Flat season review: David Ord on the summer of 2023
At just before 5.24 last Saturday evening Astro King won the aptly-named Sky Bet Finale Handicap at York and the curtain came down on the British summer racing festivals of 2023.
From Epsom to York via Ascot and Goodwood it was always going to be some journey as we clung onto Frankie Dettori’s coat-tails on his final lap of honour.
It started well too with Soul Sister winning the Betfred Oaks but Arrest was all at sea on the fast ground and undulations of Epsom in the Derby.
But the fact the race went off on time was almost the story of the day. Animal Rising, fresh from the publicity their Aintree protests had gained, targeted the premier colts’ Classic. The Jockey Club took out injunctions, the police made morning arrests, but moments after the stalls opened Ben Newman made it onto the track. Seconds later he was caught and removed, and the show went on.
There was a sense of relief then when the runners came around Tattenham Corner with clear blue water to aim at and a sense of bewilderment at the line as Auguste Rodin reeled in King Of Steel to win for Aidan O’Brien.
I asked at the time was this the trainer’s finest hour? Building a colt back a month on from a complete blowout in the 2000 Guineas to tasting glory in the most important race of the entire campaign. Auguste Rodin went on to complete the Derby double at the Curragh but the rebuild is on again after another low-key effort in the King George at Ascot - more on that later.
Golden Ascot for retiring Dettori
Royal Ascot was always going to be a major stop on the Dettori tour, a track that means more to him than any other. He’s synonymous with the place.
We had Dettori watch, special bets and previews across the site. But it was a slow-burner of a week for him which finally caught fire in the newly-crafted Wathnan Racing silks aboard Gregory and Courage Mon Ami.
The latter's win in the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot felt very significant, after all a lightly-raced four-year-old landing the big race of the week on only his fourth start is hardly the norm. But he’s been beaten twice since, and the champion stayers’ crown is up for grabs.
So is the title of the fastest sprinter – or at least sprinter of the year. Highfield Princess looked a good thing to snare that gong for the second successive season but couldn’t get to the three-year-old Bradsell in the King’s Stand at Royal Ascot or Khaadem and Sacred in the Platinum Jubilee four days later.
She did drop to Group Two company to get the confidence back in the Qatar King George Stakes at Goodwood but last week at York Live In The Dream flew from the stalls and she got a rearview of him throughout another of the country’s fastest five furlongs. He was electric.
The story of the sprinting ranks has undoubtedly been Shaquille, though. His unbeaten year started with victory in desperate ground at Newmarket's Guineas meeting in May from a handicap mark of 93. Four starts later he was running away with the July Cup.
That was a second Group One win following hot on the hooves of an authoritative display in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot. There's a little sense of the Highfield Princess romance about him too, representing the Julie Camacho team. A very big fish in a relatively small pond and one who we haven’t seen the best of yet.
He’ll be in action next week in the Betfair Sprint Cup at Haydock and connections have been working hard on getting him out of the stalls faster. Imagine what he could do if he does.
So where are we with the milers?
The milling division has been a puzzle of its own.
Among the established stars we’ve seen Lockinge hero Modern Games retired, Triple Time spring a surprise when fending off Inspiral in the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot, only for the Gosden ace to take sweet revenge in the Prix Jacques Le Marois.
She deserves extra credit for that having taken in the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Goodwood en route and meeting with defeat at the hooves of Paddington, the poster boy of our summer.
His meteoric rise was a rare Ballydoyle fable, from the humble surroundings of a Naas handicap at the tail-end of Cheltenham week to a seven-race winning streak that took in the Irish Guineas, St James’s Palace Stakes, Coral-Eclipse and aforementioned Sussex Stakes.
He was the horse we hitched our wagon to as he dusted himself off, gained weight and more admirers and he threw himself into challenge after challenge.
Too good for 2000 Guineas winner Chaldean, who is now in need of a little rebuilding job himself, at Ascot, he eyeballed Emily Upjohn before going clear again in the Coral-Eclipse.
He had to get down and dirty at Goodwood – we all did, it was that sort of week. Inspiral was the problem. In the driving rain of Wednesday Frankie Dettori decided he wanted the inside rail aboard the Cheveley Park ace but you don’t win as many Group Ones as Ryan Moore does by handing over such advantages.
The door was shut but having used up petrol to get there – and the better of the filly – Paddington still had two furlongs in deep, Sussex ground to last out. For a stride or two he was vulnerable as French raider Facteur Cheval threatened a late charge, but the leader chewed him up and spat him out.
Iron horse derailed but Mostahdaf star shines bright
The new Iron Horse was rolling but just as comparisons with the great Giant’s Causeway gathered pace, the streak was ended by a Dettori masterclass aboard Mostahdaf in the Juddmonte International at York.
But one of the reasons why National Hunt horses, certainly from yesteryear, were more revered than their Flat counterparts among the sporting public was their ability to climb off the canvas after a defeat, dust themselves down and take revenge further down their line.
We like vulnerabilities in our champions and Paddington isn’t finished yet. He’ll be at Ascot on QIPCO British Champions Day, probably for the QEII, and probably smarting from getting a rear view of horses for the first time in 2023.
Mostahdaf is the latest stallion prospect to emerge from a frankly staggering two years for the Shadwell team. He was brilliant from behind in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot, devastating from the front at York. Give him a little break, fast ground and you have a genuine international star.
He’s as good as we’ve seen this season although owner-mate Hukum might still have a say in that.
He won a King George of the ages at Ascot as the Derby one-two from Epsom rolled into town to do battle with the older generation. In the end it was Owen Burrows’ charge who came out on top after a pulsating duel with Westover in which Jim Crowley was within one more strike of the whip of triggering a disqualification.
Whipping up a storm in the King George
Oh I forgot to mention. The whip debate rumbled on too.
For the racing purists it was a finish that stirred the emotions as the principals fought tooth-and-nail to the line but it also dispelled the notion that no jockey would ever go close to the number that would see the expulsion tool brandished.
Crowley copped a lengthy ban and missed Mostahdaf at York. He said he’d lost count of the number of strikes down the Ascot straight. I bet he doesn't again.
Courage Mon Ami is just about the top stayer on Timeform ratings among those to have raced in 2023 right now despite his two defeats post-Ascot. He carried a penalty when beaten by the admirably consistent Coltrane in the Lonsdale Cup.
Quickthorn’s Goodwood win was the story of the division, with the added spice of the pre-race social media video of Oisin Murphy saying they knew what Tom Marquand wanted to do aboard Hughie Morrison’s charge and it was everyone else’s job to stop him.
They did at York where the leader set the same early fractions as when tearing away from the field in the same race the previous season, but this time they sat much closer. Once bitten twice shy, they say. Sorry, twice bitten.
And those who’ve been dominating the staying scene so far this year will no doubt be casting an anxious eye over their boxes next weekend to see what comeback king Kyprios has in store at the Curragh.
O’Brien has the strong hand in the two-year-old department, no he really does, honestly he does, with City Of Troy, Henry Longfellow and Ylang Ylang heading the ante-post Classic lists for 2024. Vandeek, good at Goodwood, better in the Morny, is the pick of the home team at present.
Karl Burke has trained more juvenile winners than anyone else in Britain this term, almost twice as many at one stage. The big prizes have eluded him so far but there’s time yet.
And that’s the thing when the summer ends – the riches of autumn loom into view. So while the nights draw in and Strictly returns to the big screen we can think back on a Dettori farewell tour that’s going so well plenty insist extra dates will be added next season. Watch this space.
We had Royal success at Ascot as the King seemed to grow more engaged with the sport he inherited from his mum. He might just win the Leger too.
The turf at Goodwood finally cried ‘no mas’ after four-and-a-half days of battling biblical rain, but the Stewards’ Cup beat the elements. It always will.
York was run on fast, summer ground. We’d forgotten what it looked like and it was glorious, as was the story of Live In The Dream winning the Nunthorpe. Sometimes the fastest horse in the race isn’t the one we all thought it was beforehand.
So what lies ahead?
And then we look forward.
Tensions are simmering away in the weighing room around the whip and the removal of saunas, we’ve yet to see the 2024 fixture list and what premierisation means in practice.
Small fields continue to blight the sport, the gambling white paper and affordability checks cast a shadow over a funding mechanism that is hardly throwing out gold bars for fun with all the competition for the leisure pound. After all, this is happening with a cost of living crisis that is proving more of a three-mile hurdler than a sprinter.
Sales season will prove that those with the deepest pockets are still prepared to go big in pursuit of the dream, but it will be interesting to see how far down the training ranks the riches run. There's been a trickle of people handing in their licence battling high operating costs, dwindling strings and the difficulty in attracting and retaining staff.
Charlie Appleby, without a winner at Epsom, Ascot, Goodwood or York, would give anything for a Group One winner or two in the coming weeks. Mind you, he’s too good for this to be the new norm and it’s proof, should it be needed, that no trainer can hit the target if he’s handed blanks with which to take aim.
We’re ready to say farewell or is that see you soon to Dettori at Ascot before he heads to Santa Anita and Melbourne where Willie Mullins is taking Vauban, Absurde and the sense of inevitably that usually surrounds his team for a Grade One novice hurdle.
There’s a French-trained favourite for the Arc, King Of Steel/August Rodin round three in the Irish Champion and the nagging suspicion that next year’s Derby winner might pop up on a winter’s night at Newcastle while we’re all trying to work out if Haydock will beat the big freeze and stage the Betfair Chase.
And they’ve the cheek to say football is a funny old game.
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