Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  He bought Mezzotint after his, shall we call it, ‘colourful’ time at QPR – enlivened by stories of a gun levelled at his head by thugs who wanted the former players’ agent to quit – and at Windsor he showed what racehorse ownership can do for you instead by insisting, ‘I’m so excited. I got promoted to the highest level with QPR but this feels better.’ You could see his point. At least Mezzotint wouldn’t be demanding impossible wages, getting in punch-ups on the pitch or spending his downtime in nightclubs with brain-dead blondes.

  Some owners seem to avoid Windsor: you rarely see any of Hamdan Al Maktoum’s horses running round its curious saucepan-shaped track. But others have told me they love it. Said one chief executive, ‘It’s close to the City, it’s easy to get to and it’s always a party atmosphere. It’s a place where deals get done.’ Trainer Richard Phillips put his finger on Windsor’s secret: ‘Show me one other course where the jockeys are so relaxed they come out and sit on the weighing room steps.’ In fact, relaxed Windsor is a good place for spotting emerging jockey talent: it will often be the lesser meeting of the day with racing staged also on a more fashionable track. Top jockeys will have travelled elsewhere and that provides opportunities for young riders on the way up or stable number twos.

  The day of Mr Paladini’s success was typical. Those who scored included the then little-known Atzeni, Pat Dobbs, George Baker and the since prematurely retired Ian Mongan, whose admirers included Sir Henry Cecil.

  Of course the top jockeys don’t always stay away. Dean McKeown told me once of a time when as an apprentice he rode a horse called Miss Merlin, a 33-1 shot, at Windsor. The stable had its money on and there was every confidence. He was drawn in the number one slot and admits he drifted slightly across the course but he won easily: ‘I never saw another horse,’ he said.

  Unfortunately for him the rider of the second horse was one Lester Piggott. McKeown and his trainer were amazed to hear that Lester had objected to their horse and it turned out he had done so on the bizarre grounds that the apprentice-ridden horse, by drifting left, had ‘frightened my horse out of racing’. McKeown was called in by the stewards and told that his horse had been disqualified and the race awarded to Piggott.

  As the two riders went back into the weighing room, the racing idol turned to the apprentice and said, ‘You learned something today son. Bullshit beats brains.’

  Windsor seems to be something of a gambler’s course. Following the money there often pays, but following Richard Hannon’s horses does so even more. Some punters call the Thameside track ‘Hannonland’. ‘We always try to bring a nice two-year-old here,’ said assistant trainer Richard Hannon junior. ‘Our horses seem to run well here. At the yearling sales a lot of owners want something they can run at Windsor on a Monday night.’

  On the evening in 2010 described earlier, the only person grumbling was Barry Dennis, Britain’s best-known bookmaker. ‘Ten years ago,’ he told me, ‘I would take £60,000 in bets on a Monday night. In recent years it’s been down to £20,000. Tonight I’ve hardly taken £10,000.’ But then it was the night before the Budget. We all had to keep something in our pockets.

  It was perhaps a wonder that I ever became so fond of Windsor. Once in my time as a political correspondent I was invited by the MP Spencer Le Marchant, a generous-hearted and utterly convivial man who was then a Conservative whip, to join him and a couple of others playing hookey from the House of Commons to go and watch his horse run at Windsor. He hired a limo – a Rolls, I seem to remember – in which we went down to the course drinking unfortunately warm champagne from plastic cups. He was so convinced that his horse would win that he promised to buy us all dinner afterwards on the proceeds at the famous Michelin-starred Waterside Inn at Bray. Unfortunately the horse ran a stinker, Spencer rowed publicly with the blameless jockey Willie Carson and instead of the fabulous dinner promised, the evening finished with us eating takeaway pizza from a car boot in the car park of a Holiday Inn. It was an early lesson about politicians’ promises.

  Ascot and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes

  I love Ascot. True, the modern stands can make you feel at times that you have wandered into an airport concourse by mistake. True, it is irritating through Royal Ascot week to find the place cluttered with people who are there to be seen rather than to watch the racing. Even back in 1912 The Times recorded, ‘Ascot is notoriously the best place in England to see beautiful women in elegant clothes and also less beautiful women in very odd clothes.’ Back in those times, apparently a famous actress’s garish outfit in the parade ring startled a two-year-old, who reared up. The actress in turn leapt in panic and gashed a general with her parasol, after which she declared, ‘It’s scandalous that they allow horses in here.’

  What you always get at Ascot though is top-class horses competing for proper prize money, and in recent years we have been blessed with a management team determined to turn Ascot into a true centre of international racing, attracting top-class runners from France, Germany, Australia, Hong Kong and even the conservative and rarely adventurous stables in the USA. Such is the competitiveness of Royal Ascot that the only certainty of the week is that the Queen’s will be first of the four carriages across the line in the procession.

  Champions Day with its Qatari sponsors is emerging as a proper finale to the season, but my favourite Ascot raceday remains the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, instituted in 1951 and since then the crucial test over the Derby distance for three-year-olds and their elders to take each other on. What many see as the greatest race of all time, the epic contest between Grundy and Bustino, took place at Ascot in the ‘King George’ and there have been several renewals since which have left true racing aficionados emptying the hyperbole bottle and reaching for the smelling salts. I always get to the parade ring early for the King George to get a good look at the contestants.

  In 1999 for example there was Daylami. I don’t much like swagger in the human race but I adore it in horses. Watching the parade for the 1999 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes you could not have had a better display. Eight intelligent heads topped eight perfectly prepared bodies. The gleaming flanks of the Hong Kong bay Indigenous might have been freshly lacquered. Oath may have been smaller than some but he carried himself with a bearing as if to say ‘Don’t mess with me folks, I won the Derby’. Fruits of Love and Silver Patriarch arched their necks with fluid athleticism, obviously confident of their right to be in the all-star line-up as they in turn studied the packed crowds under the Ascot limes.

  But it was to be Daylami’s day and with my money already committed to Fruits of Love I felt the first prickings of doubt as I watched the Godolphin grey saunter round with the self-regard of a world heavyweight boxing champion. A silk dressing gown across the shoulders would have been entirely appropriate for his burly frame. In the race Daylami just murdered them. Staying power and the readiness to battle are important qualities in a racehorse but there is nothing so exhilarating as sheer speed. As they entered the last quarter-mile Daylami, who takes about a furlong to wind up to top gear, simply shot away from his rivals. Frankie Dettori told us afterwards:

  Coming into the straight I gave him a crack and the turn of foot was so instantaneous that it gave me goose pimples. When I went by Gary Stevens [on Nedawi] he shouted ‘Go get ’em Frankie’ and the voice was getting fainter and fainter. I was able to spend the last hundred yards watching on the big screen how far I was in front.

  So cocky was the horse himself that he gave an exuberant buck and kick on the way to the winners’ enclosure. Well, why not: by then he had proved it all. The five-year-old had won nine of his eighteen races in four countries over distances from a mile to a mile and a half, earning well over £1 million. Owner Sheikh Mohammed and trainer Saeed bin Suroor had ignored the doubters who urged them to keep the horse to the ten furlongs of the Eclipse. No, they said, he already had that T-shirt; they would confirm him as an all-roun
d champion by moving up another two furlongs. Fortune had duly favoured the brave.

  The King George in 2000 was special in a different way: it was the one chance for British racegoers to see the great Montjeu racing on our turf. As ever it was a joy for us gawpers and baskers in reflected glory to watch the principals before the race – not the gangling adolescents we often see on the racecourse but hard-tuned professionals accustomed to success. There was the Aga Khan’s Coronation Cup winner Daliapour gazing intently at the crowds. The Japanese hope Air Shakur looked magnificent, his dark bay coat glistening like a guardsman’s boots and pink bandages on his legs. Almost last in was Henry Cecil’s Shiva – hard to say in her case whether she or the trainer was best turned-out, although Shiva wasn’t shod by Gucci.

  At last in came Michael Tabor’s Montjeu, a brilliant horse who knew he was brilliant and didn’t always see why he should do things that ordinary horses do. He had been reluctant to enter the paddock but his regular work rider slipped into the saddle for a few strides and coaxed him along. ‘With a horse this good we don’t hassle him,’ said French-based trainer John Hammond. ‘We just work round his little foibles.’ And there he was, the winner of nine races, tall and imperious.

  As Michael Kinane was swung up into the saddle Montjeu tossed his head in acknowledgment as if to say ‘We both know what we’re here for, now let’s get on with it’. The race itself was more like a procession. The Aga Khan’s pair blazed the trail into the straight and the crowd began to cheer as the 3-1 on favourite ranged alongside. But they never had to shout to encourage the burst of acceleration that was Montjeu’s trademark. He simply cruised past the leaders on the bridle. Mick Kinane barely had to move. We could scarcely believe it: he was winning one of the top events in the racing calendar as if it were an exercise canter. It was like Linford Christie motoring past a gaggle of puffing parents on school sports day. Until Frankel came along I never saw a top race won so easily. Kinane said he had never been at more than three-quarters speed: ‘The horse was enjoying himself; we haven’t got to the bottom of him yet.’ It was awesome – and some.

  The sadness was in the sequel when Sheikh Mohammed challenged Michael Tabor to run Montjeu against his own pride and joy Dubai Millenium over a mile and a quarter for a $6 million sidestake. It brought echoes of the great sporting challenges of the past, but no sooner had the media begun to salivate than poor Dubai Millenium broke his leg on the Newmarket gallops and his racing days were over. What a race that would have been.

  A King George that truly was a horserace was the contest between Galileo and Fantastic Light in 2001. In the parade ring beforehand, the tough St Leger winner Millenary and the French Derby winner Anabaa Blue had loped around contentedly, oozing equine status. John Dunlop’s other runner Golden Snake, his wins in Germany and Italy having been followed by an unsuccessful bid for the Japan Cup, probably thought he’d had a rather shorter trip than usual to the races but still eyed up the crowd as cockily as a likely lad with a lager in his hand.

  Fantastic Light, the crooked white blaze on his face curving up above his eye, tossed his head with the arrogance of a horse with ten victories behind him on three continents. Among the last to enter was Galileo, his head held low amid his four-handed security escort. But he surely knew he had won two Derbies already in Britain and in Ireland.

  The race itself was everything we had dared to dream. The pacemakers set a hectic tempo. Two furlongs out, the crowd roared as Galileo cruised to the front, the bushy-eyebrowed Mick Kinane crouched low in his dark jacket. At this point in his Derbies Galileo had simply surged clear. This time Fantastic Light too came clear of the pack and set out after the younger horse under Frankie Dettori’s driving. He came up to him and even perhaps headed Galileo for a stride or two. For the first time Coolmore’s darling was in a real race, forced to show character as well as class. But Kinane gave Galileo a couple of cracks, he dug deep in response to the challenge and went away from Fantastic Light, who was anchored by a 12lb weight concession, to win by a couple of lengths.

  From that point on we saw the sportsmanship of two great teams united in the pursuit of thoroughbred perfection. Joint owner Michael Tabor said of Galileo, whom he shared with Sue Magnier, ‘It’s a pedigree to die for. He has the conformation and now he’s proved himself on the track. This horse has everything.’ Said Fantastic Light’s owner Sheikh Mohammed, ‘I respect the courage of the other team in coming here. They were the ones with something to lose, but they were not afraid to find out just how good he is, and the winner is racing.’

  The 2002 King George was another fine struggle and it was memorable not just for the all-out efforts of the two horses who were separated only by a head at the finish, Golan and Nayef, but for the showcase of riding and training skills it provided. Golan, ridden by Kieren Fallon, was last away and had to be scrubbed along by his rider to stay in the race early on, which was no part of the plan. Fallon kept his cool and crept slowly through the field, hugging the inside rail. As Golan’s trainer Michael Stoute had told him, ‘You don’t win races by coming round the outside’. Meanwhile the long-striding Nayef, trained by Marcus Tregoning and ridden by Richard Hills, was making the best of his way home. In the final furlong Kieren pounced and drove past the leader, only for Nayef to fight back gamely and start closing the gap again. Richard Hills had kept just a little in the tank for such an eventuality. It took all Fallon’s considerable strength to keep his mount’s head in front at the line but he did so to win in the colours of Lord Weinstock, who had died that Tuesday. As the jockey commented on dismounting, ‘The horse really stuck his neck out, which he has never done before. Maybe he had help from somewhere.’

  Both horses had given their all under two intelligent rides, but the real achievement was that of Golan’s trainer. The previous year he had sent out Golan to win the 2,000 Guineas without a prep race. He was not the first or the last to do that for a race so early in the year when none of his rivals was likely to have had more than a single run. But here again the King George was Golan’s seasonal debut, the horse having suffered a setback before the Eclipse. To have a horse cherry-ripe in those circumstances to win one of Europe’s premier middle-distance races in high summer against others who have been honed to race-hardness through the season really was a supreme test of skill.

  Foreplay, I noted after Doyen’s victory in 2004, can be even more fun than the real thing. For contests like the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, where older horses take on the current Classic generation, the parade-ring preliminaries are an essential part of the public’s enjoyment. These top horses – hard-toned athletes with a few miles on the clock – know why they are there. They are mostly mature individuals who know how to cope with the pre-race adrenalin surge. The globetrotting Sulamani, calm and impassive, cast an intelligent eye on the crowd. Phoenix Reach, his forelegs bandaged, gleamed with health, the sun glinting off the brushwork on his quarters. Hard Buck from America looked lean and muscular. The old warrior Warrsan stopped inquiringly for a moment before leaving the parade ring: a tug on the reins persuaded him ‘Yes, there is serious business ahead’. The French filly Vallee Enchantee picked up her feet fastidiously as if you could not trust those perfidious English not to have left something nasty on the path. But one horse stood out in the preliminaries. As his rider Frankie Dettori later said, Doyen swaggered into the ring looking as if he owned the place. The big Sadler’s Wells colt was up on his toes, his neck proudly arched, ready to eyeball anybody who wanted to look at him. It was pure assertion. ‘At home,’ said Frankie, ‘he just slobs around. But here he has so much presence.’

  Through working abroad I had missed Doyen’s course-record victory at Ascot in the Hardwicke Stakes, and being mindful that no horse without a Group One victory to his name had won a King George I had come prepared to back the battle-hardened Warrsan or Kenny McPeek’s American raider Hard Buck against the favourite. (McPeek not only has a degree in business st
udies; on top of that he had learned Portuguese so that he could go and buy good value horses like Hard Buck in Brazil. Not many in Newmarket or Middleham, I suspect, have contemplated that kind of homework).

  But having seen Doyen lording it over his rivals in the parade ring I was an instant convert: I went straight off to back him instead. Handsome is as handsome does and fortunately for me Doyen ran up to his looks. He cruised into the straight behind the leaders, was asked to pick up a furlong and a half out and smoothly went three lengths clear of Hard Buck, who held on well for second. That detail was precious to me: I don’t have too many exactas paying 62-1.

  I was that day at a sponsored function and our hostess had put me on public trial as a tipster against the list of selections provided by her daily cleaner, apparently a near-infallible source of endless winners. The daily and I each produced two winners that day, but the each-way odds on the 33-1 Hard Buck, I argued, put me ahead in terms of profit. ‘Typical journalist,’ was my wife’s retort. The daily, she pointed out, clearly had alternative career prospects as a tipster: she would not recommend me as a cleaner to anybody.

  * * *

  I cannot leave the subject of Ascot without reflecting too on the jockey who made the course his own with a formidable feat

  Frankie Dettori not only puts the joie into joie de vivre on the racecourse, he helps us take a little out of the bookmakers’ satchels. I won’t forget one tortured soul, I think it was Gary Wiltshire, halfway through Dettori’s feat of riding all seven winners at Ascot in September 1996 shouting ‘Nine to four’s Dettori’s horse and nine to four me for the Labour Exchange’.

  Maddeningly, my duties as a political correspondent meant that I had to leave Ascot that day before the feat was completed. It was a bit like being dragged out of Headingley with Ian Botham on 60 racing towards a century or being hauled out of your seat at Le Caprice before the entrée had arrived. The applauding thousands who were able to stay on and witness the final flying dismount from Fujiyama Crest had an ‘I was there’ story to tell for the rest of their lives. Even now, I suspect, the sheer quality of Frankie’s legendary achievement that day has not been fully digested. Alec Russell’s remarkable record of riding six winners in a day had stood since 1957. But his six were rattled up on a standard day’s racing at Bogside. Bog standard? Dettori’s seven were accumulated at the Ascot Festival of Racing across as competitive a card as we had seen all season. The cumulative odds were 25,091-1, even after the frantic hedging on his later mounts had brought their prices down to totally unrealistic levels. Anybody who had linked the seven at morning ante-post prices would have enjoyed a return of 235,834-1.