Tag Archive for: Sir Gino

Monday Musings: Remembering the Aga Khan

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The news that H H the Aga Khan, head of the Nizari Ismaili Muslim sect, had died last week thrust me back more than 30 years, writes Tony Stafford. At the time I was scrabbling around trying to buy cheap horses, usually those that didn’t reach their reserves at the conclusion of the Tattersalls’ Horses in Training sale.

In those days, my targets were Cheveley Park Stud, usually well-bred fillies that didn’t measure up to their demanding requirements and would go privately for £500, or the Aga Khan detritus that it would be too costly to send back to either France or Ireland with nobody other than me wanting them. To be fair, the Cheveley Park ones were rarely much good!

I say detritus, but M. Drion, the Aga Khan’s manager, called them “boucher” (butcher) horses, so if I didn’t step in, they would be destined for the dinner tables of continental Europe. Once or twice, both targeted operations even gave them away.

While not a freebie, one such was Karaylar, a son of the Aga Khan’s Derby winner Kahyasi out of a mare by brilliant broodmare sire Habitat. He had been with John Oxx in Ireland, but the trainer of Sinndar, another Derby winner for the owner, hadn’t managed to get him on the track.

I spoke to His Highness by telephone having got the number from M. Drion. He agreed £500 and the cash was duly handed over. He called him a “boucher” horse, too!

At the time, I was regularly passing on my “finds” to Northumberland owner David Batey. In a few years he had done so well that he had a video made up of his “first” 25 winners. Most had cost buttons whereas only the last, bought from Brian Meehan as a 2yo at Doncaster sales for £14,000, was not my discovery. The winners had all been trained by my friend Wilf Storey.

I can only imagine the rage building up in the mercurial owner as 3yo Karaylar ran last of 11 first time on the flat and then, in the always well-populated novice hurdles in the north at the time, 16th of 20, 15th of 20 and, to finish the job, 19th of 21.

That brought him an initial mark of 64. Wilf and I always in our deliberations used to reckon on one run to confirm the rating and then go to work. Fourth in his first handicap, he then won a John Wade-sponsored selling handicap hurdle, at Sedgefield. That was a qualifier for the final also at Sedgefield on a Friday night early in May.

I can remember exactly where I watched it but have no idea where I had been earlier for me to be in that place. It was a betting shop in Bishop’s Stortford town centre. Karaylar started the 9/4 favourite and in a field of 16 won as he liked by five lengths under Richie McGrath, who had also been on him for the previous win.

What marked that race as special was its prize - £7,000, for a seller! Just a four-year-old, we thought Karaylar was going places – he did, rapidly downhill, never winning another race.

Mr Batey was also the beneficiary of another Wilf winner ridden by McGrath in his 7lb claiming days. That was Cheltenham Festival long-distance hurdle scorer Great Easeby, bought unraced for 2k from the owner-breeder Robert Sangster. A son of Caerleon, he was acquired in a very comfortable negotiation, sent to Wilf and won seven races between the flat and jumps.

Our association (not with Wilf) suddenly ended allegedly because the owner found out I had made a small profit on one of the deals. His success rate dropped almost to nothing once he stopped sending horses to Grange Farm, Muggleswick.

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The Aga Khan was the third member of his family to make a massive impact on thoroughbred racing and, equally, breeding. His grandfather, also the Aga Khan, owned the famous flying filly Mumtaz Mahal in the 1920s and was prominent in racing until his death in 1957.

His son Prince Aly Khan kept the family horse racing business going, while at the same living a film star lifestyle,  especially when he married the actress Rita Hayworth. He died in a car crash, having already been passed over for the title of Aga Khan by his father who thought his son Prince Karim, as he was, would be a more suitable leader. For almost seven decades, he fulfilled the role with great skill and was reckoned as long ago as 2014 to having a fortune of $13 billion by Vanity Fair.

For racing fans, his green and red colours have been a constant even though he had refused to have them trained in the UK for a long time, relying on Ireland and France. He had countless champions in his time; for me, though, it’s always been Karaylar!

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How frustrating that a week after the Dublin Racing Festival, one of the two biggest stars of the UK team shaping up to see off the Irish challenge at Cheltenham was unable to run in his warm-up race.

Sir Gino, flawless over hurdles, the latest time when deputising for the country’s number one, Constitution Hill, in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle and then spectacularly proficient first time over fences at Kempton over Christmas was the absentee. Many had travelled expecting to see him at Newbury, but a cut leg ruled him out of the Game Spirit Chase.

The Nicky Henderson horse was forced to miss the Triumph Hurdle at last year’s Festival and now will be going into the Arkle Challenge Trophy – if he gets there, that is – with only one run over fences behind him, unless Nicky sends him either to Kempton or Bangor as has been mooted.

Of course, waiting to pounce is Willie Mullins with his smart 5yo Majborough, winner of that Triumph Hurdle and unbeaten since in his two runs over fences. He looked last week in winning the Irish Arkle Novice Chase at Leopardstown that he still had a bit to learn about jumping fences. When Sir Gino won at Kempton, you could have thought you were watching a horse that had won ten races over fences, let alone had never run over them before. After all, it was Ballyburn that he was putting back in his box, a horse who all through last season and again at the Dublin Festival, looked like a future Gold Cup winner.

Henderson did have something to smile about on the Newbury card, the mare Joyeuse cantering away with the William Hill Handicap Hurdle and its £87k first prize in the colours of J P McManus. Only a 9/2 shot, the success was therefore expected in some parts but a glance at her earlier career did not present her with the most obvious of chances.

She won her only race in France, a 1m4f AQPS maiden as a 3yo by three parts of a length. The venue? Another of those French tracks where they probably mark out the rails the night before. For the record it was at Paray-le-Mondial, a track and indeed town I’d never heard of; but, in fairness, even those venues that race only once a year are always immaculately presented. Paray-le-Mondial is in the east of France, for the record, about 80 miles northnorthwest of Lyon.

The run was enough to secure a price of €235,000 soon after from the all-seeing McManus talent-scouting operation. Henderson took his time before sending her out for the first run from Lambourn, at Taunton in January last year and she won by half a length.

Two placed efforts in just over three weeks in November and December earned her an initial handicap rating of 123. The way she accelerated away – once favourite Secret Squirrel fell when still right in the argument at the last flight, suggested she wouldn’t have been far away off 143!

The McManus team from Ireland and the UK will be feared as usual next month but a quirk of the altered regulations for Cheltenham’s handicaps means Joyeuse is ineligible for any of them, and she isn’t a novice either. Aintree here she comes, no doubt.

 - TS

Roving Reports: Reflections from the Festivities

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Well, Christmas and the New Year holidays are well and truly over, writes David Massey, and with the decorations stuffed back into the garage, the last of the Wensleydale and water biscuits demolished and just the awfulness of the Bounties left in the Celebrations tub (sorry Lydia, but it’s true) it’s time to go back to work.

Or at least it would be if the weather wasn’t playing havoc with my schedule this week. Leicester, which was the first port of call on Tuesday, bit the dust at the weekend and I’m not holding out a lot of hope for the nominated replacement fixture, Doncaster on Friday. Warwick on Saturday has to be in the balance, too, with the course waterlogged; and that in turn means they can’t get the frost sheets down for later in the week. I fear it may be a week at home, which in turn means the good lady will find lots of dreadful jobs for me to do. Anyone any good at hanging pictures up?

At least we got through Christmas with no abandonments and thank the Lord we did, with the good lady and myself taking in Kempton on Boxing Day and staying over for the Friday meeting before heading off to Challow Day at Newbury. She’d never been to King George Day before and so, despite a stupidly early get-up of 7am, we set off for what we hoped was a Bank Holiday weekend of tremendous sport.

The one really good thing about the Christmas period, when you do a lot of driving as part of your job, is the total lack of traffic on the road. It felt like it was at least ten minutes after leaving our house before we came across another vehicle. Why can’t it be like this all the time? Oh, how my life would be easier. No more bottlenecks in the roadworks on the A1 going to Wetherby. Goodbye, shocking jams near Heathrow that take me forty minutes to navigate on the way to Sandown. And farewell 50mph M1 roadworks near Northampton… actually, no. Those swines would still be there. Forever.

We arrived at Kempton in plenty of time – early, in fact, even after a Boxing Day Maccies breakfast stop at Watford Gap, a service station I frequently can’t find my way out of – and the Christmas spirit was already evident. After grabbing a coffee and catching up with my friend Anna from Sheffield, also at KG Day for the first time, I found my work partner Vicki and we set about how we were going to tackle the day.

The racing, I have to say, was superb. The Jukebox Man did not disappoint, looking every inch the chasing star I really hope he is. Constitution Hill, whilst not back to his best yet, was at least taking a step towards it in the Christmas Hurdle (and yes, he will come on for that). The wonderful Banbridge proved myself and others wrong by staying the three miles well and picking up a brave but tired Il Est Francais after the last. I was equally delighted to see L’Homme Presse finish third on his seasonal debut for Andy Edwards, and he tells me he's come out of the race well.

After the last we head to Addlestone, which is where we are staying for the next couple of nights. The good lady has booked us into a local Thai restaurant early evening for food, an excellent choice. We are greeted with a cheery “Merry Christmas!” by a Thai lady as we enter. I wish her a Merry Christmas back, thinking she was a member of staff. It turns out she wasn’t, merely a customer that had been enjoying herself in a local hostelry or two for the afternoon and wanted to carry that enjoyment on here. She entertained us by (loudly) singing along to all the easy-listening versions of classic pop songs the restaurant were playing – her rendition of Coldplay’s “Yellow” a personal highlight – until she’d entertained us for long enough and decided to go back to the pub. “If you ever come to Woking, I’ll take care of you!” she shouted as she left, something I wasn’t sure was a promise of hospitality or a threat. We finished our meal in peace and went back to the hotel for a quiet night.

Kempton Day 2. Breakfast in the superb Bread & Roses, which I can highly recommend if you’re ever in the area, is followed by a blissful 17-minute drive to the course. Although not before I’ve filled up with petrol, which has me muttering “how much?” as even the prices at the local supermarkets are considerably higher than they are in the Midlands. Can’t eat value, goes the old racing saying, but I can’t even put it in the tank down here.

With time to kill at the track, I try my hand at a Crystal Maze-like box that is one of the on-course attractions set up by Ladbrokes on the day. Those of you of a certain vintage will remember the endgame of The Crystal Maze: what remained of the team of accountants/nurses/architects by this point were locked into a huge glass dome before they turned the fans on, and all the pretty gold and silver tickets flew around their heads. The aim was to get 100 Gold tokens to win the big prize (“The pony-trekking holiday in Ullswater will be MINE!”) which they failed to do with alarming regularity. This was similar, but with flying foam balls. I scored 30 in my allotted 30 seconds in the box, which I thought was pretty good, but the bloke after me, who couldn’t have been much more than five foot tall, scored an impressive 38. Lower centre of gravity, I told myself. Yes, it was that, and not the fact I’m old and creaking, that was the difference. Let’s move on.

The highlight of the day’s racing was, without doubt, Sir Gino, who looked superb before the Wayward Lad and, as he danced around Kempton’s tight turns attracting oohs and aaahs from the knowledgeable crowd as he put in spectacular leaps at some of his fences, you did get the feeling you were watching a new chasing star being born. From a punting perspective, by far the better day of the two for me, with both Della Casa Lunga and Ooh Betty getting me back in front over the two days.

With the Italian restaurant cancelling my reservation for no good reason, food that night is nothing more than a raid on the local Waitrose and back to the hotel but the peace of the evening is rudely shattered by the fire alarm going off. We’re all outside – I say all, there couldn’t have been more than forty of us – debating whether this is someone having a fag in one of the rooms or whether local kids are mucking around, when I realise I’ve left my coat in the room and am now freezing cold. It takes 40 minutes to sort the mess out, but thankfully it’s a false alarm, and nothing worse than us missing an Only Connect Christmas Special has happened. However, the alarm periodically goes off for a few seconds at a time and we wonder whether we are going to get through the night without another visit to the car park.

The episode takes me back to a time when that happened in a Travelodge in (I think) Leatherhead a few years ago. We were all outside in the cold when a lady offered me her dressing gown. That was weird enough, but literally getting propositioned by her not long after put the tin hat on things. (No, I didn’t, behave yourselves. I’m better than that. Not much, but I am.)

As things turned out, it was a Silent Night, with the alarm behaving itself and we get a decent kip. A final Builder’s Breakfast at Bread & Roses (the scales were not kind to me next morning) and we are on the road to Newbury.

Now, Newbury is one of those tracks that seems to split opinion. Vicki loves the place, but she’s crackers, and I’m with the majority that find the place hard going these days. I have to say that the new pre-parade ring is very good, though, and a real boon for those wanting to get an early look.

This is supposed to be a day off with the good lady for me, with Vicki doing the donkey work for Trackside today, but it isn’t long before I’m roped back in as the favourite for the second is taken back to the pre-parade. “Get in there and see what the problem is, will ya?” she says, literally pushing me that way in the process. I do as I’m told, obviously, and it turns out they’re having issues with the tongue-tie, which gets a report. The horse ends up well beaten.

The Good Doctor, on which I’ve had a decent bet in the next, isn’t quite good enough, as it turns out, with The Famous Five having his measure by a short-head. The wife has backed the winner, too, a double kick in the Norbits, but Henry’s Friend prevailing an hour later ensures I won’t go home potless on the day.

The Challow is a cracker, with The New Lion looking every inch the top-class hurdler (and future chaser) he promised to be beforehand. He’s too good for them, far too good. Did I foresee him being sold within a week? Using the Yates' celebrations after as a guide, I did not.

It’s getting dark, and our Bank Holiday Bonanza Of Racing is coming to a close. With still little traffic on the roads, we head home via the M40 and A43. We’re within a couple of miles of the now defunct Towcester Racecourse at one point. Oh, how I wish that was still open. Finding slow horses is something I can do…

The M1 Northampton roadworks haven’t gone away. You can’t have everything, I suppose. Home for seven, and a chance to catch up with that missing Only Connect. I reckon we could do a racing version, if we put our minds to it. I’ve got some time on my hands this week now. I’ll have a think and get back to you in the next missive.

See you on a racecourse soon!

- DM

Monday Musings: Nobody Else

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Who else could have handled it? Never mind Willie Mullins for all his mastery at winning championship races, writes Tony Stafford. Add those other Irish behemoths of jumps training, Gordon Elliott and Henry de Bromhead. You could probably slip Joseph O’Brien onto that list now he has renewed his love of collecting Grade 1 jumping prizes, notably last week’s King George at Kempton with Banbridge.

As to the UK, after Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton it’s hard to imagine anyone having the resources or flexibility to attempt Nicky Henderson’s Christmas equine gymnastics. He’s a man apart.

Go back to last month. He took two horses for a gallop at Kempton Park. One, the former Champion Hurdler Constitution Hill, was aiming at a third consecutive Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle having been absent since the last one. The other, the unbeaten four-year-old Sir Gino, was being prepared for an early first race over fences.

It was a publicised workout, so the racing press were there expecting to see Constitution Hill come out on top. Then, assuredly, to resume at Newcastle that daunting sequence of eight successive wins since being bought from Warren Ewing and former Seven Barrows stable jockey Barry Geraghty for €120k.

That represented a fair profit on the €16k they paid for him before he had his one racecourse defeat, possibly unluckily, in a point-to-point. What could match him? But Henderson never minds testing his best horses – “no point” he probably says, “sending them away from home to look good against trees”.

Anyway, this tree spread his branches and took exception to his sacrificial object role and came out on top. I pondered a few weeks ago here whether the gallop was possibly a fair representation of where they are now and there were, and since, elements in the form lines of some of Mullins’ best horses that back up that theory.  More of that later.

But it brought an instant change of plan, Henderson with that nimbleness of thought that has kept him at the top of the tree – the fact he wins fewer trainer championships as the relentless Paul Nicholls to my mind has nothing to do with it.

“Constitution Hill isn’t ready” was the message followed soon after by a minor lameness issue, so Sir Gino, would-be chaser, would have to step in and continue his own unblemished Rules career record at Newcastle.

Although eight turned up at Gosforth Park, it was billed as a straight match between four-for-four Sir Gino and five-from-six Majestic Power from the Mullins stable. By Galileo out of Annie Power, Majestic Power has the most awesome pedigree and an equally redoubtable trio of owners, Mrs Ricchi, Mrs Magnier and J P McManus. It was widely held that the Mullins steamroller could not be thwarted.

In those top two-mile hurdle races, though, only a hint of inefficiency over the obstacles will leave any horse flailing in the wake of the rest and so it proved with Majestic Power. Ahead of him, Sir Gino, fluent from the outset, hit the front when Nico de Boinville wanted and drew away to an easy win.

The identity of the runner-up was almost immaterial, except that Sam Thomas’s Lump Sum picked up a more than useful £24k lump sum for his owners. It made everyone start looking at Sir Gino’s credentials for the Champion Hurdle, especially with Constitution Hill’s potential readiness in doubt at that stage.

Sir Gino hadn’t managed to get to the Triumph Hurdle last March so was unable to pick a fight with the septet of Mullins juveniles, the first two among them Majborough who beat filly Kargese by one and half lengths.

Majborough didn’t go on to Aintree for the Boodles Anniversary Hurdle, but Kargese did and Sir Gino beat her by almost four lengths.

Any suggestion that the Mullins filly was below par on the day has no credence as she easily won the Champion 4yo Hurdle at Punchestown in May. Meanwhile Majborough, with so much hurdles talent for Mullins to juggle, was sent straight over fences for his first run since Cheltenham and won easily at Fairyhouse last month.

It didn’t take long for any question whether Sir Gino would be aimed at the Champion Hurdle or taking the chasing path. Constitution Hill came right in the days leading up to Christmas when it was decided he would try for a third consecutive Christmas Hurdle. Waiting to destroy his unbeaten record was the 2023 Triumph Hurdle winner Lossiemouth, hard trained after a facile two-and-a-half-mile win over smart Teahupoo this month.

The French-bred mare came to Kempton with nine wins and a dreadfully unlucky 2nd in her first season on her card. Easy winner of both mares’ races at the Cheltenham and Punchestown Festivals, the latter at 2/11, she would be a stern test for the returning champion.

While Constitution Hill raced fluently close behind recent Greatwood Hurdle winner Burdett Road in the four-runner race, Paul Townend was content to allow Lossiemouth to sit a few lengths behind - perhaps he just couldn't go the speed of his rival. At no time did Constitution Hill look in danger.

De Boinville urged – no more - Constitution Hill to the front before the last flight at which Burdett Road made a horrible mistake and Lossiemouth wasn’t fluent either, but still the margin of two-and-a-half lengths didn’t reflect the winner’s superiority. At the same time, Lossiemouth’s own exceptional ability was not dimmed on a track where stamina, her main asset, wasn’t the prime requirement on the day.

But for me, the Christmas race of races was the Wayward Lad Novices' Chase on Friday. Here Sir Gino was unhesitatingly pitted against possibly the biggest talking-horse ever to come out of Ireland since Arkle - and “Himself” was racing more than 60 years ago!

As Ballyburn went through his season as a novice hurdler last winter, the publicity machine, in some degree initiated and fuelled by those closest to him and greedily latched on to by the media, earned him the status in some parts as “unbeatable”.

True he made mincemeat – appropriate for this time of year? - of the opposition at Cheltenham in the 2m5f Gallagher Novices' Hurdle, but two-thirds of the opposition, and handsome place prizemoney collectors, were from the Mullins stable. Two UK upstarts, one each for Ben Pauling, last of six to finish, and Nicky Henderson, pulled up, made this an open goal for the favourite.

An even easier victory came at Punchestown, and he returned to the same track for a debut win over fences last month.

So when they lined up on Friday at Kempton, it was a slight surprise to me that Sir Gino was comfortably preferred in the market in a race where again, as in the Christmas Hurdle, it featured two no-hopers in a field of four.

Ballyburn, with the experience and the need to make it a gallop over the two miles, was sent to the front by Paul Townend, but Sir Gino, all the way round, looked the more assured jumper and it was no surprise when he was allowed to take the lead going to three out. The last trio of Pendil-like leaps – look him up if you cannot remember the 1970’s – took him clear and the margin of seven and a half lengths again was no accurate reflection of their relative performances.

So once more Nicky Henderson has trumped everything that could possibly have been thrown at him. The noisy Ballyburn adherents will be wishing their trainer had kept him for one of the multitude of Grade 1 options that litter the four days of Leopardstown and even the odd one at Limerick over their joint Christmas programme.

The two Kempton defeats did signal more than a hiccup for Mullins. On Friday, in all he had 32 runners and, while it’s fair to say there were a few outsiders among them, it must have been a rare if not unprecedented experience for him to come home from Kempton in the knowledge that only one of the 32 had been victorious. That came in a chase at Limerick where two horses in front of his runner fell independently, allowing his to come through to win.

I think already we must regard Sir Gino as the next Altior. Altior won the Wayward Lad during 14 consecutive chase wins a decade ago. But Sir Gino’s achievement should be considered in the light that Altior’s win at 1/9 came on his third start over fences. Of course he won the Arkle. Of course, so will Sir Gino, unless Constitution Hill has any reason to miss the attempt at recapturing the Champion Hurdle from Mullins' State Man (and Elliott's Brighterdaysahead, who blitzed State Man yesterday), then no doubt he’ll go there and win that. See if you can back him for that, non-runner no bet!

- TS

Roving Reports: “Are you sure?”

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It’s 6.50am on Saturday morning, and the alarm has just bleeped its way through the first of three wake-up calls (copyright D. Thompson), writes David Massey. The other two, which will come at 6.55 and 7am, signify the start of what has become known among jumps fans as Trials Day, but the good lady is having her own trials at the moment, torn between wanting to come for a day at the races with me, and the immediate warmth and comfort of a lie-in. 

“Eh, what, errrr, what?” is the reply I get when I ask if she’s tagging along. Unsure of whether this is a yes, no or maybe, I give her another five minutes to make up her mind before she decides that yes, she’s coming along for the entertainment. I know this means I’ll be driving home tonight in silence, as her falling asleep on the way home is now the nap of the day. Quite literally. 

We’re out of the house for eight, as I have to be there for around ten due to working on the rails today. It’s the usual stop-off at the Maccies two miles from our house for breakfast and it’s the usual muck-up with the order too, as somehow they manage to put cheese on both of our bacon rolls. Now I like cheese, and I like bacon, a lot, but just not together. One of these times, they’ll get the order right. (Wrong coffees last time. More trials…) 

So, after an early start and the wrong food order, you can imagine the good lady is already in a cracking mood. I turn the radio up, which seems like a good idea. 

Driving down, we can see how the floods have receded around the Worcester area. Last time we drove this way the Avon had flooded badly, and the fields were lakes, but most of it, all bar a bit just before Strensham where there was still some low-lying water, has disappeared. Amazing how quick the ground has recovered. 

The morning call comes in from my writing colleague Rory Delargy as I drive down. Rory, as many of you will know, is working in Riyadh half the time at present. At the weekend he flies into Dublin to do the PP Podcast on a Monday with Ruby Walsh before flying back. He’s spent more miles in the air than your average Arctic Tern this winter. 

He’s also in the bad books of the good lady after forgetting the time difference between Riyadh and Nottingham the other morning, and ringing me at precisely 5.56am. I know this, because the good lady looked at her alarm clock before asking the not unreasonable question “who the f**k is ringing you at 5.56am?” I saw it was Rory, immediately realised what he’d done, and declined the call. He called back at 5.58am, which only made a bad situation worse.  

We make good time and are there for just before ten, which means I get time to say a few hellos to some fellow press and photographers. “Going to Yarmouth this year?” asks one of the snappers. He knows full well I’m not, which is why he keeps asking every time he sees me. I tell him I’m having a badge made that says “NOT GOING TO YARMOUTH” that I can point to every time he asks me. 

Anyway, the pick is made at 10.30 and I’m stood next to Pinno, so it’ll be an afternoon of him asking me questions that all end in the words “Davey Boy.” “Can we get this jolly beat, Davey Boy?” is the first of them. He’s referring to Burdett Road, who was the favourite when he asked, but they flip-flop and Sir Gino then heads the market. It’s normally slow to get going but not today: it’s lively out there, and in comes a grand on Burdett Road at 11-8. That’s followed by a £200 on Sir Gino, and clearly this is a race that’s divided opinion. As it should! We go the right way with Sir Gino and we’re off to a good start. 

The next, though, is not so good. We go 9-2 Ginny’s Destiny near the off, having not taken much for it, and I’m filled in good and proper. Bets are flying in at me, 40s and 50s, a 200 win and a 400 win. I can just about keep up. Two out I think we’ve a chance with Es Perfecto, but by the time the last comes around, it’s game over. A 3k+ payout, which not only hits your float hard, but the line to get paid out is long, and doesn’t help my business for the next. 

Here’s Tracy, one of my favourite punters. A Cheltenham member, she has a fiver on every race and if you followed her blind, you’d not go far wrong. Always cheery and smiling, she has a fiver on Ga Law for the next. A minute later, I take a 300ew at 7s the same horse and when that romps home, that’s my float done. I go and ask the boss for more money. “Try to stop laying winners, that might help.” I’ll write that down, might come in handy. 

Capodanno is a better result for us and stops the rot, but now it’s Jonbon time. I’m betting with and without the jolly, and there’s plenty want to back Nube Negra without the favourite at 4-1. I do NOT take an each-way bet on Jonbon - a first - but one lady wants £2 on him just so she can say she backed a winner. I don’t need to tell you how that went. 

I have a group of young lads and lasses not far in front of me at the off. Whilst Jonbon runs, they’re all taking Insta photos of one another with the track behind them. None of them has any interest in what's going on. When Jonbon clouts four out and raises a big “wooooh” from the crowd, it barely registers with them. Does it depress me? I’m afraid it does. 

Elixir De Nutz is all but a skinner. One person has had a tenner with me, and that’s it. When he picks his money up and informs me he actually backed the wrong horse… I tell him that, as he’s told me this information, I get to keep the winnings. For a split second I think he believed me. 

The flip side of a skinner, particularly when you’ve another odds-on jolly in the next, is that it kills business off. We’re all stood around looking at one another for much of the next half-hour. I go off to fetch some chocolate which I intend sharing with Joanne, three doors down from me, working for Ken Howells. We often share biscuits and cakes and the like and when I return, she’s deep in thought counting money. I just stand there, holding the Mars Bar, and she bursts out laughing. “What are you laughing at?” I ask. “Because I know what’s coming, and I’m trying to concentrate!” she says, and I split the Mars in half. She doesn’t refuse. 

The crowd want Paisley Park to win, of course they do, and he nearly gets up in the Cleeve. We’re glad he didn’t, but I think we’re the only ones that are. That’s saved another long payout queue. Before the last I see my good friend and fellow Derby County supporter James, who informs me the Rams are one down. And his punting has gone badly. I also know he’s all-in on the Ravens to win the Superbowl. I’m guessing he’s had better weekends. Always tomorrow. 

Gidleigh Park is actually a fair result in the last. Business picked up for it but they all wanted Antrim Coast and Johnnywho, both of whom are well beat. 

And finally, the nap gets beat, as the good lady remains wide awake for the whole of the car journey home. Derby turn it around to win 2-1. And I've backed the first winner at Kempton. The journey home always seems shorter when you’ve had a winner. Scientific fact. 

Next stop, well, maybe Sandown this weekend. See you there. Probably. 

- DM

Monday Musings: Trials and a Tribulation

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In many ways, Trials Day at Cheltenham 2024 did exactly what it said on the tin, writes Tony Stafford. But for one trainer, a successful, remunerative trial early in the afternoon had become a gut-wrenching tribulation half an hour later. Jamie Snowden had hardly finished celebrating Ga Law’s sparkling return to his Paddy Power Gold Cup winning form from December 2022, when his other stable star Datsalrightgino was stricken down with a fatal fall at the ninth fence of the immediately following Cotswold Chase.

I suppose plenty of our handlers can be described as target trainers, but the ex-Army man Snowden fits that description to a tee. Both his best horses had last raced on another major day, Newbury’s Coral Gold Cup meeting early in December, each going to post for the top race with uncertainty about whether they would stay the three miles, two furlongs at the headlong gallop the former Hennessy Gold Cup routinely becomes.

Both seven-year-olds (the ideal age for that race over more than half a century) at the time, Ga Law had been up with the pace until early in the straight second time round but faded and was thus brought back to 2m4f, the distance of his Paddy Power win.

This race carried less prizemoney, but £56k was decent enough. Like the slightly richer at £70k Cotswold Chase which followed, Paddy Power was again the sponsor, the handicap offering the nod to the firm’s Cheltenham Countdown Podcast.

In the Coral Gold Cup, Datsalrightgino definitively proved his stamina with a late-running effort under Gavin Sheehan. No doubt everyone was happy enough as the partnership sat at the rear of the small field on Saturday, anticipating a similar run through to Newbury’s. Sadly, though, in the manner of sound jumpers that had previously never fallen, his lapse proved fatal.

Over the years, a win or place in the Hennessy often signalled future stardom. Most glaringly, the 1992 runner-up Jodami, carried only 10st2lb yet won the Cheltenham Gold Cup the following March. The future had seemed to open with endless possibilities for Snowden and Datsalrightgino, who won the race under 5lb more and quite easily too.

That feast or famine setback was typical of racing in general and jump racing in particular. It came at a time when Snowden had been in a great run, winning a novice hurdle at Catterick with a potential Boodles Handicap Hurdle contender on Thursday and the Grand Military Gold Cup at Sandown on Friday with his stable newcomer Farceur Du Large.

A race he won as a rider four times, the Grand Military had eluded him until now but this ex-Irish 10-year-old who had achieved a great deal for Noel Meade until losing his form, admittedly in major handicaps over the past year, had slipped down to a rating of 130, the upper limit for the military race.

So, while not a handicap, but almost (apart from females) a level weights affair, it has become a nice target for horses like Farceur Du Large, that can meet vastly inferior opposition on much more favourable terms – not that his 11/1 starting price reflected his history or the fact that Jamie would have been ultra-keen to win it.

There were Festival hints throughout the weekend, including the hitherto invisible juvenile champion hurdler of 2022-3, Lossiemouth. Willie Mullins finally took the wraps off her in the Grade 2 Unibet Hurdle and the Triumph Hurdle winner from last March and then slightly less overwhelmingly superior at Punchestown in April, metaphorically laughed at Love Envoi to win by just over nine lengths.

Speculation naturally followed as to whether she would be offered up alongside older stable-companion State Man as opposition to Constitution Hill. The reigning champ missed Saturday’s race just as he had the re-scheduled Fighting Fifth at Sandown last month, this time for a slight training issue rather than the fear of too-testing ground.

In that race, Love Envoi had been a slightly lesser distance behind Not So Sleepy, as Lossiemouth on Saturday, but really it could have been a fair bit more. Hughie Morrison’s old Timer Not So Sleepy has put together an exceptional hurdles record over the years, often spectacularly so.

Lossiemouth was quoted as a 10/1 shot in Champion Hurdle betting, behind only last year’s one-two, State Man being at around 9/2 and Constitution Hill, naturally odds-on. If Mullins decides to go the mares’ route, Lossiemouth is similarly odds on to join six-time winner of the race Quevega.  It’s hard to call it a substitute for the biggest prize. Admittedly, Honeysuckle stepped across to it last March to avoid Nicky Henderson’s emerging star rather than attempt to complete her personal hat-trick. I think she earned that little bit of latitude and understanding for her emotional farewell to the track.

In 2022, Marie’s Rock was a surprise 18/1 winner of the mares’ race for Nicky Henderson. Amazingly, she started joint-favourite at 9/4 with Honeysuckle for last year’s race when equally surprisingly she could manage only 7th of 9. There’s no sign to suggest the nine-year-old has any less talent than before as she showed in the feature race at Doncaster yesterday, the Warfield Mares Hurdle, Grade 2.

There, our old friend Coquelicot shared the pace for much of the way but, in the straight, class told and she had to be content with fourth place and just short of 2.5k for geegez.co.uk and Anthony Honeyball. It looked for a few strides that Marie’s Rock was about to be swamped for pace by You Wear It Well, winner of last year’s Mares’ Novice Hurdle at the Festival and attempting to bring a little joy to the Jamie Snowden camp.

Her stamina was unproven before the race, but now having got close to the Henderson mare, she will have more opportunities going forward. Dropping back to 2m4f at the Festival is a given for her and equally the winner, who showed just that little too much power for her on the demanding Doncaster run-in

The Gold Cup picture didn’t really look any clearer after Saturday. With Datsalrightgino not concerned in the finish, there was a Willie Mullins winner in Capodanno, but he is officially rated 21lb inferior to reigning champ Galopin Des Champs. Capodanno will possibly aim at the shorter Ryanair Chase for the Mullins stable, but there will be several ahead of him in the pecking order even for that race.

The latest episode in the on-going tussle between staying hurdlers Paisley Park, Dashel Drasher and Champ came in the Cleeve Hurdle. All three were in with a chance on the run-in at the end of the three miles and they finished in that order in second, fourth and fifth behind Noble Yeats, the 2022 Grand National winner.

Still only a nine-year-old, there’s no reason why he shouldn’t make a winning return to Aintree after his bold show under a massive weight last year and maybe stop off on the way in the Stayers Hurdle or even the Gold Cup as he did last year.

The excitement building that second-season trainer James Owen may have a potential Festival winner in his care will have cooled after Burdett Road was well beaten by market rival Sir Gino in the JCB Triumph Trial. Ten lengths was the margin about a horse that was pinched by Nicky Henderson from under the noses of the Mullins buying team (and other Irish connections, too) after it won a juvenile race in April last year at Auteuil. It’s easy to forget just how good Nicky is with juveniles and in the Triumph Hurdle, his seven wins in the race being a record.

 - TS