Tag Archive for: sovereignty

Monday Musings: Sovereignty Looks The Real Deal

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This is the time of year when we like to see Derby form franked as we move into the lucrative end-of-season international racing action around the world, writes Tony Stafford. Initially, we didn’t and then gloriously at Saratoga on Saturday night, we did.

There were suggestions that Lambourn’s Derby win had been in some ways fortunate. He was very much the second pick for Aidan O’Brien, Ryan Moore favouring Delacroix, who found himself well behind the all-the-way winner. Then the latter’s subsequent electric finish to catch Ombudsman in the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown muddied the waters a little further.

Both colts went to York last week, Lambourn on the back of a second Derby triumph, in the Irish version at the Curragh which was a little underwhelming – but he won, and he was the chosen one in York’s Great Voltigeur Stakes.

Delacroix was pitched in against Ombudsman once more in the Juddmonte International and in a race that took a lot of watching with his pacemaker Birr Castle at one time seemingly in an unassailable lead under Rab Havlin, before he ran partly out of steam.

You have to say “partly” as he was still good enough to be third at a price of 150/1 – thank you M Fabre, say Godolphin and the Gosdens. The winner earned £748k; the second £283k and Birr Castle swelled the Godolphin coffers by a further 141 grand. I bet Havlin has never earned so much for finishing as far back as third on a 150/1 shot.

Once you get into a stream of consciousness, such as events on that first of four days at York, you (well anyway, I) go into sidetrack mood.

Godolphin must be happy with the progress of Ombudsman, but the international operation must be even happier in the knowledge that almost certainly they own the best dirt horse in the world.

For much of the year their Sovereignty, trained by the vastly experienced Bill Mott, and the Michael McCarthy-handled Journalism have dominated affairs among the classic generation. They finished one-two in Sovereignty’s favour in both the Kentucky Derby at Churchill Downs in May and again in the same order in the Belmont Stakes, third leg of the Triple Crown run over the shorter than usual 1m2f at Saratoga. The track’s tighter configuration doesn’t allow for the 1m4f at Belmont Park which has been under reconstruction.

The margin between them doubled from one and a half to three lengths, while Journalism stepped in for leg two, the Preakness run at Pimlico, Maryland in between, winning that race comfortably. Additionally, he can also lay claim – horses do, you know! – this year to the San Felipe and Santa Anita Derby in California and since the Triple Crown races, picked up the prestigious Haskell at Monmouth Park in July, where he pulled victory from defeat with a flying late run.

So over to you, Sovereignty. Mott departed from the sequence of Grade 1 or Classic races by picking up the Grade 2 Jim Dandy early in the Saratoga meet, but then upped him in grade for the Travers, known as the midsummer 3yo championship for the colts.

Only a quartet took on the 30/100 favourite, but one of them, Magnitude, next best at 18/5, came into the race with interesting credentials. He had won the well-regarded Risen Star at the Fair Grounds in February collecting a $240k prize for trainer Steve Asmussen and one-time North of England jockey Ben Curtis.

The team were reunited when Magnitude went on to win a turf race at Prairie Meadows racecourse back from a lengthy break in July and here was running for $660k in the Travers Stakes.

Curtis set the pace and, coming to the far turn, he was still challenging at the front with eventual runner-up Bracket Buster (Luis Saez), who had been fourth to Journalism in the Haskell.

On their outside around the far turn, Junior Alvarado brought the favourite alongside and for a half-furlong or so, Victoria Oliver’s colt looked to be holding his own. Then the turbo kicked in, Sovereignty quickly drawing clear, and in the last furlong he put ten lengths’ daylight to his closest pursuer even as his jockey eased up in the final strides.

What of Magnitude, winner by nine lengths in each of his two previous races? He was another eleven lengths further back, his bubble well and truly pricked. Ben wouldn’t have been too fussed, the cumulative third prize being a handy $120k.

In his last full season in the UK two years ago, Ben Curtis rode a level 100 winners from 677 rides. The aggregate stakes earnings for his mounts’ efforts were £1,339,549.

The last three runs from Magnitude alone have worked out at not far short of half a million dollars, so without being too pedantic about exchange rates, that’s around a quarter of what his efforts on those 677 rides brought. Indeed, Equibase informs us that Curtis has 2025 earnings to date of $6,568,478 from his rides! And that’s before factoring in all the travel up and down the country and early mornings on the gallops here in Blighty.

Working in the US seems to be just the job for Frankie Dettori (a ‘meagre’ $3,552,180 this year from his roughly half as many mounts) and in a much quieter way, it’s proven ideal for the very capable Ben who at 35 is two decades younger than the former multiple UK champion and is going to make plenty of bank for the rest of his career.

Sovereignty’s superiority on Saturday was overwhelming and he now goes to the Breeders‘ Cup Classic on November 1 as the guaranteed favourite. With prize money as lucrative as it is, there’s no reason why Journalism shouldn’t be there in the vain hope Sovereignty has an off day, and there’s still terrific purses for the places. Last year’s one-two, Sierra Leone and Fierceness, have stayed in training, their connections energised by the thought of £2,866,000 to the winner.

My belief is that the younger pair will take centre stage with Sovereignty looking the best we’ve seen since the 2022 winner Flightline.

After the Wednesday Knavesmire reversals, the Coolmore/Aidan O’Brien week did get much better when the Epsom and Irish Oaks heroine Minnie Hauk comfortably won the Yorkshire version by three and a half lengths from her main market rival, the four-year-old Estrange; her season is putting her potentially in Enable territory.

With big race wins for the Gosden father and son team, the prizemoney margin between their stable and O’Brien has shrunk to not much more than £500k. Creeping up on the inside is Andrew Balding, whose 142 wins this year in the UK is almost double the Gosdens’ number.

Balding’s £5,244,464 tally includes victory in the initial Group 1 running of the Sky Bet Stakes at York on Saturday with Never So Brave, and Jonquil kept up the pressure with success in yesterday’s Group 2 feature at Goodwood.

All three stables have more than 200 horses, but Balding is definitely on the march and I wouldn’t be surprised if he came through to take the pot. I reckon the other contenders will need to have a great Champions Day in October to stave him off.

  • TS

Sovereignty makes it a Classic double in Belmont Stakes

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Kentucky Derby hero Sovereignty got the better of his old rival Journalism when running out a brilliant winner of the Belmont Stakes at Saratoga.

The Bill Mott-trained Sovereignty provided the Godolphin operation with a first taste of Kentucky Derby glory at Churchill Downs on the first Saturday in May, beating Michael McCarthy’s hot favourite Journalism into second place.

With connections of Sovereignty resisting the temptation to shoot for Triple Crown immortality and running in Preakness Stakes a fortnight later, Journalism took full advantage with a narrow success at Pimlico, setting up a tantalising rematch at Saratoga.

Journalism was the first of the big two to commit for home, quickening to the lead off the final bend under Umberto Rispoli, but Sovereignty and Junior Alvarado joined him entering the final furlong before pulling three lengths clear to confirm his status as America’s star three-year-old colt.

Speaking on the Godolphin website, Mott said: “We had a repeat of the Derby – the first three finishers in the Derby finished one-two-three here – and the form is holding up. They are three really good horses and I’m glad that Sovereignty was able to come back and put in a race like he did in the Derby.

“If we hadn’t won today, we would have taken a lot of criticism for missing the Preakness, but it turned out good. Sometimes, you make the right decision and a lot of times you make the wrong ones. Today, it really worked out well.”

Michael Banahan, director of bloodstock for Godolphin USA, said: “It’s the most fantastic feeling in the world. Sovereignty was trained to the minute by Bill and his team to come here off a five-week rest.

“We knew that he was a good horse going into the Kentucky Derby and he showed it that day. To come back here and show it again, and beat a really, really good horse in Journalism, it was a fantastic result for us.

“It’s fantastic to win two legs of the Triple Crown. We are very, very happy with doing it – coming here after the Derby was the plan and it teed up a really good race, with the Derby winner and the Preakness winner having a showdown in the Belmont.”

Considering plans for the rest of the year, Banahan added: “There are races down the road that we would really like to win – the Travers is very special. We’ve won it before, but I don’t think Bill has, so it would be great for him to do that.

“It would be great, if the horse is healthy and well, to try to get to Del Mar for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. It’s a race that we have run in several times without having the opportunity to win yet.”

The Jamie Osborne-trained Heart Of Honor represented British hopes but he could finish only sixth under Saffie Osborne.

Monday Musings: A Classic Weekend for Godolphin

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All those years ago when Sheikh Mohammed came across to the UK for the first time intent on buying a few racehorses, I doubt it would have entered his mind how his involvement in the worldwide racing industry would develop, writes Tony Stafford. More so, that in 2025, with himself nowadays a rare visitor to this country, he could ever have a UK/US quadruple big-race triumph over one weekend as he just did.

On Friday, he won the Kentucky Oaks, for three-year-old fillies at Churchill Downs; on Saturday the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket and the Kentucky Derby at Churchill; and yesterday the 1,000 Guineas back at HQ.

Equally, I doubt whether it even occurred to him that almost half a century on, he would have progressed from the number three of four horse-racing mad sons of the Dubai Ruler Sheikh Rashid. But first, his eldest brother Sheikh Maktoum died, and he had already supplanted next-in-line (by mutual agreement we believe) the more recently deceased Sheikh Hamdan, to become the Emirate’s undisputed boss.

The racing set-up he initially organised had as its principal advisors Robert Acton, John Ferguson and Simon Crisford. The horses were in top UK stables, such as (Sir) Henry Cecil, who trained Oh So Sharp to the filly equivalent of the Triple Crown (1,000 Guineas, Oaks and St Leger) in 1985, a full 40 years ago. The last colt’s Triple Crown came from Vincent O’Brien’s Nijinsky eight years earlier.

It was around the time of Oh So Sharp when I experienced my close and personal moment in a car driven by the late Richard Casey, a superb jumps trainer but at the time the man who used to prepare the (Sir) Michael Stoute horses before they went into training.

John Leat was then the Sheikh’s inseparable (in the UK) personal assistant. He and I were with the other three gentlemen while we two conducted an impromptu interview in Richard’s car at Dullingham near Newmarket. The one phrase I remember from the conversation was, “People expect to build a breeding operation in five to ten years. I’m not sure you could do it in less than 30!”

For years, the development was patchy, for all the good horses they raced, often bought by Acton and Stroud, later by Ferguson. Acton and Stroud moved aside in a significant shake-up as, much later, did Ferguson, while Crisford turned to training with great success, now in concert with son Ed.

Now though, Stroud and another of the Sheikh’s former trainers, David Loder, is back at the helm of buying at auction while Simon Crisford is never too far away from the deliberations, so much so that he maintains a big satellite winter team in Dubai along with his powerful Newmarket yard.

Of course, the advent of Godolphin at around the turn of the century with local Dubaian Saeed bin Suroor taking centre stage coincided with a big explosion of success. Even when the very popular Saeed was seemingly demoted to a secondary role with the emergence of Mahmood al Zarooni, he kept smiling and continued to be the polite, readily accessible man he remains today.

I was pleased that in yesterday’s 1,000 Guineas, when interviewed beforehand, bin Suroor reckoned his filly Elwateen, a once raced 22/1 shot running for the first time on grass, would go well. She finished fourth and, considering her inexperience, the future looks bright.

The al Zarooni years ended abruptly with the finding of non-permitted substances in several of his horses. His Encke, which won the St Leger in 2012 and thereby denied the Aidan O’Brien-trained Camelot the Triple Crown after that one had already taken the 2,000 Guineas and Derby, was one of them, but his test ironically was clear when his St Leger sample was later analysed.

Al Zarooni’s banishment was the opening that led to Charlie Appleby’s promotion, and how he has taken it with both hands. Ruling Court’s win from the tactically outsmarted runner-up and short-price Gosden-trained favourite Field Of Gold and Kieran Shoemark was followed yesterday with another HQ masterclass by Buick on Desert Flower in the 1,000 Guineas.

In her case, it didn’t take a seven-figure auction bid to secure the daughter of 2,000 Guineas winner Night Of Thunder. She was a homebred and while there was no fluke about the result, the runner-up Flight almost ‘did a Night Of Thunder’, drifting from one side to the other, although contrastingly to Desert Flower’s sire, out to the right to join the main pack rather than the other way round.

I thought for a while she looked to have the race won, so easily did she go past the pacemaker on her wing, but she seemed to get lonely, hence the drift to seek the company of her companions.

Flight is trained by the emerging Ollie Sangster whose other runner, Simmering, stayed on to be third. It looked a very strong field beforehand and there is no reason to believe these fillies will not prove that to be the case time after time as the season progresses.

As I mentioned above, 40 years on from that meeting at Dullingham, a scan through the Charlie Appleby team of 225 reveals that having been sustained for so long in the unequal fight with Coolmore over the past two Galileo-blessed decades, by their champion Dubawi, newer stallions are moving in to help level up the playing field.

Well to the fore in Charlie’s list are former Horse Of The Year Gaiyyath, the top juvenile Pinatubo, Blue Point, and freshman sire Space Blues.

And yet, despite those new ‘home team’ blood lines, Saturday’s convincing winner of the 2,000 Guineas, Ruling Court, was a son of Justify, who stands at Coolmore’s US arm, Ashford stud in Kentucky. He twice eluded the attentions of the Coolmore team at auctions. Sold originally to the ultra-shrewd former jump jockey Norman Williamson for $150k at Keeneland in September 2023, he so impressed the attendees at the Arqana May breeze-up sale the following May that he changed hands for €2,300,000. Nice one Norman!

Scanning through the team, Ruling Court was the sole three-year-old Justify although three more colts by City Of Troy’s sire are among 110 juveniles. Wootton Bassett (300k a pop at Coolmore this year) also illustrates the more pragmatic approach by the present Godolphin management, with six. The first of them to run, Rising Power (€600k at Goffs Orby Book 1 last autumn) made a winning start yesterday at Newmarket, the final leg of an Appleby/Buick treble.

Friday’s Kentucky Oaks heroine, Good Cheer, mirrors Desert Flower as she is also unbeaten, in her case seven from seven, the latest three this year. She was also favourite (7/5) and came wide on the home bend to run past a quartet battling on the lead with extreme ease. Brad Cox has been very patient with her, moving her gradually up the grades. She has been favourite every time, and Friday’s winning margin of two and a quarter lengths was the narrowest, if you can say that about an overwhelming superiority. She too is a homebred, by Medaglia d’Oro.

It was closer in the Kentucky Derby. Sovereignty, a son of 22-year-old stallion Into Mischief, trained by veteran Bill Mott, won by one and a half lengths with a big stretch run to deny the favourite Journalism on a soupy track after heavy rain fell all day. The Coolmore team has made several shrewd in training deals in the US in recent years into careers like Justify’s. Journalism has also been the subject of an arrangement with his present owners to stand him at stud at Ashford when he retires. He has something to put right then over the rest of the season, while nearer to home evidence suggests the Coolmore runners from Ballydoyle seem to be a couple of weeks short of peak.

One that stayed in Ireland this weekend was The Lion In Winter, winner of last year’s seven-furlong Acomb Stakes at York when even-money shot Ruling Court suffered his only defeat in third. He is expected to turn out for the Dante Stakes. His owners will be hoping that the team quickly moves into top speed. Interestingly, The Lion In Winter is the 7/2 favourite for the Betfred Derby with Ruling Court next best at 4/1. More exciting times ahead.

- TS