A couple of the quirkier things that caught my eye over the week..

{from my blog - richardmooreracingblog.wordpress.com}

Saddler Maker’s Continued Rise

The story behind Saddler Maker had my attention well before this year’s Cheltenham festival, but his runners at the meeting managed to eradicate the last seed of doubt I was harbouring about his progeny – namely their ability to handle faster going conditions. This was a festival where we were treated to times well below standard with regularity, with a new course record in the Champion Hurdle set by Annie Power for good measure. The ground was officially good to soft for the Tuesday, but drying by the hour, and good ground prevailed for the other days of the festival.

A feature of French racing is that the vast majority of it is on a softer surface, and as such up until recently, the progeny of Saddler Maker would have had very little exposure to quicker going. It is to his credit then that the six runners he sired at this year’s festival managed to record an astonishing four second place finishes. Three of those places were in Grade One races (Alpha Des Obeaux in the World Hurdle, Apple’s Jade in the Triumph, Bristol De Mai in the JLT Chase). Frustrating as it may be to have so many near misses, on this evidence a Cheltenham festival winner is surely just a matter of time.


Attachment to Particular Stallions

Montjeu sired one of Willie Mullins’ greatest horses in Hurricane Fly, and since his demise it is interesting to note that Mullins seems to be having plenty of success with horses sired by offspring of Montjeu. Walk in the Park is the obvious starting point here, with Douvan carrying all before him in the last two seasons. Min ran a great race in the Supreme, and could make up into another top class representative for his young sire. As a racehorse, Walk in the Park finished second to Motivator in the Derby, but actually only recorded one win from fifteen starts (in a minor event at Saint-cloud). Earlier this year he was bought by Coolmore, and is standing at Grange Stud in Cork.

Montmartre is a less-heralded son of Montjeu, but Mullins has enjoyed success with Petite Parisienne and Kalkir of late, with a few more of his progeny falling to his buyer Harold Kirk at recent sales. Another son, Authorized, has sired Nichols Canyon, who finished a very respectable third in the Champion Hurdle last week.

What makes this all the more interesting is the fact that Montjeu is also responsible for one of the most disappointing jumps sires in living memory. Scorpion had huge expectation on his shoulders when he went to stand at Castle Hyde stud, but despite covering 339, 207 and 229 mares in his first three seasons, he has struggled to produce a black type winner of any description. In 2015 he covered just 125 mares, suggesting that breeders have started to lose patience, often questioning the temperament of his offspring. Currently his top rated horse over jumps (according to Racing Post Ratings) is the Nicky Henderson-trained Might Bite, who won a handicap hurdle off a mark of 138 last week in Kempton.

Altior’s devastating win in the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle enhanced Nicky Henderson’s affiliation with offspring of High Chaparral. Predominantly a flat sire, he has produced some truly exceptional racehorses in that sphere, including So You Think and Toronado. His fee of 30,000 was out of the league of most jumps breeders, but it is interesting to note that four of his top five horses over jumps were trained by Nicky Henderson. Different Gravey is another current inmate, rated 160, while Hadrian’s Approach won what used to be called the Whitbread Gold Cup at Sandown for Henderson in 2014. Both Montjeu and High Chaparral are of course descended from Sadler’s Wells, and he continues to cast an epic shadow over the racing world.

The Folly of Ante-Post Betting

One of the arguments thrown up by traditionalists was that by expanding the festival from three to four days, one would dilute the quality of the individual races, with the variety of distances offered meaning that novices in particular had more options to avoid taking on supposed bankers. That was borne out by victories for Yorkhill and Black Hercules in races that they were not originally meant to contest.
Yorkhill was to the fore of the market for the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle, and was a last-minute switch to the Neptune, presumably in a bid to avoid taking on Min and Altior. His stamina was never in doubt, as the son of Presenting powered away from Yanworth up the hill.

In Black Hercules’ case, he had a range of options, with the National Hunt Chase mentioned as a likely target over the winter. The RSA was considered the most logical destination around February, but he was a late switch to the JLT, with connections seemingly looking to avoid More of That and No More Heroes. As is turned out, Black Hercules could easily have won the RSA too, with both favourites failing to run their races.

Away from the novice races, few could have envisaged Annie Power turning up in the Champion Hurdle last January, while connections were making all the right noises about Vautour running in the Gold Cup until literally days before the race. All four horses are trained by Willie Mullins, and while he loves keeping his charges apart, sheer volume of quality animals dictate that clashes are inevitable at the festival. For all that, he rarely runs two top chances against each other, as shown by Vautour/Djakadam and Min/Yorkhill.

In a nutshell, four Grade One races at this year’s festival were won by horses who didn’t look likely to be even competing in them in the lead up. The lesson to be learned here is that as long as one trainer continues to dominate the landscape at the elite end of jumps racing, ante-post betting on major races containing multiple Mullins runners should be avoided.