Tag Archive for: Manton

Monday Musings: Yes, No, Wait…

Anyone who ever played cricket will have heard those four words, Yes, no, wait….sorry! as he trudged back to the pavilion, run out by half a pitch length thanks to his partner’s indecision and then wanton sense of self-preservation, writes Tony Stafford.

If you’ve got a voice in your head, yes indeed the yesnowaitsorries are a floating ownership group, mainly of National Hunt horses. It was brought together through a joint love of cricket and racing, with the late Alan Lee, former cricket and racing correspondent for the Times, a very active member.

Over the past three months, mostly with good friend Kevin Howard, owner of the Noak Hill Shellfish Cabin off the A127 in deepest Essex, I’ve heard the same phrase trotted out at least 20 times. The project was a now 3yo gelding by Dandy Man called Edgewater Drive. The price plus Wilf Storey’s training fees was calculated based on 10 per cent shares and initially described by would-be joinees as “a cup of tea”: “Yes”, they said, almost without exception.

Next, rather than the No, it was Wait, after all Christmas was coming, the heating bills were astronomical. Well actually, better say No. As 20 dwindled down to zero, “Sorry” was replicated from a score of lips as Kevin withdrew back to the cabin, readying a bowl of jellied eels he’d promised to take to Gary Wiltshire, resident bookmaker at the owners’ room in Chelmsford racecourse.

Neil Graham, boss of Chelmsford, had been very optimistic at the meeting before last when talking about yesterday’s fixture – the first floodlit card on a Sunday in the UK. The total prize money on offer was £144k, a figure that will be replicated at Kempton on February 18.

Sunday racing in the UK had become generally a two-meeting apology, but yesterday was always going to be an exception, weather permitting. Apart from the innovative Chelmsford card, it was to be the last of three scheduled days of the Lingfield Winter Million. Friday’s first stage over jumps was unsurprisingly frozen off, but Saturday went ahead on the all-weather track with almost £250k distributed.

Then yesterday, the hoped-for miracle happened. Temperatures, stubbornly well below freezing for a week, suddenly went comfortably into positive numbers and the £492k card survived. The promise from the BHA to bolster otherwise mundane winter Sundays has made a good start. When we spoke to Neil he was anxious that the punters should roll in at Chelmsford, but as ever I was more than hopeful.

I’ve thrown in the odd Sangster family element in a good few of these articles over the years. Edgewater Drive had his two-year-old season with Ollie Sangster and didn’t make the frame in three starts. Another three times unplaced runner for Ollie, the now 3yo Floating Voter, came home in front in his first handicap – off 55 – at Wolverhampton on Saturday and that had been the plan for Edgewater Drive too until a foot injury stopped him, instead going to the sales before the plan could be tested.

On Thursday, two days before Floating Voter’s win, I was watching the early-evening all-weather action, but miscalculated and instead saw a race about to start at Pornichet, a track along the Atlantic coast from my dream holiday location, La Baule. The fact I never made it there is immaterial, so much was I brainwashed by a veteran production man on the Daily Telegraph sports desk.

Ronnie Fowler was really a news man, but liked his sport so ended up with us. With his soft West Country burr, ready smile and always with a holiday in France either to have just returned from or was about to embark upon, as I said, we knew all about La Baule.

Pornichet racecourse is what you would probably describe as Grands Provences, certainly prominent enough to have a regular spot on Attheraces (Sky Sports Racing).

The commentator had a rundown of the betting of this 4yo and up maiden, declaring that the Nicolas Clement-trained Midsummer Dance was an 8/13 shot having been a good second on her French debut a few weeks earlier.

At the same time, he remarked that the filly was making the opposite directional move than is usually the case. When Sam Sangster was looking for a trainer in France I unhesitatingly recommended M. Clement. Later we discovered that not only had Nicolas trained for Robert Sangster when he started out – he won the Arc in his first season – but also Nicolas’ father Miguel had trained for him.

From his lovely yard in Chantilly, he had prepared French Fifteen to win the Group 1 Criterium International at Saint-Cloud and, after Ray Tooth had sold him three days later, trained him for new connections to be a close second to Camelot in the 2000 Guineas.

Sam has done very well with Nicolas in the interim and when they went off at Pornichet just before 6 p.m. I heard Midsummer Dance moving along easily at the head of the 1m7f maiden race. The leader was Gruschenka and they were still hammer and tongs at the head of the 13-runner field turning for home before the favourite drew away comfortably.

She won by two and a half lengths and the runner-up was five lengths to the good over second favourite Piper’s Hill, to whom we will return in a moment.

It was as they passed the winning line first time around that I twigged. The same blue, green sleeves, green cap with white spots in which Mr S E Sangster’s horses, as differing from Manton House Thoroughbreds, which have the proper Robert Sangster colours with white cap, green spots. It’s amazing how much difference that cap switch makes.

This was the second run in France for the Mendelssohn filly Midsummer Dance. She was originally bought for $300k by a partnership including John Gunther, racing owner of the Newsells Park stallion Without Parole. I’m sure the plan was to send her to him when she won a few races.

Newsells Park, with its owner of a few years Graham Smith-Bernau, aided by General Manager Julian Dollar and Racing Manager Gary Coffey, has become one of the major players both in the sale ring and on the racecourse since Smith-Bernau acquired it.

They would have been expecting to welcome Midsummer Dance, but she failed to impress in three runs for the Gosdens and while improving to be placed a few times when switched to Harry Eustace, the rating of 59 was never going to persuade the owners to keep her.

Instead, she went to last year’s Horses In Training sale where she was knocked down to Blandford Bloodstock, probably Sam’s mate Stuart Boman, for just 12k. The one winning sibling to her was the Ralph Beckett trained Fox Vardy, who was rated in the low 90’s at one time and raced at the later stages of his career over two miles.

While with Harry Eustace, Midsummer Dance usually raced at ten furlongs, but for her first run at Chantilly last month, Nicolas Clement stepped her up to two miles and she finished an excellent second.

Now back a furlong, she stayed on well. I mentioned her UK mark of 59. When beaten three lengths at Chantilly, her victor earned a rating of 36 (x 2.2  to get the pounds from kilograms figure) hence 79.

The third horse on Friday already had a mark of 36, so having beaten him by seven and a half lengths, you would have to say she’ll be rated at least 36, maybe a shade more. That’s a minimum of 20lb higher than the UK mark. We’ll find out in a day or two.

Sam Sangster and his long-time collaborator and principal UK trainer Brian Meehan are the partners in the Mendelssohn filly. They had a bit of fun with the ownership as although carrying Sam’s (S.E Sangster) colours, she races in the name of Shelby Ltd. Maybe it should be Shelby Unlimited after the partners in Isaac Shelby, Brian’s Group 2 winner of the Greenham Stakes last year, was sold for a seven-figure sum before the 2000 Guineas to free-spending Wathnan Racing.

I mentioned Edgewater Drive at the beginning of this piece. Wilf Storey pointed out that only three horses have previously moved from Manton, the Sangster family base for more than 30 years, to his Consett, Co Durham yard.

Looking for a potential hurdler in 1993, I bought the three-year-old Caerleon gelding Great Easeby unraced from Robert: “a total slowcoach”, he said when Peter Chapple-Hyam was the trainer.  Wilf won races on good tracks, flat and jumping, culminating with success in the 24-runner Pertemps Handicap Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival. The following year, when “unbeatable” Unsinkable Boxer won the race for Martin Pipe, Great Easeby was an early faller, but started third-favourite!

Next was Jan Smuts, an expensive yearling buy for Raymond Tooth. He had a bad injury and then on third career start, pulled himself up in a flat race at Windsor.

It was thought he was unlikely to race again but had his final win in 2018 as a ten-year-old. He had been sent to Storey for free and raced a further 116 times, winning seven over flat and jumps and placed another 48 (!) times between second and fourth.

Finally, Card High. I watched out for his big white face as he toiled on Brian’s gallops every Thursday, too slow to finish last in his work! Sam’s older brothers Ben and Guy Sangster were happy to pass him on and he became another multiple winner (eight) and more than 50 per cent in the money in 50-odd runs.

Wilf, and granddaughter and assistant Siobhan Doolan, both have at least as much faith in this young, still growing three-year-old, as any of his predecessors. Wilf says: “He’ll stay.” Once they get up there on the Moor darting around avoiding the 300 sheep at Grange Farm, they usually do.

So, if you believe the sales pitch (unlike the Doubting Twenty!) and would be interested in maybe having a shot at a very cheap option to the rather pricier, but admittedly fantastically successful Geegeez.co.uk syndicates so skilfully managed by Matt Bisogno, the Editor, just give a call to Mr Storey or Ms Doolan. You’ll find them on the web.

When you get to “Yes”, never mind the No or Wait. I predict you won’t be Sorry!

- TS