You wouldn’t want to have been collecting the empties from Robins Farm, Chiddingfold, last week. There is no more sociable man in racing than George Baker: when I parked alongside him at Royal Ascot once, he had a flask of Bloody Marys on offer almost before I had the car door open.
Nobody could have been better suited to celebrating triumph in the Goodwood Stewards’ Cup as he was on Saturday after Pat Cosgrave had led all the way to win the historic sprint on the 40-1 shot Get It. The cheery band who constitute the MyRacehorse & Partners syndicate and their friends provided the most joyous scenes I’ve ever encountered in the Goodwood winners’ enclosure.
Sometimes we beat ourselves up about what’s wrong with racing: Glorious Goodwood was the perfect antidote
As a local boy who has been attending Glorious Goodwood since he was five, George declared: ‘It’s been a long week and we’ve had a house full of hooligans and reprobates. The party started on Tuesday and it will probably go on now until next Tuesday.’ In a quieter vein he noted: ‘Races like this are incredibly hard to win: just to get horses to run in them is hard.’
Nevertheless he is managing. A few years back he won the Royal Hunt Cup and the Golden Mile at Goodwood with Belgian Bill and the publicity around his Stewards’ Cup victory couldn’t have come at a better time: in January he moves into the refurbished stable in the centre of the course at Epsom Downs while simultaneously developing a satellite yard in Bahrain.
Sometimes we beat ourselves up about what’s wrong with racing: Glorious Goodwood was the perfect antidote with so much to celebrate. Another Goodwood local boy is the French-born trainer David Menuisier, who has rooted himself in West Sussex. He doesn’t have the 200 horses housed in some super-yards but he’s advertised his talents this year by winning the German 2000 Guineas and providing the second in the Irish Derby and the third in both the Oaks at Epsom and its Irish equivalent.
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After he won the Golden Mile with Toimy Son, carefully targeted at the race, I loved his Olympic week comment. ‘The symbol of France is the cockerel: an animal that is always proud even when he has his feet in the mud,’ he said.
No participant in any Olympic sport showed acceleration to match the way 2000 Guineas winner Notable Speech turned on the after-burners under William Buick to return to form after an Ascot flop by winning the Sussex Stakes.
‘He hasn’t got great stride length,’ said the trainer Charlie Appleby, ‘but he turns those legs over so quickly: that’s why you see such acceleration.’
I had to admire too the fortitude of jockey Kieran Shoemark, who has been unlucky to take over from Frankie Dettori as the No. 1 rider for John and Thady Gosden at a time when their yard doesn’t seem to be bursting with equine talent on the scale they are accustomed to.
Their star filly Emily Upjohn was not on one of her going days in the Nassau Stakes behind Opera Singer. Inevitably that led to criticism of her jockey, but Shoemark still had the guts to join the ITV racing team the next day for a lengthy examination of her race. When I complimented him on that, he was modest but he talks a good race as well as riding one.
And if there haven’t been quite as many Shoemark-ridden Group victories for the Gosdens yet as some would like, then John Gosden has a simple answer to that: ‘There are seven retained jockeys in the stable already – retained by their owners. To that extent it limits what Kieran can ride.’
One Goodwood ride I did note was that of Jim Crowley, winning the Group Three Glorious Stakes on Al Aasy. The seven-year-old horse is not known as a battler, and you have to deliver his effort with precision. Jim squeezed through on the rail in the dying strides, and when I praised his achievement afterwards he grinned and said: ‘He didn’t know he’d been in a race.’
That was artistry, much admired no doubt by Sheikha Hissa, whose Shadwell Estate owns Al Aasy. Half an hour later Al Aasy’s full brother Align The Stars (they are both by Sea The Stars out of Kilcara) won the Coral Summer Handicap over 1m 6f in such good style that the trainer Charlie Johnston was talking about the St Leger as a serious proposition, with bigger aims to follow.
‘The jockey Jason Hart galloped him last year before he’d even run and said, “He’ll win the Ascot Gold Cup”, and we’re still on target,’ he said. I asked Charlie’s father, Mark, if Align The Stars really is the yard’s next Subjectivist (one of the easiest Gold Cup winners ever in 2021) and his grin was as wide as the Cheddar Gorge. The Johnstons have a reputation for finding equine bargains – and what will please them as much as the progress shown by Align The Stars, who was scoring his third victory, is that they paid 100,000 guineas for him. Shadwell paid 400,000 for his brother.
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