Tag Archive for: Desert Crown

Monday Musings: Crown King for a Day?

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Things move along rapidly in life in the 21st Century even if a certain English monarch has shown plenty of stickability, writes Tony Stafford. In the Coolmore box on Saturday after the authoritative triumph by Desert Crown in the Cazoo Derby, the main players were adamant we had all witnessed a superstar – one that might go all the way.

Even in his interview after the race, Sir Michael Stoute felt emboldened enough to declare him “promising”. Maybe he was saying, “seen it all before”, and I suppose he had all those years ago in Shergar, but promising? Hardly.

Maybe he was talking about his jockey. You would never have thought Richard Kingscote was having only his second mount in the race in a large field where more experienced big-race riders could easily have got caught up in the inevitable Epsom traffic that can envelop them on the wrong day.

But Kingscote, untroubled, could just as easily have been riding on a Friday evening at Haydock or Chester, the two tracks where he had best showcased his talents in the years he spent riding for the Tom Dascombe stable until Michael Owen’s mid-winter shake-up.

You need luck in this game. Sir Michael Stoute has never been a man in his half-century as a trainer to change his stable jockeys unduly, but Ryan Moore’s progressive unavailability with his Ballydoyle commitments meant there needed to be an available back-up.

In the past, Frankie Dettori might have been a contender for drafting in with Moore cemented to Coolmore, but Kingscote had moved south after leaving Manor House Stables and must have impressed Desert Crown’s trainer that he would do very nicely when he showed up to ride out at Freemason Lodge.

The son of Nathaniel, who before York had raced only once in a maiden at Nottingham last November, was obviously very talented. His trainer, though, was unsure whether Desert Crown could be readied in time for the Dante. Fortunately he was and Kingscote was on board, looking the part as they strolled home in what history has told us is always the best Derby trial.

All that was left was to beat the Godolphins and the Coolmores on Saturday, and this they did with panache, coming down the straight with a surge that took them past Moore and Stone Age as the Aidan O’Brien first string was battling to take control.

The consensus in the box afterwards was that Stone Age didn’t stay, along with a recognition that it would not have mattered if he had. The winner was supreme. It was going to take something special, they thought, to beat him.

That view held until mid-afternoon yesterday and, as is often the case when Coolmore don’t have the winner of a Classic, they still have more than a little to do with the breeding and production of it.

Step forward Vadeni, who swamped the front-running Modern Times for speed and drew effortlessly away in the last furlong of the Qatar Prix du Jockey-Club at Chantilly. He won by five lengths, avenging a defeat in a Group 3 on the track last September when third to James Ferguson’s El Bodegan. That colt battled on well to pip Modern Times for the runner-up spot.

The consolation for the Coolmore partners is that the winner was the result of an outsourcing by his breeder the Aga Khan, who sent Vadeni’s mother, Vaderami (an unraced daughter of the German stallion Monsun), to be one of the first group of mares to visit Churchill.

The quest is always how to replace – or in their wildest dreams – replicate Galileo. They’ve always thought Churchill was his quickest Classic son as the champion juvenile of his year and easy winner of both the Newmarket and Curragh 2,000 Guineas.

Having gone into this weekend as the sire of two Group 3 winners, Churchill now has a five-length winner of a Classic in a field of 15 where runner-up and third had already won at Group 1 level.

Churchill is, on a lower plane, the sire of one of my favourite handicappers, Brian Meehan’s Lawful Command, who has all the courage of his wonderful grandsire. That colt will keep on winning handicaps, but I bet Sam Sangster, who bought Lawful Command, will already be resigned that his yearlings will be priced out of most mortals’ budgets this autumn with the stud fee doing a similar exponential jump as Galileo’s did when his first three-year-olds began flexing their Classic muscles almost two decades ago. Not even his passing has stopped them twitching away!

I mentioned last week when discussing Desert Crown, that he might not have been the most obvious contender for winning a Derby. Not all products of Nathaniel, Frankel’s contemporary and three-quarter-length debut victim to the unbeaten champion, are high-class. Both colts of course were by Galileo, and Nathaniel will always be remembered as sire of the 21st Century’s best race-mare, Enable. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park Stud in Hertfordshire and Gary Coffee and Julian Dollar have every right in declaring him a steal at £15k too!

Desert Crown may well aspire to similar heights as Enable. There have been many examples of Michael Stoute horses developing from ordinary performers in their three-year-old season to international champions, like Singspiel and Pilsudski all those years ago. When they start out good, they rarely disappoint.

Sir Michael must still hanker after the days when he trained horses of the calibre of Shergar for the Aga Khan, but His Highness’s horses have for many years been centred in France and Ireland for racing and breeding. Long-term stud operations cannot be carried on at full effectiveness without regular injections of new talent and, on the day Churchill offered fresh impetus for Coolmore, the Aga Khan Studs unveiled their latest trump card.

There were three Aga Khan winners yesterday and, rather like the perfect Harry Kane hat-trick (left-foot, right-foot and a header – that’s for you Your Majesty, sorry about yesterday!) – they offered a bright vision of the future.

First in the 12f fillies’ Group 3, the Prix de Royaumont, Christophe Soumillon brought Baiykara, only second best in the market, with an irresistible run which provided a step-by-step dress rehearsal for their Classic show a little later on.

The extent of Vadeni’s success over ten-and-a -half furlongs had been even less anticipated than the filly’s win. You got the impression from winning trainer Jean-Claude Rouget that he might be thinking less about Longchamp in October for Valeni than Leopardstown the previous month. That was probably in line with Soumillon’s earlier murmurings about the Arc for Baiykara.

“I love that race, <the Irish Champion Stakes>”, said Rouget, who has now won five Jockey-Clubs and four of the last seven. Some people in racing seem to think this is the “cheaper” alternative to Epsom and, while Rouget will not hold that view, he did concede that there have been some less than top winners of the Chantilly race along with stars like last year’s hero and European Champion, St Mark’s Basilica. Then again, not every Epsom Derby winner enters the sport’s pantheon either.

The third Aga Khan winner, almost bizarrely, was a sprinter, although in the year when the Aga Khan studs are celebrating the 100 years since the colours of his grandfather, also the Aga Khan, were first seen on a racecourse. That year he bought the flying speckled grey filly Mumtaz Mahal and as well as proving a great racehorse herself, she appears in many of today’s pedigrees, often through her descendant Nasrullah.

Yesterday’s sprint winner was Rozgar, easy winner of the six-furlong Listed race, and while out of an Aga Khan-bred daughter of Sea The Stars, she is by the Darley sprint sire, Exceed and Excel.

Returning though to Baiykara, she is from the first crop of Zarak, a beautifully-bred young stallion, coincidentally listed in 2022’s brochure from the Aga Khan’s French stud, the Haras de Bonneval, at the same fee as Churchill, €25,000.

By Dubawi out of the unbeaten champion mare Zarkava, he did not quite live up to his exemplary breeding, but one of his four wins in 13 starts was at Group 1 level – the Grand Prix De Saint-Cloud and he did just nudge the €1 million prize mark.

Zarak also had something to say later in the card, providing a cross-Channel win for the William Haggas stable.  This was Purplepay, a filly bought by his long-time clients Lael Stable at last December’s Arqana sale for €2 milllion.

That price would never have been countenanced in the first half of last year, even though she was prolific in the provinces, but she upped the ante for her last two runs and picked up a Longchamp conditions race before running third in a Saint-Cloud Group 1.

Fittingly, on the weekend when the 2022 Derby was run in Lester’s honour, his American friends Lael Stable, with whom he owned shares in Haggas horses, now have a very smart filly with his son-in-law.

As probably the trainer closest to the Sir Michael Stoute tradition of steadily bringing on his young horses, he can take this explosive filly a long way, perhaps starting at Royal Ascot next week. Yes, we’ve got that to come, in just eight days’ time. Chantilly was only one day after a wonderful Derby performance but, as we’ve seen, things in racing rarely stand still for long.

- TS

Monday Musings: Paging Richard’s Granny!

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One early morning a few years ago in the days when I still bought a Racing Post rather than access the online version, my regular source did not have a copy, writes Tony Stafford. Not to be outdone I jumped in the car and made a stop at Tesco’s big store at Bromley-By-Bow in between Hackney Wick and Bow.

With only one till open I took my copy and, from memory, a BLT sandwich and went to pay. The senior lady with her full Cockney accent, looked and said: “Oh, you like racing? My grandson’s in racing. He’s a jockey. He’s Richard Kingscote!”

Now more normally you might expect to find grandparents of jockeys to have farms in Limerick or Wiltshire or to have ridden themselves. I doubt Grandma Kingscote – it could just as easily have been Piggott, Eddery or Buick but I think that unlikely - woke to the sounds of horses’ nostrils snorting in her early days which I guessed might have been, like mine, in the East End of London with bomb craters from World War II lingering still around every corner.

I mentioned that meeting to Richard soon after and wish I’d have gone into his heritage a little more. I bet granny wouldn’t have expected her grandson to have made the remarkable change in his source and scene of employment, so secure did the Michael Owen/Andrew Black/Tom Dascombe and Kingscote combination appear then and for a few years after.

Kingscote jumped first, moving south to pick up good rides from Newmarket stables, notably for Sir Michael Stoute, increasingly denied use of his long-term stable jockey Ryan Moore by his lucrative, Classic-bountiful Coolmore job.

Then Dascombe clearly got the tin-tack and he now operates with a team of 13 in Lambourn. Whether he can reinvigorate his career will be a serious challenge, though his interview on Luck On Sunday yesterday related that he’s up for it. All a jockey needs when forced to make a move is a saddle, a pair of boots, an agent and a car to take him to as many stables as he can to ride out and make an impression. Would-be trainers must (for starters) convince the BHA that they have the financial resources to set up and carry their (hopefully) growing business.

It helps if your dad was/is a trainer and he can help you along in the manner of a Crisford, Gosden, Johnston or even a Ferguson. So much more power then to the elbows of such as Boughey and Clover. George went close again yesterday when 1,000 Guineas heroine, Cachet, made a brave attempt to follow up in the French 1,000 at Longchamp, finishing second to the Mikel Delzangles-trained Mangoustine, ridden by the remarkable Gerald Mosse.

Half an hour later the Godolphin blue (Charlie Appleby brand) followed their Newmarket 2,000 one-two with Coroebus and Native Trail by sending out Modern Games under William Buick to win the counterpart French colts’ Classic.

Unraced since winning the hotly-contested Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf at Del Mar last November, the son of Dubawi came home strongly and adds his name to the already formidable team for the Boys in Blue in the major mile races.

They will still have to go some to match the year-older Baaeed in that division after the William Haggas four-year-old brought his tally to seven from seven when winning the Lockinge at Newbury. He started that career less than a year ago on the same course and looks set to be put right to the top of the official rankings after this display.

To be more accurate, Baaeed didn’t just win, he made mincemeat of a strong field of milers and the disdainful three-and-a-bit lengths by which he beat the Saeed Bin Suroor-trained runner-up Real World (a Coolmore-type sighter?) suggests even Classic form later in the season from the best of the younger generation will not be enough to stop him.

The big two power-houses are as strong as ever, but Baaeed’s trainer, William Haggas, is making ever more forceful strides in their pursuit and Baaeed was one of 13 winners for his Newmarket stable in the past fortnight. If you don’t enjoy backing short-priced favourites, never mind, just make sure you take your place early on day one at Royal Ascot when this potential world champion will be the stand-out in the Queen Anne Stakes.

But Richard Kingscote has matters more immediate on his mind after last week’s Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Dante Stakes at York. Riding Sir Michael Stoute’s Desert Crown on only his second racecourse appearance, he brought the Nathaniel colt home well clear of a strong field to clinch what is often the best of the Derby trials.

Ryan Moore was third in the race on the Galileo colt Bluegrass and that colt is sure to do better in time.  They were split by the Johnstons’ Royal Patronage who had run a reasonable race in the 2,000 Guineas, not far behind the principals having attempted to force the pace.

When Nathaniel made his racecourse debut at the Newmarket July meeting in the evening maiden race also chosen by Sir Henry Cecil for Frankel, both colts being by Galileo, there was only a half length between them at the line.

Frankel never lost a race; Nathaniel did, but also won plenty, including the King George and Eclipse at Group 1 level. He has been a great servant to Newsells Park stud where his fee for 2022 was only £15,000 but one eternal distinction is that his daughter Enable was probably the best filly to race in Europe in this century.

Now he could be getting his first Derby winner with a Tattersalls Book 2 purchase, admittedly bought for the respectable figure of 280,000gns. How this year’s Book 2 catalogue will celebrate him, Derby success or not!

Desert Crown has been brought along with typical patience by Sir Michael, who has five Epsom Derby winners to his credit, the last three since he was honoured by his home country Barbados for services unconnected to his profession. Ryan Moore rode the last of them, Workforce, in 2010 and was also on the Aidan O’Brien winner Ruler Of The World three years later.

The Derby can often throw up unexpected winning jockeys and you only have to go back to last year when Adam Kirby was the popular beneficiary of William Buick’s decision to ride third-placed Hurricane Lane, leaving Kirby to fill in on easy winner, Adayar.

O’Brien and Charlie Appleby between them have won the last five editions of the Blue Riband and only once has the stable first string been on the right one. That was Buick on Masar in 2018. Ryan has had to watch on from behind as first Padraig Beggy (on Wings Of Eagles), Seamie Heffernan on Anthony Van Dyck and, most recently, Emmet McNamara (Serpentine) won the spoils.

To think that Beggy and McNamara together have ridden as many Epsom Derby winners as the flawless Ryan Moore. As I mentioned last week, Ryan’s riding has been exemplary this season and I think we can expect a ride of supreme skill on Stone Age on June 4.

I have no idea whether Richard Kingscote’s grandma remains in good health. I hope she does and, even more fervently, that she has been gathered up by all the excitement that Richard will almost certainly be on the favourite that day; even more so that she can be there, because I’d love to meet her again!

One horse I would hope turns up on that day is Saturday’s stylish Newmarket sprint winner, Dusky Lord, who came through the eye of the proverbial needle to win the finale after a six-month absence.

I was happy to be representing part-owner Jonathan Barnett and, given the way in which he came through to make it three wins from six, I think this previous Brighton winner could win the Dash, a race I believe Raymond Tooth should have won with Catfish ten years ago.

The fact this remains the fastest-ever electronically-timed five-furlong race is a major achievement for John Best, who saddled the 50/1 winner Stone Of Folca to record a time of 53.69 seconds, which has never been beaten. That works out as an average speed for the entire trip of 41.9 miles per hour.

Catfish stayed on strongly after a tardy start to finish third in the big field, beaten for second by Andrew Balding’s Desert Law. But when Mikael Barzalona returned, he said: “She was unlucky. My saddle slipped at the start and the way she finished if I could have ridden her properly, I’m certain she would have won.”

David Egan reckoned after Saturday that Dusky Lord definitely needed the outing after his six-month absence. Now the Dash is back as a 100 grand race with half of that going to the winning owners. That’s worth going for, don’t you agree Roger?

- TS