Tales from the Turf

by Robin Oakley

  He conceded that it felt a little weird to be winning a Classic for Godolphin’s rivals – ‘I’ve got mixed emotions as I usually win these races for Sheikh Mohammed’ – but what struck me before he donned the traditional silk cap given to the winning rider was the intensity of Frankie’s focus, the steely determination. It was Frankie himself who volunteered that this was his tenth Classic winner and his third St Leger victory. After a year in which his champion jockey’s title had gone by default thanks to the disappointing form of the Godolphin horses, a suspension through Royal Ascot and a broken collarbone halfway through the season, he looked and sounded lean and hungry.

  For me the St Leger of 2008 was a glorious spectacle, with Frankie Dettori once again the star. It wasn’t just the sight of Dettori launching himself at Sir Michael Stoute like an exuberant child vaulting into a parent’s arms for a hug, nor even the view of the mildly embarrassed trainer, a bonhomous but stiff-backed bear of a man, wiping off the smacker of a kiss that Frankie gave him later. Those represented extra relish. No, it was simply the triumph of Conduit, trained by M. Stoute and ridden by F. Dettori in the last and longest of the English Classics, the one mile six furlong St Leger.

  For some years then the St Leger had been the Cinderella Classic. Modern breeding is excessively focussed on speed at the expense of stamina and, some of us suspect, at the expense therefore of the durability of the modern racehorse. The French, as already noted, have succumbed to fashion by trimming the distance of their ‘Derby’ to a mile and a quarter. The US Breeders’ Cup authorities were in 2008 absurdly entitling the mile-and-a-half Derby distance race on their programme the ‘Breeders’ Cup Marathon’. Largely because of that mindset, some St Leger fields in previous years had been small and of rather limited quality. The ten-furlong Irish Champion Stakes, often run the same weekend, had begun to attract more publicity and more top-drawer horses. English or Irish Derby winners were becoming more likely to turn out at Leopardstown than on Doncaster’s Town Moor. But its 232nd running with a field of fourteen runners gave glorious witness that the oldest English Classic could still be both a thrilling spectacle and a contest worth winning.

  For a start it included Look Here, the filly who had won that year’s Oaks, and Frozen Fire, who had won the Irish Derby for Aidan O’Brien. There cannot be much wrong with a race for which the all-conquering O’Brien sends over a team of five from Ireland and in which Sir Michael Stoute, England’s champion, fields three. What was truly heartening for Doncaster regulars was to see one of those three succeed. Sir Michael had at that stage won five 2,000 Guineas, four Derbies and a brace each of Oaks and 1,000 Guineas, but despite his 24 runners in the St Leger, including Shergar, he was yet to win it – although he had five times provided the runner-up.

  Ironically when he did finally tick that box on his illustrious CV it was not in association with his stable jockey Ryan Moore: of the Stoute trio Moore had chosen Dr Fremantle. But since Godolphin had no runner, Frankie Dettori was approached to ride Conduit in a race he had already won for Godolphin, for O’Brien, for John Gosden and for Jeremy Noseda.

  Dettori’s post-race antics as he works the victory ‘high’ out of his system – the hands raised to Heaven or whatever he sees up there, the flying dismounts, the crowd-conducting, the kisses sprayed around connections – are of inestimable value to a sport short on characters with his ebullience and popular appeal. What tends to be forgotten is his sheer tactical brilliance and instinctive horsemanship. Amid all that crowd-pleasing, there are often valuable words to be heard in Frankie’s post-race analysis. ‘They went off very fast,’ he said on this occasion, ‘and I knew I was on a stayer.’ While Hindu Kush, Warringah and Maidstone Mixture pulled the field along at a stiff pace, Frankie was content to wait near the back in the pale blue silks of the Ballymacoll Stud. Two furlongs out, feeling plenty of horse under him, he knew it was time to press the button. He cruised to the front and dared the others to come and peg him back. Only the two fillies in the race, Look Here and Ireland’s Unsung Heroine, proved capable of setting out after him, but Conduit, despite one jink to the right, ran on readily to win by a comfortable three lengths. At last Sir Michael had shaken off the hoodoo, even if it was at the price of a public smacker from Frankie.

  Sandown’s Coral-Eclipse

  Sandown, for me, has got the lot. Class without formality. Continuity without stuffiness. A few big, historic races mixed with tantalising big field handicaps. On site there is easy access to the parade ring, a natural arena spreading down the hill to the railway fences along the bottom straight, a testing final hill and a knowledgeable crowd. Sandown, once a monastery whose inhabitants were wiped out by the plague, also stages one of my favourite races: the Eclipse Stakes is the first occasion in each year’s racing programme when the three-year-old Classic generation (done no favours by the weight for age scale) takes on the older horses over a challenging mile and a quarter.

  The original Eclipse, foaled during the 1764 solar eclipse which gave him his name, was a phenomenon unbeaten in eighteen races in his century. As one contemporary wrote, he was ‘never beaten, never had a whip flourished over him or felt the tickling of a spur or was ever for a moment distressed … outfooting, outstriding and outlasting every horse which started against him.’

  The race that bears his name has seen some wonderful performances too. In 1971 Mill Reef was sublime: he made the talented French colt Caro look one-paced in winning by an easy four lengths. That was before Mill Reef went back to a mile and a half in the King George and beat the others so easily that his jockey Geoff Lewis declared, ‘It was daylight that was second. If I’d given him a slap the judge would have left his box before the others got home.’

  The superstar Pebbles was the first filly or mare ever to win the Eclipse Stakes in 1985. Nashwan (1989) and Sea The Stars (2009) are among very select company in having achieved the Derby–Eclipse double. And there have been some major shocks too, notably the defeats of Park Top in 1969 and Bosra Sham in 1997, not to mention Ard Patrick beating the great Sceptre back in 1903.

  Among trainers one of the shrewdest race-readers is Mark Johnston and I was fascinated one year recently when he told us of the Surrey course, ‘Sandown is a perfectly straightforward track but it’s amazing how many people try to complicate it.’ Jockeys, he said, are too inclined to sit in behind the leaders thinking they have got a double handful – and then they find they haven’t. ‘First up the hill takes some getting past. Horses sitting behind going well haven’t the momentum into the hill and won’t quicken up so are relying on others stopping. It takes an awfully good horse to get past.’

  Sandown was for much of my racing life my local track, and the best Eclipse I ever saw was in the millennium year of 2000: the battle of the pensioners.

  With Mick Kinane suffering from a bad back, Aidan O’Brien had turned to George Duffield, at 53 then the oldest man in the weighing room, to partner Giant’s Causeway. Sir Michael Stoute, forced to find a substitute for the injured Kieren Fallon on Kalanisi, went for 48-year-old Pat Eddery. Neither could have made a better choice.

  The hefty Giant’s Causeway was a horse who needed cranking up and O’Brien told Duffield, ‘Whatever you ask him for, he’ll give you. Go when you straighten up and let them come for you.’ George obeyed the instructions to the letter, going past the Derby second Sakhee soon after the last turn and setting sail for home. But entering the last furlong Eddery drove Kalanisi, in the Aga Khan’s famous green and red silks, up to the leader. It looked like another triumph for the Aga. The last sight in the world any jockey then wanted to see was Pat, determination in full motion, coming upsides. But the old grey fox had seen it all before, including that scenario, and he was conceding nothing. Fifty yards out, Pat had Kalanisi’s muzzle in front but Duffield and Giant’s Causeway out-gritted them. Just before the line the Irish horse got his head back in front for an epic victory.

  As the crowd applauded both
of them back, Duffield was sportingly pointing at his mount, as if to indicate that victory was all down to the horse. It was his triumph too but the courage shown by Giant’s Causeway did seem to me to cast doubt on the argument that the horse is not by nature an inbuilt competitor with a will to win. On that display I found it impossible to believe that Duffield’s driving of Giant’s Causeway would have received the response it did unless there was an inbuilt desire to win in the animal too.

  Cynics might take a different view, as I noted at the time, because there was an unfortunate postscript to the Eclipse. Duffield had hit Giant’s Causeway more than fifteen times with the whip in the straight; Eddery had given his mount a similar number of reminders. Both jockeys were referred to the Jockey Club for ‘excessive use’ and were stood down for a number of days, once again fuelling the whip controversy.

  The Eclipse in 2010 was truly an emotional occasion. When Henry Cecil won with Twice Over it marked the return to the top table of one of Britain’s best-loved trainers.

  For Spectator readers I described what nearly became a personal disaster:

  Feeling for my wallet en route to Waterloo for the train to Sandown my heart sank as my hand went into an empty pocket, and then I remembered. Mrs Oakley, by then uncontactable at the Royal Academy summer exhibition, had borrowed it to extract some cash the night before.

  Shorn of cash and credit cards for rail ticket or racecard I slunk home, reconciled to TV racing. But then I wondered: didn’t Mrs O have somewhere a secret cash-stash for window cleaners, charity collectors and emergency taxis? Ten minutes’ search proved successful (and no, friendly burglar, it was not in the cocoa tin marked ‘Rice’). Thirty seconds later, with folding stuff in my top pocket, I was back en route for Sandown, convinced it was my day.

  I had several objectives, mostly financial. I was planning support for William Haggas’s Triple Aspect, a horse who goes down to the post like a goat and comes back like a cheetah. Sir Mark Prescott, who does not tilt at windmills, had entered a promising filly in the Coral Distaff, a Listed race. And Andrew Balding, who does not often use the former champion, had booked Kieren Fallon, still for me the strongest rider on the circuit, to ride his Kakatosi. The other objective, all being well, was to join the crowds cheering home another Coral-Eclipse winner for trainer Henry Cecil in the Eclipse, 32 years after his last one, Gunner B. Triple Aspect prevailed by half a length. Sir Mark Prescott’s Virginia Hall made all and won by a comfortable three lengths at 11-2 and Fallon showed all his strength to bring home Kakatosi by a head. But the serious business of the day was in the big race itself. At only 13-8 I hadn’t backed Henry Cecil’s Twice Over but his was the success I cheered the loudest, not least because it was so bravely done.

  His experienced trainer and young jockey Tom Queally had determined beforehand not to let the race degenerate into a sprint so, after sharing the pacemaking duties with the mare Dar Re Mi, who gets at least two furlongs more, Queally drove clear at the three-furlong marker and stretched out, defying his pursuers to catch him. His judgement was spot on and they did not get to him. But both Sri Putra and Viscount Nelson were closing at the finish as the tired Twice Over, his stride visibly shortening, just made it to the winning post in time, having lost one of his stick-on shoes in the struggle. Owner Prince Khalid Abdullah was visibly chuffed. Even more so was young Tom, who declared, ‘I’m delighted for Henry, the prince and everyone in the yard, but more so for the horse. He has a wonderful character. I’ve ridden him work from day one. I knew he had ability and I was just mad about him. I got a real kick out of this.’

  Twice Over himself, picking up Cecil’s characteristic diffidence, paused before entering the winner’s enclosure, as if embarrassed by all the fuss. His trainer, head tilted, softly spoken, immediately praised his jockey and stable staff. But when a voice in the crowd called for ‘Three cheers for Henry’ and got them with real enthusiasm, their subject simply pointed to his throat to say how he felt. He may be a toff in the non-toff age but his vulnerability makes Cecil the people’s toff. He’s been through so many travails – broken marriages, the loss of a twin brother, the withdrawal of top owners’ horses, his own stomach cancer. But he’s trained more Classic winners than any British trainer alive and he’s back at the top where he belongs.

  For some of us, Twice Over’s victory also helped to make up both for Bosra Sham’s controversial defeat in 1997 and for Henry Cecil’s public denunciation of his own jockey Kieren Fallon on that occasion. Like many, I had been a passionate devotee of the lovely Bosra Sham since I first saw her run as a two-year-old. I had backed her the previous autumn for the 1,000 Guineas, which she won with a bruised foot after nearly being pulled out of the race. And like many I was shocked by her fate in the race in 1997.

  In 1997 there were as many people round the saddling enclosure before Sandown’s Coral-Eclipse as you would find normally around the parade ring proper. Like me, most of them had come to pay homage to the Queen. Not the mere mortal with a handy tied cottage at the end of the Mall but Wafic Said’s chestnut filly Bosra Sham, who rules the hearts of so many racegoers. As delicately as a picture restorer working on a smoke-damaged Rembrandt, her trainer Henry Cecil washed out her mouth with a pink cloth and scratched her between the ears. The lady herself, before she resumed her imperious, head-erect stroll around the circle of her admirers, kicked out fastidiously with her white ankle socks as a fly or two had the temerity to buzz around her quarters. Her magnificent backside was turned towards us, ridged with muscle and gleaming like the patina on a cherished violin.

  Heedless of the fact that only two fillies had won the Eclipse in its previous 99 years we piled the money on to the odds-on favourite. Had not Bosra Sham convincingly defeated Halling, winner of the last two Eclipses, in last year’s Champion Stakes? Had not John Gosden, trainer of Derby winner Benny The Dip, declared ‘She is an Amazon of a filly with a weight allowance. I don’t think she is beatable’? The others, including the Breeders’ Cup winner Pilsudski, looked to be running only for the place money.

  But although Benny The Dip made the running as expected, he did so only at a moderate pace. Pilsudski bided his time and then got first run at him while Bosra Sham’s rider Kieren Fallon managed to find himself in a traffic jam in a five-horse race. As the helicopter pictures demonstrated, he went for a gap on the inside, which was, quite legitimately, closed down. He had to snatch up and switch to the outside and in what then became a helter-skelter sprint for the line it was too late for the big filly, who needs time to wind up to her top speed, to make up the ground on Pilsudski and Benny The Dip. I wrote then:

  A man talking through his pocket must always be treated with caution and although I do not normally back 4-7 shots I had done so heavily this time. But I am not one of the ‘Get Fallon’ brigade who reckon Bosra Sham’s jockey never had the class to be Henry Cecil’s first jockey. I urged readers to back him to become champion jockey this season (he currently leads the table). I have praised him before as one of the strongest riders I know in a finish. But has he yet developed the tactical racing brain he needs to complement his other skills? One racing sage I met after the Eclipse was willing to lay odds against Fallon still being Cecil’s first jockey next season and the rider himself was pretty defensive in his early comments on Saturday, saying ‘it would be typical of people to blame me’.

  Well, yes Kieren. Her trainer was content he had Bosra Sham ready to run the race of her life. The jockey agrees he was on the best horse in the race while complaining there was no real gallop. But if the pace of the race was not suiting Bosra Sham, who likes to be covered up in a truly run contest, then it was up to her jockey to do something about it. We cannot be sure that Bosra Sham would have beaten Pilsudski in a better-run race: what we do know is that she was not given the chance of doing so. After the traffic problems he has managed to encounter this season on Reams of Verse and Sleepytime, too, it is not surprising that questions are being aske
d about Kieren Fallon because even when he wins he is giving Cecil’s horses a harder race than they should have.

  Since I wrote those words Henry Cecil has himself made plain his displeasure at Fallon’s riding of Bosra Sham and it seems unlikely that Wafic Said will persevere with the Warren Place jockey on his horses even if the trainer continues to give him the benefit of the doubt. All that said, we should not detract from the triumph enjoyed by Pilsudski’s connections. When you have just picked up a £115,000 prize it is perhaps easier to be honest. But all praise to Michael Stoute for blaming himself for Pilsudski’s defeat in his previous race at Ascot, saying that he had obviously not got this big, gross horse to his peak by then. All credit too to big race specialist Mick Kinane for his enterprising tactics in striking when he did. And let us not forget what a cracker of a race it was too from Benny The Dip.

  On Benny The Dip Willie Ryan once again rode a copybook race as he had done in the Derby. He had plotted the tactics with John Gosden, who thought that if he went too fast then ‘Benny’ would merely be setting it up for the older horses. The irony is that Ryan, attached to Henry Cecil’s stable, is not rated highly enough at Warren Place to ride the stable’s top prospects except in their work.

  I stuck with Fallon in a column I wrote the next week. Complaints, I noted, do not always bring the anticipated result. When a couple of golfers missed their putts on the eighteenth green on a famous northern golf course they turned the air blue with expletives, upsetting two members’ wives taking a gin and tonic on the overlooking terrace. The ladies complained to the committee, who deliberated and then issued a firm ruling: in future, ladies were to be banned from the clubhouse terrace.