John Ingles looks back forty years to a summer of sport when Dancing Brave completed the Eclipse-King George double.
The summer of ’86. Forty years ago, England had been gripped by World Cup fever then too, at least until the quarter-final stage when, in the same Azteca Stadium in Mexico City as last weekend’s dramatic victory over the co-hosts, England were sent home following a 2-1 defeat to eventual tournament winners Argentina. Their captain Diego Maradona scored both goals in that victory over England, each memorable for very different reasons. His first was the infamous ‘Hand of God’ - which inspired the name of yesterday's John Smith's Cup runner-up - while his second, a mesmerising individual effort that had begun with a run from inside his own half, was hailed as ‘the Goal of the Century’.
But that slimmer version of the World Cup than the ongoing edition was done and dusted by the end of June. By July, the focus had shifted to the highlights of the traditional British sporting summer; reigning champions Boris Becker and Martina Navratilova both retained their titles at Wimbledon, Nigel Mansell had the Union Jacks waving after winning what proved to be the final British Grand Prix staged at Brands Hatch, while at Turnberry, Australian Greg Norman beat Englishman Gordon J. Brand to win his first major championship in the British Open.
Meanwhile in racing, July 1986 belonged to one horse - Dancing Brave. Putting behind him an agonizing defeat in the Derby the previous month, Khalid Abdullah’s son of Lyphard firmly established himself as a top-class colt and one of the best middle-distance performers since the era of Mill Reef and Brigadier Gerard. Three weeks apart in July, Dancing Brave emulated that pair by completing the double of the Coral-Eclipse and the King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Diamond Stakes.
Brigadier Gerard accomplished his Eclipse-King George double as a four-year-old in 1972, but Dancing Brave became the first three-year-old to win both races since Mill Reef the year before. Mill Reef had succeeded at Epsom where Dancing Brave had narrowly failed, but unlike Mill Reef who had come up against Brigadier Gerard at Newmarket, Dancing Brave could boast a 2000 Guineas victory when storming clear to beat Green Desert by three lengths.
While Dancing Brave went on to prove himself over distances in excess of a mile, Green Desert went the other way and turned out to be a high-class sprinter, he too excelling himself in July. In between Dancing Brave’s two big wins that month, he won a muddling July Cup which owed plenty to a fine tactical ride from that season’s Derby-winning jockey Walter Swinburn.
Dancing Brave started at 9/4-on for the Eclipse, making him the shortest-priced favourite for the race since Brigadier Gerard. The only other three-year-old in the field, Bold Arrangement, had finished down the field behind him in the Derby but prior to that had achieved the notable feat of finishing second in the Kentucky Derby.
Their older rivals included the top-class and supremely tough French-trained filly Triptych, who’d beaten the colts in the Irish 2000 Guineas the previous season and was already on her seventh race of the current campaign, having been beaten a short head on her last start in Britain in the Coronation Cup.
Dancing Brave’s two other serious rivals, Bedtime and Teleprompter, were a couple of the first geldings to contest a Group 1 in Britain following the welcome rule change allowing them to do so. That pair had been placed at Royal Ascot on their most recent starts, with Bedtime second in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes and Teleprompter third in the Queen Anne.
This proved to be Dancing Brave’s best effort yet, recording an exceptional timefigure that was the best of the whole season. Ridden closer to the pace than at Epsom, he took the lead under Greville Starkey over a furlong and a half out and proved a class apart from his rivals, pulling four lengths clear of Triptych with Teleprompter beaten another length and a half into third. Starkey evidently hadn’t quite laid the ghost of his much criticised ride in the Derby when Dancing Brave had been left with too much ground to make up, refusing post-race interviews after returning to the Sandown winner’s enclosure.
Four years earlier, Dancing Brave’s trainer Guy Harwood had trained the last horse to complete the Eclipse-King George double, the four-year-old Kalaglow, who had been partnered to both those wins by Starkey. But the jockey didn’t get a chance to repeat the feat on Dancing Brave as he was injured prior to Ascot and replaced by Pat Eddery.
Triptych was in the field again but a 25/1 shot after being firmly put her in place at Sandown three weeks earlier. The rematch that was most keenly anticipated was instead between Dancing Brave and his Epsom conqueror Shahrastani, that pair the only three-year-olds in the field of nine which, like the Eclipse, had pacemakers making up the numbers. The two colts were backed virtually to the exclusion of their older rivals, though Dancing Brave didn’t start favourite.
On the eve of the World Cup final, Shahrastani had shown that he too had improved since Epsom by running away with the Irish Derby by no less than eight lengths and he started the 11/10 favourite at Ascot, ahead of Dancing Brave on 6/4, with the previous year’s winner Petoski and Shardari on 14/1.
Like Shahrastani, Shadari represented the Aga Khan and Michael Stoute, and he’d been another winner for Swinburn and the Stoute stable at the July meeting when having Petoski back in third in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes.
In contrast to the sweating and edgy favourite who was a little reluctant to load, Timeform reported that Dancing Brave ‘looked a picture’ beforehand and ‘moved down to post like a horse on top of the world’. Those pre-race signs proved prophetic, as while Shahrastani ended up running well below form, Dancing Brave produced another top-class performance with the favourite’s stablemate, ridden by Steve Cauthen, giving him most to do.
Sent for home entering the final furlong, Dancing Brave initially went a couple of lengths up, but Shardari fought back and Eddery had to ride him strongly to hold off the challenge and win by three quarters of a length, with a gap of four lengths to Triptych in third and Shahrastani a well-beaten fourth. It was another excellent performance on the clock from Dancing Brave, bettered only by his timefigure at Sandown.
The summer of 1986 was what we traditionally think of as a typically British one – certainly not the succession of heatwaves that might become the new normal – and the going for both of Dancing Brave’s wins in July was no firmer than good. There had been rain at Ascot before the King George, and any more of it might have made him a last-minute absentee.
Of course, Dancing Brave’s brilliant three-year-old season didn’t end there, so perhaps we’ll take up his story again later in the season.
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