places at a respectful distance.

The only outcast from those four tightly arranged and informative indeed series of races is Willow, the fifth and possibly on form the least feasible of the Coolmore contingent. She was third in a Naas Group 3 on Lingfield Oaks day and is, so far, winner of one race in five (a maiden), so normally just an also-ran.
But then you notice that the daughter of American Pharoah is out of Peeping Fawn who, at the time she ran in the 2007 Oaks, also just had one maiden victory from five career starts. She did not run at two but packed in five runs before the end of May, finishing a more than creditable third in the Irish 1,000 Guineas.

Despite that she was a 20-1 shot for Epsom, hardly surprising as she was stretching out from a mile to a mile and a half and only five days after her third behind the brilliant Finsceal Beo. In the event she easily outperformed the trio of other O’Brien candidates when a half-length second to Sir Henry Cecil’s Light Shift with the stable number one All My Loving four lengths back in third.

For the rest of the summer Peeping Fawn was supreme in winning four Group 1 races in succession, the Pretty Polly, readily from the previous year’s 1,000 Guineas heroine Speciosa; the Irish Oaks, emphatically turning around Epsom form with Light Shift; the Nassau at Goodwood and then the Yorkshire Oaks, wrapping up her 10-race, five-win career in 144 days.

So if Willow does turn up on Friday I wouldn’t put you off having as my friend Prince Pippy always says – and I’m sure he’s missing going racing as much as me – a chip each-way on her.

It’s a very different Oaks this year with no Gosden, Charlie Appleby or Wiliam Haggas runner, but Roger Varian is upholding the Newmarket challenge with three contenders along with Sir Michael Stoute, veteran of many Classic triumphs over the past 50 years and Hugo Palmer, a 2,000 Guineas winner with Galileo Gold (ironically not by Galileo, but with him as the broodmare sire) and now proud progenitor of two winners from his first crop including Listed winner Ebro River, hero of the National Stakes at Sandown for Palmer last week.

The Oaks would already have fallen to a Hugo Palmer filly had his Architecture not had the misfortune to be in the same age group as the amazing Minding, comfortable winner of the race five years ago. Architecture was an excellent second.

There are at least three names in addition to Martyn Meade that do not fall easily from the tongue in relation to Group 1 fillies’ races. The afore-mentioned Archie Watson’s filly Sherbet Lemon, despite her almost-unconsidered status as a 33-1 shot, did extremely well to hold off a quartet of challengers around Lingfield and that race has been a more promising indicator of events at Epsom than was the case in the early part of this Millennium. Still regarded as more of a two-year-old “get-‘em-out-and-run-‘em” trainer, there seems to be more of a measured approach these days. As Watson’s stable grows into its new coat, so Hollie Doyle keeps pace and more.

That prospect of a first Classic for her is almost too exciting to contemplate but virtually guaranteed to happen one day.
If Watson used to be that specialist trainer, George Boughey, with the help pf Amo Racing’s big-spending Kia Joorabchian, has smoothly stepped into his shoes. A former Hugo Palmer assistant, he has all the hallmarks of a future top five trainer.

The name Chapple-Hyam has been notable in Classic terms and Peter of that ilk trained two Derby winners, Dr Devious and Authorized. At the time of his training for Robert Sangster from his Manton stables, Chapple-Hyam was married to Jane, daughter of Sangster’s second wife, the former Susan Peacock.
In 1992 not only Dr Devious brought Derby success, but the outstanding miler Rodrigo De Triano won the 2,000 Guineas and Irish 2,000 Guineas.

Over the past decade while her former husband has been operating on a much smaller scale – though with little sign of diminished talent – Jane Chapple-Hyam has gradually shown her own skills as a handler. Starting in 2006 she had tremendous success with multiple stakes-winner Mull Of Killough, trained for some of the younger members of the Sangster family, headed up by Sam and his nephew Ned and now her step-brother Ben’s wife Lucy with James Wigan and Lucy’s son Olly own Saffron Beach.

Winner of her only two races at two, a maiden and then the Group 3 Oh So Sharp Stakes, both over seven furlongs at Newmarket, Jane has kept the daughter of New Bay to the same track this year.
She reappeared in the Nell Gwyn, finishing runner-up to Sacred and then comfortably left Sacred behind in sixth in the 1,000 Guineas, staying on strongly past Santa Barbara into second behind that filly’s stable-companion Mother Earth who did not let the Classic form down with her second to Coeursamba in the French 1,000.

There are plenty of potential stories, but save a Hollie win, Jane Chapple-Hyam winning a race for her step-nephew and step-sister-in-law would run it close. There are certainly worse 12-1 shots around to waste our money on.

It would be great if Love could turn out earlier in the afternoon in the Coronation Cup. We only saw her once after her two Classic wins, by almost five in the 1,000 and nine in the Oaks. That later five-length win in the Yorkshire Oaks seems so long ago. It would be nice to see her challenge the fast-improving Al Aasy for William Haggas and the French colt In Swoop who has carried on the good work this spring after that excellent second in the Arc last October.

As to the Derby, you tell me, although it is hard from here to look past the favourite Bolshoi Ballet who won the same two races that his sire Galileo did before his triumphant run in the Derby. In winning the Ballysax Stakes and then the Derrinstown Stud Stakes, Bolshoi Ballet has convinced Ryan Moore he is the most uncomplicated colt he has ever ridden. I believe him.

-TS