Graham Cunningham insight & opinion | Turf giants primed ahead of autumn showdown
The Cunningham File shines the spotlight on the latest incarnation of Godolphin vs Coolmore ahead of a key autumn in the battle for bragging rights between the big two.
Fab four fire Godolphin towards a golden autumn
June 2021: Bolshoi Ballet is Aidan O’Brien’s sole Derby runner and jumps as 11/8 favourite with huge expectation on his shoulders, while Yibir is on the big-race naughty step after spitting the dummy at Chester and Goodwood.
September 2021: A gelded and rejuvenated Yibir blows Bolshoi Ballet away off the Belmont home turn as Charlie Appleby stages one of the most clinical transatlantic raids in recent history.
The story didn’t get huge coverage – it was Nicky Henderson’s owners’ day, after all – but when a trainer sends five horses abroad and they return with three G1 wins and a £720,000 American Derby then it feels like something significant is afoot.
And it’s not as if Appleby sent his A Team to Belmont and Woodbine. Walton Street lined up as an exposed seven-year-old with a rating of 115 but bolted up in the Canadian International.
Wild Beauty and Albahr had looked short of the top level in Britain before completing a Dettori G1 treble with ease in the Natalma and Summer Stakes and, with the climax of the international Flat season looming, the question in this week’s File comes in two parts:
Will O’Brien and Coolmore resume normal service at Newmarket, Longchamp, Ascot and Del Mar? Or can Appleby and Godolphin continue to bridge a Group race gap which has been narrowing week by week of late?
Head to heads a key component of Appleby ascent
With 16 G1 wins – plus another 14 at G2 and G3 level – it would be wrong to suggest that Coolmore have been living with the gas turned down in 2021.
But Appleby’s season has gone from strength to strength at home and abroad - with 11 G1 scores bolstered by 18 more in G2 and G3 company - and a deeper dive into the data reveals several interesting trends.
Precision placing has become the norm under Appleby’s leadership and his British strike rate – currently running at 84 winners from just 290 runners at a near three in ten hit rate – tells the tale of a team who have an increasingly fine touch when it comes to finding the right race at the right time.
It’s odd yet revealing to note that every one of Aidan’s sixteen G1 winners this year have scored without a single Appleby runner in their way.
By contrast, most of Appleby’s biggest wins have been earned at the expense of heavily-backed Coolmore stars, with Adayar, Hurricane Lane and Native Trail flooring Bolshoi Ballet, Love, High Definition and Point Lonsdale in the Derby, King George, Irish Derby and National Stakes.
Leading O’Brien players St Mark’s Basilica and Snowfall had just a maiden win apiece this time last year, so it would be unwise to draw firm conclusions about prospects for the 2022 Classic crop at this stage. That said, Point Lonsdale remains the sole Ballydoyle juvenile to land a Pattern race in 2021.
It’s been strange to see the world’s most powerful stable either absent or making up the numbers in a series of major two-year-old contests and, for all that a clutch of unexposed youngsters are emerging, they need to come forward quickly if Aidan is to add greatly to his long list of victories in Newmarket’s flagship autumn contests.
Arc promises a season defining showdown
But enough on what’s already in the books. Autumn is as good a time as any for speculation, so what lies in store for Godolphin and Coolmore in England, France and America over the next weeks and months?
The ‘perhaps he’s done enough’ scent that wafted around Leopardstown after St Mark’s scraped home in the Irish Champion still lingers and I wouldn’t take evens about him leading the Coolmore charge to anywhere bar the stud barn.
That would rip the ace from the O’Brien pack and the queens and kings below include worthy but beatable Mother Earth, a 2021 version of Love which isn’t so good as expected and a handful of grizzled older males (Japan, Broome, Armory and Order of Australia) who haven’t done enough to suggest they can beat the very best this autumn.
Meanwhile Santa Barbara, it was confirmed on Thursday, has died following a serious pelvic injury.
Of course, Snowfall could silence any talk of a star shortage if she lands the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe but the triple Oaks winner has a good deal more to prove than seemed likely after her shock defeat in the Prix Vermeille.
That man Appleby stands in her way with Derby heroes Adayar and Hurricane Lane, while 2000 Guineas runner-up Master Of The Seas is back in Friday’s Joel Stakes and Space Blues and the exciting Native Trail head the markets for the Prix de la Foret and Dewhurst respectively.
The next few weeks will reveal all but it’s far from impossible that Godolphin’s main trainer will head to the Breeders’ Cup with a first Arc, a first British champion trainers’ title and a second champion two-year-old (Pinatubo was his first) to his credit.
Coolmore will rally – they always do – but their days of dominating in Britain as well as Ireland could be numbered. Appleby and his team have made Godolphin a genuine global force again and next week’s Arc shapes up as the sort of showdown we could be seeing for years to come.
Bielsa states the case for staying on the straight and narrow
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Thanks very much for all the kind messages – make that message – after last week’s File recommended Bielsa at 16/1 for the Ayr Gold Cup.
Kevin Stott stole the show and the plaudits for going solo down the stand rail but Bielsa’s commanding success – a career best by 8lb on Timeform figures – left me wondering why so many riders keep hindering their chance by refusing to go the short way home?
Last week’s File drew on substantial Ayr data to show that “high drawn horses who work their way left as the stalls open are playing a very dangerous game."
Friday’s Bronze Cup and Saturday’s Silver Cup extended the trend, with none of the eight placed horses drawn higher than 13, and yet every rider drawn high in the Gold Cup bar Stott followed the march to the middle with predictably damaging consequences.
Weary of stall-based shenanigans, Tom Segal used this week’s Weekender piece to berate the “clever boys” and “nutters” who spend hours trying to solve the frequent draw puzzles that are integral to racing the world over.
It landed as a weirdly reductive stance from one so bright – especially as I suspect Tom has burned more than his share of midnight oil with the clever boys and nutters over the years – but that old draw conundrum will be firmly in play again for Saturday’s Cambridgeshire.
And in any case, if there’s blame going round it might be as well to ladle out a spoonful for jockeys who add to the chaos factor by deliberately running farther than necessary in races where every inch counts. Straight line racing can be complicated, right enough. But it’s not as complex as some of our peripatetic pilots make it.
Rifleman sets sights on new life in HK
John Gosden will be aiming for a record sixth Cambridgeshire success with the gambled-on Uncle Bryn and Magical Morning this weekend but a couple of his erstwhile pupils will be boarding a plane to continue their education in Hong Kong next week.
Remember Rifleman, who dumped Ryan Moore on the Sandown turf in the spring but returned having been gelded to earn a Timeform rating of 113 by landing a hot handicap during York’s Ebor Festival?
The chestnut will join useful Ascot winner Guru (TF 105) in Ricky Yiu’s yard at Sha Tin before embarking on the lucrative Hong Kong Derby trail next year.
Meanwhile, HK owners have also been shopping just down the road from Gosden at Carlburg Stables as Roger Varian’s smart Newmarket winner Imperial Yellow (TF 109) and the useful Legion of Honour (TF 107) have been sold to join David Hayes and Jimmy Ting respectively.
Farewell to a rare one
It was my 82-year-old Mum’s wake on Tuesday. She had no racing connection other than a hard-drinking Dad and a hard-working husband who both loved a bet. But she had a longstanding fondness for the pink and green Juddmonte silks and a seasoned actor’s ability to mask her disappointment as an errant son used his degree as a ticket to Timeform rather than the legal profession.
An incurable optimist with a rare ability to conjure a few quid out of nowhere when it was most needed, she spent a lot of years making sacrifices so her three kids didn’t have to. And, although I repaid the digouts, there are some debts that can never be repaid. Rest in peace, Mum.
