Tag Archive for: Sophie Leech

Monday Musings: Leech Mad For It

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We’ve just had the two days of the Dublin Racing Festival, and the excitement of the course commentator when he announced that Willie Mullins had just completed a clean sweep of the eight Grade 1 races over the two days, finally sent me to sleep, writes Tony Stafford. More of that later…

Instead, I will start on a very different tack, following up a piece here last summer in which I revealed I had been stunned by the enterprise and success of Sophie and Christian Leech’s small stable near Bourton-on-the-Water in Gloucestershire. They were at it again at Leopardstown on Saturday, with the only English-trained runner on the entire card. There were two yesterday, one finished eighth, the other pulled up.

In the piece I told the tale of an itinerant eight-year-old who had spent time in several of the best stables in the UK and Ireland, but how said gelding, Lucky One, only came to his peak when sent from the Leech yard to compete in very valuable hurdle races in France. He had just picked up €69k in one race and has since finished sixth (for the second time) to France’s best hurdler, Theleme.

I thought I’d start yesterday morning by looking at their team in Horses In Training 2023. Twenty were listed, and I reckon you’d go a long way in any serious horse racing country to find a similar-sized yard where the youngest occupant was a single five-year-old. Seven of the rest, starting at the top were 15, 14 twice, 13, 12 and 11 twice. The 15yo did not run last year but won his last race as a 14-year-old the previous summer. His name? Applesandpierres.

Another five of the newcomers in the total of 18 to run in the UK this jump season are aged 10 or older and Via Dolorosa, now a 13-year-old, won two races and 60k in France last October..

So what, you might ask, would they do when they get a proper horse to train? Sophie gives the credit for travel plans and overseas race planning to husband Christian and son Ed, and they also clearly keep an eye out for talent spotting when the possibility arises.

Not in the way of Mullins, who had secured five of his six runners in Saturday’s Grade 1 juvenile hurdle at Leopardstown, by reputedly paying massive sums privately for the most part for horses that usually have won a single maiden hurdle. The odd exception will have run on the flat in France.

The Leech collective eye settled on a 2m1.5 furlong claiming chase for four-year-olds at Auteuil in early October. The horse in question, Madara, a son of State Man’s sire Doctor Dino, had already won two steeplechases either side of his fourth birthday, when a 4/1 shot and a faller in a €60k to the winner Grade 3 race at Compiegne.

At the same time, his trainer David Cottin, previously a multiple French champion jumps jockey, son of a great trainer and now making an incredibly successful second career, had lost his licence. Four of his horses, including Madara, were involved in having had banned substances administered. Madara found his way to Yannick Fouin’s stable and, second time out, he was entered for the claimer.

He finished a neck second to a horse called Romarius and Sophie claimed him, paying €25,555, a hefty increase on the nominal 18k he was in to be claimed for. A bit like it used to be here 40 years ago.

Switched to Bourton, with chase wins already in his locker, the Leech’s didn’t waste time sending him over fences. His form was good enough for a 66 jumps rating, equating to 145 over here. The starting point for the first of three runs in late October (just 20 days after the claim), November and December was outlined.

Unseated and then sixth in the first pair, he then showed terrific speed to run away from his opponents in a 20k chase at Cheltenham’s December meeting. I can’t remember many four-year-olds winning handicap chases at Cheltenham. After that, the plan was laid to run in the €59k to the winner Ryanair Handicap Chase (Listed) over 2m1f.

French-based James Reveley was booked and, watching the race, this now five-year-old was cantering along easily in the front five on the inside rail all the way round. You could see James never had a problem and even though there were four in a line coming to the final fence, he showed the suggestion of a sprinter’s pace to surge around five lengths clear before James eased him markedly at the finish.

I know to all intents and purposes Madara can be regarded as a French horse even now, despite four runs for his new connections, and that French jumping-bred horses start practising over small obstacles even as early as yearlings. But this hard-working team is far from being the only trainers with that type of raw material.

I had a quick look down the races run over fences at the three UK cards on Saturday along with Leopardstown and then Musselburgh and the Dublin course once more yesterday.

In all 128 horses ran in chases at Wetherby, Sandown, Musselburgh and Leopardstown over the two days and only one other five-year-old, apart from Madara, ran. That was a horse trained in Ireland, running at Musselburgh on Saturday. He finished last of five to get round.

After Saturday’s race there was plenty of talk between connections about which Cheltenham Festival race they would be going for. Sophie and Chris (and of course their oh so happy owners, stable stalwart Brian Drew and friends) don’t look further than the Grand Annual. He’ll win it pulling a cart!

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4/1 about an eight-timer – how exciting!

I’m sure bookmakers would have been inundated with multiple bets over the two days’ action, usually on singly-named horses in each leg. Not many of those will have got past the first race. Willie always helps the enemy with multiple runners doing their absolute best. The first three wins on day one all went to second or even third choices for the yard each ridden by Danny Mullins rather than Paul Townend who was on the stable first-choices.

I thought it would be salutary to try to work out the true combined odds for his runners in each race, or somewhere near, so here goes. On Saturday the first race comes out at 2/7, the even-money favourite beaten by the great man’s 16/1 no-hoper; race two, six juveniles lined up, five bought from France in the manner of Lossiemouth last year and all either having a first or second run for Willie, the 7/2 second-best beat the 9/4 favourite. The combined odds of the six comes out at 92%, so say 1/12; In the one race of the eight where Mullins didn’t have the favourite, Barry Connell’s unbeaten long odds-on shot ran a stinker, his trio including the 6/1 winner total 40%, so 6/4; and finally In the Irish Gold Cup, Galopin Des Champs (1/3) and one other made up to a 2/9 chance.

Yesterday opened with a Mullins match, the wrong one won; the wonderful Ballyburn, owned by David Manasseh and Ronnie Bartlett, enjoyed a seven-length Sunday stroll, despite four more Mullins beasts including Ebor winner Absurde. The winner was 10/11, the quintet combined at 1/3. Next, El Fabiolo (4/11) had three stablemates among four opponents. The odds amounted to 104%, so another no bet. Finally in the Champion Hurdle, State Man (2/5) plus two of the other three, came out at 95%, so 1/20.

Buoyed by the 6/4 because of the eclipse of Marine Nationale in the novice chase on Saturday, the other five only represent around 2/1. Even then, would you have bet against it? Great horses admittedly, and Mr Mullins will have added – hey let’s have a reckon up! I’ve had a quick scan and make it his 30 prize-earning runners made a combined €1,190,00. Wonder how much it cost just to buy the six juveniles that represented him on Saturday?

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At a much more realistic end of the business I was delighted for Fionn McSharry, who trains in West Yorkshire, not far from Leeds, home of Keith Walton, her mentor. Keith is a form student, boxing coach, former pro fighter and conditioner of many northern jockeys, and was also thrilled when Fionn’s Berkshire Phantom won at Wolverhampton. The four-year-old, sourced from the HIT sales from the Andrew Balding yard for 28k last October, came good with an easy win and It won’t be his last victory. I’m equally sure that for the dedicated Fionn, it will be the first of many.

Monday Musings: A Weekend in France

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It could only happen in France, writes Tony Stafford. There were 15 runners in the Grade 1 Grande Course de Haies d’Auteuil on Saturday and despite seven from Ireland, four Willie and one Emmet Mullins, a dual Cheltenham Stayers Hurdle winner (Flooring Porter) for Gavin Cromwell, and last month’s impressive Sandown Grade 2 chase winner Hewick from Shark Hanlon, the French turfistes bet as though only one horse mattered.

Until a few weeks ago there would have been a big two, but over recent meetings, Theleme, Saturday’s 6/4 favourite trained by Arnaud Chaille-Chaille, so good a trainer they named him twice, had taken control. Last year, Hermes Baie had easily won the then eight-runner renewal by seven lengths from Mullins’ first string of three, Klassical Dream, who was coming on from winning at Punchestown, a feat he repeated late last month.

In another replica, while just preferred in the market to his conqueror, Klassical Dream was again seven lengths adrift of Hermes Baie, as that six-year-old got within a couple of lengths of his contemporary Theleme, a well beaten fourth last time. Still, third will have done quite nicely for Joanne Coleman and family and Mr and Mrs Mark Smith, not only enjoying a weekend in the French capital but also glorying in West Ham United’s Europa Conference League exploits. The bubbles surely will have been flowing and blowing!

This season, apart from an aberration when Goa Lil, a 7yo trained by Tom George’s son Noel, but running in the colours of Nigel Twiston-Davies, was allowed too long a lead and supplied an 18/1 shock against the long odds-on Theleme - Nige’s horse pulled up on Saturday – it’s been one way traffic.

The unusual thing I referred to at the start of the piece was the fact that in each of Theleme’s last dozen races over the past 20 months, Hermes Gaie has been among the opposition.  For their initial five encounters, Francois Nicolle’s charge had been on top, winning four of those races, but the tide has turned emphatically and Theleme is now unequivocally the master.

A few weeks ago, I wrote a piece about a one-time Willie Mullins horse, not to mention his initial trainer, Guillaume Macaire, and subsequent not insubstantial handlers, Paul Nicholls and Dan Skelton. He’s a discard from Sullivan Racing and hardly the type to make a living out of racing in France, the land of his birth, you would think.

But over the past 18 months, from her base in Westbury-on-Severn, Gloucestershire, Sophie Leech and her husband Christian have been loading up the horsebox for the eight-hour trip to the Paris tracks to campaign said Lucky One, with spectacular form and financial results for owner Ben Halsall.

Last month, the eight-year-old won more than 50k in a race over 2m5f at France’s principal jumps track, and afterwards the team reasoned he was unexposed at the extended 3m1f of the Grande Course, so the foolhardy – it seemed to others – plan was hatched.

A glimpse at his UK rating of 114 – probably unrealistic as his last ten runs (all of them in fact since being bought out of the Skelton yard) – have been in France. He was raised to an exchange equivalent of 129 (from 120) for the last win.

What is as equally remarkable as Lucky One’s achievements is the Leech race planning of his programme. He has taken up and raced in eight of his last ten entries.

Surely, though, he would struggle in such company? Well, no, in the event he ran on from the rear into sixth, admittedly behind Irish trio Klassical Dream, Hewick, and Emmet Mullins’s lightly-raced Feronily, all of those recent Grade 1 scorers. But, in turn, he was well clear of Haut En Couleurs, Willie’s 146-rated hurdler and 10lb higher chaser, in 8th place; 156-rated Flooring Porter (9th), with Willie’s remaining pair Asterion Forlonge (155 hurdles, 162 chase) 10th and Kilcruit (145 and 160 chase) 11th.

Christian Leech said they were all thrilled at the result and he and Sophie are looking forward to exploiting the opportunities in what they regard as their “home” programme book next season. In the meantime, they had another nice result at Compiegne last week when Alnadam, a 42/1 shot, picked up 7k for his fourth in a Listed hurdle.

Eight lengths behind in fifth was the Harry Fry trained Might I, a 3/1 shot. Rated 20lb above the Leech horse in the UK ratings, but conceding only 2lb, he was easily beaten off. Alnadam can look forward to some more trips under the Channel in the coming weeks and months.

If Willie Mullins was pained at having four unsuccessful darts at the big hurdle, the gloom would have intensified yesterday when the well-publicised plan to return with last year’s third Franco De Port for the Grand Steeple Chase de Paris proved in vain as he trailed home eighth of 18.

The master trainer had planned out his season minutely, with three previous trips across to Paris along with a date in the Cheltenham Cross Country when he ran third to Gordon Elliott’s smart pair Delta Work and Galvin, but to no avail.

There were three UK connections faring rather better. Lord Daresbury, who in his days as Peter Greenall rode many good hunter chasers under the guidance of a master trainer of an earlier era, the irrepressible Arthur Stephenson, four decades ago. His lordship is the principal owner of the big race favourite Gex, who was backed down to a very short 9/5 before the off.

Most of the way it seemed inevitable that he would win but he was pestered out of it on the run-in by a determined Johnny Charron on Rosario Baron, trained by Daniela Mele. Fourth were two familiar names, Nick Littmoden and Jack Quinlan, trainer and rider of Imperil, who collected £71k.

The seven-year-old was bought originally from France as a juvenile and I was at Fakenham on New Year’s Day in 2020 when the son of No Risk At All made his Littmoden debut and cantered away with the 2nd division of the novice hurdle, beating a 40/1 shot trained by the late Shaun Keightley.

I was there to see Waterproof win the first division of that race for Keightley in the colours of Raymond Tooth. Jack Quinlan, pretty much the only jump jockey of any seniority in most of the past decade to be based in racing’s HQ, had done all the schooling on Waterproof and ridden him in his previous starts, but was unavailable for Fakenham when he could also have ridden Imperil.

My connection with Jack’s father Noel goes back a long way and probably as far as with Littmoden. In his days around 25 years ago – Nick first took out a licence in 1994 – he trained on the track at Dunstall Park, Wolverhampton. In response to my asking whether he had anything for sale privately, he came up with two hard-working handicappers which were passed on to Kuwaiti brothers who raced on a small private track.

When, after a season, they reported back that between them they had won 15 races (one seven and the other eight), unwisely I passed on the “good news” to their previous trainer and Nick refused to sell them any more! At least, the boys offered me a trip to the wedding of one of them that winter which I was happy to accept.

Sometime after, Nick moved to Newmarket and trained from Julie Cecil’s Southgate Stables in the Hamilton Road after she retired. That’s now the base for Amy Murphy, Jack Quinlan’s principal employer, when her stable was much more jumping oriented. The best days were when Kalashnikov was winning the Betfair Hurdle and other nice races.

Amy herself has done well with mostly Flat runners in France and she is still toying with the idea of making the move to that country permanent to take advantage of the far better prizemoney on a day-to-day basis. A hurdles win there for now 10-year-old Kalashnikov at Auteuil in March brought a win prize of £23k and he was then sixth in another hurdle at Compiegne over 2m3f, won by Rosario Baron, who stepped up 10f and over to fences for yesterday’s triumph

Littmoden, unlike Amy, did go the whole hog; switching with wife Emma in early 2021 to a base at Moulins-les-Metz in Alliers, Central France, 377 km from Paris and just north-west of Lyon. With so many of France’s many racetracks within a few hours’ drive, that has proved an ideal location.

In 25 years’ training over jumps, his best single season’s prizemoney haul in the UK was £29K, although when he had the journalist/professional gambler Nigel Shields as the main owner in the yard, he was adept, with Nigel’s shrewd reading of the programme and form book, at getting many more wins, 80 being the peak in 2002.

In 2021 upon his move, the first season brought 14 wins from 78 runs and yielded €218k; last year 13/168 brought €268k and this year so far eight wins from 51 have added €259k so he is on course for a another much-increased tally. With almost £800k for his owners over just more than two years, this has been a transfer to savour. He operates from two yards, one based at Moulins racecourse housing around 15 horses – no new experience for him! – and the remainder are located nearby at a farm with an 800-metre gallop.

Yesterday’s fourth in the undoubted biggest race of the year over fences in France was one sort of pinnacle but when his career record as a foreign trainer in the country is remembered after he finally retires, Imperil’s success under Jack last month in the race that is known as the French Grand National, but is actually the Prix du President de la Republique, will stand tallest. Jack was along for that ride too, as Imperil beat 16 others in the race over just short of 3m.

While Littmoden was checking his France Galop account to see whether he had beaten last year’s tally, Willie Mullins finally got on the winner’s podium. His filly Gala Marceau, in the Kenny Alexander Honeysuckle colours, picked up her second Grade 1 win, having previously been the beneficiary of stablemate Lossiemouth’s traffic problems at the Dublin Racing Festival in February at Leopardstown.

Otherwise, she had been seeing Lossiemouth’s back end in a second place in the Triumph Hurdle and third at Punchestown, but she bolted up yesterday in the 4yo championship, Grande Course de Haies de Printemps (Spring), slaughtering the much-acclaimed domestic champion Losange Bleu by seven lengths.

Then again, you might say champion of what? Mullins had bought all the potential juvenile stars over the past 18 months and most of them, including Lossiemouth, are still on the upgrade. No doubt Willie and Howard Kirk will have had their notebooks out over the past few weeks, shopping for next season’s stars. And probably still trying to remember where they had heard the name Lucky One!

  • TS

Monday Musings: Route To Gold

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The problem with the international and even domestic racing programme is that when you get older, and appreciably so in my case, it spins ever faster, writes Tony Stafford.

It seems it was only a few months ago that I was looking back at a just concluded UK jumps season and saying that by the time of my next offering, 40 per cent of the UK Classic races will have come and gone. This time round we’ll have had a Coronation too – the second in my lifetime!

Thank goodness we had the Craven meeting to wean us back to flat racing of young, well-bred, and beautifully prepared horses, just in time for the 2000 Guineas on Saturday when Messrs O’Brien Sr., Balding, Appleby, C., and the Gosdens, father and son, will move back into focus.

Saturday at Sandown was a joyous event in many ways with top-class performances through the card, staged on the first spring-like afternoon of the year it seemed. Even if Paul Nicholls was unable to conjure the earnings needed to break the UK trainers’ record for a season, such as Kitty’s Light, giving another boost for Christian Williams as his family tries to cope with his daughter’s illness, and Jonbon, taking another sure upward step as a two-mile chaser with Nicky Henderson, enthused the massive crowd.

It was less of a cliff-hanger though in the normal way of a Nicholls/Martin Pipe or Nicholls/ Henderson last-day tussle and the jockeys’ championship, a third for Brian Hughes, was a one-horse race probably from October.

The identity of the top trainers on its prizemoney, rather than winners, criterion, was pretty much set in stone. Nicholls, Henderson (sneaking into second with a memorable last day double), Dan Skelton and, solely due to his Cheltenham Festival domination, Willie Mullins, predictably led the way.

That Mullins could add £1.72 million in the UK to the more than €7m in Ireland is remarkable. What may be less appreciated is that he sent 88 individual horses over here for the 106 combined runs it needed to earn the big bucks, considering only eight were wins.

As my former associate Derek Hatter always used to say, it’s only different numbers and that applies to everything in life. Racing is certainly a numbers game. The top three UK trainers had respectively 166, 142 and 212 individual horses representing them; fifth-placed Fergal O’Brien saddled 208 individuals on his way to 141 wins and £1.61 million in earnings.

Mullins’ domination of Irish racing – for a while challenged by Gordon Elliott who, though still a factor, in championship terms has been put firmly back in his box – extended to 17 winners over the five days of the recently-concluded Punchestown Festival. His earnings last week alone – €1,783,905 according to my admittedly questionable addition – almost exactly matched his whole UK season’s tally, depending on whose currency rates you use.

The domination of the top four trainers depends entirely on their purchasing power and having a stable full of owners who will pay the ever-increasing prices needed to acquire raw material from the Irish pointing field or the plethora of spring juvenile races in Auteuil and other French tracks.

These are more often of fillies who, like Lossiemouth, the outstanding juvenile of the season and a dual Grade 1 winner (in the Triumph at Cheltenham and again at Punchestown on Saturday) won or ran well on debut thus catching the attention of Harold Kirk, Mullins’ principal French talent scout.

Their shopping trips do not always produce instant gold. One private purchase, a gelding bought after two second places from Guillaume Macaire, the most successful French jumps trainer of the past two decades, illustrates that point. He was acquired on behalf of Sullivan Racing Ltd, whose red colours, previously associated on the flat with Richard Hannon, had become a significant part of the Mullins team.

The horse was called Lucky One, a gelded son of Authorized, the 2007 Derby winner and sire of Tiger Roll. He was no doubt selected as a prospect to rank alongside such as Sullivan’s smart winners Duc De Genievres and Eglantine Du Seuil, among several others.

Incidentally the narrow winner and favourite of that race, Aveiro, trained by Francois Nicolle, was bought on behalf of the Coolmore owners and so far, four years on, hasn’t made it to the track since.

Mullins did get Lucky One to the races, but only once and then a full 14 months after that French race. He finished fourth of 16 in a novice hurdle at Punchestown in February 2020.

The following winter he had moved to Paul Nicholls where he had two wide margin wins in eight starts and by the end of that season was rated 143, so smart. Moved again to Dan Skelton, he struggled with that high mark, and after five runs, was passed on at the Doncaster May sale for £18,000.

The trainer willing to take a chance on a horse that had been originally with a French legend and since had been under the care of three of the four outstanding handers in these isles as the stats show (only Nicky Henderson can plead innocence) was Sophie Leech.

Sophie and husband Christian have a 30-box yard at Westbury-on-Severn, near Gloucester, once occupied by my mate the late David Wintle and owned by another pal Keith Bell. Christian was formerly racecourse manager at Warwick and he and Sophie started training in 2007.

On Saturday at Auteuil, the same Lucky One, a 12/1 shot, who had been nurtured and developed in those prestigious environments for the larger part of his life, won the most valuable jumps race run in France so far this year.

Mme Sophie Leech, as France Galop describes her, picked up the Grand Course de Haies de Printemps, and £70k as near as makes no difference, at Auteuil on Saturday afternoon. By Sunday morning – “We go via Calais and it’s only ten hours”, said Christian, “and he’s already in the field.”

The Leech duo have successfully exploited the system of French jumping which has far fewer handicaps than is the case in the UK. “Older horses, like Lucky One, who might now be struggling in handicaps, have plenty of conditions races available to them. It’s almost as though they are back in novice company, and they are obviously much easier to win. Also, these old boys seem to enjoy the travelling,” he said.

It truly is a route to gold and Christian, still revelling in the enormity of the win, says Sophie has already decided on challenging for the French Champion Hurdle, over just more than three miles, on May 20.

Christian says: “He’s unexposed over further, but the way he kept battling over 2m5f suggests he’ll stay. The company will be hotter, but the top French hurdlers keep beating each other. No doubt Willie Mullins will send over one or two as usual. I wonder how he will feel if Lucky One was to beat him!”

Now though this upwardly mobile couple will be hoping that the 20 horses at present in their yard might be increased because of this amazing success. Their three winning horses, the other two are Demoiselle Kap and John Locke, have earned almost £180k just this year.

“In the UK, as we find with our runners here, the expected return is around 10-15% in our experience. In France, we’ve found you must be hopeless if you can’t at least break even with a jumper.”

Clearly the Leeches – there, I had to say it at least once! – are thinking about applying for a three-month licence for next winter. “We would be based at Cagnes-sur-Mer and that would make that course and Pau, whose season follows, much easier to reach, We have done well down there, race programmes clearly suit our horses. Paris is okay, but getting to the Riviera or to Pau, which is near Spain,is much more difficult,” he said.

Lucky One is the right name for a horse that is helping put this talented double act on the map, not that they have had much attention paid to them by the racing media. “It’s like flogging a dead horse,” says Christian. At least where the racehorses are concerned their training talent clearly has the desired effect, making it pay for their owners and themselves. And rather than flogging dead horses, they are extending their effective racing careers.

- TS