The turf
Bad bout of seconditis
Robin Oakley
Journeying to Dublin for Leopardstown's Irish Champion Stakes was a gamble. Last season's contest had produced the race of the year, with Godolphin's Fantastic Light beating Coolmore's Derby winner Galileo in a key struggle between the two dominant empires in racing. Surely lightning could not strike twice? In fact lightning was all that was missing. This year's race was sponsored by 'Ireland the Food Island' whose logo contains a raindrop — 'nature's purest ingredient' — and, with September in Ireland becoming a sort of super-mutant April, the course was alternately deluged and bathed in warm sunshine at roughly ten-minute intervals. But who cared about getting wet. It was, again, the Race of the Season.
Grandera isn't the nicest of animals. Stable staff warned photographers to keep their distance because he kicks and means it. At the other end, he will bite you if he can. He has a mind of his own and can be beaten a neck by almost anything out on the gallops with him. Two furlongs out, it looked as though he was in no mood to cooperate with a hardworking Frankie Dettori. Even when Frankie asked him for the big effort on Saturday, he cocked his head to take a look first at the crowd and his opponents. But then the handsome chestnut powered on, lowered his white-blazed nose and battled past the luckless Hawk Wing in the shadow of the post to win by a short head, with the whole of Ireland cheering for his opponent. Even Frankie declared of the winner: 'He's a nightmare.
You never know what to expect but at least he goes forward. I got him out when he was half thinking of going.'
It was a much relished success for the patient Saeed bin Suroor and Godolphin after a year in which they have played not so much second fiddle as fourth oboe to the wunderkind Aidan O'Brien, and their relief showed in the joshing within the team. 'Ifs taken you a year to learn how to ride him, Frankie,' teased racing manager Simon Crisford. 'Oh, come on, let me milk it. This is my day,' smiled the Big Sardine. And so it was. Mick Kinarie's face on the second told you that. Frankie played his hand so late there was no chance of trumping his card. Some say that Dettori doesn't take enough rides these days to keep his talents perfectly honed for a relentless business dependent on split-second timing. Fickle as we are in the media, we might not say the same if he had lost by a short head, but I have not seen a better ride this season. Frankie remains not just a delight for the crowds but a supreme big-race jockey.
For me, there were two disappointments about the race, One was the weak showing of Irish Oaks winner Margarula, of whom trainer Jim Bolger had declared in advance: 'She's almost as well as I am and if I was in any better form I'd be dangerous.' The other was the rapid disappearance with his beaten horse of Aidan O'Brien, with not a word to the media assembled to record his thoughts for an expectant public. He is admirably modest about his success but might earn still more Brownie points from coping publicly with the other of Kipling's two impostors. Of course the stable has been under a cloud with coughing, but after all the extravagant claims made for the big, handsome Hawk Wing he has now been second in the Guineas to a better-drawn stable companion, second in the Derby to another who liked the going better and second in the Irish Champion Stakes, with only his victory in the Eclipse for compensation.
The Coolmore operation isn't famous for taking such a course with their stud prospects, but to me there is a screamingly obvious case for campaigning Hawk Wing as a four-year-old and showing the world he is as good as they say. Like many others, I went to Leopardstown as much as anything to see a colt whom I still believe could have a magic about him. Hawk Wing lost little in defeat, especially after an enforced layoff. But we need to see more of him.
My knowledge of the Irish form book being somewhat limited. I had hoped to find some assistance with the rest of the card, starting with the Dublin cabbies. Alas, Seamus, who took me to Leopardstown, had been warned by his father to 'steer clear of slow horses and fast women'. And he had no need, it seems, to wager on horses, having won 8,000 euros so far this year for a 400 euro layout on lottery balls. The cabbie who brought me back would not have been much use either. He preferred the dogs, he said, 'because I can lose my money so much faster that way, none of that tedious waiting around'.
Drifting helplessly, I had a bad bout of seconditis, and not just with Hawk Wing. But at least I could read the form better than the young lady in the queue ahead of me at Gatwick. Bemoaning the ways of men to her female companion, she expressed her puzzlement at the behaviour of one who had left her after three months and a good weekend together, walking out the next morning without so much as a parting word. 'Mind you,' she mused, 'He did wear lipstick and ladies' knickers ... ' Oh lady, surely it was odds on that that one wasn't going to last the course.
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