The turf
Leave well alone
Robin Oakley
Sometimes I fear the sun-dried tomato syndrome is taking over the whole of life. Why cannot a chef give you a Caesar Salad any more without adding a sprinkling of beetroot crisps or a crème brill& without chucking candied cherries on the bottom? Even in a Zimbabwean game reserve last week they could not serve me a steak with- out dousing it in orange sauce.
Classics should be left alone, and that applies to the Derby too. Nobody thinks of training ivy up Nelson's column or swap- ping Big Ben for something sponsored and digital and, with the 221st race due to be run at Epsom this Saturday, it is time the would-be 'modernisers' left the Blue Riband of the Turf alone. Run it later in the year, urge the experimentalists. Cut back the distance from a mile and a half. Take it away from Epsom's switchback to a flatter course. Phooey. If they think they can create a better race in which owners and trainers would prefer to enter their horses, then let them do so. The true test of the Derby is that, as Sue Ellen, the man- aging director of United Racecourses, puts it, 'It is still the race everyone wants to win.'
Part of the argument used by those seek- ing change is that no horse has won the Triple Crown of 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St Leger since Nijinsky; and, with the first of those run over a straight mile at New- market, the second over a mile and a half of Epsom gradients five weeks later and the third over one and three quarter miles at Doncaster in September, nobody is likely to. Compare that, they say, with the Ameri- can Triple Crown which involves the Ken- tucky Derby over ten furlongs, the Preakness over nine and a half furlongs and the Belmont over 12. It is more achiev- able and several times in recent years top- class horses have at least won two of the three legs. (The snag with the American Triple Crown is that the three races conic within six weeks.) But winning one top-class race like the Derby is dream enough for most people, so who is going to carry home the prize from Epsom this year? It has been a formidably difficult year for trainers, with wet and cold weather bringing constant hold-ups in their work. Although his stable is now running into form, Henry Cecil's equine blue bloods like Beat Hollow and Wellbeing have suffered from mucky lungs. Aidan O'Brien is sending Aristotle from Bally- doyle to Epsom after just one prep race at Longchamp when there appeared to be steering problems, and the various Derby trials have produced no outstanding candi- date.
King's Best won the 2,000 Guineas with a devastating burst of speed. Jockey Kieren Fallon insists the horse will stay and trainer Sir Michael Stoute said the horse would have kept going all the way to Newmarket Clock Tower on Guineas day. My worry with King's Best, apart from a minor last-minute injury scare, would be whether he has the temperament to cope with the preliminaries on such a highly charged day. Although Lingfield's Derby Trial has proved a good pointer in recent years, few professionals were excited by Saddler's Quest's performance, battling home from Going Global in a mini-monsoon that is unlikely to be repeated at Epsom. But, as his affronted trainer Gerard Butler pointed out when Ladbrokes kept Saddler's Quest at 40-1, the horse would have been half that price if trained by one of the big names and he is unbeaten in three races.
Godolphin's Roscius won the Predomi- nate Stakes over the Goodwood gradients but is not reckoned by the stable to be up to the class of Best of the Bests. And that is one reason why I am going for Sakhee in this very uncertain year.
Sakhee won what looks to me like the best of this year's trials when in the Dante Stakes at York he beat Pawn Broker and Best of Bests, who looked well tuned up for the occasion and whom I do not see reversing that result. No horse beaten in the Dante, I believe, has yet won at Epsom. Sakhee, trained by John Dunlop, won from the front on soft going at Sandown and came from behind on fast going to win at York. He looks a grown-up and his trainer knows what it takes to win a Derby, having achieved that feat previ- ously with Shirley Heights in 1978 and with Erhaab in 1994. He deserves a change of luck after persuading the owner to supple- ment Lucido for last year's race at a cost of £75,000, only for the horse to suffer injury in the race and come home almost last.
John Oxx's Sinndar showed toughness in winning Leopardstown's Derby trial, and I noted long ago that Ian Balding said of Kingsclere, the horse he riskily named after his training base, that he was 'our signature horse, the best I've ever bred'. The booking of Olivier Peslier shows he too means busi- ness. For me, though, it is Sakhee to win from Kingsclere and Aristotle. And there should be a rare tussle for the Oaks between Love Divine, a hopefully revived Petrushka and Kalypso Katie.
Robin Oakley is political editor of the BBC.
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