One back for Australia, even if it took an Italian trainer and a French jockey to do it for them. Loping round Newmarket’s pre-parade ring on Saturday in the shadow of Brigadier Gerard’s statue, the sun glinting on his massive shoulders, the deep-chested Starcraft looked immense. He stands 17 hands, and the white bandages on his two back legs only emphasised that his feet are the size of soup plates. But then in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes he showed us that he has a stride and an engine to match.
Considering that it was the mile championship of Europe, the race itself was a curious event. Philip Robinson took Rakti to the centre of the course. Other jockeys know he is a shrewd tactician, which is perhaps why Kieren Fallon, on Mullins Bay, and Frankie Dettori, on Dubawi, went with him.
Starcraft, meanwhile, participated in a second three-horse race down the stands rail in company with Blatant, supposedly there as Dubawi’s pacemaker, and Sleeping Indian. As Rakti ran out of steam, Frankie Dettori cut back across to join and challenge Starcraft, but by then it was too late. The big fella was powering away, and he is not the kind of horse to whom you can give a 20-yard start. The best Dubawi could do was to get within three quarters of a length of him.
Frankie knew he had boobed, insisting, ‘I was on the best horse and I got beat.’ He will rue not only having got his tactics wrong on Sheikh Mohammed’s favourite horse but also having disobeyed instructions in doing so. The Godolphin team did their best to swallow the disappointment, and they insist they would love to take on the winner again in New York, in the Breeders’ Cup Mile. But as they did their collective impressions of someone who has just swallowed a slug with his lettuce, Starcraft’s trainer Luca Cumani, jockey Christophe Lemaire and owner Paul Makin were deservedly wreathed in smiles.
The amiable Mr Makin is indeed a rarity. Having made a fortune out of gambling, he retired in 2000 to ‘get rid of a few million’ by campaigning his own horses. You felt the urge to touch his jacket hem in the hope of a little of the magic rubbing off, though he is willing to settle for the concept of being a ‘gambling mechanic’ who did it on mathematics. He gambled again, though, by sending his best horse, winner of three Group Ones in Australia and New Zealand, to the chillier northern hemisphere to be trained by Luca Cumani and in having him ridden at Newmarket by a French jockey who had never seen the course before.
Luca says Starcraft suffered a culture shock with the cold when he first came to Newmarket, and walked around in a daze for six weeks. ‘But, having got over the fact that his owner had decided to send him to Siberia, the horse gradually acclimatised.’ Starcraft finished third first time out at York in the Queen Anne Stakes, but then got himself overheated before the Eclipse at Sandown. So the canny Cumani next figured out how to settle him. Starcraft then showed his true mettle in the Prix du Moulin at Longchamp, where Christophe Lemaire first rode him, and after the Newmarket victory the normally pessimistic Luca declared, ‘After we had done all we could with his training, the big thing was to keep him calm, and after that to keep the trainer calm, which was much more difficult. We want to prove him to be the best miler in the world, and I think we are three quarters of the way to doing that.’
If they do take on Dubawi once more, I for one would be ready to back Starcraft again. Paul Makin said that he had insisted on Luca keeping the horse ‘a bit porky’ for the Newmarket contest, while the trainer had wanted to give him one more gallop. In retrospect, said Mr Makin, he was wrong and the horse had won, as his jockey confirmed, when short of a gallop.
So will they take on Dubawi again in the Breeders’ Cup? The horse is not entered, and supplementing him would cost some $400,000. Mr Makin first suggested he was not a great fan of American racing. ‘It would be expensive to enter him and I’m not sure what a win would do for his CV anyway.’ He was more inclined towards the Dubai Gold Cup meeting next spring. ‘I’d rather go there and take the money off the Sheikh.’ But when told that Godolphin would love to take him on again in the Breeders’ Cup, there was a glint in his eye as he inquired, ‘Will they be paying my entry fee, then?’ and by Monday he was telling the Racing Post, ‘We brought him over here to race against the best in the world, not to take on pussycats,’ and indicating he wanted to take on America’s champion miler, too.
It was a day of glorious quality at Newmarket, with Ouija Board’s successful return to relish alongside a gutsy performance by Nannina in winning the Fillies’ Mile. Put her on your list for next year’s 1,000 Guineas right away. And finally an apology to those in the members’ stand who encountered at the end of the Fenwolf Stakes a demented banshee jumping up and down screaming, ‘Yes, Yes, Yes,’ like a souped-up version of the orgasmic heroine in When Harry Met Sally. It was, I am sorry to say, your correspondent, encouraging Paul Doe to the line on Land ’n Stars ahead of Larkwing and Sendintank. But I plead extenuating circumstances. Never before have I not only backed a 50–1 winner but also doubled my modest stake just before the off. Land ’n Stars was only that price, I was convinced, because he came from the small yard of Jamie Poulton and not from a swanky Newmarket establishment. For once, I was right and he is now favourite for the Cesarewich. But I am sure that, if Paul Makin had backed him, it would all have been done with so much more dignity.
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