Enable no Arc certainty as three-year-old filly provides Class opposition
Of course, he probably won’t but I could not – in all conscience – put pen to paper for this morning’s column without mentioning his shameful performance in being party to the outrageous bullying of Opera House CEO Louise Herron on 2GB radio yesterday morning.
He and the ever unpleasant broadcaster Alan Jones ambushed Herron in an attack which ought to have embarrassed themselves. It was bullying at its absolute worst. Nasty and threatening. It was certainly embarrassing for horse racing and you would hope that someone on the Racing NSW board or someone from The Everest sponsor TAB would, at the very least, take V’landys to task.
I could go on but enough of that. There is much which is good at hand.
Enable chases back to back wins in the Prix de l’arc de Triomphe at Longchamp on Sunday. Victory would see the world’s second best mare promoted, from her current international rating of 125, to challenge the best, Winx, who’s assessed at 130.
Victory, which looks assured as anything can be in horse racing, in the Turnbull Stakes at Flemington would be the 28th straight (and a 21st Group 1) for Winx but would be unlikely to prompt any rating increase.
However, victory may not be quite so assured for Enable who chases an eighth straight win. She faces at least one very legitimate rival in the William Haggas trained filly Sea Of Class who’ll be ridden by James Doyle who, of course, rode Jungle Cat to win the recent Group 1 Sir Rupert Clarke Stakes on these shores.
Sea Of Class, by Sea The Stars, was an emphatic last start winner of the Yorkshire Oaks which Enable won en-route to her Arc success last year. This year, the champion graduates from a September Stakes win on the polytrack at Kempton Park. It will not surprise you to know that no Arc winner has come via that path.
Three-year-olds have won 17 of the past 23 editions of the Arc and I expect Sea Of Class to add to that tally in the race which is arguably the world’s best and one which has a great link to Australia. Alas, this year that link does not extend beyond Australian Thoroughbred Bloodstock running Tiberian.
The first edition of the Arc, in 1920, was won by Australian jockey Frank Bullock aboard Comrade. He won the race again in 1922, on Ksar. He won the Melbourne Cup in 1905 on Blue Spec and the Caulfield Cup twice (1918, 1919). Then, in 1921, he rode a record nine winners in four days at Royal Ascot. Quite the CV.
Australian jockeys won the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe eight times between 1945 and 1969 via Rae ‘Togo’ Johnstone and Bill Williamson (twice) along with Scobie Breasley, George Moore, Pat Glennon and Bill Pyers. They won the Epsom Derby on the same number of occasions from 1948 to 1967 (and another Arc was added in 1981, courtesy of George Moore’s son Gary).
I doubt Tiberian could claim this year’s race for ATB but a drier track would aid his cause. He finished 7th in last year’s Melbourne Cup, beaten about nine lengths. The only previous Arc winner to have contested the Cup in the previous year was Marienbard in 2002 and, you guessed it, he finished seventh beaten about nine lengths at Flemington (behind Ethereal).
Tiberian’s regular rider Olivier Peslier has jumped off to ride the three-year-old Patascoy who may well be the best roughie in the race. Peslier has won the Arc four times, one fewer than Enable’s jockey Frankie Dettori.
Eduardo goes at 3.40 pm
The day’s most intriguing runner is Eduardo, the five-year-old gelding by Host, who did not debut until June this year and tackles the Group 2 Gilgai Stakes following maiden and benchmark 64 wins and a last start open handicap second to Spending To Win at Caulfield.
Logic would say he couldn’t possibly win under these set weight and penalty conditions as horses rated 26 points and more above him are asked to concede him just 1.5 kilograms.
But there is something freakishly good about this horse and we may not yet have seen the best of him. He set a blisteringly fast pace at Caulfield and was entitled to compound but held on extremely well to be beaten just 0.4 lengths behind a stakes-placed horse.
It’s some task to win such a race at just his fourth start. The exceptionally talented Schillaci is the only horse, other than juveniles, I can think of who’s done so – winning the Lightning Stakes at his fourth raceday appearance.
Interestingly, he’s ridden by Brian Park whose sole Group 1 win was aboard the David Jolly-trained Zip Zip Aray who won the 2002 Goodwood Handicap at just his sixth start.
It may be all too much but Eduardo might just dictate terms in front and will carry a few dollars of mine just in case… with a saver on Bons Away who comes through the same Caulfield race.
Eduardo is prepared at Cranbourne by Sarah Zschoke who, at last count, had just three horses in work. The one-time jockey, who rode a winner in Tasmania in a brief riding career, has had just 50 runners as a trainer in the past two years but had a healthy nine winners in that time and may well have more to come.