A friend called yesterday afternoon and asked, “What are you going to write about? Dettori? Coolmore? My choice”, he said, “would be the King and Queen Camilla, how they fully and seamlessly followed the example of the late Queen, treating Royal Ascot with fitting respect.” He could have added, even down to owning a winner and having the joy of the Duke of Kent presenting the trophy to them, writes Tony Stafford.
My preference though, only locked in my mind a few minutes after 6pm yesterday, was one that got away. All week, until Thursday at 10am, a small trainer based in Newmarket was convinced he had in his stable the winner of the Golden Gates Handicap, penultimate race on Saturday.
The unfortunate thing for Dylan Cunha, though, a South African with just under a year behind him as a trainer in the UK, was that the 10-furlong Round Course allows only 16 runners in races as against 20 at a mile-and-a-half.
With a few minutes to go, we spoke, and he said: “It’s not looking great, Johnston and Appleby haven’t declared yet” – but then they did and Dylan’s hopes for Silver Sword and a £50k first prize evaporated in a trice.
He did have yesterday’s one-mile Sunday Series race at Pontefract as back-up, but a ten grand winning dividend hardly makes up for five times that as well as the kind of publicity a win at the meeting would mean to a small stable.
“It’s been very hard to convince UK owners of what we are capable”, he said in an earlier chat before we got to know each other better. “Most of the horses have a South African ownership element at least and all we can do is show on the racecourse that we are up to the job.”
The same goes for Greg Cheyne, 46, ten times a top five rider in South African and twice runner-up there. An experienced rider with more than 2,000 wins to his name and who has moved to the UK to take up a job as pupil assistant to William Haggas.
He’s not the usual pupil assistant, the type sprinkled around Newmarket especially, from “good families” often with ownership and breeding in the family tree, much like Haggas was in his early days and even before.
I’m sure I’ve told this story before. William, now 63, was at school when at the time I used to speak every night to Michael Dickinson who was still riding. He’d come in from his nightly sauna when father Tony’s plans percolated through his head as the steam ebbed away the excess pounds from that spare, long frame.
The Dickinson trinity of dad Tony, mum Monica and son Michael were for a time almost the equivalent of a 70’s version of Willie Mullins and trained, among other very good horses, Silver Buck for William’s mother Christine Feather. The young master Haggas, apart from being a star cricketer that Fred Trueman once declared as a future Yorkshire captain, also kept a close watch on affairs at Gisburn in Lancashire, the original Dickinson base before the move across the county line to Harewood near Harrogate in West Yorkshire.
One evening Michael came on the phone. Always a little hyper, this time he neglected the usual greeting of “now then”, instead launching into a furious tirade saying: “That little so-and-so William Haggas keeps phoning me from Harrow telling me how to train his mother’s horses!”
A Cheltenham Gold Cup and two King Georges at Kempton were to fall to Silver Buck as well as fourth in the Famous Five Michael Dickinson Gold Cup of 1983. His was a long, honourable career which ended with a stable accident when still in his prime the following year.
By that time, Haggas had already moved to Newmarket, as pupil assistant for two years with fellow Old Harrovian Sir Mark Prescott and then four with John Winter before starting training in his own right in 1986. Thirty-seven years on, he is of course one of the acknowledged masters of his craft, working alongside wife Maureen, daughter of Lester Piggott.
Anyway, I digress, Dylan and Greg went north to Pontefract yesterday rather than south-west to Ascot the day before. The market was unequivocal, Silver Sword being backed down to 13/8 favouritism. If you need to know a little of Dylan’s talent, consider this about the Group 1-winning handler during his time in South Africa where he was one of the leading trainers. Silver Sword, an 11 grand December 2021 yearling had two runs in August last year early in Dylan’s UK training career and the result each time was catastrophic, at least for the trainer.
Apprentice Grace McEntee had the misfortune to be on the already gelded grey son of Charm Spirit for whom the comment on debut at Chelmsford was “dwelt, refused to race” and then, at Newbury 18 days later, “slow away, soon hung left, refused to race.”
Now what can you do after that? Well Dylan took him home, gradually instilling confidence so that by October he was ready to show more conventional reaction to training, finishing fifth of 11 as a 250/1 shot at Newmarket before three weeks later getting his first place with a second of 13 at Lingfield. Thus he could be sent away at the end of his juvenile career with reputation restored – to a degree!
Project forward to the February sale at Newmarket and I was having a cup of tea with my pal John Hancock, bloodstock insurer extraordinaire, and another friend, Michelle Fernandez, and knowing I edit a couple of sites every day, Trainers Quotes and From The Stables, she thought I might like to meet this trainer she had got to know. “He might be one for your site, he’s South African.”
I asked her to find out from him before he came over whether he knew Bernard Kantor, a friend who was the joint-founder and long-time boss of Investec Bank, sponsors of the Derby for quite a few years, sharing the podium with Her Majesty and the winners of the great prize. He is now retired.
Dylan Cunha came over and said: “You asked if I knew Bernard Kantor. I trained for him and we had plenty of winners together. In fact, one of his horses probably was most responsible for my coming over here as he had looked like a potential champion but had serious problems. I was so disillusioned I decided to call it a day and came to England a few years ago.”
He agreed he would join the Trainers Quotes team and told me that day about this grey gelding he had that was going to be a big part of his year. By April, Silver Sword had won very easily at Southwell and the plan was the London Gold Cup at Newbury in May. When you have one or two nice horses, you need the luck to hold and a couple of days before the race the horse had a small setback and Newbury was off.
Instead, turning out at Epsom, the gelding was second to a smart John and Thady Gosden performer on an interrupted preparation and that convinced him he would win at Royal Ascot.
Early in the week, when I wondered whether he would get in on his mark of 86 – up 4lb for Epsom – he said, “84 and 83 got in last year, so we should be all right.” History will show he wasn’t.
The best thing about the decision to run over an inadequate trip of a mile was the stiff nature of the Pontefract track, and having broken well from stall two, he soon had the two leaders covered and the punters who had shortened his price during the day never had a moment’s anxiety. Pulled to the outside by Cheyne, he took control just over a furlong out, drew clear and then had time to be eased. The winning margin was just over three lengths under 9st10lb joint top-weight. If they had another two furlongs to go, the margin could probably have been trebled.
Before yesterday’s race, still disappointed about missing Ascot, Dylan told me of a valuable ten-furlong race at his local course that is already on his radar. The Bet365 Handicap over ten furlongs for three-year-olds is a 0-105 that opens day two of the July meeting. That race carries a similar prize to the Golden Gates and he should have no fears of making the cut, especially as he’ll be into the 90’s by then.
I’m thrilled for this hard-working handler, and another winner with Ascot connections also pleased me greatly on Thursday. You won’t find the name Paradise Row on the list of Ascot winners, but part-owner Jonathan Barnett and trainer William Knight were in a box watching the progress of that three-year-old filly when she ran at Chelmsford, a few minutes after 150/1 shot Valiant Force had carried football agent Kia Joorabchian’s colours to victory in the Norfolk Stakes.
Barnett is also a major football agent, and founder and Chairman of ICM Stellar sports, race sponsors every year at Chester. Rather less ebullient than the boss of Amo Racing, he watched as his filly battled home to a first career success at the Essex track. With a few friends around him and his trainer to cheer her home, it felt like a Royal Ascot winner. I agree with her handler that bigger things await this Zoffany filly as she gains experience, maybe even a run in one of the handicaps at next year’s Royal meeting. After all, dreams in racing can come true!