Tag Archive for: Honeysuckle

Leading owner Kenny Alexander among 11 charged over gambling services in Turkey

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Leading owner Kenny Alexander, former head of the parent company of Ladbrokes, is among 11 people who have been charged as part of an investigation into the provision of gambling services in Turkey.

Alexander, 56, of Perth in Scotland, the former chief executive of the then GVC Holdings, now known as Entain, was charged with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to bribe between 2011 and 2018, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) said.

Alexander’s colours have become a familiar sight after big races in recent years, most notably through the brilliant mare Honeysuckle, who won the Champion Hurdle at Cheltenham in 2021 and 2022.

Lee Feldman, 57, of East Hampton, New York, United States, the former chairman of the firm, was also charged with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to bribe during the same period.

Also charged with the same offences are Richard Cooper, 64, from London, Robert Dowling 50, from Horsham, West Sussex, James Humberstone, 52, of Olney, Milton Keynes, Raymond Smart, 59 of Castel, Guernsey, and Richard Raubitschek-Smith, 49, of Harpenden, Hertfordshire.

Scott Masterton, 57, of Tetney, Grimsby, is charged with conspiracy to defraud and conspiracy to bribe, fraudulent trading, cheating the public revenue and acting as a director of a company when undischarged bankrupt.

Alexander MacAngus, 64, of Grouville, Jersey is accused of conspiracy to defraud, while Caroline Roe, 48, from Staincross, Barnsley is charged with conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to bribe, fraudulent trading and fraudulent evasion of income tax.

Robert Hoskin, 54, of Gibraltar, is charged with perverting the course of justice in February 2024.

The first hearing in the case will take place at Westminster Magistrates’ Court on October 6.

Richard Las, director of HMRC’s fraud investigation service, said: “This has been a complex and international investigation.

“These are serious charges that relate to conspiracy to defraud, bribery, cheating the public revenue, evasion of income tax and perverting the course of justice among others.”

Entain said in a statement: “The company has not been charged and none of the individuals charged are currently employed by the company or its group.”

Monday Musings: Of Champions – Past, Present and Future

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The minute the decision was made to pull Constitution Hill out of a probable exhibition round that was going to double as his return to action at Ascot last weekend, you knew Nicky Henderson would merely shrug his shoulders and switch him to Newcastle, writes Tony Stafford.

What about 2020 Champion Hurdle heroine Epatante, long since pencilled in for a third consecutive challenge after one and a half wins (she shared the 2021 Fighting Fifth Hurd1e with Not So Sleepy)? Tough, she can run too, he reasoned. As I said here last week, he has plenty of previous.

The net effect: J P McManus, instead of collecting the owner’s share of £64,710, cedes that to Michael Buckley and gets instead £24,380. Lady Blyth, whose Not So Sleepy finished well to get within two and a half lengths of Epatante on ground faster than ideal, collected half of what would have been the case. Then again, J P has become used to that sort of thing over the years.

While Nicky looked on from Newbury, animatedly showing the cameras a real anxiety at the outcome, Buckers made the journey and shared in the wonder of it all with the viewers. Meanwhile, back at Newbury, Hendo was resplendent in the Cossack-style hat he had bought at the Peter O’Sullevan lunch on Thursday, a midwinter accoutrement for the master commentator, a man rightly still revered seven years after his death at the age of 97.

That generous gesture would have given Nicky some brownie points. J P is a leading light in the annual organisation of the charity event in memory of his late, great friend, which has provided so much welcome help to good causes, never needed more than in today’s straightened times.

For Henderson, the sight of Constitution Hill effortlessly drawing away from his older, female stable companion to the tune of 12 lengths must have been received with a mixture of pride and not inconsiderable relief. It may also mean that the three-year stranglehold on the top spot in hurdling by mares is about to end.

The trainer’s percentage remained whatever it is now of the £89k for Newcastle, on top of his automatic share in another £92k over two days at Newbury principally. On Friday J P McManus’ Champ – perhaps just as well – held off the fabulous finish of old adversary Paisley Park in the Coral Long Distance Hurdle, a win augmented by impressive novice winner Jet Powered earlier.

On Saturday, smart bumper performer Luccia stepped up in a very competitive fillies’ novice hurdle with a flawless performance on debut, almost in the Constitution Hill class, and First Street also impressed in the graduation hurdle against high class opposition. To complete the borderline obscenely successful weekend, Touchy Feely was an appropriate winner for Seven Barrows at Doncaster.

I have two post-scripts to the “do”. Ben Pauling was hard to reach on Friday morning, and when, finally he was contactable, he explained how tired he had been, understandable in view of the fact he got home from lunch at 1 a.m., replicating the sort of irresponsible behaviour that many used to exhibit at the annual Horserace Writers’ Awards lunch in London.

That pre-Christmas staple goes on at Lancaster Gate next Monday and I have received a welcome and most unexpected invitation. I promise I will make it home before midnight. (The following Monday we have family tickets for Cinderella. I better get into practice!)

The other amusing incident concerned a random meeting in the gents, mid-lunch between Henderson and Not So Sleepy’s trainer, Hughie Morrison. Hughie relates: “He wasn’t interested how Sleepy would run, just whether we would knock over one or other of his horses at the start or at the first hurdle.

“He asked, “which way does he hang?”, to which I replied: “Wherever the other horse happens to be!” That hardly placated him but, obviously, on the day he was as good as he ever has been and ran a blinder. Then again, going into last year’s Champion Hurdle, Sleepy was the highest-rated UK hurdler and his latest Cesarewitch run shows how unwise it is ever to under-estimate him.”

Top male hurdlers do not have an alternative championship race at the Cheltenham Festival, so trainers not keen to take on the now 4-7 shot Constitution Hill in the Champion, must either grin and bear it or wait for the 2m5f Aintree Hurdle. The mares have a couple of options at Cheltenham, and it would not be a shock if Epatante looked elsewhere after this summary lesson from her younger colleague.

What intrigues me more is the Honeysuckle situation that confronts Henry De Bromhead. His mare is on 16 wins unbeaten with two Champion Hurdles on the board. Does she carry on regardless and try for the hat-trick in the knowledge that her toughest challenge and most talented rival awaits? Or does she slip into a mares’ race to extend the unbeaten record?

You might almost wish her to have a hiccup in one of her prep races on the way. Such as being carried out at the start or first hurdle – don’t suggest Not So Sleepy! - so that it wouldn’t be numerically quite so vital. Then again there would be no shame or stud career implications in 16 and a couple more unbeaten and a second to Constitution Hill. If she did beat him – partisan Irish delirium and equine fame for as long as horses race over jumps awaits her. I hope they will meet next March for the Big Showdown on Prestbury Hill.

It's the big races that inevitably attract the most attention and are vital for the major stables that they collect their share of them. Over the past few years, the Dan Skelton stable has made a conscious decision to reduce its summer activity for a corresponding increase in concentration on the top end.

As the horses came to the closing stages of the Coral Gold Cup at Newbury on Saturday, Harry Skelton on his brother’s Le Milos was being vigorously pursued by two David Pipe-trained horses, Remastered and Gericault Rogue. Going to the last Gericault Rogue was seen to be tiring just as Remastered came on, seemingly about to atone for last season’s unlucky fall four from home when going like the probable winner.

Yet, hard as he strived, Le Milos found that little bit more to deny him. The £142,000 the horse brought his owners, the Jolly Good Partnership, tipped Skelton over the £1 million mark for the season, for the eighth time in succession. He has 54 wins to his credit.

That makes him the nearest to former boss Paul Nicholls, who had three victories over the Newbury weekend taking his tally to 70 and earnings of £1,161K. Most wins have been collected by Fergal O’Brien, nearer the old Skelton model with summer activity, but that alone cannot explain away 90 wins. It’s almost a rewind to the old Martin Pipe days.

Martin’s son has been doing extremely well this season already and despite missing the big one on Saturday, he’s now on a faster-than-recently 50 for the season. Had the Skelton horse departed at the last fence – not that anyone could have wished such an eventuality – Pipe would have been pushing £800k rather than £634k!

Nicky’s 35 wins so far have brought him neatly onto a shade over half a million and with the massive expectations of Constitution Hill, Luccia and novice chase prospect Jonbon, all set to clean up in their various categories barring mishap, he’ll be making up the ground rapidly from now on.

Henderson agreed that the Christmas Hurdle at Kempton would be the obvious step for Constitution Hill, and that was the next step for his 2008 winner of the Fighting Fifth, which was run at Wetherby as Newcastle was off games.

At that time Ian Turner, now racing manager for the McNeill family, was the man behind a sponsorship offering a £1 million bonus for a horse that won all three races culminating in the Champion Hurdle.

Punjabi won that Wetherby leg and by coincidence Turner was at the Yorkshire track last week to see his boss’s hurdles debutant Spartan Army (£170k, ex-Joseph O’Brien) win impressively for Alan King. He looks a natural for the Triumph Hurdle although Gary Moore’s Leicester winner, Perseus Way, looks smart too.

As to the £1 million, Punjabi fell at Kempton before winning the Champion Hurdle. That cost owner Ray Tooth, his trainer and the stable staff a chunk of money! Were they bothered? Not once Punjabi and Barry Geraghty claimed the Festival showpiece at 33/1 they weren’t!

Finally, while we’re talking in terms of millions, congratulations to Ryan Moore who early yesterday morning won his second Japan Cup at Tokyo racecourse. Riding 7-2 third favourite, Vela Azul, a five-year-old stallion, he won the £2,593,463.46 to the winner race for trainer Kunihiko Watanabe and owners Carrot Farm Co Ltd in daring fashion. After his wonderful Breeders’ Cup meeting earlier in the month, this makes 2022 a year to treasure for the former champion.

- TS

Monday Musings: Reflecting from the Sofa

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Two years ago I happily trudged through four days of Cheltenham, impervious to the threat of Covid-19 which had yet fully to take a grip on this country, writes Tony Stafford. Allowing the meeting to go ahead was one of the biggest sticks the authorities had to deal with at that time as, by the weekend, lockdown was announced.

Last year’s eerie atmosphere when only the most closely connected – and the best of the well-tried chancers – were admitted went on without me and again last week I watched, by choice this time, the events unwinding from the sofa.

With an otherwise empty house it was no surprise that Champion Hurdle Day 2022 quickly morphed in my mind to 13 years earlier when Punjabi’s 33-1 win in the race was accomplished with barely a cheer from the chair:  just a smile of satisfaction.

When Honeysuckle made it two out of two in the race, and 15 out of 15 in all, the smile was just as wide and, like everyone else, my mind was scanning forward to next year as we’d already savoured the extraordinary performance of Nicky Henderson’s Constitution Hill in the Supreme.

Over the years Henderson’s best animals have all enjoyed better ground and the first day after a dry spell provided a surface that enabled a spectacular course record in that Festival opener. Not only that, Constitution Hill was much faster than Honeysuckle’s Champion Hurdle – a race where we hadn’t believed the gallop to have been in any way pedestrian.

Second home behind Honeysuckle and Dame Rachael Blackmore – if you could have Sir Terry Wogan, then why not? – was Henderson’s 2020 winner, Epatante. Afterwards, Nicky ceded greatness to the winner and great merit to his mare. It’s possibly easy to be charitable after witnessing a performance from one of your own horses that promises to keep you near the top for another few seasons, but it was nice anyway.

Coming to race seven on the opening day, the score was UK four, Ireland two and W P Mullins zero. And at that stage there were only 22 races still to be contested. Willie and son Patrick supplied a fuss-free winner of the astonishingly denuded six-horse field for the National Hunt Chase, but who could have thought he would win ten of those remaining races?

There is no question that he is the greatest trainer of jumping horses since his late compatriot Vincent O’Brien. The first master of Ballydoyle used to win Gold Cups, Champion Hurdles and Grand Nationals in the early post-War years in much the way Gary Moore knocks off little races around Plumpton and Fontwell.

The first inkling of what was to come was in the opener on Wednesday when Sir Gerhard strolled home in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle. Last year’s Festival Bumper hero carried what was to be the first of three Cheveley Park Stud victories during the week and he was possibly the least spectacular of the trio.

Energumene was the next major Mullins winner, but sadly the anticipated re-match with Shishkin failed to materialise, Henderson’s hitherto unbeatable young chaser never going a yard and pulling up.

As I hinted earlier, the Seven Barrows maestro’s horses are usually better on faster ground – not that Constitution Hill minds mud, he was just as impressive up Sandown’s hill in desperate going on his previous Grade 1 start; but I can imagine the trainer’s thoughts on that evening when the new clerk of the course John Pullin decided to water, even though rain was expected in many forecasts.

It was almost as though Willie Mullins had sent the boys round to demand a level playing-field. UK four, Ireland three. That’s unfair!

“I didn’t think we would be getting the rain we did,” paraphrases the beleaguered new boy’s response to turning the previously pristine acres to a midwinter Thurles peat bog. The die was cast and the tide turned irrevocably.

The nice runs continued, especially for Venetia Williams whose strength every season comes in muddy midwinter. Even if it may more usually be in January at Hereford or Haydock, the hurricanes can happen at Cheltenham too as L’Homme Presse showed with a fine performance in the three-mile Brown Advisory – the Sun Alliance for old-timers like me.

The next day Venetia sent out two long-priced handicappers in the Kim Muir. This race, happily restored as an amateur riders’ event post Covid, went to her Chambard, a 40-1 shot. She also supplied the 66/1 third, the 3,000-1 plus forecast only denied by joint-favourite Mister Coffey, yet another Henderson horse to impress.

The Irish did not exactly replicate their total monopoly of the handicaps as had been the case in 2021 but the old chestnut of allowing the always questionable form in France for qualification in handicaps reared its ugly head once more.

I mentioned last week that contrary to an alleged inside source, I doubted Colonel Mustard would be running against Sir Gerhard again, trainer Lorna Fowler being much too shrewd to waste her breath tilting at that particular windmill.

The County Hurdle had to be the answer. By the morning of the race Colonel Mustard was down to second favouritism, but the snag was that Mullins had State Man, a horse with only three runs on his card in the field.

A win in France as long ago as May 2020; a fall switched to Ireland when 8-13 for a maiden on Leopardstown’s St Stephen’s Day card and then a facile maiden romp at Limerick brought a 141 initial mark. Incidentally that put him 1lb higher than the well-tested and openly raced Colonel Mustard.

Lorna’s horse actually hit the front between the last two flights but you could see State Man galloping all over the field. While at the line it was less than a two-length margin over First Street, another fine run by a Henderson horse, with Colonel Mustard (in the conservatory with the lead pipe), battling on for third.

Mullins had already come out on top in the opening Triumph Hurdle. His Vauban always had the edge over the Gordon Elliott pair Fil Dor and Pied Piper with the rest, and therefore the home team, nowhere. It seems even before Vauban carried the resurgent and always on the box Mrs Ricci colours, the Melbourne Cup was being mooted. You wouldn’t put that past him either.

Five wins on the final day for Mullins did not prevent the 2021 star turn Henry de Bromhead striking back in the most emphatic way. Last year in the Gold Cup Minella Indo gained a big enough advantage over stablemate A Plus Tard to hold off Rachael Blackmore’s mount up the final hill.

This time, as the Betfair Chase at Haydock virtuoso performance prepared us for, it was Pas Trop Loin rather than later that French-mangling turfistes might have greeted the Cheveley Park-owned chaser.

Richard Thompson, once a prodigal son who was perceived as having wasted some of the family fortune as briefly chairman of Queen’s Park Rangers but now restored in the bosom of the Cheveley Park management, was centre stage all week. But on Friday mum Patricia was on hand for the starring role.

She is the nearest to my mind in non-Regal terms to the Queen Mother in her status in horse racing. This has been achieved, not only through these great horses – to which we can add Ryanair winner Allaho – but also the wonderful flat-race breeding and racing operation in Newmarket. Lest we forget, she owned Party Politics when he won the 1992 Grand National.

Now, by winning a Gold Cup and a Grand National, she emulates L’Escargot’s owner, Raymond Guest. He did win a Derby, too, with Sir Ivor. I think Messrs Haggas, Stoute and the rest better line up one for that classic before too long.

- TS