Tag Archive for: Forever Young

Monday Musings: Saudi Riches

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You might wonder whether the dream of Saudi Arabia’s rulers to dominate the world’s most watched sports at the highest level is wearing a little thin, writes Tony Stafford. Golfers and soccer players have been enticed by unfathomably large sums to join the Liv Tour and Saudi Pro League respectively, but even after no more than a year or two in some cases disillusionment is setting in.

In the Kingdom, horse racing’s attention is largely on one day and specifically one race. Last Saturday was the seventh instalment of the Saudi Cup, run on dirt over a mile and a furlong of the Riyadh racecourse at Janadriyah. A field of 13 included three Japanese competitors, six horses from the US and was filled out with a quartet of generally outclassed locals.

The race had a prize fund totalling £15 million, but despite facing decent opposition, the favourite and defending champion Forever Young started as short as 1/3 and duly did the business for owner Susumu Fujita, trainer Yoshito Yahagi and jockey Ryusei Sakai. The trainer also won the race in 2023 with Panthalassa.

Forever Young shared top spot in the dirt-race section of the 2025 International Classification with the US-trained three-year-old Sovereignty. Their mark of 128 was 2lb inferior to the overall champion, the French-trained turf specialist Calandagan, who was boosted to that mark when winning the Japan Cup at Tokyo Racecourse in late November.

Saturday’s opposition to Forever Young was headed by the Bob Baffert-trained Nysos, a far from negligible performer who had won six of his seven previous starts. One of those was at Grade 1 level and his sole defeat until the Saudi Cup was also at that level and then by only a neck.

His rating going into the race was 119, 9lb inferior to Forever Young’s, but after the one-length defeat, he is certain to have his mark adjusted upwards. The pair were almost four lengths in advance of the best of the rest, the Wathnan Racing-owned but US-trained Tumbarumba, partnered by Wathnan’s retained rider James Doyle.

Here’s the time to mention the lavish prizes. The winner collected £7,407,407; Nysos earned £2,592,592; Tumbarumba pocketed £1,481,481; fourth-home Bishops Bay (US) takes home £1,111,111. £740,740 was the prize for Japan’s fifth-placed Luxor Café, while Sunrise Zipangu, the next-home under Oisin Murphy, lifted £444,444. Murphy has often been associated with Japanese runners in international events over the years.

The money went all the way down to 10th place. That position was held by one of the home contingent, Ameerat Alzamaan. It was well worth Ryan Moore’s time to travel over to Saudi Arabia, his mount earning £148,148.

Those massive figures explain what happens when the best part of £30 million in overall stakes is available. Do the authorities at the top in the Kingdon continue to feel that the £30 million for one day is value for money? As long as they do, the “have saddle will travel” community will be happy to join the party.

Moore, Murphy and Doyle are among that small group of UK-based riders (also including the absent Willliam Buick) at the forefront of the world’s jockeys and all three will return home with nicely enhanced bank balances. I’m not sure whether they cop the imagined ten per cent of total prizemoney in Saudi but even if it is a mere five per cent, it would represent a great way to divest the costs of family Christmases.

Overall, Murphy held sway, his £2 million and a bit total bolstered by two wins, in a Listed race (£370k) and more spectacularly in the £1,333k Turf Cup over ten and a half furlongs on the Karl Burke-trained Royal Champion.

Moore was third here on George Boughey’s Survie, carrying the Doreen Tabor colours, and the resulting £222k contributed to Ryan’s £700k haul on the afternoon. Later he teamed up with Tom Clover’s Tabletalk in the 1m7f Turf Handicap, bettered only here by Joseph O’Brien’s Sons And Lovers ridden by Dylan Browne McMonagle. The Irish team’s reward? A cool £1.1 million.

Doyle’s nearest to a win came on the French-trained, Wathnan-owned speed merchant Lazzat, but he couldn’t match the US performer Reef Runner, trained in Florida by David Fawkes.

Another septet of UK jockeys was recruited mostly for a single mount and again normally without making an impact. David Loughnane and Danny Tudhope got lucratively among the place prizes once each, while the other five, namely Pat Dobbs, moving across from his winter base in Dubai, Jason Watson, Pat Cosgrave, Callum Shepherd and P J McDonald all went without a prize, but could well have been paid a guaranteed fee to attend.

Many years ago, when Saudi Arabia was just getting acquainted with organising top-class international sports events, a golf tournament’s first prize was exceeded many times over by the appearance money paid to Justin Rose.

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We’re in that period of the season when most trainers will be holding their breath with Cheltenham in mind. One who will be going there with optimism is Ben Pauling after Saturday’s wonderful hat-trick in the first three races on the Ascot card. Novice hurdler Mondoui’boy; The Jukebox Kid, comfortably in the Reynoldstown Chase; and Fiercely Proud in the day’s featured handicap hurdle all won well to show his team is right at the top of its form.

Pauling is involved at the six-day stage in one of the most compelling events of the winter – and it’s a flat race at Southwell on Friday. With £40k added, it’s the “Let’s do Nicky Henderson and Michael Buckley a Favour novice stakes”, a race for four-year-olds and upwards over 1m4f.

Hughie Morrison was speaking to me about it the other day and mentioned that with that amount of money, it cannot be divided, and 32 horses were entered, with a maximum field of only 14 able to run. For a day Nicky must have been nervous that Constitution Hill could have a low ballot number and miss the gig.

I know loads of trainers who routinely get what they describe as “crap draws”, but the boffins (or AI maybe nowadays) that programme the machine that spews out the ballot order the day after entries, thus yesterday, gave Constitution Hill number 16 so only two of the 32 need to come out.

One bookmaker’s odds I saw had the former Champion Hurdler as the 4/6 favourite. Kevin Phillipart De Foy’s Amo Racing-owned Square Necker, a winner at Dundalk in December, is next best at 7/4 with Willie Mullins’ Daddy Long Legs, a 152-rated hurdler, next best at 7/2.

If you think I begrudge the Seven Barrows team being helped to find a non-jumps race for Constitution Hill’s quest to regain his Champion Hurdle crown, far from it.

Sixteen years ago, the season after his 2009 Champion Hurdle success, Nicky was struggling to find a suitable prep for Punjabi. Kempton was persuaded to stage an £8k to the winner hurdle race with advantageous terms, also at the end of February. Punjabi started 1/6 and won by 12 lengths, but his wind gave out in the big race a few days later and stablemate Binocular gained his revenge.

Ray Tooth’s star performer was never the same again. The year after Binocular’s Champion Hurdle win, Sandown provided another “gift” for him. It was gladly accepted at 1/10 but again a second title victory proved beyond the J P McManus star.

- TS

Monday Musings: Romantic

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It’s official – well almost, the best flat racehorse in the world is a seven-year-old gelding, writes Tony Stafford. True, Romantic Warrior didn’t win the Saudi Cup in Riyadh on Saturday, but he made the high-class Japanese dirt specialist Forever Young pull out all the stops, only getting overhauled in the last 25 yards and losing out by a neck.

The top of the 2024 International Racehorse Ratings was a tie between multiple Group 1 Derby and Irish Derby winner City Of Troy from Aidan O’Brien and the appearing-from-nowhere Laurel River, given an equal figure of 128 after an 8.5 length demolition of the Dubai World Cup field on dirt as long ago as last March.

The Juddmonte-owned Laurel River hadn’t appeared again until being defeated at odds of 4/11 in a Group 3 race back at Meydan where he is now trained by Bhupat Seemar, having started his career in California with three wins for Bob Baffert. He had been an intended starter for the Saudi Cup but was ruled out by injury.

The dangers of allotting such a high score on a single run – true, he had won his previous race at the Dubai Carnival by 6.5 lengths, but that was still only enough to merit a 115 rating – are obvious. In the World Cup, his nearest finisher, staying on all the way home, was the veteran Japanese horse Ushba Tesoro, a regular in Far and Middle Eastern major middle-distance races. He turned up once more on Saturday in the Saudi Cup and the now eight-year-old again put in his best work late in the piece to finish third, albeit ten-and-a-half lengths adrift of the top two.

Forever Young started the 11/8 favourite on Saturday, having gone to the track eight times in his life, each one on dirt. He had been the unlucky member of the trio that crossed the line noses apart in the Kentucky Derby in May, having been interfered with; and again had to give best, this time to Derby second Sierra Leone, when that Coolmore-owned colt won the Breeders’ Cup Classic in the autumn on Forever Young's only other start in the USA. Before Saturday, he'd won all six of his other races.

Those runs gave Yoshito Yahagi's colt an international rating of 121, joint 24th and 4lb lower than Hong Kong-trained Romantic Warrior (125) in joint fifth. The amazing thing about the runner-up, a son of UK-based veteran sire Acclamation and a 300,000gns yearling buy from Corduff Stud at the Tattersalls Yearling sales six years ago, was that this was his first race on dirt after all 23 previous appearances (19 wins) had been on turf.

James McDonald, his regular partner, always finds time away from his Australian commitments – no wonder – to go wherever Romantic Warrior takes him. The only regret for him was that the neck, possibly because he took up the running too far from home and travelled five wide at the top of the straight, made a difference of £5.2 million to the horse’s owner Peter Lau Pak Fai, and maybe half a million for his rider’s share, to McDonald.

 

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He didn’t let it get him down though, for having pocketed the best part of 300k there, he was at it again in Hong Kong yesterday, picking up the 720k first prize on Voyage Bubble for a virtual stroll around Sha Tin in the Hong Kong Gold Cup. In the words of the immortal Derek Thompson, he won “as an odds-on <7/20> favourite should”.

It made quite a difference to Romantic Warrior’s earnings. Before Saturday I believe, although the internet resolutely refused to give me up to date figures of before the race, showing horses of lesser prizemoney on top, he was already the highest-earning racehorse of all time. The £18.1 million he had collected from 18 wins, three second places and two (honestly!) fourth spots eclipsed whatever any horse, such as fellow Hong Kong champion Golden Sixty, had compiled. I couldn’t find anywhere that confirmed it.

He isn’t just a one-trick Sha Tin pony either, with Group 1 wins at Moonee Valley in Australia, Tokyo last summer and a cantering warm-up for Saturday across the Gulf at Meydan last month. He’s surely at the top of the earnings tree now, up to £20.9 million and change. It would have become an almost unfathomable £26.1 million if Forever Young hadn’t produced that battling late rally under his Japanese rider Ryusei Sakai.

The case for calling him the best in the world, if only for versatility and adaptability at such a late stage in his career, is made easier by comparing the inability of top-ranked City Of Troy to adapt to dirt in the Breeders’ Cup Classic last year at Del Mar. There, he was 13 lengths behind Sierra Leone and ten adrift of Forever Young.

It’s a moot point whether Laurel River’s 128 keeps him ahead of either Forever Young or Romantic Warrior on their form via Ushba Tesoro in Riyadh. I’d love the big three to meet later in the year, maybe in the Dubai World Cup next month, when I’d be siding with Romantic Warrior to clock up another few million of those other sheikhs’ money.

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The weekend’s (Friday and Saturday) domestic racing was dominated by Ben Pauling and his stable jockey Ben Jones, with two wins on Friday at Warwick, where Jones added a third for an outside stable, and a 200/1 hat-trick together at Kempton on Saturday.

Pauling fancied all of those winners bar one, understandably so as Mambonumberfive, overnight a 20/1 shot for the Adonis Hurdle, had pulled up on his recent hurdles debut and was faced by the Prix du Jockey Club fifth and King Edward VII fourth, the 111-rated on the flat Mondo Man, trained by Gary and Josh Moore.

Mondo Man had cost €520,000, whereas Mambonumberfive was a “cheapie” at only €450 grand! After three non-wins in decent juvenile hurdles for Francois Nicolle, that initial pulled up in the Cheltenham race won so decisively by East India Dock didn’t enhance the trainer’s expectations.

But now we saw the true potential of this giant of a horse of whom Ben Pauling said in the morning “he doesn’t strike me as a juvenile type - he’s one for next season”. Mambonumberfive confounded that negativity with a one-length verdict over Toby Lawes’ St Pancras, the favourite half a length further away in third. Ben Jones reported that Mambonumberfive had been less than perfect over the first three hurdles but got the hang of it in time to get the best of a tight finish.

Mondo Man’s connections reckoned the ground was softer than ideal for the gelded son of Mondialiste, but the effort was still creditable. In between the pair came St Pancras who had picked up the 24k first prize for his Scottish Triumph Hurdle victory at Musselburgh last time and earned another 17 grand here. He was conceding the 5lb penalty to his much more expensive opponents.

A 95,000gns Tatts buy in the autumn out of the Martyn Meade stable, the 86-rated flat performer is almost halfway to recouping the investment of Andrew and Sarah Wates in the colours of Andrew’s 1996 Grand National winner Rough Quest. I expect it will take the two French recruits rather longer to get that far!

With an easy win earlier from the hitherto luckless Bad in a chase handicap (geegeez syndicate-owned Sure Touch running a nice race in fourth) and a more mettle-testing success for Our Boy Stan in the concluding bumper, Pauling had the perfect send-off for his short drive along the A308 to Twickenham where England edged out Scotland in a Calcutta Cup thriller.

That wasn’t a bad weekend as the trainer took his tally to 55 wins for the season and more than 900k in stakes. Ben is 260k adrift of last season’s best and with the major money on offer at the big spring festivals to aim at and ammunition to target them, he must be hopeful that he can push the envelope that little bit further.

- TS

Monday Musings: It’s Coolmore’s Classic, but not as we thought…

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How fitting. City of Troy does have an Achilles (Ancient Greek hero of the Trojan wars) heel, writes Tony Stafford. Not an arrow shot from a bow out of the packed stands at Del Mar on Saturday night, just a different surface and a slow exit that consigned him to being the latest non-winner for Ballydoyle of the Breeders’ Cup Classic.

It had been in the expectation of watching City Of Troy win the 2000 Guineas – he didn’t, of course – that Michael Tabor stayed in Europe on the first Saturday in May when he previously insisted he would always go to Kentucky in preference to Newmarket if the boys had an authentic contender for the Run for the Roses.

He changed that life choice this year such was the confidence emanating from the Aidan O’Brien camp, just as he had a few weeks earlier. Then, he made a first-ever trip to Dubai for the Sheema Classic where the 2023 Derby winner Auguste Rodin had one of those off-days that sprinkle his card.

The Coolmore team had two big chances in the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs – one in their name, Sierra Leone, carrying the dark  blue of John Magnier, and also Fierceness, the favourite, who although owned by Mike Repole’s stable, the Coolmore team had acquired some of the racing and more importantly breeding interests, just as they had their two Triple Crown-winning stallions American Pharoah and Justify towards the end of their racing careers.

The pair were fancied to complete the 1-2 in Kentucky and Sierra Leone surely should have won in front of Derrick Smith, one of the partners, had he kept at all straight rather than doing his imitation of a naughty schoolboy.

Three noses crossed the line in concert, and it was indeed by a nose that outsider Mystik Dan held on while Japan’s Forever Young was the same distance away in a regularly impeded third place. Most people thought the second and third places should have been reversed. Fierceness, the 2023 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner, was a non-competitive 15th with no apparent excuse.

In between May and November, Sierra Leone had been beaten three times, albeit close up in the places in Grade 1 races at Saratoga: not his track, said trainer Chad Brown. Fierceness won two of those races, the Jim Dandy in July and the Travers in August, for Todd Pletcher to lay claim to being the best of the Classic crop.

On Saturday, half a dozen or so horses went off in a group at a suicidal pace in what was the fastest first half-mile ever for a Breeders’ Cup Classic. Fierceness sat just behind the front rank, while Sierra Leone was for a while almost dancing step by step with City Of Troy.

The Irish challenger in the first Magnier silks merely plodded along, but Sierra Leone in the vibrant pink second livery made rapid ground. Fierceness, with the utmost gallantry, led three furlongs from home as his fellow front-runners ran out of puff, and turned into the stretch in front; but his old adversary was full of running and won readily. Fierceness deserves the utmost respect for keeping on for second.

The Breeders’ Cup Classic has been something of a Holy Grail for O’Brien and his owners, and he and the team will have to brush themselves down and revert to winning the big races in Europe. Not that he’s a mug at this meeting, two winners on Friday propelling him to 20 and the equal of almost but not quite retired D Wayne Lukas whose Kentucky Derby win for Michael Tabor in 1995 with Thunder Gulch was the catalyst that helped forge the alliance with John Magnier.

Those two nice wins on Friday, with Lake Victoria in the Juvenile Fillies Turf over a mile and the Juvenile Turf for colts and geldings at the same trip with Henri Matisse, both owed plenty to Ryan Moore’s coolness under pressure. Lake Victoria could easily have been a victim of the inevitable first bend crowding around this tight turf course as she got knocked back a worrying few lengths.

Patient as ever, Moore bided his time and burst through to lead in the closing stages. The filly showed that the mile of the 1000 Guineas next year will not worry her. In between the seven-furlong Moyglare and Friday, she outclassed the opposition when dropping to six furlongs for the Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket. Probably the only thing to stop her will be another of the O’Brien fillies, like for instance Fairy Godmother, who hasn’t been seen since Royal Ascot.

That marvellous Friday was the filling between two less agreeable moments for Aidan. While preparing his Del Mar team, 19 hours further forward on the international time scale, over in Australia the veterinary panel adjudicating on which horses should pass fit to run in tomorrow’s Melbourne Cup, ruled that the unbeaten Jan Breughel could not.

Jan Breughel last raced in the St Leger, beating fellow O’Brien Galileo colt Illinois, when still looking to have a fair bit to learn about racing. As Hughie Morrison can testify when a similar pre-race fate befell his 2018 runner-up Marmelo in preparation for the 2019 renewal, it was a crushing setback.

As was the case last week, Hughie’s vets totally disagreed with the verdict, but there is no recourse. Aidan was visibly fuming and while the Coolmore coffers can withstand the odd reverse of this kind, it’s no less galling than for a team like Morrison’s with the cost of sending horse and staff and keeping them there for several weeks being so excessive.

The man wheeled out to explain the situation was none other than Jamie Stier, the head of the temporary Australianising of the BHA at the end of the last decade. Few mourned his departure from our shores, but beware, he’s still very much out there helping to run Racing Victoria. One horse happily that did pass the scanners and “gait-evaluators” is Brian Ellison’s Onesmoothoperator, winner of the Northumberland Plate and now the Geelong Cup last week which entails 2lb extra in the Melbourne Cup. I’d love him to win the £2.35 million and I’m sure Brian will still talk to everyone if he does!

The worst moment for me of the weekend was to hear than Brian Meehan’s Jayarebe had collapsed and died after sustaining a heart attack while finishing what must have been an ultra-brave seventh place in the Turf race that immediately preceded the Classic.

Brian had plotted a masterful programme for the three-year-old, winning three of his five races and looked to have an exceptional chance. He ran an usually sluggish race, starting slowly and never getting close to the front, which became wholly understandable in the awful circumstances.

In a year when his stock has gone a long way towards where it was at the time of his two previous Breeders’ Cup Turf wins with Red Rocks and Dangerous Midge, this will be a tough blow for Brian to overcome. Let’s hope the new intake Sam Sangster acquired for the various syndicates he manages will bring another star for Meehan to work his magic on.

Talking of magic, it’s hard to believe that it’s coming up to 30 years since Kim Bailey pulled off the Gold Cup (Master Oats) and Champion Hurdle (Alderbrook) double in 1995. Kim continues to show a sure touch especially with his training of staying chasers and at Ascot on Saturday, he brought out second-season chaser Chianti Classico to win his comeback race, the Sodexho Live! Gold Cup with a pillar-to-post victory off top weight,

It's strange not to see the bustling style of David Bass on the Bailey horses but Tom Bellamy seems to have the regular gig now. He's much more a "let the horse do the work"-type pilot and it's looking good and working well so far.

Once Chianti Classico settled in the lead it was almost like a flashback to a few years back in the same race when Vindication came back from a break to win this nice prize. At age seven, Chianti Classico is the perfect profile of a Coral Gold Cup (Hennessy etc) winner at Newbury next month.

-        TS