Will to win
Robin Oakley
It wasn't the panamas and the pretty girls in pastels who put the gloss on Goodwood this year. It wasn't even the strolling steel band which the crusty old Observer is shamefully demanding to have silenced. And until the sunny Saturday it certainly was not the weather. What made this particular Goodwood glorious was the character of two wonderful horses who don't just have ability but also the will not to be beaten, the veteran Persian Punch and the flying filly Russian Rhythm.
'Keep a diary, honey, and one day it will keep you,' Mae West once observed, We can be sure that when his racing days are done proud owner Jeff Smith will ensure that Persian Punch never wants for comforts anyway. But if ever there was a horse whose diary I would have wanted to read it is his. Jockeys who ride him say that the ten-year-old knows more about what is going on in a race than they do. After Thursday's Goodwood Gold Cup, when Persian Punch became the oldest winner in its 191 years, Martin Dwyer declared, 'I think he's taking the mickey out of me. He knows where the winning post is and towards the end when I was tiring he went "Right, come on, let's go and win". 'It was as if Persian Punch had deliberately let Jardines Lookout, another brave battler, get close to him, and then produced one final heave to let him know who was boss. And you could see he positively enjoyed milking the crowd's emotion afterwards.
In the winner's enclosure the delighted Jeff Smith said, 'He's a war horse. You could see someone in armour on top of him charging the opposition.' With the massive Persian Punch you could mount a gun turret between his ears and another atop his quarters and send him into the desert heading a column. He is that rarity, a real character horse on the flat who has kept going long enough to earn the same affection as the longer-lived stars of jump racing. And, of course, with Persian Punch there is the drama factor too. So often he wins by fighting back, and so often he only just makes it after a ding-dong struggle through the final furlong or two.
In the Addleshaw Goddard Stakes at Sandown this year the four years' younger Cover Up passed him, but foolishly did so too soon and the old boy rattled back to catch him just before the line and win by a short head. Persian Punch won the Lansdale Stakes at York in 1998 by the same margin from another grand stayer, Celeric. And it was only by a head that he beat his Goodwood rival Jardines Lookout in the 2001 version of the York race. In the 1998 Henry H Stakes at Sandown he was passed in an epic struggle by Samraan but once more came again to win by a head. Let's hope that next year. at 11, he can take the Ascot Gold Cup that has so far eluded him. They won't then need to demolish the stand for Ascot's rebuilding, the crowd will lift the roof off for them.
As a gelding, Persian Punch has no breeding-shed delights to come. The filly Russian Rhythm, though, winner of Goodwood's Nassau Stakes in a time just three tenths outside the record, will in due course become a highly sought-after mare, and not just because she is a fine, big handsome filly, with an athletic walk and a high cruising speed in her races. It is her attitude which will add enormously to her value. Just like Persian Punch, she has that crucial will to win. She is brave as well as beautiful.
In the Nassau, Kieren Fallon had tried to keep the Michael Stoute-trained filly, running over two furlongs further than she had attempted before in public, on the better ground close to the rail. As the two in front of him slowed down and two attackers moved past on the outside, he lost crucial momentum, But that was where class told. Other jockeys might have panicked. Fallon moved out and crucially waited for his filly to collect herself before launching his drive after the long-gone Richard Hughes on Ana Marie. Russian Rhythm, on ground she did not really enjoy, stuck her head down and went for it, responding to every urging from her jockey and prevailing in the end by a neck. Said Fallon, 'She has a big heart and is very game.' That gameness, already demonstrated by her escapologist exploits in York's Lowther Stakes as a two-year-old, has now been rewarded by victory in five of her six races, including three Group Ones this year. At 5-4 on, her victory has not added hugely to the profits of this column's Nine to Follow. But she has contributed more than any other to the sheer pleasure factor of following them.
Two more of our Nine, incidentally, ran in the King George at Ascot the Saturday before. Alamshar won it at 13-2 and Sulamani was second at 9-2. Mark Johnston's Double Obsession won the last race that day at 5-2 and though he and Dubaian Gift have run since then without scoring our record now is 12 victories and six seconds from 29 starts, or a return of £548 for a £290 outlay at a level £10 stake.
At Goodwood with some good friends, I gave them Moments of Joy in the first at 15-2, which launched the day nicely. Sadly, when it came to the Stewards Cup, in which I suggested the 4-1 winner Patavellian and Fire Up the Band, which came second, Mrs Oakley was much more impressed with my witnessing an Arab gentleman wager £500 each way in cash on Fayr Jag and placed one of her rare wagers accordingly. She of little faith. It came nowhere.
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