Tag Archive for: Coquelicot

Monday Musings: A Very Different World

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In the week that Lord Derby’s much-hated Hatchfield Farm plan has finally been given approval in its latest scaled-down form, Newmarket’s own Member of Parliament has indicated that there will be further irritations to come for some of his most celebrated constituents, writes Tony Stafford.

Matt Hancock, Secretary of State for Health as well as West Suffolk MP, said that “in the coming weeks, people aged over 70 would be required to stay at home in self-isolation for four months” with the aim of protecting that vulnerable group from the ever-growing threat of Covid 19.

Sir Michael Stoute is one of the trainers who will need to work out feasible working patterns within his yard to fulfil those conditions. Nick Rust, outgoing Chief Executive of the BHA, indicated that within a very short time, the UK would echo most other racing authorities around the world by imposing the “no-spectator” format, with one groom and one owner only allowed for each participating horse.

I was looking forward to Huntingdon on Thursday but that no longer seems an option. Even if Waterproof is allowed to run, I’m in the soon-to-be-barred age group. Last night my wife, who doesn’t drive, confirmed that our local shop where I’ve bought my Racing Post each morning for the past 17 years had run out of toilet rolls in the manner of the supermarket we visited late on Friday after my return from Cheltenham. Yesterday morning, the Turkish-born owner laughed as he pointed to very full shelves of the largely-missing product. I don’t think the people that sanctioned the seemingly-annual price-rise in that publication, now £3.50 daily and £3.90 on Saturday, might experience a reader backlash!

It’s a fast-moving situation.

We knew we were on borrowed time in Gloucestershire (or across the border in Worcester where Harry Taylor and I stayed in the wonderful Barn B and B, Pershore) last week. Thankfully for the racing industry and racegoers, but more especially the local community, as the Racing Post headline put it, it was a Last Hurrah. See you, hopefully, sometime in July. Just how much damage in human and commercial terms will have been done by then is a terrifying prospect.

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Every day since 1962, the best part of 60 years, I’ve been obsessed by horse racing. I still find it hard to accept that almost everyone else has no conception of Hethersett, the 1962 St Leger winner who a month earlier at York was the agent of my first big win as a 16-year-old in a Bournemouth betting shop, part of a treble with Sostenuto (Ebor) and Persian Wonder.

In jumping, contrarily, it wasn’t ever Arkle: I was a Mill House adherent in their clashes in the mid-1960’s. It was his compatriot, L’Escargot, a few years on, twice winner of the Gold Cup and the horse that prevented Red Rum from a Grand National hat-trick in 1975 when the weights and the ground turned the tide in his favour. Rummy’s third win was delayed for two years, Rag Trade similarly denying the Ginger McCain star in 1976. These heroics from L’Escargot came five years after his first of two successive Gold Cups.

Last week Al Boum Photo joined the select group of dual winners of Cheltenham showpiece, with Kauto Star’s two victories being separated by success for that great horse’s equally eminent stable-companion and contemporary, Denman. Triple winners in the modern (post 1945) era have been restricted to Cottage Rake, Arkle and Best Mate, whose trainer Henrietta Knight was busily autographing copies of her latest book in the Shopping Village last week.

On Gold Cup Day I believe we were in the process of witnessing the best performance ever by a four-year-old at the Cheltenham Festival when the final flight intervened to halt Goshen’s serene progress. Veterans, like me, will have been recalling a similar blunder by Attivo back in 1974, but he and rider Robert Hughes recovered. The Cyril Mitchell-trained and Peter O’Sullevan-owned favourite kept going to win by four lengths as his owner commentated with his usual unflappable calm on BBC television.

In 2013 - is it really seven years ago? - Our Conor won the race by 15 lengths, his final victory in a career ended a year later with a third-flight fall in the Champion Hurdle. Four horses have achieved the feat of following the Triumph Hurdle win in the next year’s Champion Hurdle. The first was Clair Soleil, in the race’s Hurst Park days. That track, between Kempton and Sandown, closed in 1962, the race transferring to Cheltenham three years later.

The Hurst Park years were generally a French benefit and some of that country’s top trainers targeted it. Francois Mathet, Derby winner Relko’s handler, trained him as a four-year-old but it was in Ryan Price’s care that he won the Champion Huirdle, Fred Winter the jockey both times. Alec Head was another to win the race during that era. At Cheltenham, the great Persian War preceded three consecutive Champion Hurdles with his Triumph victory and the others were Kribensis, trained for Sheikh Mohammed by Michael Stoute all of 32 years ago and Katchit (Alan King).

I’m convinced that had the understandably distraught Jamie Moore managed to retain his balance after his mount’s single error in an otherwise flawless performance, Our Conor’s margin would have been superseded. It was a display of raw power that the handicapper Dave Dickinson would have been hard pushed to keep below 165 at a minimum.

It was a week for the clever trainers, that is those with yards full of horses that they can engineer to enable them to target big races without giving away too much in the build-up, and some spectacular results were achieved. None was more striking than Saint Roi, a horse who had been fourth in his sole run in France, in an Auteuil Listed race in September. Transferred to Willie Mullins plenty was expected, but certainly not the 23-length fifth of 17 at 1-3 at Clonmel in December. He atoned by winning a maiden by nine lengths on New Year’s Day at lowly Tramore.

He’d obviously improved more than a touch in the intervening ten weeks under Mullins’ tutelage as the torrent of money told on Friday morning and, off 137, Saint Roi won the County Hurdle as he liked. McFabulous on Saturday at Kempton, a superb bumper horse the previous season, but surprisingly lack-lustre in his first couple of hurdles, also managed a timely win at the third attempt for Paul Nicholls at Market Rasen last month. That (minimum three runs) qualified him for the EBF Final. Off an undemanding 132, McFabulous strolled home as the 5-2 favourite in an 18-runner supposedly-competitive race where they went 10-1 bar one in the re-scheduled-from-Sandown event.

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I keep intending to give Coquelicot a bigger mention in these jottings and she certainly deserves a stage of her own after a third win in a row on Saturday. Her victory came with some elan in the also re-staged from Sandown EBF Mares’ Final, a Listed National Hunt Flat race which makes the geegeez.co.uk-owned filly a very valuable proposition.

Do I sense a move in her direction by someone whose horses run in green and gold colours and who has horses in the Anthony Honeyball stable? She certainly has the profile of a JP horse! By the time we get the answer to that, Sir Michael and me will almost certainly be in lock-down. This time a week ago we inhabited a very different world.

Monday Musings: French Imports Galore

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As Storm Ciara wipes out racing in the British Isles, I thought a leisurely mid-morning Sunday rather than a 4 a.m. Monday start would make for a nice change, writes Tony Stafford. It’s windy here too, and I keep thinking the front door’s about to blow in. I’ll let you know if it does.

A standing start and the inevitable criss-cross of half a dozen of Not Too Sleepy’s opponents, three from either side, in front of him was enough to decide the Hughie Morrison hurdler’s fate in the Betfair Hurdle at Newbury. That left the way clear for a trio of five-year-old French imports to clean up in first, second and close fifth for the big-spending Nicholls (Johnny De La Haye, first and fifth) and Willie Mullins/ J P McManus teams. Pic d’Orhy, 33-1, won from the 13-2 favourite, Ciel De Neige, with the Nicholls second string Tamaroc Du Mathan a close fifth at 50-1.

Every February I know David Dickinson, the two-mile hurdles handicapper, steels himself for the identity of which of the Ditcheat (funny that the word ends as it does!) UK debutants is the one to fear in the Fred Winter (now Boodles) Juvenile handicap. Dave has to assess them on French form and by the time they come over there’s already plenty to go on, unlike with the domestic bunch.

For example, Waterproof, a winner second time for Ray Tooth at Fakenham, getting 127, might just squeeze in at the bottom on ratings, but needs a third run to qualify, hopefully in the Victor Ludorum at Haydock on Saturday before next Tuesday’s closing date.

Meanwhile the 2020 French Cheltenham Festival juvenile candidates will have racked up plenty of experience. Ciel De Neige ran in last year’s Boodles, finishing a creditable third of 21 on debut for Mullins after three seemingly undistinguished runs, 445, for Guy Cherel. They were enough to earn a figure of 132 and his position just over three lengths behind Band Of Outlaws seemed to guarantee imminent success. Amazingly after Saturday, he remains a maiden, beaten twice more in Ireland this winter before yesterday’s near miss.

The second of those “undistinguished” runs came on April 28th 2018 at Auteuil when he was fourth, eight and a half lengths behind the odds-on Pic D’Orhy, the Francois Nicolle trainee having already won on debut. More significantly, runner-up at three lengths on debut and seven lengths in this race was Goliath Du Berlais.

A non-winner in four hurdles, Goliath Du Berlais switched to fences following another run behind Pic D’Orhy in June and won seven of eight races before May last year since when he has disappeared from the circuit. The France Galop site not only lists form for all horses but also all entries and Goliath remains un-entered since May 19, the day after his last win.

The race I just referred to on June 9 2018 was won by Porto Pollo, who had been 13th, then pulled up and a faller in three runs on different provincial tracks. No wonder he started almost 13-1 for the seven-runner Grade 3 juvenile hurdle for which Pic D’Orhy was a 1-2 shot. But he prevailed by a length and a half. It is only when you see what was behind the pair that you realise the merit of the run, especially for the winner who incidentally has never replicated it since despite a couple more wins.

Third, a head back, was Beaumac De Huelle. That son of the great and recently-deceased Martaline only ran as a three-year-old and this was his sole defeat in six starts. He twice subsequently got the better of Pic D’Orhy in valuable races, first by a short neck in a €66k event in October then by a length and a quarter the following month, this time in a €101k contest. Second places in those two races earned a combined €80k for the son of Turgeon before his switch to Nicholls. Beaumac De Huelle has now joined the stallion team at Haras de Montaigu, in part replacing Martaline. Aliette and Guy Forien, the stud’s owners, also bred the Nicolas Clement-trained French Fifteen and they joined me on the winner’s podium after he won his Group 1 at Saint-Cloud for Ray.

The also-rans in that June 2018 race also bear repeating. Flumicino (fourth) has won three times; Goliath was fifth as I said earlier and then came two horses destined for Joseph O’Brien. Sixth home was the 29/1 shot Fakir D’Oudairies, now a 149-rated hurdler and 156 chaser for the young master, while Konitho, who trailed the field as a 56-1 shot that day, was good enough to beat 23 others by five lengths and more at Naas a year ago today in the colours of his sister Sarah. They soon were switched to the green and gold hoops.

So what of Pic D’Orhy since his departure from Nicolle? He started his UK career in the Triumph Hurdle, finishing tenth of 14 behind Pentland Hills. That race came almost four months after his French finale and you could excuse ring-rustiness. Less forgivable was his fall when returning to Auteuil after another break, on November 10 last year. Then on his only subsequent run before the Betfair, Pic D’Orhy, running over almost two and a half miles, pulled hard, raced round the outside and faded, finishing sixth more than 14 lengths behind Thomas Darby.

So now we can fast forward to Newbury, back to two miles and in a field where he could be covered up in midfield. Harry Cobden achieved this requirement comfortably and they came through to outdo Ceil De Neige, just as he had 22 months previously in Paris.

The number 33 is doubly significant for Pic D’Orhy. Not only was that his starting price, remarkable given his outstanding French juvenile form, but it was also the perhaps even more astonishing age at which his sire Turgeon, in his racing days winner of the Irish St Leger, died last year.

That means Pic D’Orhy was conceived when his sire was 28 years old. Turgeon’s amazing fertility can be judged by the fact that his 2015 crop including the Betfair Hurdle hero comprised 42 foals, his biggest of recent times. It only dropped below 30 with 20 in his penultimate crop of 2018, and in the year of his death, a final group of five remained as a legacy to his longevity.

I love the statistics in France Galop. They tell me that Turgeon, who still commanded a fee of €4k in his final year, 2018, had 853 foals. They have run in 6,901 races winning 748. Total earnings from that little group amount to more than €25 million. The way Pic D’Orhy won the Betfair Hurdle, he will probably go on and win the County Hurdle next month with plenty more victories to come.

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Apologies to all who sail in her, but I’m afraid the geegeez.co.uk filly Coquelicot is only a footnote rather than the week’s top news. She looked pretty good at Huntingdon under a penalty in a bumper where they were strung out all along the straight. “Poppy” has the prestigious fillies’ bumper at Sandown as her target. One day she might win a Queen Alexandra on the Flat, or more lucratively emulate her older brother Heartbreak City by winning the Ebor and then improve on his record to win rather than be second in the Melbourne Cup! Matt, you have to dream in this game. There are enough nightmares to endure when you own horses.

-TS