The turf
Courageous stayers
Robin Oakley
If your selection is going to get beaten, then let it be like that. I had urged readers to back Sakhee for the Derby because he was a toughie, a grown-up, a horse who does not like to be passed and one who will stick his neck out and fight. Sakhee did all of that at Epsom down the finishing straight but he was beaten by an even braver, tougher horse in Sinndar, as the pair of them powered five lengths clear of the field. It was a truly classic race between two courageous stayers, for my money one of the best we have seen in recent years. And with a huge crowd out on a sunny Epsom Downs it was quite like old times. In fact it was very like old times. We may be in the 21st century but there was the Queen Mother handing over the prize to the Aga Khan, who was winning his fourth Derby. And while his father may have won five, the present Aga Khan has won all his four with home-bred horses. I hope he gets the fifth and, since John Oxx has a brother to Sinndar back at Currabeg in Co. Kil- dare, it might be sooner rather than later.
It really was a day to savour. Winning jockey Johnny Murtagh has been all the way down to the bottom of the slough of despond and back as he struggled to con- tain his weight, at one stage having to give up his job as John 030{'S stable jockey. (He once told jump jockey Mick Fitzgerald, 'Mick, if you want to do this job you've got to realise you are not a normal person.') His wife was in tears, and Johnny himself held on to the Queen Mother's hand for quite some time. Why was that? we asked. 'Well, I don't often get to meet her,' came the entirely reasonable reply. Every day is a battle with the scales. Doing anything less than the 9st carried in the Derby is a strug- gle but, as he says, when you are riding horses of the quality he gets with John 030C it does become a little easier. He certainly rode a peach of a race, tracking Richard Hills on Sakhee, taking him on up the straight and finally easing a length clear in the last hundred yards.
The quietly professorial John 030C is the kind of man to whom you would cheerfully entrust not just your horses but your wife, your daughter and whatever was left in the building society. I do not think I have ever seen a Derby-winning trainer so calm, so reasoned and so utterly in charge of him- self. He has a huge horse empire at home. When we asked how many, he replied diplomatically, 'I'd have to go home and count them.' But he is an utter realist, who does not send his horses abroad to inflate his owners' egos or to make up the num- bers. It turned out that Sinndar was the first horse he had ever run in the Derby. He sent only one horse to England last year and won the Group One race Ascot Gold Cup with him. On that record I will certainly look closely at anything else he sends over.
Of the horse himself, John Oxx said that he works with handicappers at home and makes ordinary ones look good, so little does he exert himself on the gallops. But put him in a race and he delivers. Sinndar had showed them he was ready. He needed a strong pace and he got it in what became a real test of stamina. 'If he's going to win a race, he'll do it like that, with determina- tion. You can't run any old horse in the Derby, you need an uncomplicated sort.' Amen to that, and thank heaven for owner- breeders like the Aga Khan who are still willing to produce them. Had he expected the Derby victory with Sinndar? 'We had high hopes, but you don't go into the Derby with expectations if you are a wise owner.' And His Highness was a diplomat too. Which would give him the greatest pleasure, the Derby win or being about to become a grandfather? Becoming a grand- father, he insisted, before revealing that his daughter was in the audience.
The important thing now for the status of the race is that Sinndar goes on to win more races, starting perhaps with the Irish Derby in a fortnight's time. Not since the unbeaten Lammtarra in 1995 has a Derby winner gone on to significant success after- wards. The subsequent racing record of Shaamit, Benny the Dip, High-Rise and Oath has scarcely been distinguished, although High-Rise did manage to win a race at Nad Al Sheba in Dubai this year. As for this column's tipping record, well, we did not get the Derby winner this year, although Sakhee's gallant second was not bad. The fillies, however, did oblige. I fore- cast a battle between Love Divine, Kalypso Katie and Petrushka for the Oaks. They finished first, second and fourth. Sorry we didn't quite get the tricast.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
'Flies are Sp extra.'
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