Tag Archive for: Hong Kong Vase

Monday Musings: Sleepy’s Fighting Fourth

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It’s only about ten weeks ago that I went through the lengthy career of Not So Sleepy, writes Tony Stafford. Of course, any time in competition for a racehorse that began with a win as a juvenile nine years before is unusual. Even more remarkable was Saturday’s romp to victory in the Grade 1 Betfair Fighting Fifth Hurdle, a race switched from Newcastle the previous weekend to Sandown.

This was Not So Sleepy’s fourth run in the race and his second triumph although he had to share the previous one in 2021 with Epatante, the pair impossible to separate in a dead-heat.

The previous year, Sleepy messed about at the start and unseated his rider soon after, prompting winner Epatante’s trainer Nicky Henderson to become paranoid about what the veteran Hughie Morrison gelding might get up to at the start in subsequent meetings.

He needn’t have worried. Last year when Constitution Hill came into the picture for his first Fighting Fifth on the way to that explosive Cheltenham Champion Hurdle success, Not So Sleepy was no problem.

I spoke to Hughie on Saturday morning, and it was he that alerted me to Henderson’s withdrawal soon after 8 a.m. of Constitution Hill. Also, it stopped the hastily changed plan for Shishkin, denied a run in the Rehearsal Chase that day at Newcastle, a week on from his standing stock still at the start at Ascot.

Hughie said, “Can you believe he’s the outsider of the four that are left? When I looked at the prices, he wasn’t just the outsider, but a double-figure price.”

The opposition included two mares. One, Love Envoi, is rated higher than the Morrison horse and, like the other, You Wear It Well, a Cheltenham Festival winner and fit from a recent winning comeback, they received 7lb from their two male rivals. They took the bulk of the market.

Then there was Goshen, back on his favoured right-handed way of going but hardly the most reliable. The ground was heavy, and as Hughie said, “That will be no problem for us!” And how.

Goshen had a 1lb higher rating over jumps than Not So Sleepy, but they met as recently as October in the Cesarewitch when the Morrison horse, trying in the race for the fourth time, finished seventh, 30 lengths ahead of the tailed-off Goshen. His flat-race mark of 101 exceeds Goshen’s by 15 lb, and how far did they finish apart at level weights on Saturday? -  just about 15 lengths.

https://youtu.be/CmZfLDs_FYo?si=FAYdUn4tMCcf8YMU

In 66 races since 2014, Not So Sleepy has raced six times on official heavy ground. In his three-year-old season he was third in a Group 3 race in France on such going, and next time, four years on, was second in a Nottingham handicap.

Further investigation, though, should have alerted me to what must have been one of the bets of the year [they often are with hindsight – Ed.] without the Henderson horses to complicate matters.

These are the results, the last four times he has encountered a heavy surface: December 21, 2019, Ascot Grade 3 Handicap Hurdle 85k 1st of 13, by nine lengths, 9/2 JF; December 19, 2020, Ascot Grade 3 Handicap Hurdle 57k 1st of 17 from Buzz, 20/1; September 23, 2023, Newbury 1m5f handicap off 98, 36k, made all 15/2. Then on Saturday where he bolted up by eight lengths from Love Envoi with the other pair battling for third a similar distance back, he earned owner-breeders Lord and Lady Blyth another 45 grand!

In his last ten races, he has earned his owners around 170 grand and only twice in that spell has he started at shorter than 10/1, including Saturday. His average SP in those races has been 42/1!

As I say, the bet of the year! Hope Hughie had a bit on!

What is remarkable is the way this unique horse has been able to cope with such a long time on the track; and his only breaks have been early on in his career from one turf flat season to the next and since then planned absences, but never more than seven months at most.  Despite two long barren spells as far as wins went, he never slipped below a mark of 92 having won Chester’s Dee Stakes on his third time ever on the track. Derby winners Oath and Kris Kin had that race as their prep for the Classic in 1999 and 2003 respectively.

He started hurdling late, aged seven, and while he stays every yard of the 2m2f of the Cesarewitch in which he has been in the first four three times, he is quicker than most hurdlers over two miles as the trio ranged against him on Saturday found to their cost.

Expect Hughie to keep him going as a 12-year-old and already he has survived in his career longer than Alcazar, Morrison’s winner of the Group 1 Prix Royal Oak in France wen aged ten. He had a couple of runs the following season without success, racing in all 31 times.

Originally with John Dunlop, with whom he won three times, Alcazar then had two very long absences, broken only by a first-time win for Hughie at Nottingham before resuming four years and four months after his last run for Dunlop.

In effect then, his active career could be regarded as six seasons. Not So Sleepy will be embarking on his 11th if he remains in training.

It was great that Betfair found room on the Sandown card to switch the race on a day when of the 41 races on offer around the country – Wetherby was abandoned – one was sponsored by the Pertemps Group, a qualifier for its long-standing Final at Cheltenham in March and one a Rachael Blackmore charity vehicle. The other 39 were all bookie-backed.

It was very nice money at both Aintree, where Boylesports underwrote the entire card of eight races including the Becher Chase, while Betfair was the benefactor of the Sandown card in its entirety. Coral got a nice Black Friday deal for the rather bargain basement (in comparison) card at Chepstow, which featured the Trial for their forthcoming Coral Grand National on the course just after Christmas: Gary Moore won that and a couple of nice pots at Sandown, too.

The two all-weather cards at Newcastle and Wolverhampton were shared between Bet UK and Bet MGM – reckon there might be some connection there! I mean that in the nicest possible way, of course.

There was big money on offer for the Grade 1 races at Sandown and the top prizes at Aintree, but it does pose the question, what would happen if the big bookmakers decided to take a unified stand and withdraw their support with little warning or as their deals expired?

In Ireland, there was a decent card at Navan, featuring a Listed handicap hurdle, a Grade 3 steeplechase, and the Foxrock Cup, but nothing like what will be on offer over there for the days immediately after Christmas. Still there was €130k to be sliced up.

I do like the feel of the variety of race sponsors, emphasising the homely feel to Irish jump racing. It started off with Mervyn Gray Construction; then the Headfort Arms Hotel, the Tote (what happened to them and race sponsorship over here?); Bective Stud, Tea Rooms and Apartments (love to stay there!), Durnin Workshop and Timeless Sash Windows. Oh for 1990!

As well as their three winners and a third, which pushed stable earnings beyond £100,000 on Saturday, Gary and Jayne Moore must have been still brimming with pride on the news that eldest son Ryan, unbelievably now a 40-year-old, was awarded the World’s Best Jockey accolade in Hong Kong on Friday evening.

He was there to ride four Aidan O’Brien horses in the handsomely-endowed International turf races at Sha Tin yesterday. In the first of them, the twelve-furlong Vase, Warm Heart ran another good race in defeat where, as when caught late by Inspiral at the Breeders’ Cup, she led into the last furlong but ultimately finished third to the Andre Fabre-trained Junko.

Two disappointments followed, but in the Cup, although not winning, anyone watching his ride on Luxembourg, finishing a short head second to the favourite Romantic Warrior in that mile and a quarter showpiece, would not question Moore’s best in the world status.

Always a couple of lengths behind the favourite on the way round, Luxembourg looked likely to be swallowed up as the challengers queued up entering the final furlong. With the favourite running on doggedly, another disappointment loomed, but Ryan conjured a final flourish, narrowly fending off his two nearest rivals and getting within an agonising short head of the fully extended winner.

In just missing the £2.1 million first prize, the Aidan O’Brien/Coolmore/Westerberg team still picked up £805,000 for second place, only £80k less than Auguste Rodin collected in the Derby. Also, it was considerably more than the £712k Auguste Rodin garnered when holding off Luxembourg in the Irish Champion Stakes on yesterday’s runner-up’s latest appearance.

The winner, a son of Acclamation, has earned more than £12 million in claiming 12 of 17 races since being bought by the Hong Kong Jockey Club for 300k at the 2019 Tattersalls Book 2 yearling auction. I will be writing next week about the various excitements in the same ring last week when one mare fetched 4.5 million guineas.

The other star yesterday was Golden Sixty, in the Mile. Like Romantic Warrior a 27/20 chance on the day, he made the local punters very happy, making short work of his field, bringing his career stats to 26 wins in 30 career starts, and pushing his earnings beyond £16 million.

- TS

Monday Musings: Overseas Despatches

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Time was when a post-season challenge for the international races at Sha Tin racecourse was a fairly commonplace objective for high-class horses still in good heart, writes Tony Stafford. Four contests, each worth in excess of £1 million to the winner, were attraction enough. In the world of post- and apparently still-present Covid, things have changed.

Seven European-trained horses set off for Hong Kong at the end of their European seasons. None of the one French, two British and four Irish took back a victory from yesterday’s challenges, but such is the generosity of the prize pool, four will return with six-figure hauls.

Transportation difficulties have been a major adjunct to Covid times in all spheres with regulations for horse travel being especially onerous. That Willie Muir and joint-trainer Chris Grassick would have the foresight to send the partnership-owned Pyledriver for the Hong Kong Vase took courage and determination to see the project through.

Pyledriver didn’t manage to win, but in finishing a length second under Muir’s son-in-law Martin Dwyer to odds-on Japanese-trained favourite Glory Vase – it truly was a glory Vase for the winner! -  the Lambourn-trained runner matched anything he had ever previously achieved.

The second-favourite at 7-2, he lived up to that status, seeing off French-trained Ebaiyra to the tune of two-and-a-half lengths with Aidan O’Brien’s Mogul only sixth. In collecting £415,486 he easily eclipsed all the prizes he’d earned in his twelve previous starts, with five wins from his three seasons’ racing.

The equal youngest, at age four, with the other two Europeans, Pyledriver, who is still a colt – the winner is also an entire – must have more big pay-days ahead of him. Many plaudits, as well as Hong Kong dollars and other international currencies, can come the way of his entrepreneurial connections.

Only Mother Earth ran for European teams in the Mile and the hard-working 1000 Guineas heroine, coming on after Del Mar and the Breeders’ Cup, picked up fourth. That was worth £139k, supplementing Mogul's £37k for sixth in Pyledriver’s race. Ebaiyra picked up £188k for third there.

The Irish duo in the Hong Kong Cup, over 10 furlongs and the most valuable of the four races at £1.6 million to the winner, were unplaced, Bolshoi Ballet only ninth for O’Brien and Jim Bolger’s Irish 2000 Guineas winner Mac Swiney last of 12.

William Haggas, the only other UK trainer represented, did better, his Dubai Honour picking up £161k for his close fourth behind Japanese mare Loves Only You who was adding to her Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Turf win last month at Del Mar. Dubai Honour, under Tom Marquand, was running at least on a par to his second behind Sealiway in the Champion Stakes at Ascot last month.

I would imagine that Haggas and his horse’ s owner Mohamed Obaida will have pricked up their ears that Sealiway’s trainer Cedric Rossi, as well as Cedric’s father Charlie, who was Sealiway’s previous handler, and other members of the family have been arrested in Marseille in relation to enquiries into allegations of doping. Who knows, there could be some ramifications to come and maybe even a Group 1 disqualification in favour of Dubai Honour.

Back home in the UK, jumping continues apace but this past weekend must be possibly one of the least informative in relation to the Holy Grail of unearthing Cheltenham Festival winners. Indeed the two days of Cheltenham’s December fixture were more notable first for the astonishing level of demand for National Hunt stock at the Friday night sale at the track, and then for Bryony Frost’s absence from the meeting, than anything happening on the course itself.

True, My Drogo restored what in reality had been only a minor blemish on his record when smoothly erasing the memory of his earlier course fall to re-emphasise his candidature for the Festival, much to the relief of the Skeltons. Otherwise it was ordinary enough.

Bryony, cheered by the crowd at Warwick on Thursday upon the news of Robbie Dunne’s 18-month suspension with all four charges of bullying proven, was despatched by boss Paul Nicholls to Doncaster over the weekend where she had an anti-climactic two winner-free days.

I have been canvassing some trainer friends around the country and they have all noticed over the years instances of inappropriate behaviour by jockeys to female riders at different times. It may have been thought acceptable in the days when girls were far less commonplace in stable yards and on racecourses, but those days are long gone.

Now they are ever more prominent and respected thanks to the exploits of Hayley Turner, Josephine Gordon, Hollie Doyle and Nicola Currie on the Flat and in the UK Bryony and the Andrews sisters, Gina and Bridget, over jumps. In Ireland, Rachael Blackmore has picked up the baton relinquished by Nina Carberry and Katie Walsh and carried their achievements to unprecedented and unimagined heights.

In these days of improved nutrition and the resultant increasing in the size of successive generations more women, with their natural lighter weights have been needed to offset the scarcity of smaller male riders, especially for Flat racing. Some yards like Sir Mark Prescott’s would have to pack up – although his stable is a case of choice rather than necessity.

In those far-off days of Sir Gordon Richards and his generation, girl riders never got a look in and nor were they to be found too often in stables, despite their success at the top level in show jumping and eventing. Historic examples abound like Charlie Gordon-Watson’s sister, Mary, and Marion Mould, not to mention Princess Anne and daughter Zara Tindall.

In many other sporting spheres – football, cricket and rugby in the UK are the most obvious in terms of professionalism –women have become much more prominent and women’s golf has long been at the forefront of international sport at the highest level. Nowadays racing could not survive without its female participants.

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Yesterday when I heard the words “Tornado” and “Kentucky” in the same breath I confess I was instantly confronted by an image of flattened barns, devastated meadows - possibly already under snow as is often the case in much of Kentucky through the heart of winter - with animals helplessly strewn far and wide.

Kentucky to me is first Lexington and its stud farms - an area I’d visited so many times between the early 1980’s and 15 years ago. Second is Louisville, birthplace of Mohammed Ali and home of the Kentucky Derby. I’ve been there a few times, too.

The tornado which on Saturday came in at 220 m.p.h. and flattened a candle factory in Mayfield, trapping it was thought more than 100 workers – 40 apparently managed to get out – was centred near the western border of the south-eastern state. Lexington is way across to the east and 75 miles due south of Cincinnati on the borders of Ohio.

That south-western part of Kentucky is apparently tornado country, a manifestation that occurs when cold dry air meets warm moist air. The cold air is denser so it settles on top of the warm air and forces it to the ground where the tornado is formed.

While the terrible loss of life and devastation to people and their property is tragic in the extreme my initial dread I confess did concern the horses. I feared the tornado could have reached considerably further east – Mayfield is 265 miles south-west of Lexington – but that it seems was unfounded. These occur regularly in the region near Mayfield, though never previously with this intensity or effect.

Declared the biggest tragedy in the history of Kentucky by Democrat Governor Andy Beshear, a 44- year-old lawyer who won the state’s top job by 0.2%, you could imagine the initial worries in the stud farms of the region as the mares prepare to foal down their valuable produce in the New Year.

Sales prices have been booming. We have been here before when studs have been enjoying good times only for the hammer blow to fall. It only takes a little adjustment to make things less rosy. Like a misplaced tornado for example!

Monday Musings: The Mogul Blueprint

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Getting up early is more of a bind in these dark winter mornings but there was a point to it yesterday with the multi-million-pound offerings on Hong Kong’s day of the year, writes Tony Stafford. The Vase (mile and a half) and the Cup (ten furlongs) were, as usual, the highlights and, while Magical couldn’t quite get there in the Cup – instead finishing a close and as ever valiant – third, Ryan Moore and Mogul did the business for Aidan O’Brien and Coolmore when turning the Vase into a rout.

The son of Galileo (who else) and the equally-sought-after broodmare Shastaye had three lengths to spare over smart local and odds-on shot, Exultant, a 13-time winner, 11 since leaving Ireland’s shores as a Mick Halford-trained three-year-old.

It is almost uncanny how much Mogul’s career is echoing that of his stable predecessor Highland Reel and there can be little doubt that health and fitness permitting, the former will be the most obvious successor to the latter’s role as a world-wide Group 1-collecting money-machine.

Highland Reel stayed in training for four seasons, winning twice at two and three times at three, culminating in, guess what, a nice win from the previous year’s Andre Fabre-trained winner Flintshire in the 2015 Hong Kong Vase. Two years later he won it again, with a close second in the intervening season. Four campaigns brought him seven wins and easily the highest-ever earnings for a son of Galileo, more than £7.5 million.

Mogul, like Highland Reel, won twice at two, but whereas Highland Reel had already tucked away his three runs – a second and two wins: a maiden and then the Group 2 Vintage Stakes at Glorious Goodwood by the end of July – Mogul didn’t start his career until mid-August; but the pattern was similar. He was second on debut, won a maiden, and then third time out was odds-on and a fluent winner of a Group 2 on the Irish Champion Stakes undercard.

The one divergence from the matching juvenile programmes was that Mogul was lined up for one extra race, the Group 1 Vertem Futurity at Doncaster. In all likelihood that race’s postponement for almost a week because Doncaster had become waterlogged was not in Mogul’s favour. It was switched to the all-weather Tapeta track at Newcastle and Mogul, ridden by Donnacha O’Brien with Moore engaged at the Breeders’ Cup, finished fourth to Kameko. He had been as close as disputing second coming home but got the worst of a three-horse Coolmore photo for that place, behind Innisfree and Year Of The Tiger, two clearly inferior animals.

Neither horse managed to win a Classic. Highland Reel had three goes - a close sixth in the French 2,000 Guineas, second to New Bay in the Prix Du Jockey Club, and fifth to Jack Hobbs in the Irish Derby. So it was a full year without a win when he made his second trip to Glorious Goodwood and collected the Gordon Stakes, another Group 2 en route to a more exhausting test of his temperament for long-haul travelling when landing the Grade 1 Secretariat Stakes on the turf at Arlington Park, Chicago. Two more non-wins followed before that first Hong Kong Vase at the end of the year.

Mogul’s Classic aspirations were also just as frustrating. O’Brien admitted not having him anywhere near ready after an early training setback and amidst all the Covid-19 upheavals, when he turned up at Royal Ascot for the King Edward VII Stakes which preceded the delayed-until-July Derby rather than the usual way around. He still seemed a little under-cooked when, as Ryan Moore’s ride at Epsom, he was one of the fast finishers that failed to get anywhere near stablemate Serpentine and the other always-prominent outsiders in that mystifying Classic. After that, in precisely the same way as Highland Reel, much better was to follow.

Mogul, too, went to Goodwood and won a very strong Gordon Stakes and then, after finishing third in the Great Voltigeur at York, as at Ascot behind Pyledriver, he also went overseas (but not as far as Highland Reel) to pick up his first Group 1 in the Grand Prix de Paris. That day he impressively overturned Derby form with Serpentine.

Then followed a modest fifth, three places and two lengths behind Magical when very fast ground and the tight Keeneland track were not ideal, especially after a slow start, in the Breeders’ Cup Turf. Yesterday’s exhilarating performance though means he’s probably a few pounds higher in class terms than Highland Reel was at the same stage.

As a full-brother to Japan it was never a shock that Mogul should cost a fortune as a yearling, although 3.4million guineas might have been rather more than the boys expected to pay. When the pair’s full-sister showed up at this year’s Tattersall’s October Book 1 sale, again there would be few possible buyers. Once again M V Magnier put in the closing bid for Coolmore and amazingly for a filly, it matched the price of her illustrious older brother.

As I said at the top, Mogul, with five wins, is a good way along the road to becoming a latter-day clone of Highland Reel, but probably with pretensions to being higher-class. That said, Highland Reel won a Coronation Cup, a King George and a Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, three races of the highest international prestige, along with those overseas victories, so he won’t be easily out-performed. I get the feeling, though, that Mogul is that little bit classier and possibly a more obvious higher-end stallion prospect for the future, so whether he’ll be allowed to go on racing for quite as long might be another question.

It was interesting to hear that Aidan O’Brien would be delighted if the amazing Magical was to be kept in training for yet another year in 2021. She may never have beaten Enable in their multiple tilts on the track over the past three years but she did get a verdict over the 2020 Horse of the Year Ghaiyyath in the Irish Champion Stakes back in September, the only horse to beat the Charlie Appleby star in the calendar year. She is still poised close to £5m in earnings, needing another £125,000 to reach that mark after 12 wins (six at Group 1) and ten second or third places in a 28-race career.

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There was some high-grade jumping at Cheltenham over the two previous days but it was a source of great irritation that Saturday’s big race, the Unibet International Hurdle, was reduced by three hurdles to only five. This Grade 2 event was widely seen as the first real test of Goshen’s chance of wresting the Champion Hurdle from the mare Epatante since his unfortunate last-flight fall with the Triumph Hurdle at his mercy back in March.

It’s not a secret that in mid-December as if by a fluke the sun happens to make an appearance, that it will be low in the sky by 3 p.m., the time of this race. Bizarrely, there was one more hurdle race run after the Unibet and with the sun by now setting, this had a full complement of hurdles.

In the big race though they had to plot a serpentine route through and between the hurdles and fences, twice down and then twice up a hill. Last time round, a group of nine without only Goshen, who was never travelling or jumping, set off with only a few lengths between them. By now Jamie Moore had already eased off Goshen allowing him to coast past the post.

The winner was yet another for Tom Symonds. The Hereford-based handler’s ex-French gelding Song For Someone maintained his progress to win for the sixth time in 12 starts, with another five placed efforts to boot. There will be worse-value 20-1 shots, his price in Champion Hurdle ante-post lists, than this Flat-bred five-year-old son of Medicean.

Symonds had gone through a lean spell after an initial bright start to his training career. He had 22 winners in the third of his ten seasons, but had got nowhere near that number in the following six campaigns, having previously been joint assistant trainer – with Ben Pauling – to Nicky Henderson.

They were in those roles at the time of the Punjabi/ Binocular rivalry within Seven Barrows: when the two lined up in the 2009 Champion, Tom was on the Punjabi side in opposition to Ben and Corky Brown, the revered head lad, both of whom favoured Binocular. Both sides were to enjoy their Champion Hurdle winner and, overall, even Punjabi’s biggest fans (like who?) will have to admit that Binocular probably shaded it. It’s great that, with 20 wins already and a renaissance since former trainer David Dennis moved across to join forces (and provide additional equine ammunition) with Tom at the start of the season, he’s definitely going places.

There was a feasible explanation after the race for Goshen’s disappointing effort as he was found to have finished with an irregular heartbeat. He won’t be the first horse – Sprinter Sacre for example – to have that medical issue to overcome. While that great chaser was to rise again pretty much back to his absolute best, Gary Moore and Goshen’s owners will always have the thought that any physical weakness in a horse is an extra worry especially with championship races in mind.

- TS