Glorious but cruel
Robin Oakley
Asked once what had been the happiest day of her life, Brigitte Bardot allegedly replied, 'It was a night.' Which presumably conferred champion status on her partner of the time. With so many top
racing programmes these days, Newmarket's 'Champions Day', as they advertise it, could be challenged by some. It does, after all, come at the tail end of the season, with the trees down the All already blazing in the reds and yellows of a nippy autumn and some horses losing their form after a hard season. But an eightrace card including two Group Ones, two Group Twos, three Group Threes and the ultra-competitive Cesarewitch Handicap really is something special, and I doubt if we have had a better day's racing all season.
For poor Mark Johnston and his wife Deirdre it was a glorious day and a cruel one. The canny Middleham trainer whose ultra-fit horses live up to the stable motto 'Always Trying' won the two-mile two-furlong slog of the Cesarewitch with Contact Dancer and then went on to capture the Group One Dewhurst Stakes with Shamardal, who is now the winter favourite for next year's 2,000 Guineas.
The stable's gutsy filly Attraction has been one of this season's stars, charging off in front in her races and defying the others to catch her before the mile is done. Only on soft ground do many ever look like doing so. Now Mark has another speed machine. He told jockey Kevin Darley before the Dcwhurst, a key two-year-old indicator for next year's Classics, that Shamardal had blistering early pace and
that he should ride him like Attraction: 'Anyone going with you will be going too fast.' Despite the soft ground, the pair were never headed. Kevin told me afterwards, 'He's got lots of speed and then he quickened off it.' Shamardal kept lengthening in the style of a really good horse and though Mark says 'no ante-post price is a fair price' there were plenty of professionals who reckoned there was nothing ungenerous about his 3-1 price for the Guineas.
But racing has a habit of kicking you in the guts even when it is patting you on the back. In between the two victories Mark Johnston ran two horses, Lucky Story and Mister Monet, in the other Group One, the mile-and-a-quarter Champion Stakes, both of them with decent chances on the book. Lucky Story, perhaps unsuited by the going, hacked home in last place having run no kind of race, and poor Mister Monet, in a promising position, suddenly shattered his off-hind pastern six furlongs out. The three-year-old son of Peintre Celthre was quickly pulled up by Kevin Darley and whisked off in a horse ambulance, but the vets could not save him. Trainers at all levels, and they don't come much higher than Mark Johnston, certainly have to learn to cope with Kipling's two impostors along with all the other complexities of the job.
The successful trainer in the Champion Stakes was, for the third time, Barry Hills, who has never lost his faith in Hamdan Al Maktoum's little chestnut. After Haafhd had won the 2,000 Guineas this year, Barry, who is not given to wild superlatives, described him as the best miler he had trained in his 36-year career. But although four of the colts he beat in the 2,000 had gone on to win Group Ones, flaafhd, whose yard had been out of sorts in mid-summer, was still looking for a follow-up success and was allowed to start at 12-1. I only wish I had known that Angus Gold, Hamdan Al Maktoum's racing manager, had been so amazed at the price that he had placed the biggest bet of his life.
In the race, Haafhd, who was bucking and kicking with exuberance in the preliminaries, travelled sweetly behind the pacemaking mare Chorist, who loved the ground, and led a furlong out under Barry's son Richard for a smooth victory, with the Irish Champion Stakes winner Azamour in third. He has boosted this year's Classic form and should have a fine time next year over eight and ten furlongs. It is a tribute to a remarkable training career that Barry Hills's first winner of the Champion Stakes was Cormorant Wood, back in 1983, a feat repeated with Storming Home two years ago.
On Saturday's card Barry also trained the ultra-consistent Maids Causeway, ridden by his other jockey-son Michael, to take the seven-furlong Owen Brown Rockfel Stakes. Having backed her, I thought I had done my money when she
was headed by Penkenna Princess inside the East furlong But the chestnut filly is a true daughter of her sire, Giant's Causeway, who always relished a fight She came again and stuck her head out on the line to win by a short head. There may be others more obviously qualified for the 1,000 Guineas next May, but she has already proved she stays a mile and she has that precious capacity to battle. Michael Hills reminded us that the last time he won the Rockfel, on Hula Dancer in 1999, the filly went oil to win the Irish 1,000. Whatever Maids Causeway does now in her racing career, you would want to have one like her afterwards. Sharnardal, too, is by Giant's Causeway.
Saturday was all about the horses, with Kieren Fallon's fall and loss of racing days having taken the steam out of the jockeys championship. Frankie Dettori extended his lead to 18 with a victory on Godolphin's Firebreak. It does seem that their strength in depth is going to prove the key. As Frankie pointed out on Saturday, the previous season Godolphin had 17 winners, this season they were already up to 108. Sir Michael Stoute does not seem to have quite the ammunition at the moment to keep Kieren in the hunt.
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