Tag Archive for: Datsalrightgino

Monday Musings: Trials and a Tribulation

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In many ways, Trials Day at Cheltenham 2024 did exactly what it said on the tin, writes Tony Stafford. But for one trainer, a successful, remunerative trial early in the afternoon had become a gut-wrenching tribulation half an hour later. Jamie Snowden had hardly finished celebrating Ga Law’s sparkling return to his Paddy Power Gold Cup winning form from December 2022, when his other stable star Datsalrightgino was stricken down with a fatal fall at the ninth fence of the immediately following Cotswold Chase.

I suppose plenty of our handlers can be described as target trainers, but the ex-Army man Snowden fits that description to a tee. Both his best horses had last raced on another major day, Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup meeting early in December, each going to post for the top race with uncertainty about whether they would stay the three miles, two furlongs at the headlong gallop the former Hennessy Gold Cup routinely becomes.

Both seven-year-olds (the ideal age for that race over more than half a century) at the time, Ga Law had been up with the pace until early in the straight second time round but faded and was thus brought back to 2m4f, the distance of his Paddy Power win.

This race carried less prizemoney, but £56k was decent enough. Like the slightly richer at £70k Cotswold Chase which followed, Paddy Power was again the sponsor, the handicap offering the nod to the firm’s Cheltenham Countdown Podcast.

In the Coral Gold Cup, Datsalrightgino definitively proved his stamina with a late-running effort under Gavin Sheehan. No doubt everyone was happy enough as the partnership sat at the rear of the small field on Saturday, anticipating a similar run through to Newbury’s. Sadly, though, in the manner of sound jumpers that had previously never fallen, his lapse proved fatal.

Over the years, a win or place in the Hennessy often signalled future stardom. Most glaringly, the 1992 runner-up Jodami, carried only 10st2lb yet won the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following March. The future had seemed to open with endless possibilities for Snowden and Datsalrightgino, who won the race under 5lb more and quite easily too.

That feast or famine setback was typical of racing in general and jump racing in particular. It came at a time when Snowden had been in a great run, winning a novice hurdle at Catterick with a potential Boodles Handicap Hurdle contender on Thursday and the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown on Friday with his stable newcomer Farceur Du Large.

A race he won as a rider four times, the Grand Military had eluded him until now but this ex-Irish 10-year-old who had achieved a great deal for Noel Meade until losing his form, admittedly in major handicaps over the past year, had slipped down to a rating of 130, the upper limit for the military race.

So, while not a handicap, but almost (apart from females) a level weights affair, it has become a nice target for horses like Farceur Du Large, that can meet vastly inferior opposition on much more favourable terms – not that his 11/1 starting price reflected his history or the fact that Jamie would have been ultra-keen to win it.

There were Festival hints throughout the weekend, including the hitherto invisible juvenile champion hurdler of 2022-3, Lossiemouth. Willie Mullins finally took the wraps off her in the Grade 2 Unibet Hurdle and the Triumph Hurdle winner from last March and then slightly less overwhelmingly superior at Punchestown in April, metaphorically laughed at Love Envoi to win by just over nine lengths.

Speculation naturally followed as to whether she would be offered up alongside older stable-companion State Man as opposition to Constitution Hill. The reigning champ missed Saturday’s race just as he had the re-scheduled Fighting Fifth at Sandown last month, this time for a slight training issue rather than the fear of too-testing ground.

In that race, Love Envoi had been a slightly lesser distance behind Not So Sleepy, as Lossiemouth on Saturday, but really it could have been a fair bit more. Hughie Morrison’s old Timer Not So Sleepy has put together an exceptional hurdles record over the years, often spectacularly so.

Lossiemouth was quoted as a 10/1 shot in Champion Hurdle betting, behind only last year’s one-two, State Man being at around 9/2 and Constitution Hill, naturally odds-on. If Mullins decides to go the mares’ route, Lossiemouth is similarly odds on to join six-time winner of the race Quevega.  It’s hard to call it a substitute for the biggest prize. Admittedly, Honeysuckle stepped across to it last March to avoid Nicky Henderson’s emerging star rather than attempt to complete her personal hat-trick. I think she earned that little bit of latitude and understanding for her emotional farewell to the track.

In 2022, Marie’s Rock was a surprise 18/1 winner of the mares’ race for Nicky Henderson. Amazingly, she started joint-favourite at 9/4 with Honeysuckle for last year’s race when equally surprisingly she could manage only 7th of 9. There’s no sign to suggest the nine-year-old has any less talent than before as she showed in the feature race at Doncaster yesterday, the Warfield Mares Hurdle, Grade 2.

There, our old friend Coquelicot shared the pace for much of the way but, in the straight, class told and she had to be content with fourth place and just short of 2.5k for geegez.co.uk and Anthony Honeyball. It looked for a few strides that Marie’s Rock was about to be swamped for pace by You Wear It Well, winner of last year’s Mares’ Novice Hurdle at the Festival and attempting to bring a little joy to the Jamie Snowden camp.

Her stamina was unproven before the race, but now having got close to the Henderson mare, she will have more opportunities going forward. Dropping back to 2m4f at the Festival is a given for her and equally the winner, who showed just that little too much power for her on the demanding Doncaster run-in

The Gold Cup picture didn’t really look any clearer after Saturday. With Datsalrightgino not concerned in the finish, there was a Willie Mullins winner in Capodanno, but he is officially rated 21lb inferior to reigning champ Galopin Des Champs. Capodanno will possibly aim at the shorter Ryanair Chase for the Mullins stable, but there will be several ahead of him in the pecking order even for that race.

The latest episode in the on-going tussle between staying hurdlers Paisley Park, Dashel Drasher and Champ came in the Cleeve Hurdle. All three were in with a chance on the run-in at the end of the three miles and they finished in that order in second, fourth and fifth behind Noble Yeats, the 2022 Grand National winner.

Still only a nine-year-old, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t make a winning return to Aintree after his bold show under a massive weight last year and maybe stop off on the way in the Stayers Hurdle or even the Gold Cup as he did last year.

The excitement building that second-season trainer James Owen may have a potential Festival winner in his care will have cooled after Burdett Road was well beaten by market rival Sir Gino in the JCB Triumph Trial. Ten lengths was the margin about a horse that was pinched by Nicky Henderson from under the noses of the Mullins buying team (and other Irish connections, too) after it won a juvenile race in April last year at Auteuil. It’s easy to forget just how good Nicky is with juveniles and in the Triumph Hurdle, his seven wins in the race being a record.

 - TS

Monday Musings: Snowden’s Gino Beats the Snow

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I remember many years ago, walking out of my office in Fleet Street to be greeted by a healthy, or rather unhealthy, fall of snow, writes Tony Stafford. It was just before Christmas and that winter racing was decimated.

Some years we escape snow until well into the New Year and the jumps season appears to continue largely without meaningful interruption. With global warming and all that, you would have thought temperatures at the end of November would be temperate enough.

But here we were on the opening weekend in December, with the far north of England suffering large deposits of the white stuff, causing the formality of the cancellation of the Fighting Fifth Hurdle. With it evaporated the chance for Gosforth Park’s jumps adherents to get a second view of the great Constitution Hill as he sets off on his ceremonious way to a repeat Champion Hurdle, only three and a bit months from now.

My fear is that such an early start to freezing and snowbound conditions could set in for quite a while. With still three weeks to go to the shortest day, there is so little time in the mornings to address frozen tracks, so inevitably more meetings will be lost.

Yesterday’s unfortunate abandonment of Southwell’s all-weather (sic) card because of frozen hailstones must make the BHA wary of too many panicked extra flat or jumpers’ bumpers fixtures. Carlisle’s jumps card yesterday meanwhile was little short of a fiasco with 18 non-runners, mostly due to travel problems that reduced a 40-horse card almost in half. Three matches hardly made for value for money for racegoers.

Nicky Henderson was relieved to hear that the Fighting Fifth Hurdle was preserved – added to the Tingle Creek Chase card at Sandown next Saturday.  It wasn’t all positive in compensational terms for the Seven Barrows trainer though, as Shishkin’s planned attempt at rehabilitation in the undercard featured Rehearsal Chase is apparently unlikely to be rescheduled.

It was more than something of a cliff-hanger before Newbury’s superb, effective deployment of frost covers and the three hours it takes to lay them – just an hour to remove them – that enabled both Friday’s and Saturday’s cards to proceed.

With snow in the north, how appropriate was it that the Lambourn trainer Jamie Snowden – pity the Welsh mountain isn’t spelt correctly! – took the biggest slice of the 250 grand on offer for the Coral Gold Cup. In its days as the Hennessy, Betfair and Ladbroke before its present identity, it has always been one of the races that trainers and owners most wanted to win and clearly nothing has changed.

Snowden had two runners, both second-season chasers, in the race - the Ayr Grade 2 winner from last year Datsalrightgino, and last year’s Paddy Power Gold Cup hero Ga Law - as the local trainer chose the most valuable chase handicap of the season at his home track to explore his pair’s stamina.

Over the years, I’ve always maintained that the perfect formula for the Hennessy was a seven-year-old in the lower half of the handicap and in its second season’s chasing. Thatsalrightgino fulfilled all three requirements. Stablemate Ga Law, whose career has revived splendidly after a near two-year injury hiatus, is a year older.

Six of Saturday’s 20 runners were age seven, including the first three home. Datsalrightgino was a 16/1 shot, getting the better of a splendid tussle from the final fence with the Irish gelding Mahler Mission (15/2) with the Jonjos’ Monbeg Genius a respectful six lengths behind after running out of puff from the final fence.

Jamie Snowden was full of praise for his jockey Gavin Sheehan who waited in the pack with his mount before making his move near the inside and challenging at the vital moment. One fellow jockey that might not have been quite so chuffed was Tom Cannon, due to ride Datsalrightgino until Newcastle’s abandonment enabled Snowden’s regular rider to change direction. A share of £142k doesn’t crop up too often for even the top jumps riders.

The bookmakers would presumably have accepted forecasts and tricasts on the race, and I recently joined with my vote against the affordability checks – funnily enough from a Nicky Henderson email.

It takes 30 bets for a six-horse straight forecast combination and £120 for a full-cover £1 tricast. The bookies’ version of the two paid not extravagantly generous with respectively £129 and £859 for a £1 stake, The Tote version was close to twice as productive with £230 for the Exacta and £1,539 for the Trifecta. Of course, I forgot all about it.

Thirty-one years ago, I found what I thought to be the handicap certainty of all time. Datsalrightgino carried 10st7lb on Saturday, 5lb more than the Peter Beaumont-trained and Mark Dwyer-ridden Jodami, who had slipped into the 1992 race with 10st2lb.

He started favourite but could not cope with the gutsy Ferdy Murphy runner Sibton Abbey, who was 21lb out of the handicap. In a preview of the race three decades later, the first two came six lengths clear of third-placed The Fellow, trained in France by Francois Doumen. The winner was owned by Geoff Hubbard and ridden by Adrian Maguire, the best jump jockey never to win the championship. Blame Richard Dunwoody and then A P McCoy for that.

All three (among five in the race) that year were also seven-year-olds and the runner-up, amazingly, went on to win the Cheltenham Gold Cup just over three months later. I’ve never actually asked Mark Dwyer all the times we’ve met since, “What went wrong?” merely because when he shakes your hand, it stays shaken for minutes afterwards. Such a question might cause permanent injury! I’ll check again when I see him at the Tattersalls mares’ sales sale tomorrow when seven-figures will be a feature of the Sceptre section during the afternoon.

After his Gold Cup win, Jodami returned in 1994 and finished runner-up to The Fellow. You could say the form stood up and no doubt Saturday’s will, too, though whether Snowden will be thinking Gold Cup is another question.

Jamie Snowden may be a less high profile member of the jump trainers’ firmament, but he certainly knows how to exploit the material in his yard. Last season You Wear It Well went through the grades and impressively won the mares’ novice hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. The way she resumed her winning ways by beating a Nicky Henderson hotpot in Listed company at Wetherby suggests the big prizes will continue to come her way.

Formerly for a brief time in the Army, but long enough to qualify for the Military races at Sandown, where he was a multiple winner of the two top races, Snowden had a year as a pupil assistant to Paul Nicholls before spending three years as Henderson’s assistant trainer and amateur rider. You could hardly ask for better schooling than that.

Over the 15 years since taking out a licence, Jamie has developed to the level where he routinely trains between 40 and 50 winners (his best in 2021-22) and last season he passed the £700,000 mark in earnings for his horses, easily his best. These are exciting times ahead.

There are also exciting times – not that they’ve been short on them already – for the Geegeez syndicate mare, Coquelicot. When this column’s editor reminded me last Monday of his invitation to join him at the Horserace Writers’ lunch in London later today, he neglected telling me the seven-year-old mare would be returning to action in Listed company at Kempton that afternoon.

Usual result, she made all and won pulling away for a six-length margin over odds-on shot Kateira. In winning that race she was overturning a 10lb ratings deficiency, and her 127 mark is sure to go up by at least a few pounds in tomorrow’s updated list.

If it still leaves her a little short of, for instance, You Wear It Well, on 140 after her Wetherby success, I’m sure the always-adventurous Anthony Honeyball would not be averse to a tilt  at the younger lady as the season progresses. They would need to come a bit nearer to three miles with the Snowden horse though, for that to happen.

- TS