Tag Archive for: King Of Steel

Monday Musings: The Rising Star of the Rising Sun

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Back in the spring, the racing world, both in Europe and the United States, was in a state of panic, writes Tony Stafford. The cause? The belief that horses raised and trained in Japan were becoming impossible to beat when they travel over to Dubai or indeed the United States for the Breeders’ Cup in the late autumn.

This fear was exemplified by the remarkable four-year-old colt Equinox, easy winner of the Dubai Sheema Classic over a mile and a half on Dubai World Cup night at Meydan last March. Soon in the lead he wasn’t remotely bothered to see off Ralph Beckett’s smart colt Westover, winner of last year’s Irish Derby and, more recently, runner-up to Ace Impact in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe three weeks ago.

Equinox was given an official rating as the world’s best racehorse after that performance. Yesterday at Tokyo racecourse, he made his record six wins and two second places in just eight runs, taking his earnings above £10 million. Then again, prizemoney over there is pretty good.

Before Dubai, Equinox’s last win had been in the Japan Cup and that remains his immediate target even though he had been eligible both for the Breeders’ Cup meeting and the Arc. In between Dubai and yesterday, he raced only once, picking up a handy £1.4 million when a narrow winner at Hanshin.

Yesterday’s prize was similarly remunerative and while he had only a narrow margin to spare back in June, there was never a doubt in regular jockey Christophe Lemaire’s mind that he wouldn’t win. He was slowly away, which needed the jockey to alter planned tactics. Coming wide, he took the lead inside the last furlong, then comfortably held off the five-year-old mare Through Seven Seas.

Lemaire has a great relationship with many leading Japanese trainers, so it was no surprise, given his status as one of the top jockeys in France, that when she was aimed at this month’s Arc, he was booked for the ride. Through Seven Seas finished fourth, three lengths behind the winner and barely a length adrift of Westover.

Although that was an excellent run, it didn’t alter the fact that no Japanese-trained horse has ever won Europe’s autumn all-aged middle-distance championship.

The form lines suggest Equinox probably would have broken the duck for Japan had he not been reserved to clean up millions of Yen at home. The Japan Cup is expected to be at his mercy once more in a month’s time.

Equinox’s name on yesterday’s results jolted me into having a look at the Japanese representation in this week’s Breeders’ Cup races at Santa Anita and the Melbourne Cup at Flemington on Saturday week. That left me with the strong conclusion that a fair degree of consultation goes on behind the scenes before overseas plans are confirmed, or should I say permitted?.

I made it that there are nine Japanese horses entered at this stage on Saturday’s card with only one on Friday. There is never more than two in one race. In the Melbourne Cup tomorrow week, there’s just a single Japanese entry,

I’ve noticed several mares are scheduled to take part while all the male horses are entires, with six-year-old Ushba Tesoro a prime contender for Saturday’s Breeders’ Cup Classic. Winner of his last five, that includes a comfortable success, coming from far back, over the Crisfords’ fellow six-year-old Algiers last March in the Dubai World Cup, a race normally a cinch for the American raiders.

He had a soft warm-up, collecting a puny 250 grand for a little exercising of his ageing limbs in a race in the summer, his one run since Dubai. With £7 million already in the bank, another £2.6 million wouldn’t come amiss before he goes off to stud. He’s Japanese-bred on both sides of his pedigree and as such will be in big demand when he does retire.

Last year’s Breeders’ Cup meeting in Keeneland didn’t seem to interest Japanese stables, with just one token unplaced runner on the entire two days of action. The previous year in Del Mar, though, two females were successful, Loves Only You in the Filly and Mare Turf and Marche Lorraine in the Distaff on dirt.

Both were five-year-olds and, interestingly, 50/1 shot Marche Lorraine was ridden by Oisin Murphy, who might not have had such a long-term association with Japan as Lemaire, but he has spent plenty of time there in recent years. Marche Lorraine, incidentally, is by Ushba Tesoro’s sire, Orfevre.

The Japanese horse whose chance I like best is Songline in the Mile on Saturday. Normally this five-year-old mare – yet another one – would be facing a formidable European contingent, but after Paddington’s defection, there’s just two Godolphin UK runners, one each from Charlie Appleby and Saeed bin Suroor, and the French filly Kelina. Clearly the Americans are reacting to the criticism of and danger of injury too on the dirt tracks that have been the foundation of the US sport for more than a century, targeting the increased number of turf opportunities.

The 2021 2000 Guineas runner-up Master Of The Seas has been in decent form this year but I have greater regard for this year’s 1000 heroine Mawj, trained by bin Suroor. She didn’t run between Newmarket in the spring and two weeks ago at Keeneland. Ridden there by Oisin, continuing the association cemented in the season’s first classic, he partnered the filly for a comfortable success in the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Cup.

Songline, though, another multi-million earner, has had an excellent season at home, winning two late spring Grade 1’s in Tokyo before returning from her break with an unlucky nose second also at Tokyo three weeks ago. This is one race where there are two Japanese entries; the other, Win Carnation, was fifth in that Tokyo race, starting 18/1 compared with Songline’s SP of even money.

Charlie Appleby does well at the Breeders’ Cup, especially with his juveniles, and he was delighted when front-running Ancient Wisdom stayed on well to win the Kameko Futurity at Doncaster on Saturday. The significance for Charlie was that it was a first Group 1 winner for the stable since May, and at least it will send him across the water with renewed optimism.

Ancient Wisdom’s previous run had resulted in a stylish, also front-running, win in a Group 3 at Newmarket on Dewhurst Stakes Day. The brave course for next spring would be to tackle City Of Troy, the unquestioned juvenile champion of 2023. As they say, someone needs to do it.

The runner-up on Saturday at Doncaster was the David Menuisier colt Devil’s Point, a wonderful result for always-enthusiastic owner Clive Washbourn. The French-born trainer could hardly have gone into the race in better form, having won two stakes races the day before at Chantilly and another double five days earlier at Saint-Cloud, including the Group 1 Criterium International with Sunday. Three of the four winners were two-year-olds.

The main Aidan O’Brien hope on the Santa Anita card has to be dual Derby winner Auguste Rodin who erased the memory of a sub-standard run at Ascot in the King George and Queen Elizabeth Stakes with a smart win in the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown. Fourth that day was King Of Steel, the Epsom runner-up who won for Frankie Dettori in the Champion Stakes at Ascot a couple of weeks ago.

Roger Varian also has the Amo Racing three-year-old entered for the Classic on dirt on Saturday, but I assume he takes on his two-time nemesis, although he did finish third when Auguste was tailed off in the King George behind Hukum. There’s a lot at stake for both these smart horses, their owners and trainers this weekend.

- TS

Monday Musings: Farewell with a flourish

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They were all at Ascot on Saturday for Frankie Day part two, 27 years after the seven out of seven, writes Tony Stafford. But in many ways his double there, including the Champion Stakes on King of Steel, was even more compelling, after his cumulative intervening effect on the sport of horse racing. It’s a business too, and these days the financial aspect has become even more crucial at all levels.

Later, in the evening, many of the highest in the land of horse racing had transferred the 30 miles east to London’s Mayfair and were in attendance as Frankie Dettori joined Ronan Keating on stage in a duet at Grosvenor House. According to one friend – my recurring ailment precluded me from either engagement – he didn’t do a bad job of it either.

https://youtu.be/caWQViU6FSs?si=r_APIh1S_t4bc2W7

Frankie certainly knows how to maximise his marketability. At £15k for a top table for ten and 10 grand for one of the remaining of 70-odd in the cheap (sic) seats, it was a high-profile and highly remunerative affair for the jockey, and the hotel; presumably also for Mr Keating and the band, and event organisers Esmond Wilson and James Wintle, son of my late, great friend Dave Wintle, who would have loved to have been there.

There were some who had questioned his idea of a lucrative “retirement” extravaganza only days after the revelation that he would be riding on through the winter in Santa Anita for Bob Baffert, but I thought that was already well documented. Apparently not, and sometimes things you had heard as early as York in August to be fact, hadn’t filtered through to the general public.

My on-the-spot informant, Shaun Ellery, had also been a close friend of Dave Wintle’s and a fair few of the older attendees on Saturday evening might well have taken the trek west to visit Shaun’s Cardiff spot, The Bank Café Bar, in the 1990’s and 2000’s.

Frankie of course is from the next generation, but he’s now in his early 50’s with no sign of slowing down in his life or of being diminished in his ability in the saddle.

If his win in the Champion Stakes, when Man Of Steel came through late to catch Via Sistina on a day when all the other races were won from the front, seemed pre-ordained, it also probably owed a little to good fortune, a recurring theme through his career.

Just as Oisin Murphy sent the comfortably-travelling Via Sistina – also coming from the rear – into the lead on the outside at the furlong pole, he dropped his whip. From there the filly seemed to be in quicksand – it was testing ground anyway – hanging right. Frankie spotted the weakness and pounced.

It made a massive difference in prestige terms to owner Kia Joorabchian of Amo Racing, and trainer Rogar Varian, as well as the jockey and stable staff. The winner’s prize of £737,000 would probably not have been too far removed from the entire amount generated by the Grosvenor House bash, one way or another.

But here comes a supreme irony. If the whip episode hadn’t happened, then the first prize rather than £279k for second, might well have gone to Mrs R G Hillen, owner of Via Sistina. Coincidentally, Mrs Becky Hillen, wife of bloodstock agent Steve Hillen, is none other than James Wintle’s sister!

The first prize would have been nice, of course, but Via Sistina, bought originally for 5,000gns at the 2019 December yearling sales by Steve Hillen, must rank as one of the bargains of the century. The 279 grand for Saturday’s supreme effort – and a magnificent training achievement for George Boughey – has taken her career earnings to £674,000 from 13 races, with five wins and as many places.

Originally with Joe Tuite, who retired from training after the filly’s initial unsuccessful run last year, she won two of seven races for him – I wonder what Joe’s thinking now? Since switching to Boughey, she has never been out of the first three, winning the Pretty Polly at Leopardstown (Group1) and two more races, at Group 2 and Group 3 respectively.

She goes to the December sales and in these days of extravagant demand for hard-running fillies and mares, another massive payday can be anticipated.

I mentioned above the financial difficulties for owners in these days of inflation, high fuel costs for horse transportation and administration fees. Even a trainer at the top like William Haggas must be aware of costs. I recall him and Richard Hannon both being concerned early this year about not having full stables.

In William’s case it was because he didn’t have enough highly-skilled staff at the time to deal with more horses than he felt was viable. Now he tells me this week that when it came to deciding whether to sell at the Horses In Training sale, he needed to be aware of the potential costs for an owner balanced by whether the horse in question was worth retaining.

He said that if he was unsure about an unraced horse winning even a small race, balanced by the amount it would cost to achieve it, he would probably recommend taking up the sale option. Fortunately, for William’s owners, there is a demand for horses from his yard, both from smaller stables in the UK and overseas buyers.

The Horses in Training sale has always been one of my favourite weeks of the season and not least because of the days when I used to loiter on the final day for the drafts of Cheveley Park Stud and the Aga Khan’s lesser individuals to go through the ring.

Sometimes, I would pick up unsold lots privately for 500 quid from Cheveley Park - rather than the stud take them home – or even for nothing in the case of the Aga Khan “boucher” (butcher) horses, as the owner described them to me. He would hardly have wanted to send them back to France to end up on a meat counter.

I recall I did have to cough up £500 for Karaylar from the Aga Khan, but he proved a great buy, unlike most of the others! He became one of David Batey’s first 25 winners, all preserved for history in a video produced for the owner. All bar the last had been sourced by me and trained by Wilf Storey.

Karaylar’s four winning siblings were all sprinters and never tried jumping. Karaylar wasn’t quick, but won twice at Sedgefield, including a John Wade sponsored selling handicap hurdle final over 2m5f and worth £7,000 to the winner, a nice pot in 1996. Wilf truly was (and still is!) a magician.

Group 1 winning trainer Dylan Cunha is hoping to achieve a similar level in the UK as at home in South Africa. When he settles down after Saturday’s dual ending of England’s hopes in two World Cups (cricket and rugby) he will continue moving his string of horses the few hundred yards down the road to his new base in William Jarvis’s yard, Phantom House’s long-time incumbent retiring at the end of the season.

In a year when Tattersalls October Yearling Book 1 sale averaged almost a quarter of a million pounds per horse, and the overall four books still averaged 100 grand despite a falloff in parts of Books 3 and 4, Cunha did some serious shopping.

“We just happened to be there when everyone seemed to have disappeared. We got a nice bunch, in terms of the individuals and the prices we paid that day. Overall, we managed to get 19 at the various sales, and I’m delighted with that.”

Here’s a trainer going places.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Smack in the Mouth

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Now I know what it feels like, writes Tony Stafford. Coming to the end of my eighth decade, I can now honestly tell you what it is to experience pain. Thinking back to my football days, a broken wrist and a regularly sprained ankle were about the size of it.

I’m sure every woman past puberty has been doubled up on a regular basis and most sportsmen – none more so than jockeys – accept it as part and parcel of their lives. Sorry Keith - and boxers!

But I’ve poodled along and, despite the odd bit of skin cancer on my face and Type 2 diabetes for the past 15 years which has realistically only involved taking the tablets (and not passing up biscuits and cakes), have had a trouble-free run. My friend George Hill, who has had his share of scary medical issues over the years, always says I’m made of tungsten. The tungsten has run out.

It started a few months ago with a twinge in the corner of the mouth, usually when eating. That developed to such an extent that I went to a dentist to see if there was a problem. Nothing on the X-ray.

The pain got worse – not permanent, just intermittent concentrated bursts for seconds or minutes, often while eating in company with friends at the races or in restaurants with my wife. How embarrassing! Ask the editor!

I finally booked an appointment with the doctor for last Thursday but went to watch Ray Tooth’s Glen Again at Sandown the previous evening. It was after his race, trying to have something in the owners’ room that the pain got unbearable.

The nice guy who monitors the room and likes Chelsea FC and Surrey CCC said: “If you need painkillers go to the First Aid room in the main stand.” I did, to be greeted with a: “Painkillers won’t make a difference. I think I know what you have.”

To my shame, I didn’t take down her name, but this highly capable woman told me that she had been originally a dental nurse and for 30 years a paramedic. She was clearly the boss, working very congenially it seemed with her two male colleagues: “It’s trigeminal neuralgia.” Relief, I know what it is. I’ll tell the doctor tomorrow.

Then I Googled it after I left her room and, for relief, read horror as I realised I will have this condition for the rest of my life.

I slunk to the surgery on Thursday, telling the GP the symptoms and it took about ten seconds for him to repeat the dreaded name. “I’m pretty sure it’s trigeminal neuralgia, but it’s not entirely certain. We’ll prescribe the usual drug for the condition. Start with one a day for a few days, then go to two.

Thursday, Friday, I had one each day. Saturday, I went to Ascot, had the good fortune to be in a box where the food was laid out in glorious, nay luxurious profusion. To that point, all I’d managed to get down me from Wednesday had been a couple of coffees and a diet coke, but anything that involved access to the right-hand side of my mouth was the inevitable trigger for another shooting pain.

On Wednesday evening, post paramedic, I was trying to put away a little soft dessert, to no avail, and recently retired trainer Harry Dunlop hove into view. I was keen to ask him what he was doing now and just as I began, the pain came at maximum force. All I could do was stand there like a moron; mouth open trying to stave off the agony. Kindly, with an apologetic smile, he moved away.

So what is trigeminal neuralgia? It stems from the trigeminal nerve, the biggest nerve in the brain. That sends signals of pain to the face, ear, upper and lower jaw and teeth. When it gets damaged for whatever reason, the neuralgia follows.

The literature says that the sharp pain, like an electric shock, can be induced by talking, smiling, chewing, brushing your teeth, washing your face, a light touch, shaving (or putting on make-up – pass), swallowing, kissing, a cool breeze or air conditioning, head movements, vibrations, such as walking or travelling in a car. If that catalogue wasn’t comprehensive enough, it can happen spontaneously with no trigger at all.

Looks like I’ll have to change many of the things I thought I could do!

The literature suggests it can never be cured, the medication – a smaller dose, but the same that is given to epilepsy patients, great news eh -  can help ease or even stave it off for periods, but it’s always lurking in the background. A bit like the tablets I must take for the diabetes.

If you’d have asked me yesterday morning how I felt, it was still at stage one. I was beginning to see why patients with this condition can go into depression or even worse. I won’t. At Ascot, I drank a coffee without incident, but thinking soup would be the only sensible option, I asked if they had any and a nice bowl of tomato was put in front of me.

I needed two goes. The first when I managed three spoonfuls; the second, a third of a bowl, before the wave of pain sailed in. That was game, set and match and after the King George I went straight home.

Yesterday, though, the fourth day of medication and the second with the full daily dose of two tablets, I thought I would try to drink my soup rather than eat in the conventional way, for lunch. That worked. For dinner, a Tesco Fish Pie, spooned minutely so that it took 25 minutes to consume, also went without a problem, although two or three times, the hint was there. So, you pause, take even more care for the positioning of the next morsel. For now, I’m still clear.

The menu is to go back for a blood test tomorrow (Tuesday) and see the doctor again on Thursday week. As I write this, for the first time in weeks I’m feeling optimistic. Maybe the tungsten is still in there somewhere, but boy does it hurt when that shockwave of pain comes!

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Two years ago, I sat down – eating again, in the days when I could – having a bite before racing at Brighton racecourse and for the first time, met and had a chat with Owen Burrows. He was clearly anxious about his future as Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum had recently died and the entire Shadwell Estate Company organisation was very much up in the air.

He told me: “There’s a big meeting in Dubai next week and all the trainers are worried that the Sheikh’s daughter Sheikha Hissa and the rest of the family won’t be inclined or even able to keep it going.”

At that time most of Owen’s horses ran in the blue and white Hamdan livery and with the prospect of massive numbers of mares, horses in training and young stock on their way to market, it was understandable the uncertainty, indeed trepidation, that all the Shadwell trainers were feeling.

Project forward two years to Saturday July 29th 2023 and within 25 minutes, Owen’s older generation horses in the Shadwell ownership collected two big prizes. The four-year-old Alflaila, in his first run since last autumn, made it four wins in a row and six from 13 career, in the £70k to the winner Sky Bet Stakes at York.

Then at Ascot in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Qipco Stakes, his Hukum picked up almost exactly ten times that in beating last year’s Irish Derby winner Westover after a sustained battle. Jim Crowley, used to winning big races as recently as last year on Baaed, expressed great joy at picking up this massive pot with a six-year-old entire, whose tally over five seasons’ racing is 11 from 17. At six, he matches dual winner Swain and triple heroine Enable, the only previous horses of that age to win the race in its 73-year history.

This was a second flop of the year for Derby and Irish Derby winner Auguste Rodin, whose sudden capitulation before the home turn after which Ryan Moore looked after him, coasting home a long way behind, was a shock, no doubt especially to connections. Minute medical checks will be taken, but Auguste Rodin was not the only disappointment in the race.

Emily Upjohn, who gave Paddington such a brave fight in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown three weeks earlier, probably left her race on the Esher slopes, and never looked like getting Frankie Dettori a last King George winner, finishing 27 lengths behind the first two in seventh.

The Classic generation form was given a small nudge by King Of Steel, second in the Derby clear of the rest and an easy Royal Ascot winner. For a while it looked as though Kevin Stott was bringing the Amo Racing/ Roger Varian representative with a telling run, but he weakened and had to be content with an honourable third.

Tough stuff this Group 1 racing, especially in soft ground. Hukum is tough and Owen Burrows knows how to keep his golden oldies going.

- TS