The West Wing scriptwriter Aaron Sorkin had it about right when he said that so long as you keep one foot in the real world while the other foot is in a fairy tale, ‘then that fairy tale is going to seem kind of attainable’. For the first one minute, 12 seconds of the Group Two Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef stakes in a pelting rainstorm last Saturday, I was a believer in fairy tales. It was the next 2.41 seconds which took me and most of the Newbury crowd back to the real world as Words of Truth, trained for the Godolphin empire by Charlie Appleby and ridden by William Buick, set out after and finally overtook Into the Sky, ridden by Pat Cosgrave and trained in Epsom at the much smaller yard of Jim Boyle.
As many in the crowd knew, Boyle, who has finally won a 20-year battle with the planning bureaucrats to put together the top quality facilities which should help him contest better races in the future, had never had a Group winner. Into the Sky, however, had so impressed with his 80-1 victory in his only previous run that his owners including the Tabor family had supplemented him to run in the Mill Reef.
OK, so in the end, predictably, one of the big battalions won, and none of us can ever grudge a winner to Godolphin’s cheerily approachable Appleby. But Words of Truth was running his fourth race, Into the Sky just his second. Despite the dreadful conditions, Boyle’s Starman colt showed bags of speed, and wasn’t giving up. He remains a serious prospect and rarely have I seen such dignity in defeat.
Without a raincoat and with the rain saturating his suit, Boyle stuck around to fulfil his media duties, cheering himself that his charge had run a hell of a race and proved that his first run was no fluke: ‘The two pulled a long way clear and for him to do that on only his second start I can only be thrilled – but a little bit gutted too.’ Into the Sky will now be put away to grow into his big frame over the winter. As jockey Pat Cosgrave put it, they know they’ve got a ‘next-year horse’.
It wasn’t my day for sure. My banker bet was beaten by a 125-1 shot and my 18-1 get-out-of-trouble finale Tashkhan (he’ll win while it stays soft) went down by a short head. But it was the Newbury management for whom I felt sorry. Racing folk may complain about poor prize money and small fields, but Newbury’s Dubai Duty Free-sponsored card offered valuable prizes and six of seven races had 11 runners or more. So why didn’t more punters turn up?
None of us can ever grudge a winner to Godolphin’s cheerily approachable Appleby
There are of course wider worries, and trainer John Gosden was last week warning how few American owners race their horses in Britain. Back in the early 1970s when I first started paying serious attention, three Derbies in a row were won by fabulously rich American owners. In 1970, Nijinsky triumphed for the more than chubby Charles Engelhard, who was given the customary invitation to the Royal Box. Unfortunately his braces broke on the way upstairs: as he was presented to the Queen Mother he was clutching his hat and stick while trying to keep up his trousers with his elbows. ‘You seem to be having some difficulty,’ she said to him kindly. ‘Can I hold something for you?’
In 1971, it was the sporting owner-breeder Paul Mellon with Mill Reef: the Mellons took over Annabel’s nightclub for the celebration party and Mellon ignored higher offers from the USA to ensure that Mill Reef went to the National Stud. At 92 he still had the wit with almost his last crop of yearlings to give a colt by Seeking the Gold out of the mare You’d Be Surprised the name of Wait For The Will.
In 1972, John P. Galbreath, owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates, gave Lester Piggott his most controversial Derby winner Roberto by ‘jocking off’ Bill Williamson after the popular rider had been injured before the race. In fairness Galbreath did meet Williamson personally to tell him and promised him the same share of the prize money as the triumphant Piggott. When Raymond Guest, successful too over jumps, won the 1968 Derby with Sir Ivor he wasn’t there: as the US ambassador to Ireland, he had to attend a commemoration for the assassinated President John F. Kennedy on Derby Day.
In 1976, the Texas oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt, who later died in poverty after trying to dominate the world’s silver market, won the Derby with Empery, who was trained in France by Etienne Pollet. But American owners could be tricky: Sir Peter O’Sullevan revealed that Pollet was once instructed by Hunt’s co-owner of the Arc winner Vaguely Noble, the Hollywood plastic surgeon Robert Franklyn, to have the horse’s feet painted gold. Peter was looking forward to running the punning headline ‘Vaguely Noble to be gilded’, until Pollet’s threat to stop training him rather than comply changed minds.
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