Stars

Outside of our own little corner of it, the biggest news in the European racing world (if that's not too paradoxical) has been the news that Sea The Stars (pictured, pre-Derby) is to stand at the Aga Khan's Giltown Stud. His mating with Zarkava is one to savour, even more than was that great mare's first mating this year with Dalakhani. However, before we fall over ourselves too much in the excitement over Sea The Stars' stud career, it is worth reflecting that, when our forefathers invented racing, the idea wasn't that the best sound horses would finish their careers aged three. I very much endorse Brough Scott's article in the Racing Post, in which he argued that the weight-for-age scale, which was initially devised to promote competition between the various age-groups, now serves to discourage it because, in an era in which the best horses can earn far more with significantly less (financial) risk at stud than on the course, it provides a very good reason for connections of successful three-year-olds to draw stumps on their charges' careers before they reach maturity. It also enables the fools who peddle the idea that a great three-year-old "has nothing more to prove" to keep spouting this nonsense: if nothing else, such horses have yet to prove that they are sound enough to race for three (or more) seasons without going amiss (and that has to be an important trait), and they have also yet to prove that they are capable of winning weight-for-age races with top-weight, rather than with bottom-weight.

Anyway, I think that it is sad that racing, at a time when we are all scratching our heads about how to make our sport more appealing, hasn't moved on from the stage which it reached in the 1970s whereby the stars cease racing has as soon as they have proved themselves stars. It is too much to rely on the sportsmanship of the horses' owners, because people like the Pakenhams, who sadly received scant reward for their sporting decision to keep Sir Percy in training, aren't ubiquitous. Like Brough, I really think that this is a subject which, if we are serious about trying to boost racing's appeal, should be tackled. Unfortunately there is minimal interest among the press on the subject, but just to show that Brough isn't swimming against the tide on his own I here reproduce the first part of my Winning Post column this week, which was written before the announcement about where Sea The Stars would be standing and before Brough's Racing Post article was published:-

"With the 2009 European Flat racing season nearing its conclusion, a reflection that Sea The Stars has been the undisputed star of the year is, of course, tempered by regret of the fact that he has run his last race: despite being sound and still clearly an outstanding racing prospect, he will be covering mares in 2010 rather than racing. This, of course, is a fact of modern-day racing life, when a stallion can earn far more in the breeding shed than on the racecourse, without running the risk of injury or devaluation by loss of form. Very few people are rich enough to act as if money is no object when the stakes are really high, and keeping a champion such as Sea The Stars in training as a four-year-old would cost his owners an eight-figure sum (in loss of earnings, rather than actual money lost) were he to stay in training and lose his form: rich though the Tsui family might be, they clearly are not rich enough to ignore that risk.

However, within a week of the announcement to retire Sea The Stars it has become clear just what a bad decision, from racing’s point of view, such a decision is. Europe’s champion of 2008, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe-winning filly Zarkava, was retired to stud immediately after her Arc victory because she supposedly had “nothing more to prove” – and the fallacy in that theory has already been demonstrated: she is now no longer viewed as an all-time great, because few observers believe that she would have proved able to beat Sea The Stars had she remained in training to run against him. It is now a similar scenario with Sea The Stars: following last Saturday’s Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster, it is now clear that the current batch of juveniles contains a colt who, assuming that he remains uninjured, is likely to prove that he would have been a very worthy rival for Sea The Stars were the latter still in a position to have rivals.

The name of this colt is St Nicholas Abbey, and his victory last Saturday in Britain’s final Group One race of the year was as good a performance by a two-year-old as one could ever wish to see. This horse was highlighted in this column four weeks ago after his hugely impressive victory in Ireland in the Group Two Beresford Stakes (a race which Sea The Stars had won last year) and the praise heaped on him in that report has now to be redoubled. His performance on Saturday was outstanding. In advance, the Racing Post Trophy, up the straight mile at Doncaster, was billed as containing the best collection of two-year-olds mustered for any race in Europe this season. Even so, Johnny Murtagh rode St Nicholas Abbey with maximum confidence. He still had the horse in last position under a hold 400m from home – and when he asked his mount to go forward, the response was electrifying. St Nicholas Abbey weaved his way between rivals effortlessly before Murtagh briefly began to push him at the furlong pole. He shot clear and hit the line full of running 3.75 lengths in front of the runner-up Elusive Pimpernel. As Elusive Pimpernel had gone into the race unbeaten and had broken the juvenile track record at York when winning the Group Three Acomb Stakes on his most recent run – and as the third-placed Al Zir, reputed to be Godolphin’s best two-year-old, had also gone into the race unbeaten – the form is clearly rock-solid. And as St Nicholas Abbey made these good horses look third-rate, the son of Montjeu can be regarded as being as exciting a prospect as were any of the champions which Aidan O’Brien has already trained. He is now generally the 3/1 favourite for next year’s Derby, which is an exciting thought. The only sad thing is that he and Sea The Stars, despite being born in the same country and only a year apart, will never race against each other, which really does make one wonder whether European racing has, to use an Irish phrase, “lost the run of itself”."

So that's that. Any comments, anyone? Moving closer to home, during the past week we have seen two horses run their last race from this stable. To Be Or Not To Be ran creditably at Newbury last Saturday and then she went through Tattersalls' sales-ring two days later, fetching 20,000 gns to the bid of the former Hamilton Road trainer Mohammed Mubarak, who is going to export her to Qatar. This was a very good price for her, and it is a great reward for her owner Wayne Thomas and his partner Cathy Dunkerley, who can take the credit for buying her cheaply and then plotting her successful career. Sadly, Cape Roberto, who ran at Yarmouth on Tuesday, does not provide a similar success story. He'd done nothing when trained by Jamie Poulton and, although we've given it our best shot and although his home-work wasn't hopeless, it became clear when he had his first run for us at Yarmouth on Tuesday that he was likely to do nothing from here either.
He's a lovely horse who, it seems, just isn't cut out to be a successful racehorse. He does, though, have plenty of other fortes - one could take him hunting tomorrow and have a great day on him - as he is a straightforward, willing and hardy horse who already knows how to jump (as this photograph of him and Aisling shows), so I hope that we can find him a position as someone's horse. I can put my hand on my heart and say that, however takes him on, will find him thoroughly satisfactory unless their aim is to win races, so if you know anyone who would like a nice horse, please point them in this direction.


Such is the cycle of life within a training stable that, as we bid farewell to some (although we haven't waved Cape Roberto off yet - he could be here for a while!) we welcome new recruits. The two yearlings (fillies by Tobougg and Bertolini) who arrived from Tattersalls October Yearling Sale are the most obvious of the young prospects just now, and they seem to have settled in well.
Neither has been ridden yet, but both have settled into a routine of long-reining very smoothly, as these two photographs, taken yesterday, show. The Tobougg is the filly with white on all four legs, while the Bertolini has white on only her hind legs. Yesterday was another lovely day, and it is a shame that I managed to get the camera out at about the only time when it wasn't sunny. Today is also very warm - warm enough still for riding in only a T-shirt and shorts, which is truly remarkable for 30th October - which makes things very pleasant. We've got Anthony here plus my father, so that's nice. Anthony had the honour of meeting and shaking the hand of a (retired) Derby-winning jockey (Willie Ryan) outside the newsagent this morning -
which was remarkable as, by one of those coincidences which keep popping up, when we got home and opened our Racing Post, we saw a photograph of Willie winning his Derby on Benny The Dip, thanks to the sad news that the runner-up that day, Silver Patriarch, has passed away. Then this afternoon Anthony has been lucky enough to meet another very distinguished former jockey: Jimmy Uttley, rider of the winners of three Champion Hurdles (on Persian War) and of three Triumph Hurdles
(on Persian War, England's Glory and Boxer). We went round to visit Colin and Eileen Casey (both pictured in this paragraph with him), which is pretty much a given on any of Anthony's visits because they're honorary family, and the icing on the cake was that (the pictured) Jimmy, their neighbour, called in while we were there. And three generations of Berrys were really pleased to meet him (well, perhaps Berry minimus was less starstruck than were Berrys major and minor!).

Another jumps rider whom I've been delighted to see this week has been Ray O'Brien, an Irish jockey who rides in France. He's just in town for a couple of days, and I was really pleased yesterday that he paid Exeter Road a visit to call in here and in Jonathan Jay's stable.
I got to know Ray (pictured) fairly well when he was in Newmarket for a couple of years, working for the now-Warwick Farm-based Mark Wallace, and I always like to scan the Auteuil results in the Racing Post to see how he's faring. He's still doing well over there and rode a Listed hurdles winner, but the most interesting aspect of his recent career is that he's now started riding against his son. He has a son called Ray, who apparently rides as Raymond L. O'Brien, who has started riding over jumps, apprenticed to the successful trainer F. Cottin, and there have already been a couple of occasions when father and son have ridden in the same race. It's reasonably easy to see that that might happen not infrequently on the Flat where jockeys tend to ride well into their 40s or beyond, but over jumps I would guess it happens less frequently as not many jumps jockeys have careers long enough to ride against their sons. In Melbourne I recall Keith Rawiller, father of Nash and Brad, riding well into his 40s and I'm sure that I remember him and Nash both riding a winner on the same card at Sandown when Nash was an apprentice, but of course Nash was riding on the Flat so they wouldn't have ridden in the same races. On the Flat here I presume Paul and Charles Eddery will have ridden against each other, but over jumps? It must happen occasionally with amateurs, who tend sometimes to ride for longer (not having so many rides as professionals they might have a bit less wear and tear), but can we think of another father and son team competing against each other as professionals over jumps? Joe "The Iron Man" Guest rode for a long time and his son James became a jockey with Fred Winter, so they might have done - but even then I can't be sure that they would have done. Any suggestions, anyone?