Tag Archive for: King George

Early Monday Musings: Shrinkage

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I’m quite good at guessing the time as I look out of my window early in the morning, writes Tony Stafford. Yesterday, I surmised 7.24 a.m. – yes, I allowed myself a Christmas lie-in – but it was 7.26. I’d obviously miscalculated that the days were getting longer again (hurrah). The clocks will soon be going forward, too, by which time we’ll have had Cheltenham!

Then it was starting preparation for the Boxing Day cards. Last year I was swamped with the number of calls needed to the trainers on the From The Stables and Trainers Quotes services – I think we had upwards of 80 runners on the day.

This year, having spoken to Sam Stronge, who while assisting his wife Ali in running their small stable in Berkshire, is also the new Dave Roberts, agent not to A P McCoy obviously, but the man who has picked up the slack of the master jumps agent since his retirement a year or so ago.

At last count, the engaging Sam is listed as having 28 almost exclusively jumps jockeys and conditionals in his care, notably Nico De Boinville, Harry Cobden, Charlie Deutsch and Daryl Jacob. There’s some earning potential there and as he says: “It not easy to get away to the races any more”. I know how he feels, at this time of the year what with those early starts.

He did say, on hearing my early bleat about how much work there would be in compiling my information for the members: “I think there will be small fields, so it should work out quite nicely for my boys.”

How right he was. With all the meetings lost to bad weather of one type of another, but latterly mainly through waterlogging, you’d have thought there would be plenty of trainers, and especially their owners, gagging to have a runner at one of the seven UK jumps fixtures on Boxing Day (Tuesday).

They range around the country from Wincanton in the southwest; Kempton and Fontwell in the south; Market Rasen in the east; Sedgefield and Wetherby in the north and Aintree in the northwest.

So, a better geographical split than we sometimes get – viz Friday last week when Midlands trio Wolverhampton, Southwell and Uttoxeter shared the programme with Ascot. That admittedly can be and was extenuated as the BHA is providing extra all-weather action where it can to make up for other jumps cancellations.

So, what’s my point?  I said above that you’d think jumping connections would leap at the chance of having a Christmas runner after the relative blight of cancellations. In the event, there has been an uncanny correlation, both in the average number of runners per NH meeting on the day, and likewise its diminution since 2022.

Also odd, is that after all the extra all-weather cards alluded to, the sole AW programme on Boxing Day, at Wolverhampton, has a much greater number of runners than was the case last December.

When that meeting comes along every year, I never forget how I voluntarily passed up Kempton’s King George back in 1993 to attend the first-ever UK fixture held under lights at the then still shiny and relatively new Dunstall Park track, inspired by Ron Muddle and Arena, a few hundred yards from the old turf circuit where jumping had an equal share of the fixtures with the flat.

In 1993, the weather had turned cold and there were four abandonments from the nine jumps fixtures planned, with no obvious geographical bias. Ayr, Sedgefield, Hereford and Wincanton were lost. Wincanton and Sedgefield are the only two of the four still on the roster. Kempton was joined by Huntingdon, Market Rasen, Newton Abbot and Wetherby as surviving the elements.

Newton Abbot no longer races in the winter and, until this year, Huntingdon had been a staple, but Jockey Club Racecourses have jettisoned it in favour of Aintree this year. It gave JCR the opportunity to switch Sandown’s Tolworth Hurdle from there, bolstering the overall winner’s prizemoney at Aintree by 45 grand, with the inevitable sting in the tail.

Now it’s called the William Hill Formby Novices Hurdle (formerly the Tolworth Hurdle). At least it will be run with a very nice field.

Let’s return now though to Dunstall Park and 1993 when seated at my private table in the crammed to overflowing grandstand, I had the novel pleasure of my own TV set as I ate what I remember as an excellent lunch – it’s still very nice there -  while watching Barton Bank beat Bradbury Star and The Fellow to win 45k in the King George VI Chase at Kempton.

Google tells me that the 2023 equivalent after the interim inflation is £137k, so a first prize now of £142,000, courtesy Ladbrokes this time, narrowly beats that figure. If it’s possible to do it for the big races, then why not the rest?

So numerically, none of the seven NH cards on Tuesday has more than a total of 62, that honour going to Market Rasen. Last time they had 76! The smallest is Kempton with 46 compared with 59 last time, but in mitigation there was an extra race. Six and out for the punters therefore, and time to go home for the next phase of turkey consumption.

Aintree basically has taken over from fellow JCR track Huntingdon – I’ve nice memories of Boxing Day there, too. Just 51 horses in Liverpool compares with 76 at Huntingdon last year and the pattern continues at Fontwell, 74 last year, only 51 this time around. Wetherby also has a big drop, from 85 to only 53.

The other alteration is Sedgefield coming in for Newcastle. The Co Durham circuit was certainly on when Michael Dickinson had his remarkable 12 wins on the single day around the country. I had a great HWPA lunch recently, sitting for half the time next to Chris Pimlott (half a lunch with the Editor is more than enough!), who told me the maestro had only 15 runners that December day in 1982.

Chris rode a double at Market Rasen but said he had ridden a winner on the Brod Munro-Wilson-owned Talon, a horse I bought for the late, great amateur and all-round “cad” – he wouldn’t have minded me saying that – somewhere else later on. Talon was possibly the least grand of the duodectet, but we were as thrilled with that as the first of three King George wins that year of Wayward Lad (my second favourite jumper of all time after L’Escargot).

With one extra race in 2022 that averages out to eight per race, compared with 11 last year. And that’s comparing declarations and the possibility of late withdrawals with actual runners.

Prizemoney may have jumped at Aintree, even without the addition of the “George Formby”, in relation to Huntingdon, but that is not the case elsewhere. Wetherby is holding close to last year’s total, but Fontwell is down from 42k to 32k, and Sedgefield is way down on Newcastle last year – 26 grand following 43k last time at Gosforth Park. Maybe that’s why trainers and owners aren’t as bothered to leave the Christmas home comforts?

Meanwhile over in Ireland, and while I was writing this piece, the runners for the first two days of the Christmas meetings at Leopardstown and Limerick have been published. Reserves are in place for several races, but St Stephen’s Day’s (Tuesday) final declaration reveals 115 at Leopardstown and 80 at Limerick.

For Wednesday it’s respectively 93 and 83. It might be hard to beat the big three of Mullins, Elliott and De Bromhead, but there’s still plenty of other talented trainers willing to try for the massive money on offer this week.

Finally, all that remains to say is have a great and profitable Christmas. I think Dylan Cunha’s Mart (1.50 Wolverhampton) on Boxing Day will be very hard to beat.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Diamond Studded King George in Prospect

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It looks as though we might be getting a twelve furlong Race of the Year in England just as Sandown’s Coral-Eclipse Stakes three weekends back provided a midsummer pecking order between the generations, writes Tony Stafford. Ballydoyle’s Paddington won that and now the Aidan O’Brien stable’s other 2023 Classic-winning colt is due to line up in Ascot’s King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes.

That horse is Auguste Rodin, coming on from the two Derby wins, emphatically at Epsom over King Of Steel, and a shade controversially against fellow Coolmore inmate Adelaide River in his home Derby. More than a few close observers of the Curragh race noticed a marked differential between the relative energies of Ryan Moore on the winner and Seamie Heffernan on the runner-up.

Adelaide River had been only eighth at Epsom, so as the favourite joined him on the outside at the head of affairs, a “see you later” type of accelerating flourish was on everyone’s minds, but it didn’t quite work out like that.

Then again, Adelaide River is a fair tool as he showed under Ryan in the subsequent Grand Prix de Paris on Bastille Day ten days ago. He ran a close second to the Pascal Bary-trained Kingman colt Feed The Flame, now a winner of three of his four career starts, all this year, with just the French Derby as a negative.

More easily quantified for Anglo/Irish observers was the presence in third in Paris of the Gosdens’ Oaks winner, Soul Sister, who saw off Savethelastdance at Epsom in a battle of the super fillies. Savethelastdance put her seal on the overall form picture with a Group 1 win of her own in the Juddmonte Irish Oaks on Saturday.

Lucky it wasn’t on Sunday as the two scheduled midsummer Sunday flat programmes, one each in Ireland and Redcar in the UK, were off through waterlogging as is Cartmel’s jumps card today. It was a bit wet at the golf and the cricket, too, but it was nice for the Athletics in East London.

So here we are, summer half over, the nights are starting to draw in and eight of the ten UK and Irish Classics are already done. Every year I say something similar. We’ve Ascot this week, Goodwood, York, the St Leger and not much else. And before the next month is out, trainers will be asking owners to re-invest at the upcoming yearling sales and chase all that generous BHA prizemoney.

But to return to the King George. Adelaide River and King of Steel, the two runners-up in the Epsom and Irish Derby wins of Auguste Rodin, form – along with their vanquisher – a three-horse bloc against 16 older horses at the latest entry stage. We will know after midday today how many have stayed in. The most likely port of attrition is O’Brien, who had nine still engaged up until last night. That number is sure to be trimmed by a few.

The first question of course is whether Auguste Robin will be pitted against the Roger Varian-trained Amo Racing colt, King Of Steel. Varian had been very forthright about the chance he thought the son of Wootton Bassett had on his stable debut at Epsom having been trained previously by David Loughnane.

Starting at 66/1, a furlong out he looked to have won the Derby having gone clear in the straight under new Amo jockey Kevin Stott, but Auguste Robin pulled him back late to win by half a length. It was five lengths back to the rest – hence no extra three-year-old challengers for this weekend.

While O’Brien waited for the Irish Derby, Varian went quickly to Royal Ascot and the Group 2 King Edward VII Stakes. Once called the Ascot Derby, it gave a chance for a trio of Epsom also-rans to try to depose the emerging star, but they were wiped away. It was the ease of that win that encouraged some of the Machiavellian thoughts to emerge among the racecourse crowd – if there is such a thing.

One view was, if Auguste Rodin takes on King Of Steel again and beats him once more, that’s fine. If the result gets turned around, though, the downside for Auguste would be severe. If he stays away and King of Steel wins – “We’ve already beaten him in the Derby”, they can and will say – and in that regard in the Derby hero’s absence, effectively King Of Steel would be running for him, reputation-wise.

Some of that tortured reasoning has its basis on that less emphatic than expected run on the Curragh, but whatever the rights and wrongs of that, Auguste Rodin is lining up to be the first winner of the two Derbys and then the King George since Galileo.

The Ascot race has gone to the Classic generation seven times in the 22 years since Galileo’s success. Two went to fillies, Taghrooda in 2014 and Enable three years later. Of course, Enable was destined to win the race twice more after a break as a four-year-old when she missed the entire summer.

Adayar, the Derby winner of 2019 for Charlie Appleby and Godolphin did win the King George but didn’t appear in Ireland in between. He is one of two further Derby winners still engaged, joined by Desert Crown, last year’s Epsom hero for Sir Michael Stoute, but absent for the rest of his Classic year.

Adayar did make a winning return to action this spring, but two defeats, including at long odds-on as recently as the July meeting at Newmarket, must make him a doubt on both the scores of form and the short time since that appearance.

Desert Crown’s comeback defeat, half a length behind Hukum in the Brigadier Gerard at Sandown in late May, was diminishing in form terms, but the apparent growing confidence behind the Owen Burrows six-year-old, who would enjoy a testing surface, should also throw a favourable light on last year’s Epsom victor.

Talking of 2022 winners, how about the ever-improving Pyledriver? Also a six-year-old, he ran his best race of an illustrious career when seeing off 2021 Arc winner Torquator Tasso in this race last year and returned at the Royal meeting a month ago after that near one-year gap, romping away with the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes.

He might have knocked a few of his rivals over in the closing stages there, but after his delayed return you could imagine William Muir and co-trainer Chris Grassick would have left something to work on for this weekend.

Then, for good measure, we also have the prospect of 2022 Oaks runner-up Emily Upjohn. She followed Epsom with a weak effort in Pyledriver’s King George, but has done little wrong since, winning the Filly and Mare Championship race at Ascot last October and cleaning up in the Coronation Cup a year on from what most people thought a luckless defeat in the Oaks.

Last time, she got within half a length of midsummer sensation Paddington in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown. She was down in trip, with the winner stepping up from a mile, and it’s hard to fault her, especially with the older filly having to concede that outstanding colt 7lb in the Esher showdown.

As the only female in the race, Emily Upjohn now gets 8lb over the two furlongs longer trip and if she doesn’t have a repeat of last year’s poor showing, she must be dangerous.

If either of the first two at Epsom this June should stave off all that older talent, he would be celebrated as the interim middle-distance champ, with only the Arc to dent that reputation. It will be well worth travelling a long way to see it!

- TS