Sky Bet Ebor: Our memories; Further Flight, Sergeant Cecil and Purple Moon
To celebrate Sky Bet's historic sponsorship of the York Ebor, our racing team look back on their fondest memories of Europe's richest handicap.
Further Flight 1990
Now here was an Ebor winner. Michael Hills rode, Barry Hills trained and the 7/1 joint-favourite went to the front inside the final quarter of a mile and fended off Bean King to win by a length-and-a-half from a mark of 80. And so he should. After all he was to go on and win the Jockey Club Cup at Newmarket for five successive seasons. He landed the 1991 and 1992 Goodwood Cup, the 1991 St Simon Stakes and 1992 Doncaster Cup. He was the European Champion Older Horse at the Cartier Awards of 2005. He ran 70 times during a career that started in October 1988 and ended in October 1998, winning 24 times. He was grey, tough and his trainer said “You could live a lifetime and never have a horse like him again.” Oh – and I backed him. As an impoverished 18-year-old, embarking on an ill-fated A Levels economics course and fuelled by Theakston Best Bitter, I called it right. I swear it’s my shrilled “Go on Michael” screams that nearly drown out Graham Goode on the commentary below. Glory days. (David Ord)
Sergeant Cecil 2005
Rod Millman’s Sergeant Cecil was just another handicapper until the summer of 2005. In 30 starts before that year’s Northumberland Plate he had won just three times, but at Newcastle he won off 92 and never looked back. Two starts later, though, in the Ebor, was where his career really took off. Settled in the rear in customary fashion by regular pilot Alan Munro, the six-year-old, a late bloomer, raced a touch keenly in the early stages but it was clear that hadn’t hindered his chance of glory on the Knavesmire as he began to scythe through the pack in the home straight. It looked at one point as though Munro might be squeezed for room, but Sergeant Cecil took off once he saw daylight and he roared past Carte Diamond and Grampian in the run for the line. That Ebor was the middle leg of a tremendous treble as he went on to win the Cesarewitch on his final start that campaign, but his love affair with York was far from over. He went on to win a Lonsdale Cup, a Yorkshire Cup and even a Doncaster Cup at the track, benefitting from the Leger meeting being run at York in the autumn of 2006. A marvellous stayer that rose through the handicaps to win at the very top level, it all began for him with that terrific Ebor success in August 2005. (Ben Linfoot)
Purple Moon 2007
Purple Moon had a fantastic career and is the shortest-priced horse ever to have won the Ebor in the last 40 years. Hindsight is a most glorious thing, in this sport above all, but given what he went on to achieve, York punters were dead right to be steaming into Luca Cumani’s charge on the day. It wasn’t quite as simple as that in the race, as Jamie Spencer got himself slightly stuck behind a couple of rivals after tracking over towards the stands’ side on straightening for home. But once he saw daylight, the white-faced Purple Moon sprouted wings to come between All The Good and Godolphin’s Scriptwriter, before holding on gamely from the fast-finishing Honolulu, who was in receipt of 2lb and went on to win the following year’s Doncaster Cup. Purple Moon himself, who had started out with Sir Michael Stoute and briefly (and successfully) flirted with hurdling during a short spell in the care of Nicky Richards, subsequently finished a half-length second in the Melbourne Cup that year, and short-head second in the 2008 Hong Kong Vase. There were other near misses later in his career, including a narrow defeat in the 2009 Sheema Classic, while his penultimate performance in public saw him running on into third in Rite Of Passage’s Ascot Gold Cup in 2010. (Matt Brocklebank)
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