There’s no shrewder punter than J.P. McManus who likes to say: ‘There’d be many more fish in the sea if they could only learn to keep their mouths shut.’ Last year, clever young Emmet Mullins won the Cesarewitch with J.P.’s The Shunter but when Emmet let it be known that he was aiming for the other half of the Autumn Double, sending This Songisforyou to Newmarket for last Saturday’s Cambridgeshire, there was no way of keeping a lid on things.
The money poured on him for days. This side of the Irish Sea we all run scared of the Emerald Isle these days: if it isn’t Aidan O’Brien sending yet another from his Coolmore treasure box of beautifully bred colts and fillies to pick up our Group races, it is the likes of Mullins and John McConnell launching weekend raids for lesser targets. Now even top jumps trainer Henry de Bromhead has joined the act, picking up York’s Ebor Handicap with Magical Zoe and the Lillie Langtry at Goodwood with Terms of Endearment. In the event This Songisforyou finished only 24th of the 31 runners. It doesn’t work every time.
The bet365Cambridgeshire honours went instead to Liberty Lane, ridden by Clifford Lee and trained in Middleham by Karl Burke, the 9st 12lb topweight running clear by two and a half lengths a reminder of just what a force his yard has become. Only the previous Saturday, Karl had achieved the remarkable feat of saddling three horses in the top sprint handicap the Ayr Gold Cup and watching Lethal Levi, Silkie Wilkie and Korker come first, second and third. ‘That was a nice result, wasn’t it?’ he said with the calm of a cancer survivor. Neither of those remarkable successes was a fluke: Burke has also this season had a brace of juvenile winners at Royal Ascot as well as winning the Irish and German 1000 Guineas and the Prix Robert Papin in France. Liberty Lane’s owner Sheikh Mohammed Obaid Al Maktoum is said to reckon he has saved £1 million by moving the bulk of his horses from Newmarket yards to the North. With results like that others are likely to follow.
I love the early autumn Newmarket meetings. Big fields in the Autumn Double with bookies paying six places or more give each way punters a chance: in the Cambridgeshire I had a profitable third, fourth and fifth with Toimy Son (28-1), Bennetot (20-1) and Andaleep (66-1) but there is joy too in noting the first serious clues to next year’s Classics as the emerging juvenile champions take each other on in races like the Cheveley Park and Middle Park Stakes.
Following her success in the former, Aidan O’Brien’s Lake Victoria has been made favourite for the 1000 Guineas. For her fourth victory in a row she was remarkably coming back from two runs over seven furlongs to six. Aidan’s normally serious mien cracked for once: he actually chuckled as he told us that jockey Ryan Moore had suggested bringing back Lake Victoria in a fortnight to contest the Fillies’ Mile. That she has class is undoubted but that would show remarkable versatility.
O’Brien’s Whistlejacket was all the rage for the colts equivalent in the Middle Park but was comprehensively beaten by the Charlie Appleby-trained Shadow Of Light for Godolphin. The speedy Shadow of Light though is most unlikely to contest the 2000 Guineas. Asked if he was a sprinter Charlie was succinct: ‘Very much so,’ naming Ascot’s Commonwealth Cup as the target. The Godolphin team have been winning races in Germany, Australia and the US so is their focus coming off the UK? ‘Of course not. If I had the horses to win here I would do so. Less travelling for me and for the horses. But I’ll always go where I think I can win. I don’t want to turn up to make up the numbers.’
We probably did see a likely Guineas and Derby entry though in Royal Lodge Stakes winner Wimbledon Hawkeye, trained by James Owen and owned by the Gredley family whose Ambiente Friendly was second at Epsom this year. The son of Kameko has improved with every run and would-be buyers are queuing up. At a slightly lesser level let us not forget the showing of the gutsy little Naina. With around 20 horses John Ryan doesn’t have the biggest yard in Newmarket but he was rightly proud as punch of her performance in winning the Jersey Lily fillies nursery handicap. Every time he puts the two-year-old in a tougher race she steps up to it and produces more. She’s been kept on the go before the bigger fillies grow into their frames and has won three times. Says her trainer, ‘Though she’s small she’s the sort of girl who’d go into a nightclub and come out with the boy of her choice every time.’ Put off by the fact she’d run in a seller, I ignored the advice from my form guru friend and didn’t take the 6-1. I will next time.
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