Timeform's David Johnson looks at the origins of the Coolmore v Godolphin rivalry on a day where they locked horns again in a fascinating Dewhurst Stakes.
Sport thrives on rivalries. In the 80s, athletics had Seb Coe v Steve Ovett, tennis had Bjorn Borg v John McEnroe, boxing played host to the ‘Four Kings’, Marvin Hagler, Tommy Hearns, Sugar Ray Leonard and Roberto Duran who all fought each other, some of them several times and put the focus firmly on the middleweight division away from the heavyweights in the post-Muhammad Ali, pre-Mike Tyson era.
It was in this period that the rivalry of Coolmore, traditionally in the dark blue (and other assorted silks nowadays) v the royal blue of Godolphin can trace its roots (and anyone who wants to learn more from this era of the sport is advised to seek out a copy of the recently reprinted Horse Trader – Robert Sangster and The Rise and Fall of the Sport of Kings).
Through the 1970s, backed by syndicates led by Robert Sangster and John Magnier, Vincent O’Brien was able to purchase the very best sons and grandsons of Northern Dancer who were trained at Ballydoyle with great success, 1969 Dewhurst winner Nijinsky starting the decade with a win in the 1970 Triple Crown and it continued towards the end of the decade with top-level successes from The Minstrel in 1977 and dual Arc winner Alleged in 1977/78.
The virtual monopoly was disrupted in the 1980s with the value of bloodstock soaring as the Maktoum family, relatively fresh on the scene, battled against the Ballydoyle partnerships for the sons and grandsons of Northern Dancer in the sales ring of Kentucky and later on the tracks in Britain and Ireland.
The Keeneland sale of 1981 is particularly significant in bringing us up to the present day as the Maktoum family went to $3.3m to outbid the Ballydoyle syndicate for a Northern Dancer colt out of Sweet Alliance. He was named Shareef Dancer and went on to win the Irish Derby and earn a Timeform rating of 135. Later, he sired Colorado Dancer who in 1996 foaled a colt by Seeking the Gold who went on to be named Dubai Millennium.
After some astronomical sums changed hands, including a record (at the time) $10.2m for Snaafi Dancer, who never proved good enough to ever make it to the track, a ’truce’ of some sort was ultimately reached, and the value of bloodstock plummeted from the 1980s boom. Sangster concentrated on homebreds and the rivalry began to look a little more one-sided into the 2000s, the decision by Sheikh Mohammed not to purchase yearlings by Coolmore stallions more an act of self-sabotage than anything else as Galileo hit his prime, but Northern Dancer remains a key figure in the sire lines for both Coolmore and Godolphin.
Coolmore’s success is rooted in Sadler’s Wells and his sons whereas for Godolphin, Dubawi stepped into the mantle left by the premature death of his own sire Dubai Millennium who produced just one crop and in Night of Thunder he has produced a son who is developing into a top sire himself.
Godolphin and Ballydoyle dominated the betting for the Dewhurst with Desert Castle and Darkness Falls, both tracing their lineage to Northern Dancer, the former being by Galileo’s son the outstanding Frankel, while the latter is by Montjeu’s son Camelot.
Darkness Falls came out on top of the protracted duel, coping well with the drop back in trip with Ryan Moore soon having him close to the pace and he was always holding off the favourite who had every chance if good enough. The top-end of the range of the historic standards suggests a figure of 119 for the winner and 118 for the runner-up, both of whom are likely to keep the ‘p’ symbol that denotes on-going improvement, but that is yet to be confirmed. Great Barrier Reef is credited with improvement in third, running to a bare rating of 111, which could be upgraded a little given the trouble he met when trying to improve.
Having come so close with Camelot in 2012, a few pretenders have come and gone since, but at this stage, Darkness Falls looks a perfectly viable contender to become the first horse to emulate Nijinsky and become only the second horse in almost 100 years to achieve the Triple Crown of Guineas, Derby and St Leger, as he heads into the winter rightfully at the head of the market for the first two.
Conditions at Newmarket on Saturday, like the previous day, were riding a bit quicker than the official, even when accounting for the tailwind, the ground back to good to firm on Saturday after Timeform called the last three races as Good following rain on Friday afternoon.
The quick conditions saw a new juvenile track record set in the Zetland Stakes with Drumbeat winning by 5½ lengths from Wykehurst Park, beating the previous best by 1.81 seconds. The time stacks up well against the other juvenile pattern races on the card, acknowledging it was run at a stronger pace than either the Autumn or Dewhurst and it’s a rare instance of the winner breaking through the 110+ barrier and he’ll presumably follow the route Pierre Bonnard took last year with a trip to France for the 1¼m Group 1 Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud later in the month.
Like the Dewhurst, the Autumn Stakes proved another match between Godolphin and Coolmore and it was the royal blue of Rock Montreal that came out on top as he edged out Sergei Diaghilev by a neck. The runner-up got first run on Rock Montreal, the race unfolding similarly to the Dewhurst in fact, but Rock Montreal was able to claw back the advantage stolen by Sergei Diaghilev, earning a rating around 110, some way below that of the first two in the Dewhurst but connections are entitled to bring him along in the spring with a Guineas tilt in mind.
Quickly looking back to Friday, the Fillies’ Mile took centre stage and while it hardly looked a Godolphin/Coolmore head-to-head beforehand, that’s how it transpired, Musical Times overcoming adversity and trouble in the run to come out on top. Rated 114p going into the Fillies’ Mile it’s unlikely she quite had to run to that level and had a bit to spare over the much-improved Haven who gets a new rating of 107p. With the first two from the Dewhurst set for a Guineas rematch, a similar contest between Musical Times and the Ballydoyle-trained top 2-y-o filly Sun Goddess (120) in the fillies’ equivalent should give us Flat fans something to look forward to over the winter and representing a rivalry that stretches over forty years and counting.
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