Newmarket comment: Adam Houghton on great day for Saeed bin Suroor
With five listed/group races on the afternoon, all worth at least £29,000 to the winner, Friday’s card at Newmarket had the makings of a pivotal one in the trainers’ championship.
Before the Cambridgeshire Meeting got underway, Andrew Balding was in pole position but only by a narrow margin, leading Charlie Appleby to the tune of around £91,000. That deficit became even narrower after Thursday’s action as Appleby pocketed £34,026 for winning the feature race on the card, the Group 3 Tattersalls Stakes, with the progressive two-year-old Modern Games.
Appleby began Friday around £71,000 behind Balding and, granted a favourable bounce of the balls, it wasn’t impossible that he could have ended the day in front. After all, he saddled four favourites on the card, including Sayyida in the Princess Royal Stakes, Master of The Seas in the Joel Stakes and Star Safari in the Godolphin Stakes, three races worth a grand total of £140,073 to the winners.
In the event, however, Al Jaddaf’s reversal at 13/8-on in the maiden which kicked off the card would prove a sign of things to come, with Friday developing into one of those days for Appleby – a rare one of late – when nothing went right.
Sayyida and Master of The Seas did at least hit the frame in their respective races, collecting £17,200 and £12,374 respectively for their troubles, while the comprehensive defeat of the Balding-trained favourite Majestic Glory in the Rockfel Stakes, worth nearly £55,000 to the winner, would also have provided some crumbs of compensation.
Instead Friday belonged to another man synonymous with the Godolphin blue, namely Saeed bin Suroor, the operation’s longest-serving trainer for whom there has been some lean times since he won his fourth trainers’ championship in 2004.
Soft Whisper got the ball rolling for Bin Suroor with victory in the listed Rosemary Stakes, but Benbatl was undoubtedly the most popular winner of the day when foiling the enterprisingly-ridden Pogo and Master of The Seas in the Joel Stakes.
Benbatl and Pogo raced away from each other in the first half of the race, each leading their respective groups, and Oisin Murphy still seemed content to bide his time on Benbatl as Kieran Shoemark kicked Pogo into a clear advantage entering the final two furlongs. Steadily, Benbatl reeled the leader in and he always seemed to be doing enough once hitting the front inside the final furlong, ultimately passing the post three quarters of a length to the good.
Admittedly, the proximity of the runner-up suggests Benbatl probably didn’t need to be at his high-class best, but that shouldn’t detract from the seven-year-old’s performance as he brought up the eleventh success of his career and his tenth in pattern company.
A winner of Group 1 races in Australia, Dubai and Germany, as well as the 2019 edition of this Group 2, Benbatl has long been the standard-bearer at his yard during a period when days like today have been a rare occurrence for Bin Suroor, not just this season but for much of the last decade.
Whilst the foundations for Appleby’s title challenge have been laid by the likes of Adayar and Hurricane Lane – the winners of the Derby, King George and St Leger between them in 2021 – Bin Suroor began the day ranked twenty-ninth in the trainers’ championship and yet to saddle a winner above Group 3 level on British soil this year.
Of course, there was a time earlier in his career when victory in races such as the Derby, King George and St Leger all seemed rather routine to Bin Suroor. He memorably won the Derby, King George and Arc – a treble Appleby will be attempting to complete with Adayar on Sunday week – with Lammtarra in 1995, while his total number of wins in the King George and St Leger stand at five apiece.
Dubai Millennium (Timeform rating 140), Daylami (138), Mark of Esteem (137), Sakhee (136), Intikhab (135), Fantastic Light (134), Lammtarra (134), Swain (134), Halling (133) and Doyen (132) – the horses that carried Bin Suroor to such heights are a who’s who of top-class equine talent from around the turn of the century.
The ammunition to compete at the top level in Britain has proved harder to come by since Bin Suroor last won the trainers’ championship, though. Mastery’s victory in the 2009 St Leger remains the only classic success for Bin Suroor during that period, while it’s nearly eight years since Farhh won the Champion Stakes at Ascot, the last time the yard won a Group 1 on British soil.
To put that drought into some context, Bin Suroor has saddled 50 runners in Group 1 races in Britain during the intervening years and only Ihtimal (third in the 2014 1000 Guineas), Beautiful Romance (third in the 2015 Fillies’ And Mares’ Stakes), Very Special (second in the 2016 Falmouth Stakes), Always Smile (second in the 2016 Sun Chariot Stakes) and Thunder Snow (third in the 2017 St James’s Palace Stakes) have even finished placed.
And, whilst Covid-19 was obviously a mitigating factor, the 2020 campaign was arguably the nadir of Bin Buroor’s training career in Britain as he saddled only 39 winners, his lowest tally since 2003, and earned total prize money of only £407,825, his worst return by that measure since he first started having runners in Britain.
There has been the odd green shoot of recovery this season. Bin Suroor certainly looks to have a big talent on his hands in the shape of Real World, who has rattled off a stylish hat-trick in Britain this season, winning the Hunt Cup at Royal Ascot, the Steventon Stakes at Newbury and the Strensall Stakes at York.
Clearly a very smart performer on his day, Real World is currently trading at around 8/1 in the ante-post betting in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes, but he is reportedly more likely to run in the Prix Daniel Wildenstein at Longchamp on Arc weekend, leaving good old Benbatl with the task of trying to end Bin Suroor’s Group 1 exile in Britain.
In truth, the QEII might be a step too far for Benbatl at this stage of his career, but no horse or trainer will be trying harder to scoop the £623,810 on offer to the winner. And, whilst there won’t be a trainers’ championship on the line for Bin Suroor, victory at Ascot would surely mean just as much given how long it’s been since he last scaled those illustrious heights.
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