Tag Archive for: Kyprios

Monday Musings: UK Prizemoney has a mountain to climb

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Eighty-six horses, many of whose connections feared that heavy ground at Ascot would render their task hopeless, gathered on Saturday aiming to take a slice of the – for the UK anyway – lavish prizemoney on offer, writes Tony Stafford. It was British Champions Day, for four Group 1 races, a Group 2 and a one-mile handicap making up what from the stands seemed a motley six-race card and, in the end, the ground wasn’t too bad looking at the race times.

The UK administrators have clearly been beaten to the punch though by the Irish, and by their two-day feast at Leopardstown and the Curragh in September. Obviously, the French could never be budged from their also two-day sacrosanct Arc extravaganza over the first weekend of October.

So here we were again, switched from the outside flat track to the inner hurdles circuit. As I approached in the late morning, the sun finally having broken through, I passed the one-mile round start. The grass looked lush and verdant green, almost waiting for a herd of cows to come along and start munching.

Apart from Kyprios in the opener, there was no other established superstar on show although Roger Varian’s Charyn deserves to be elevated to the elite level after snaffling the day’s second biggest prize, the one-mile Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, with authority.

Saturday’s top pot, money-wise, the Champion Stakes, had been expected to be a match between the smart French-trained Calandagan and William Haggas’s improving Irish Champion Stakes winner, Economics. But in a rough race, Economics had a dreadful passage (and also reportedly bled), and it looked as though his fellow three-year-old Calandagan was home and dry, having squeezed through a gap at the rail.

But Jim Crowley on the lightly raced six-year-old Anmaat, at 40/1, also managed to thread a passage through in the dying strides to deny the younger horse and give trainer Owen Burrows a massive boost. Most of the crowd were scratching their heads, apart from my mate Steve Howard who fluked a tenner each-way and paid (with help of two of his friends) for a superb Chinese meal for nine of us on the proceeds.

To my mind, the Champion Stakes has never been the same, not benefiting at all from the switch in 2011 from Newmarket and its far less weather-susceptible surface, even conceding Frankel on his career finale the following year.

Saturday’s racing was eventful, Kyprios making it seven from seven on the season with one of his most commanding performances when collecting the G2 Long Distance Cup by an untroubled couple of lengths. What do the boys do now, we thought? Keep on collecting the same half dozen races as in 2022 and this year – 2023 was an injury-marred aberration – or retire him to stud? Not a bit of it, Aidan O’Brien said after the race, he’ll be having the winter off, coming back in the spring for the customary Navan then Leopardstown path to, hopefully, a third Gold Cup – and the rest.

The Stayers are given short shrift by the powers that be, the winner’s cheque £255,000 good enough for a non-elite race but below the other treasures on offer. £283k was the main prize for the sprinters and fillies and mares, while more than double that goes to the milers and ten-furlong stars. Takeaways for the two top prizes were respectively £737k for Anmaat and £655 grand for Charyn. Second home in the Champion Stakes was worth £279k for Calandagan while another French horse, Facteur Cheval, received £248k for his second to Charyn, both uncomfortably close to Kyprios’s take-home pay.

Calandagan had already earned eleven grand more than Saturday on his previous trip to the UK, following home City of Troy in the £703k to the winner Juddmonte International at York.  When Ambiente Friendly ran on into second behind City Of Troy in the Derby two and a half months previously, he collected £334k for the Gredley family and James Fanshawe against the winner’s prize of £882,000, best in the entire UK programme.

Thus, the top reward for a runner-up spot in UK racing in 2024 has been Ambiente Friendly’s £334,000. So what? you may ask. So what, indeed. On the other side of the world, at Randwick racecourse in Sydney, Australia earlier the same day, a horse called I Wish I Win collected £337,331 for finishing last of 11! That’s 43 thousand more than Ambiente Friendly’s best second prize of the entire UK race programme and, as near as damn it, £100k more than Calandagan picked up in the Champion Stakes later that day.

The six-year-old was competing in the Everest Stakes over six furlongs. If he had finished seventh, the money would have been just the same for this six-year-old who had previously won six of his 18 races. His total earnings to date have been a touch short of £7 million.

The year-older mare Bella Nipotina won the race, and her earnings leapfrogged Saturday’s tail-ender by dint of the £3.74 million to the winner – up to £8.78 million. She has won seven of 52 career starts and is trained by Ciaron Maher. Kyprios, with 15 wins from 19 starts and only a year younger than Bella Nicolina, has earnings of £2,635,000.

Until recently, Maher shared the training billing with Englishman David Eustace, son of James and brother to Harry, who has quickly built up a strong stable in their hometown of Newmarket. David has now moved to Hong Kong, another place where the prizemoney levels must burn into the hearts of those David has left behind in his native land.

Not content with knocking off the big one, Maher also collected more than a million for third and, for good measure, added another £1.5 million for the victory of Duke De Sessa in the Caulfield Cup. Caulfield, near Geelong in Victoria, is a mere 886 kilometres south, and a nine-hour drive, from Randwick. The race is usually a stepping stone to the Melbourne Cup, run at Flemington on Tuesday, November 5.

A nice touch on the last race of the Randwick card was the £1.58 million-to-the-winner King Charles III Stakes as the King and Queen embark on their tour of Australia. Maher was second here, threequarters of a length behind winner Ceolwulf, with the favourite Pride Of Jenni.

Reverting to the Everest, and its 20 million Australian dollar (just over £10 million) total prize fund, it threw up some other amazing facts. The 11 competitors after the race had each won more than £1 million in their careers to date, several of them from only a handful of runs, especially a trio of three-year-olds. Among these was a Justify colt owned by Coolmore called Storm Boy, who finished eighth behind the winner yet beaten only two lengths.

The total career earnings for the eleven, stands at a notch over £40 million from a total of 180 runs, which I make more than £22,000 per run. When Duke De Sessa was trained in Ireland by Dermot Weld, he won around €100k for two Group 3 wins and one Listed victory.

The clue? The title name Everest is preceded by the letters TAB, the off-course near monopoly system which fuels the astonishing power of the prize money in that country. No wonder owners here beseech their horses to win nice races as three-year-olds and await the calls of the top trainers, of which Maher is no exception.

We’ve been saying it for half a century. Maybe the Prime Minister’s wife, who likes racing, might get her hubby and his party to rush through a bill to effect an off-course pool monopoly here. Actually, no rush, you have five years to do it!  We’d still have one or two bookmakers on the course for colour, although when it happens, don’t try to get a hefty bet on when you go racing, having paid all the excessive costs – for everything!

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Last week at Newmarket, Book 2 of Tattersalls sales in Newmarket was also operating at more than 100,000 guineas per horse over the first two days – of course nothing like the drama of Book 1. Maybe if the buyers had been sending their precious acquisitions of the previous week straight to Australia you could start to understand how it could happen.  It won’t be the case; the Aussies are mostly too canny for that and wait to see what they can do on the track before biting.

At the other end of the scale, Book 4, starting late on Friday when most people had gone home, originally catalogued 81 yearlings. Of those, 20, probably wisely, didn’t show and of the remainder that did, 28 didn’t make their reserve prices.

In the event, 33 were sold through the ring, although others, probably out of desperation by their vendors will have found new owners later. The total official aggregate of the 33 that did change hands was £111k, for an average of just over three grand and a median of two thousand, both figures around one per cent of the Book 1 figures.

Ten found new buyers at the minimum bid of 1,000 guineas including a strong-looking Rumble Inthejungle colt bought by Henry Candy. Henry, one of the most-admired veterans of his profession, has been saying that he has no wish to retire, and that he has worked hard all his life and intends to continue to do so. I’d love that colt to win a race or two for him.

As for the hapless vendors who have nurtured their young stock with the same care as the posh studs who made all the big money, you must be totally sympathetic. To be in Book 4 is like a leper’s curse. Surely Tattersalls can either include them in a slightly enlarged Book 3 where they could have a chance as buyers are still around, or be more stringent on which horses they accept for the sale.

- TS

 

Monday Musings: Of Champions and Challengers

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Whatever happened to Trials Day? For many years, three weeks before the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe the French conveniently staged a trio of perfectly-framed races principally for the home defence to flex their muscles in preparation for their upcoming day of destiny at (Paris)Longchamp on the first Sunday in October, writes Tony Stafford. It also attracted some of our best candidates to reveal their talents.

One, the Prix Niel, was for three-year-olds; another, for four and upwards was the Prix Foy, these two both at Group 2 level. The third, the Group 1 Prix Vermeille, was and remains for three and up fillies and mares. All three are run over the full Arc distance of 2400 metres (1m4f).

They staged it yesterday as usual, but it was totally over-shadowed by the second day of Irish Champions Weekend, run at the Curragh – no longer it seems with the requirement of the definite article, viz “The” to go before the track name. I find it as incongruous as I do to precede Longchamp with the name of the country’s capital making it most unnecessarily unwieldy.

Why not LondonEpsom? I shouldn’t be irritated but I just can’t help it. In one other regular piece of work I do every day, I even referred to the Matron Stakes as being run at The Curragh. Silly me.

While the two Group 2 races have £65k to the winner, this was seemingly not enough inducement for a challenger from the UK. There were just a couple of Aidan O’Brien pages to accompany his Vermeille contender Warm Heart, winner last time of the Yorkshire Oaks. There, with a mixture of speed and determination under James Doyle, she held off the Frankie Dettori-ridden Free Wind, with Coolmore first string Savethelastdance third.

Warm Heart recovered well enough from her York exertions to join William Haggas’ Sea Silk Road and Joseph O’Brien’s Above The Curve in challenging for the French Group 1 and she came out on top again in another tight finish.

She had a neck in hand of home runner Melo Melo with Sea Silk Road an excellent third at 31/1. This race carried £303k to the winner and brought Aidan O’Brien a 4,000th career victory.  He had a few also at the two days at Leopardstown and Curragh, although racegoers (and me) hoping to see the colt I think could be the best juvenile we’ve seen in recent years, City Of Troy, were disappointed as he was withdrawn from the National Stakes owing to the unsuitably slow ground.

Of course, you don’t get to 4,000 winners without making provision for such frustrations, and in what was left as a four-runner race, his colt Henry Longfellow got the Ryan Moore touch as a narrow favourite in the market.

Henry Longfellow, by Dubawi out of Minding, if you please, had won quite impressively on debut, but it was only just enough to convince the bookmakers who considered Bucanero Fuerte, easy winner of the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes last time and an Amo Racing colt trained by Adrian Murray, to be his near equal on the boards.

The team evidently formulated a plan to try to thwart City Of Troy had he been there – and stayed with it to handle the substitute. The trouble was, both pacemaker Cuban Thunder and Bucanero Fuerte went off fast, leaving Ryan to sit behind them as though going out for a Sunday ride on his hack in the park. When he asked for an effort, either the effect was instantaneous, or the other pair were already knackered, but a five length win from the fourth runner Islandsinthestream, a two-length runner-up to Henry last time, and running on for second again, gives the form a solid look.

Elsewhere yesterday, Kyprios’ return to action in the Irish St Leger provided a disappointment. Last year’s champion stayer, held up in rear in another four-runner affair, never quite managed to challenge Roger Varian’s 2022 Doncaster St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov, who was always travelling best. You can expect a major improvement from Kyprios next time and it will be interesting to see the outcome if they reconvene at Ascot next month on our Champions Day.

I went to Ian Williams’ Owners’ Day yesterday and enjoyed some delicious food – yes, the neuralgia has been behaving itself as long as I do likewise. While queueing, I met a man who works for Arena Racing and he was looking forward to Wednesday’s final day of the Racing League, moved from Thursday so the jockeys that have been assigned to the various teams, would not be excluded by having to ride on the normal opening day of this year’s St Leger meeting at Doncaster.

The big race on Saturday is sure to benefit from the non-clash with the Leopardstown segment of last weekend’s Irish spectacular and, with pots of money to be doled out to owners, teams and jockeys, that can only be a good thing.

Some trainers who had been very much against the idea have been virtually forced to go along with it, as quite a few of the regular races in the Calendar have been lost to accommodate the 50-odd heats in the competition.

It’s easy to see why 39 have been entered for the final race on Wednesday as this open-ended affair (top-rated 107) over 1m4f carries a £51k first prize, which compares very well with the two French Group 2 races yesterday. The slight snag is that to get a run, you must convince your team’s manager – in the case of Williams, it’s Jamie Osborne for Wales and the West – that your horse merits inclusion. Late decisions have inevitably caused trainers to miss other equally suitable if less remunerative alternatives.

For those left on the shelf – and it has happened more lately after some less than inspiring early entry figures – there’s always the option of running instead for instance at Bath. The seven races on the same day carry a total win money of £31,000. The Arc/Sky led series was a small step in the right direction, and as my fellow buffet-queuer said, “At least it might bring some younger people in to enjoy racing. There are not many youngsters here, are there?”

Thereby the conundrum. To own a horse takes a lot of money and the profile of owners with Williams is generally of people who either now have or have had their own businesses, made their money, and can afford the expense and can put up with the poor prizemoney.

True, they deserve to be looked after when they go racing, but the younger people that are so eagerly sought to become enthusiasts and regular racegoers are confronted by high entrance fees, even with some junior concessions, and very expensive catering. There are many countries which stage high-class horse racing where costs for the pubic are nowhere near as forbidding.

It was good to see Auguste Rodin add the Irish Champion Stakes to his Derby and Irish Derby wins, never mind his two lapses in the 2,000 Guineas and King George. If he had won the first Classic, instead of running at Leopardstwn on Saturday, he could have been trying to go one better than Camelot, aiming to be the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky in 1970, the stated aim for him at the start of the year.

For a short time yesterday, seeing that Doncaster doesn’t begin until Thursday, I wondered why it was only going to be a three-day meeting instead as the usual four.

Checking with the BHA site, though, I saw that, as with the first meeting every year on Town Moor, it will now extend to Sunday, a welcome injection of high-class racing on that day after some pitifully drab two-meeting Sundays in the UK in recent weeks.

The Group 3 Sceptre Stakes for fillies and mares and the Listed Scarbrough Stakes are joined by some lesser quality but competitive handicaps. But what represents a master stroke by the race planners (just a one-week reprieve for you I’m afraid, BHA) is that the Legends’ race for former great jockeys can have a fabulous weekend television and on-the-spot audience. Well done! Credit where it’s due.

- TS

Monday Musings: The New King of the Stayers

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Listening to one racing show last week I was surprised to learn that the broadcaster talking about the Goodwood Cup had not known the race distance had once been two miles and five furlongs rather than the two miles of nowadays, writes Tony Stafford. Why would he, he probably hadn’t been born when the last marathon was staged in 1990?

Funnily enough, as they went over the winning line on Tuesday, the thought crossed my mind that if the longer distance – midway between the two and a half of the Gold Cup and the just short of two miles and threequarters of the Queen Alexandra – was still in operation, the verdict would not have been any different.

We were used in the days of Ardross and Le Moss between 1979 and 1982, when both won the Gold Cup at Ascot twice and then three Goodwood Cups between them, to small fields being the order of the day.

They used to doddle around and then the favourite would generally put in a burst two furlongs out and take the race. So far removed were they from the run-of-the-mill staying handicap performers of their time that few were ever persuaded to take them on.

Not today though. Just as at Royal Ascot and the Gold Cup, first prize here was £283k, with places starting at £107k, through £53k, £26k, £13k and £6,000 for sixth, the lavishly endowed Glorious Goodwood meeting, backed by Qatar, the money was identical all the way down. Nowadays, there’s nothing lost in brave defeats with that sort of remuneration to go with them. There are plenty of poorer prizes around.

The Gold Cup had revealed a new star, although the betting before Ascot’s showpiece left us in no doubt that Kyprios was “expected”.

Slinking away after his fourth in the Lingfield Derby Trial in May last year, Kyprios looked anything but a potential champion stayer. But the Aidan O’Brien recuperation centre has no peer and, when he came back 11 months later to win a Navan Listed race at 5/1 over 14 furlongs, the son of guess who was on his way. You guessed, Galileo, of course.

Bookmakers were alerted now, so when he went on to a four-horse Group 3 at Leopardstown three weeks later, he was a 1/10 chance and won by 14 lengths. In the Gold Cup, he won narrowly from last year’s Derby runner-up, Mojo Star, in a race where Stradivarius took most of the headlines. His defeat was not the main issue, but it was more significant for the sacking, temporarily for the Gosden stable, and permanently by owner Bjorn Neilsen, of the champ’s long-time partner Frankie Dettori.

Mojo Star wasn’t there on Tuesday, but Stradivarius was, with a new partner in Andrea Atzeni, and also Trueshan, enabled to take his chance to repeat last year’s defeat of Stradivarius in the race by the bountiful employment of the Goodwood watering system.

On a day when there were plenty of owners and trainers grumbling at the significantly altered ground, it brought to the race the treasure of Trueshan who had been pulled out late both for the Gold Cup and Queen Alexandra after a couple of anxious and eventually frustrated weather watches by trainer Alan King and his owners.

He did get his June date though, up at Newcastle the following week when, from a mark of 120, he carried 10st8lb to an unthinkable win in the Northumberland Plate, causing the handicapper to put him up to 124.  So what a race we had in prospect and that’s without considering the other sextet who wanted to push on into the elite grouping.

Most obvious of these was Coltrane. Andrew Balding’s progressive stayer was second in the Chester Cup, won the Ascot Stakes and then a Sandown Listed (by ten lengths). Add the Group 1 winning Irish mare Princess Zoe, and Melbourne Cup bound Enemy and you have the deepest of deep races.

Sometimes an appetising prospect can fall flat, but not this time. In the home straight, with outsider Thunderous leading narrowly from Kyprios, the other three top contenders were winding up for the finale. As Thunderous dropped away leaving Kyprios in front, Trueshan loomed up on the outside, causing commentator Simon Holt to anticipate him and Hollie Doyle going straight past and win the Cup for the second time.

Then, on the inside, having extricated his mount from a brief mini-pocket, Atzeni challenged with the indomitable Stradivarius and his run proved longer lasting than Trueshan’s. But having faced both challenges, Ryan Moore, riding as well as ever this summer, asked his mount for a response and readily saw them off.

Riding rhythmically with his stick in his left hand, Moore called in Kyprios’ hidden resources and the answer was instantaneous. Kyprios was going away at the finish and although the winning margin was only a neck it was clear-cut. It was generally accepted that the early pace had been steady, but they came home to such good effect that the time was comfortably below standard.

Afterwards Moore suggested that, if there had been a stronger pace, Kyprios would have won more easily. Only four, he has years ahead of him and he could possibly run up a sequence in the Gold Cup and Goodwood Cup to match Stradivarius and Yeats, his own much-admired forerunner at Ballydoyle. Had it been at 2m5f, all three would have still been at the forefront and you have to conclude that the result would have been no different but maybe more emphatic in favour of the younger horse.

The best news was that Stradivarius, tipped for retirement leading up to Goodwood, may now go on to the Group 2 Lonsdale Stakes at York. Worth half as much as the Goodwood Cup, victory there would still be a worthwhile day out as the prospective stallion continues his farewell tour.

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I had a nice chat with Charlie Appleby on Tuesday when he was still disappointed that his 2,000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes winner Coroebus was unable to take up his attempt at ending Baaeed’s flawless record in the Sussex Stakes. With eight from eight in just over a year and a passable imitation of Frankel in terms of his career stopping off points, William Haggas’s four-year-old was the inevitable focus of attention, but Appleby did well to dig out another Classic winner of 2022 to tackle him.

Modern Games won the Poule d’Essai des Poulains (French,2.000 Guineas) on his comeback this year, and although twice a beaten favourite in Group 1’s in France since - when third to Vadeni in the French Derby and then a close fifth to Tenebrism at Deauville - he is a solid top-level performer.

Appleby’s sharp footwork brought a £215k second place in a race worth precisely double the Goodwood Cup. He edged out last year’s Sussex Stakes heroine, Alcohol Free, who most recently had won the July Cup at Newmarket. Baaeed, held up, breezed past them both with economy and disdain. The margin in distance was one and a half lengths; in class, considerably more.

I loved Haggas’s assessment of the performance:

“It was like riding the Tour De France on a motorbike.”

True words, and some of his fellow trainers, who day to day struggle to match his skilfully-placed and “thrown-in” handicappers, often have a similar sinking feeling.

- TS

Monday Musings: A Right Royal Week

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We’ve just been through five days of the most wonderful racing – and, until Saturday, flawless weather – at Royal Ascot, but for many the experience was incomplete, writes Tony Stafford. For my part, I don’t think I managed to make a single phone call on my mobile on any of the four days I attended.

Others fared better but the internet, and especially punters attempting to put on bets via their devices, proved a generally difficult and frustrating process.

One friend not in attendance said: “It’s just the same at West Ham. As soon as you get to half-time 60,000 people take out their phones and it’s just impossible.”

But going to a Premier League football match is nothing like spending six hours watching the racing and fashion and arranging to meet up with friends. You might be able to suggest a point to gather, but when as on Saturday there is a crowd of more than 69,000 that’s not so easy. Surely it’s not beyond the wit, or the finances, of Ascot to improve communications.

I described my feelings as the week progressed – not improved on Saturday when my glasses disappeared while eating lunch – as being in solitary confinement.  Not that I ever have been!

The racing started with a bang with world best Baaeed in the Queen Anne, quickly followed by a performance full of promise from Bradsell and Hollie Doyle for Archie Watson in the Coventry, and it went on from there.

Quite by chance I had the ear of Chris Waller for a little while before racing started on Tuesday and, as well as appreciating his confidence in the chance of Nature Strip in the Group One King’s Stand Stakes, which he won as a champion should, I also got some interesting stuff on the post-racing life of his great mare Winx.

Owners of many outstanding racemares have found that life in the breeding shed has not been as straight-forward as they might have hoped. Winx has had her setbacks, losing one foal, following which she had a tough time according to Waller.

If I understood him correctly, he believes extreme activity on the racecourse often inhibits the development of the reproductive systems making such mares immature in that regard. Winx deserves to get a foal or two to pass on her magical ability.

Then there was the narrow success of Coroebus in the St James’s Palace Stakes, William Buick bringing him with one of many well-timed challenges during the week.

Buick competed toe to toe throughout with Ryan Moore just as Godolphin did with Coolmore and while it was honours even in terms of good rides and victories for the two major powers, Ryan had the edge numerically. His riding this season is as good as it ever was.

Over recent seasons we had become accustomed to Ryan vainly trying to make up ground in the latter stages of Royal Ascot races after Frankie Dettori had made the first move. This year he seemed much more intent on riding closer to the front.

Once the field gets round the home turn at Ascot there is not much more than two furlongs for a rider to develop a winning run and, with crowding often to be expected, jockeying for position is more important there than on many tracks.

I did think Ryan’s riding of Kyprios in the Gold Cup was a masterpiece. It’s one thing making sure you keep your main rival boxed in when you can. At least twice as Dettori searched for a gap to start his move on Stradivarius, Moore, level and on his outside, kept the door shut.

But when Frankie’s race as far as winning was run, Moore still had saved enough on Kyprios for the Coolmore/O’Brien horse to deal with the dangerous challenge of Mojo Star around the outside. Last year’s Derby and St Leger runner-up, resuming for the Richard Hannon team after a long break, loomed up in the Amo Racing colours, looking sure to prevail.

Sadly for Amo boss Kia Joorabchian – in the paddock on Saturday with a football-oriented entourage that included Rio Ferdinand – none of his 16 runners at the meeting could win. This fastest-growing team in racing will win some big ones, that’s inevitable. How long, though, the emotional Kia can balance expectation with the inevitable disappointments that racing at this sort of level brings, is the interesting question.

Amo Racing’s support was a major factor in George Boughey’s rapid advance in the first couple of years of his career so it came as quite a shock for me to discover that of the 82 horses to have run from his Hamilton Road stable in Newmarket this year, only three have been in Amo Racing ownership.

Already successful at Classic level with Cachet in the 1,000 Guineas this year, Boughey now has two Royal Ascot wins to his name. Inver Park won Thursday’s concluding handicap, but a much more impressive winner showed the trainer’s sure touch on Saturday.

The Golden Gates Handicap, a three-year-old contest over ten furlongs, is a recent addition as Ascot went to a full five days of seven-race cards. Boughey’s Missed The Cut could not have been a more convincing winner.

I have mentioned before how significant it was for the UK racing and breeding industry that so many potentially high-class horses from the Shadwell stable were made available because of the economies needed after the death of Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoun.

Missed The Cut, a son of the top US sire Quality Road, never raced as a juvenile and went to the February sale at Newmarket where he was snapped up by former jockey, Ed Babington. A successful businessman in garden furniture, he is also developing his racing interests, having involvement in the Roger Varian stable as well as with Boughey.

Missed The Cut cost 40k, which might not have looked a bargain when he first set foot on the track running fourth at the Craven meeting. But easy wins by eleven and then five lengths in two novice contests brought an opening mark of 95. He was heavily backed, as many of Boughey’s horses are – down to 5-2 on Saturday - and defeat never looked a possibility.

He stormed to the front two furlongs out and stretched the margin to almost five lengths, He’s already at least Listed class as we’ll see tomorrow when the new ratings appear. I reckon he’s a Group horse and maybe a top-level one.

Dettori did get some joy from the returning win of one-time 1,000 Guineas favourite Inspiral in the Coronation Stakes, but most people found his public “calling out” over the Stradivarius ride by joint-trainer John Gosden left a sour taste. You would think the number of winners the prince of racing has ridden for the stable, many at the top level, would have deserved a little more understanding in the face of one less than perfect ride on a horse for whom he has so much affection.

Nobody will ever worry in the fulness of time that Stradivarius, already a three-time Gold Cup winner, did not make it four. It was a shame for owner Bjorn Neilsen and no doubt Gosden senior would have liked another Gold Cup to his name, but that’s racing and for once Ryan rode the socks off Frankie.

Gosden was much more positive about the winning ride on Nashwa – like Inspiral a daughter of Frankel – in yesterday’s Prix De Diane at Chantilly. The Oaks third took the quick turn-around well when winning nicely under Hollie Doyle, who thus became the first female jockey to win a major European Classic.

I must say I have been dismayed all year once it became known of the departure of Tony Nerses from his role as the long-time manager of Nashwa’s owner. Initially for Saleh Al Homaizi, then for the partnership between Saleh and Imad Al Sagar, to Imad’s outright ownership when Al Homaizi bowed out a few years ago

I always believed Tony had a big input in the suggestion that Hollie might become the retained jockey for the team. Now we learn it was Mr Gosden’s idea all along. Just as it was when William Buick first went to the US, no doubt!

- TS