12 minute read
State Of Play
Many “expected” horses won as part of the Willie Mullins juggernaut, but a few different names popped up at The Festival, too
MANY OF THE WINNERS at this year’s Festival were pretty much preordained results –Galopin Des Champs was the class horse going into the Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup, State Man was never going to be threatened in the Champion Hurdle, Gaelic Warrior was expected in the Arkle Novice Chase, and the beautiful Lossiemouth, sent off the 8/11 favourite, duly picked up the Grade 1 Close Brothers Mares’ Hurdle.
The Prestbury Cup went as expected with 18 training victories going to Ireland and a better than expected nine to Great Britain, while the French and the Irish dominated the breeding ranks with 12 Irish-bred winners, 11 from France and two apiece from
Britain and Germany. France led the way with the Grade 1 winners produced on eight, Ireland bagged five and Germany scored one win, GB did not get register.
Three of the week’s winners came from top quality Flat pedigrees – it would normally be expected that Wertheimer Et Frere (Absurde), Meon Valley Stud (Golden Ace) and the Niarchos Family (Gaelic Warrior) to have bred winners at Royal Ascot rather than Cheltenham in March.
One of those top-quality British-bred winners came in probably the lowest-key races on the card, but it created the largest cheer and had people reminiscing of Cheltenham of days gone by with a buzzing atmosphere around the winners’ enclosure.
Golden Ace, the Jeremy Scott-trained sixyear-old ridden by Lorcan Williams, owned Ian Gosden and by the now local-toCheltenham stallion Golden Horn, won the Grade 2 Ryanair Mares’ Novices Hurdle.
Gosden had purchased Golden Ace as a dual-purpose type for just 12,000gns at the Tattersalls July HIT Sale from Meon Valley. She was originally bred to be a Classic possible imitating the Oaks runner-up Noushkey who is in the pedigree, it meant that she had possibly the best and highestquality pedigree of any of the Festival winners this year.
She was unraced when sold by Mark Weinfeld’s stud farm, and still required time after Gosden’s purchase, the owner wisely giving her another 18 months before she made it to a racecourse for a bumper.
She duly won that in December 2022 sent off 18-1, then took fifth in an Ascot bumper in February and picked up her first blacktype when second in the Grade 2 Goffs UK Nickel Coin Mares NH Flat race at Aintree.
She was 9l then behind Dysart Enos, who would have been sent off favourite at Cheltenham but did not make race day after pulling out lame.
Golden Ace has now run three times over hurdles, twice at Taunton and then at Cheltenham, and is unbeaten, and, as Page Fuller has written on page 20, the mare’s speed wins her the races.
It was a first Festival winner for trainer Jeremy Scott, who has reported that Golden Ace is likely to go to Aintree next.
The filly is by Golden Horn and, significantly, she is the sire’s first Festival winner. He is standing as a developing dual-purpose sire for the enthusiastic Jayne McGivern’s Dash Grange Stud standing at Overbury Stud, and she was beaming with pride after the race.
The race is often derided for being on the race card at all, but the victory gave a lot of pleasure to connections, and the winners’ enclosure reception that the team received was rapturous and something that had possibly been missing over the previous three days while the Willie Mullins train was in full tilt. It is a concern for all who want to see the NH game prosper the dominance by a few large teams, a dominance that results in largely uncompetitive racing and a dearth of stories upon on which the game prospers and thrives.
Even Patrick Mullins in his Racing Post Festival review reported that the winners he and his father had at the meeting don’t feel like they used to, and really the Mullins team should not be dominating as it does.
Going back to Golden Horn... the stallion is British-based, is in full active service and is getting winners, three factors which rarely coincide.
He now stands at a fee of £10,000 and presumably could become a more expensive sire now, let’s hope McGivern can resist the riches for the good and the needs of British racing.
Stallion Ocovango fits into that same category – alive, in Britain and progressive –and he was represented by his “terrier like” Langer Dan who won his second Coral Cup.
Post-race trainer Dan Skelton alluded to the individual nature of Langer Dan’s character (he can’t be trained in winter, he likes to do his own thing and has to be kidded along in his gallops) but there is no doubting the tenaciousness with which the horse has gone about winning his races.
Ocovango has also had 18 winners in point-to-points in Ireland this spring and is second on that leading sires’ list so his star should be in the ascendancy as those horses come to run under Rules.
Ocovango and Golden Horn give some hopes that British NH breeders have quality proven sires within an accessible and easy driving distance for their mares and hopefully the future results can start to lead to an improvement on British-bred results at future Festival.
With a few more decent winners under his belt Telescope could hit that grade too, while with a bit of luck on his side Jack Hobbs could join the gang as well.
With the improvement in the mares’ programme NH breeders are getting a chance to hold on to their fillies and develop a profile for them, but with current financial pressures and such a polarised sale ring, it is a hard path to forge.
The plan for this piece was not for it to be a devotion to British breeding stallion ranks, but some traction has developed for the British-based NH sires. While the Irish-based Walk In The Park did end up as the second-best leading sire by winners behind the veteran Saint Des Saints, who at 26 is amazingly still advertised with a fee and seemingly has found the elixir of life, the Irish stallion no way dominated the racing as his sales results would suggest; it led to many belatedly commentating just how estranged the sales ring is from the racecourse.
The sire of six Grade 1 winners, Walk In The Park’s first crop since moving to Ireland are now seven-year-olds, and from that first batch included Facile Vega, whose first Grade 1 win came in 2021, while the Frenchbred Jonbon scored at the highest level a year later. His non-Festival appearance was a lose to his sire’s 2024 record.
However, Walk In The Park’s Festival Kim Muir winner Inothewayyurthinkin might be one to add positively to his sire’s profile – an impressive winner at Prestbury Park for JP McManus and Derek O’Connor, the subsequent Racing Post analysis touted him as a future National type.
It has been a strong spring in the Irish point-to-point field for the McManus-O’Connor axis with many of the early four-year-old maidens collected by the team.
It means the racing future should well be bright for McManus, who enjoyed a fine Festival anyway with five winners and was the leading owner.
Inothewayurthinkin is out of the Califet mare Sway and she achieved the remarkable achievement of producing two Festival winners, full-siblings, in the same year – her daughter Limerick Lace won the Grade 2 Mrs Paddy Power Mares Chase.
She could be heading to the National before her brother and the market reacted to her success by cutting her price for the big Liverpool event to 25-1 from 40s.
They are both McManus homebreds, the 18-year-old mare Sway purchased from Guy Cherel as a three-year-old with eight runs under her belt having fallen when holding chances in the Grade 2 Prix Bournosienne.
She was sent into training with Jonjo O’Neill and again looked like the winner on her first UK run in the Grade 2 National Spirit Hurdle at Fontwell until falling three out, then took 11th of 17 behind Quevega in the 2010 Grade 2 Festival mare’s hurdle and then went chasing, which, despite her hurdling record, did not result in a fall and she gained two victories but no black-type.
Her recent breeding record has seen her produce a colt by Walk In The Park in 2022, a filly by him in 2023 and she is due to him again this spring. Her 2020 foal has been named Thatsdwayimthinkin and is by an outlier stallion in Getaway.
THE AMAZING Presenting maintained his dominance in broodmare sire category and is dam sire of three winners – Chianti Classico, winner of the Grade 3 Ultima Handicap Chase, the Grade 1 Queen Mother Champion Chase winner Captain Guinness, and the Grade 3 Plate winner Shakem Up‘Arry.
He also had two third-placed results in Grade 1s courtesy of Home By The Lee in the Stayers’ Hurdle, and Conflated in the Ryanair Chase.
The youngest sire to get a placed result at the meeting was The Gurkha, whose six-year-old mare Luccia finished third in the Champion Hurdle for owner-breeder Pump
Her Hurricane Run dam Earth Amber achieved a Grade 3 place in the Sagaro Stakes for Henderson and was bred by the Marquesa De Moratalla from her Dansili mare Too Marvelous.
The Poule D’Essai Des Poulains and Sussex Stakes-winning sire, a son of Galileo, now stands at Roveagh Lodge Stud for €3,500 having started out at Coolmore in 2017 at a fee of €25,000.
They couldn’t be more different.
Sir Alex Ferguson over the years has developed a passion for red wine (of course it had to be red), in particular the eyewateringly expensive £1,000-a-bottle Petrus and reckons he has over 800 bottles of fine wines in three wine fridges in his garage.
And, although Harry Redknapp also enjoys a glass, it’s never more than two and he hasn’t been to a pub for 40 years.
It’s customary for opposing football managers to meet an hour before a match starts, a chance to discuss tactics, team news, and transfer targets. Not for Ferguson and Redknapp though – whenever they met one of the racing channels would be turned on at 2:15 and a few cheeky bets placed before the kick-off started at 3:00pm.
It’s difficult to pinpoint exactly when Sir Alex developed his love for racing but Redknapp is crystal clear on his saying “I’ve grown up with racing being a big part of my life. My old nan was the bookie’s runner down our street in the East End and she used to get locked up every day for taking bets.”
Both managers are footballing royalty.
Ferguson reigned supreme across 27 years at Old Trafford, restoring Manchester United to footballing glory and winning 13 championships in the process. Redknapp never won the Premier League but did win an FA Cup with Portsmouth and outside football was crowned the winner of I’m A Celebrity – both men kings in one way or another.
Unsurprisingly, both men ventured into racehorse ownership. Redknapp’s first horse was Slick Cherry, a modest filly trained by David Elsworth and owned in partnership with some Bournemouth players. His best horse on the Flat has been Moviesta who won the Group 2 King George Stakes at Glorious Goodwood in 2014 and finished third in the Group 1 Prix de l’Abbaye at
Spirit Dancer whom he bred himself. That first place prize-money haul of £945,000 added to the £500,000 the son of Frankel picked up last November winning a Group 2 in Bahrain.
And yet despite their differences, fastforward to last week’s Cheltenham Festival and a common bond appears bringing the two men together, both enjoying sheer unbridled and scarcely-believable delight.
Remarkably both men enjoyed their first Festival winners on Day 3 of the Festival –Redknapp’s Shakem Up’Arry scooted home in the TrustATrader Plate after Ferguson had won two races earlier on the card (he would, wouldn’t he?) with Monmiral, winner of the Pertemps Final, and Protektorat, the latter claiming the Grade 1 Ryanair Chase.
Redknapp almost scored an injury time equaliser on the final day, but his The Jukebox Man was headed on the line in the Albert Bartlett.
The enthusiastic Ferguson hailed his Cheltenham success as “his greatest day in racing”. Redknapp said “To be here now in this position is incredible.
“I’ve been lucky to be able to get into racing as an owner. It is really incredible for me. It was special today – you dream of having a winner at Cheltenham.”
They’re not so different after all. British racing is lucky to have them in the sport, and it is noticeable that they monopolised British success at the meeting.
The pair are true competitors who understand the downs as well as the ups, the nature of sport, and are seemingly in for the long term and happy to have their horses trained on home soil.
They also have the cash that successful careers in football can provide, though it might be debatable that they will put the huge funds to equine purchasing that Kevin Blake seems to believe British-based trainers need to encourage its owners to be doing in order to be successful at the top of the sport.
Both are far too sensible for that.
