Local heroes at the Ebor Festival

The Sky Bet-sponsored Ebor Festival goes from strength to strength. Now with Group 1 races on each of the four days since the promotion of Saturday’s City of York Stakes last year, this year’s meeting offers record prize money, with Wednesday’s renewal of the Juddmonte International the richest race ever run at York. All of the meeting’s races carry a minimum first prize of more than £50,000, even Friday’s Convivial Maiden.

While the highlight of York’s, and indeed Yorkshire’s, racing calendar, the Ebor Festival therefore has a draw well beyond the county, even extending worldwide, though that makes for a particularly competitive environment for locally trained runners. But Yorkshire stables continue to compete successfully in some of the week’s biggest races, and it’s those successes we’ll be focussing on here, concentrating mainly on the current century.

The Juddmonte International, ranked three times as the Longines Best Race in the World, remains elusive for Yorkshire stables however. The last Yorkshire-trained runner to be placed was Elarqam, third for Mark Johnston behind Japan in 2019.

Yorkshire-trained runners have struggled to make an impact in two more of the week’s big middle-distance contests, the Great Voltigeur and Yorkshire Oaks. You have to go back to the 1950s for the last Yorkshire winners of those contests. Frieze won the Yorkshire Oaks in 1952 and Brioche won the Voltigeur in 1957, both of them trained in Malton by Charlie Elsey and ridden by Australian jockey Edgar Britt. Frieze was one Elsey’s classic winners, having also won the Oaks that year, while Brioche defeated Vincent O’Brien’s odds-on favourite Ballymoss, the Irish Derby winner, in the Voltigeur before finishing third to the same colt in the St Leger.

It’s been a different story in the meeting’s two big two-year-old contests, the Lowther and the Gimcrack, where Yorkshire-trained youngsters have often held their own against their southern rivals. Four of the last ten Lowthers have gone to Yorkshire fillies, starting with Queen Kindly for Richard Fahey in 2016. She was certainly bred for the job given that both her dam and grandam were also Lowther winners. Threading, successful for Mark Johnston a year later, also had a pedigree of note, being out of a sister to Dubai Millennium. Karl Burke has been responsible for the last two Yorkshire winners, Living In The Past in 2019 and Swingalong in 2022, the latter beating Queen Kindly’s daughter Queen Me by a neck for another Yorkshire stable, that of Kevin Ryan.

Burke has a couple engaged in Thursday’s Lowther, namely recent Goodwood winner Wild Blossom and Love A Giggle who won the Marygate Fillies’ Stakes at the Dante meeting.

While Kevin Ryan hasn’t won the Lowther, he can boast four wins in the Gimcrack, starting with Amadeus Wolf in 2005. He went on to win the Middle Park Stakes that season and was second at the following year’s Ebor Festival in the Nunthorpe. Astaire and Blaine were consecutive winners in 2012 and 2013, Astaire also winning the Middle Park, while Blaine notched another win at the meeting two years later in the extended five-furlong handicap. Ryan’s most recent Gimcrack winner Emaraaty Ana, successful in 2018, went on to be placed in two Nunthorpes. It looks as though the stable’s entry this year, Matteo, has been put aside for the race having won both his starts at Beverley in April and May.

Other Yorkshire successes in the Gimcrack this century have come from Richard Fahey’s Sands of Mali in 2017, later a Group 1 winner in the Champions Sprint and now a successful sire, and last year from fellow Malton trainer Declan Carroll’s Lifeplan who beat Ryan’s Rock On Thunder. Lifeplan holds an entry in Saturday’s City of York Stakes. While Mark Johnston also won the Gimcrack this century, with Shaweel in 2008, the race was staged at Newbury that year due to waterlogging at York. Among earlier Yorkshire-trained Gimcrack winners, the 1957 winner Pheidippides is worth a mention; he was owned by Timeform founder Phil Bull and was one of Elsey’s three consecutive winners of the race.

A memorable edition of the Nunthorpe for Yorkshire stables took place in 1997 when Coastal Bluff and Ya Malak dead-heated. Both were trained in the vicinity of Thirsk, by David Barron and David Nicholls respectively. As if the drama of a dead-heat wasn’t enough, Coastal Bluff’s jockey Kevin Darley rode most of the race without reins after the bit snapped in the early stages, while Ya Malak, who joined him close home, made history for his jockey, Nicholls’ wife Alex Greaves – formerly an apprentice with Barron - who became the first woman to ride a pattern winner in Britain. Nicholls also trained the winner of the 2004 Nunthorpe, Bahamian Pirate.

Three horses have won the Nunthorpe twice this century, and the first of those to do so was Borderlescott, trained at Cowthorpe near Wetherby by Robin Bastiman. A much earlier dual Nunthorpe winner, Right Boy, successful in 1958 and 1959, was also trained in Yorkshire, by Bill Dutton at Malton. Borderlescott’s first Nunthorpe win actually came at Newmarket – the year York was waterlogged – and after he followed up at the usual venue in 2009 with a neck win over the Kevin-Ryan trained Benbaun, his trainer remarked: ‘This is special because it’s my home ground and this year I’ll get the full percentage!’ The rescheduled race the year before had been run for reduced prize money. The popular Borderlescott won 14 of his 85 races for his small yard and was still racing up to the age of 13.

Alpha Delphini, a 40/1 winner for Bryan Smart in 2018, and Winter Power, trained by Tim Easterby, who beat Emaraaty Ana into second in 2021, are more recent Yorkshire winners of the Nunthorpe, along with Highfield Princess in 2022. She led home a Yorkshire one-two-three in beating Richard Fahey’s two-year-old filly The Platinum Queen, with Emaraaty Ana third this time. Highfield Princess took her name from the Malton stable where Charlie Elsey had trained and is nowadays the base of John and Sean Quinn.

Best chance of a Yorkshire winner in Friday’s Nunthorpe is Night Raider who put up a couple of smart efforts to win the Palace House Stakes and Temple Stakes for Karl Burke earlier in the season and was fourth in last year’s race. Entries also include Ain’t Nobody and JM Jungle, second and sixth last year for Ryan and the Quinns respectively.

The Quinn stable has also won two recent editions of the City of York Stakes as a Group 2, with Safe Voyage in 2020 and Breege in 2024, while the other Yorkshire winner this century was David Chapman’s tough and reliable performer Quito who won it as a nine-year-old in 2006 when it was still a listed contest. Being a Group 1 nowadays doesn’t make it any easier for local yards, but Richard and Peter Fahey’s Powerful Glory has already caused a shock at the top level in the Champions Sprint Stakes at Ascot last year and Chipchase Stakes winner Paborus is another smart contender for Ed Bethell.

The Lonsdale Cup is another race that has gained in stature at this meeting over the years. Mark Johnston won it twice with Double Eclipse in the 1990s when it was the Lonsdale Stakes, first as a listed race and then as a Group 3 and was successful again in 2000 with subsequent dual Gold Cup winner Royal Rebel. But the only Yorkshire-trained winner since then is Bollin Eric for Tim Easterby in 2003; victory for the previous season’s St Leger winner no doubt helped with the race’s promotion to Group 2 the following year.

Even so, the Ebor remains the most coveted staying prize of the meeting, though it too takes more winning these days than it generally did in the past and Brian Ellison’s 2011 winner Moyenne Corniche remains the only Yorkshire-trained winner this century and the first since Far Ahead won for Les Eyre in 1997. Other Yorkshire winners late last century included Jimmy FitzGerald’s Sapience in 1989 who went on to finish second in the St Leger and perhaps the most celebrated local winner Sea Pigeon, successful ten years earlier for Peter Easterby when winning at the age of nine carrying 10-0 and ridden by Jonjo O’Neill. Phil Bull owned an Ebor winner too, doing so with Sostenuto in 1962, trained by Charlie Elsey’s son Bill.

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