Efforts Continue To Save Eldar Eldarov For Life Outside Of Racing

Eldar Eldarov (GB) is said to be “making progress” having had an operation to stabilise a fracture in his neck, sustained during an incident in the stalls at the start of the G2 Dubai Gold Cup on Saturday which caused him to be withdrawn.

However, a return to racing has all but been ruled out for the son of Dubawi (Ire), who memorably won the G1 St Leger at Doncaster in 2022, before doubling his top-level tally with victory in last year's Irish equivalent, among his 10 starts for Roger Varian.

“He had an operation on Tuesday to stabilise a fracture,” said Chris Wall, racing manager for owner Shaikh Khalid bin Khalifa's KHK Racing. “Initially, when he was in that post-operative phase he had a rough time of things, but he's making progress now. It will be small steps, he's got a long way to go, but the future is looking brighter than it did 48 hours ago.

“He's in good hands in the equine hospital in Dubai, they've done a very good job so far. We flew in two vets from America who said they thought they'd be able to do something for him and they have. We are thankful and grateful to them, and to Shaikh Khalid for insisting that we left no stone unturned to try to give the horse a future.

“He still has quite a long way to go. He's by no means in the clear yet, but the progress report this morning [Wednesday] was positive and he's moving in the right direction.”

As for what the future might hold for the five-year-old Eldar Eldarov, Wall added, “I think we can safely say he won't be returning to racing, it's now a question of whether he can do a stud job or whether he just has a happy retirement somewhere. We'll have to see. That all depends on how his recovery goes and it's a bit early to say for certain.”

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Vandeek Heads KHK Racing’s Class of 2024

Chris Wall, racing manager for owners KHK Racing, has issued a positive bulletin on last year's star juvenile Vandeek (GB) and dual Classic winner Eldar Eldarov (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) as the countdown continues to the start of the Flat season on turf.

The yellow-and-black-striped colours of KHK Racing have been carried to notable success since they first appeared on British racecourses in 2020 and the latest campaign was arguably the operation's best yet following the emergence of the unbeaten Vandeek, who proved himself a high-class sprinting two-year-old for Simon and Ed Crisford when signing off with back-to-back Group 1 victories in the Prix Morny at Deauville and Middle Park S. at Newmarket.

By Havana Grey (GB) and out of a mare who raced exclusively at five furlongs, Vandeek looked all speed in his four starts as a juvenile and his connections have no plans to step him up in trip for a tilt at the G1 2,000 Guineas, with all roads instead leading to the G1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot on Friday, June 21.

“Vandeek has wintered well so far and everybody is very happy with him,” Wall said of the exciting colt. “He's just started cantering away and the Sandy Lane at Haydock [on Saturday, May 25] is hopefully where we'll make our seasonal debut en route to the Commonwealth Cup. It's so far so good and hopefully the old British weather won't interfere too much with him.

“It's exciting and hopefully he can build on what he achieved last year. You'd be thinking that he'd be capable of doing that looking at the type of horse he is. Physically, you'd be expecting him to strengthen and improve as a three-year-old, so we'll hope that proves to be the case.”

Vandeek's big target in the first part of the season, the Commonwealth Cup, was in the news on Tuesday when it was announced that the Group 1 event was in danger of being downgraded in 2025, depending on its performance this year.

Wall, who retired from the training ranks in 2022 after 36 years in that career, was clearly taken aback by the news as he said, “I would be very surprised if that was to be demoted. All races have cycles and some years where they perform better than others. I would have thought overall that the Commonwealth Cup has performed very well. I can't believe that it would be demoted just yet.

“I was on the racing committee when I was still training, back in the day when that [the introduction of the Commonwealth Cup] was actioned, and we always thought it was a positive move. It hasn't been going that long, but it's had some pretty good winners in that time. You can't take too short-term a view of a race like that, you've got to give it time to work. I think it's worked well so far and I was very surprised to hear that they were thinking of demoting it.”

One of the leading contenders for the 2023 running of the Commonwealth Cup was KHK Racing's Sakheer (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}), who failed to meet expectations in the race itself and hasn't been seen in competitive action since.

An emphatic winner of the G2 Mill Reef S. at Newbury as a two-year-old, Sakheer has stayed in training with Roger Varian according to Wall, who is hopeful that the team's patient approach will pay off when the colt returns to the track in 2024.

“Sakheer just wasn't thriving last year,” said Wall. “The couple of runs he had were disappointing to say the least. We gave him a break after Ascot and tried to get him ready for an autumn campaign, but he still wasn't thriving. We couldn't find anything amiss, so we decided we'd give him time and freshen him up.

“He's done well physically and another one who has strengthened and put on weight. He looks very well, but we haven't decided yet where he might go. To start with we need to get him back on the track and performing well. Then we can develop a plan from there.”

More concrete plans are in place for fellow Varian trainee Eldar Eldarov, who has been a terrific servant to his connections having won the G1 St Leger at Doncaster in 2022 before doubling his top-level tally with victory in last year's Irish equivalent.

Eldar Eldarov has been off the track since that success at the Curragh in September, but that has all been part of the plan, reported Wall, as the five-year-old gears up for a potential trip to Dubai next month.

“Eldar Eldarov has done very well this winter and put on a lot of weight,” said Wall. “If he's performing well enough at home he may well go for the Dubai Gold Cup on World Cup night. If the weather interferes and we can't get him ready for that, then he'd make his debut like last year in the Yorkshire Cup.

“There was nothing wrong with him [after the Irish St Leger]. We had pretty terrible ground everywhere and Roger Varian took the view that the horse's optimum trip is a mile and six furlongs. Although he stays two miles, he's probably better at a slightly shorter trip. The only other race he could have run in was the Long Distance Cup on Champions Day, but that was always going to be very testing ground.

“We thought if we were going to have him ready for Dubai it made sense for him to have his break a bit earlier, so that he could come into training earlier in the year to get him fit enough for that, if everything goes right.”

Away from the well-established names in the KHK Racing ranks, My Cloud (Ire) (Blue Point {Ire}) and True Cyan (Ire) (No Nay Never) also came in for a positive mention from Wall, both three-year-olds who showed plenty of ability on their respective debuts.

True Cyan looks set to step up in grade having impressed when beating a pair of next-time-out winners at Newmarket in September, while My Cloud–a half-brother to the multiple Group 1-winning miler Palace Pier (GB) (Kingman {GB})–was beaten only narrowly when having his first start at Newcastle earlier this week.

“We'll probably start her off in one of the Classic trials if all is well,” Wall said of True Cyan. “We'll see what that tells us. She did win well on debut and she's a filly who, physically, you'd expect her to be a better three-year-old. She remains an exciting prospect and all the reports so far are positive.

“My Cloud did everything right at Newcastle bar getting the win. It was just his lack of experience which got him beaten. He came to win his race and when he was challenged he had no idea what was expected of him until the penny dropped a bit too late.

“He remains a nice prospect and he's clearly got talent. He's a big horse and you'd expect him to improve through this year. I think Roger may not throw too much at him early on, but we'll see what he can do, how he progresses, and work a plan out as we go.”

The KHK Racing team earned total prize-money of £685,623 in Britain last year and that came from only 17 individual horses who carried their colours on the racecourse. Wall confirmed that there is no plan to massively expand their boutique team for 2024, preferring to focus on quality over quantity.

“I don't think KHK is ever going to be about large numbers,” said Wall. “I think we'll probably be around the 20-mark for horses this year and I'm sure that Shaikh Khalid [bin Hamad Al Khalifa] will be wanting to restock at the breeze-ups where he's had quite a bit of success in the past.

“We have a nice, exciting team and one or two horses still to run who are three-year-olds now and well-bred. You never know whether something might pop up out of those as well. It's an exciting time and we've got some nice horses to go to war with.”

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Eldar Eldarov Remains on Track for the Irish St Leger

Last season's Cazoo St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) will try and add the Irish equivalent during this year's Irish Champions Festival.

“The target for him is to go to the Irish St Leger and that is very much still on the cards at the moment,” said Chris Wall, racing manager for owners KHK Racing Ltd. “He's grand and it's all systems go for that.”

The 4-year-old was originally slated to contest the G3 St Leger trial earlier this month, however, was subsequently declared a non-runner after not travelling well.

“We don't know why because he's never had that problem before,” he explained. “He got upset travelling and they thought rather than carry on to Ireland they would bring him home. I think they had got into north Wales just beyond Chester.

“The worry was if you put him on the ferry and it deteriorated into something like colic then you are in the middle of the sea and you can't do anything about it. He just got his knickers in a twist about something so they brought him home.”

Trained by Roger Varian, Eldar Eldarov was second in his seasonal debut in the G2 Yorkshire Cup S. in May before finishing seventh in the G1 Ascot Gold Cup the following month. Most recently, he was fourth in the G1 Goodwood Cup S. on Aug. 1.

Varian indicated that KHK Racing-owned Sakheer (Ire) (Zoffany {Ire}), the winner of last fall's G2 Mill Reef S., is likely to resurface later this fall in the QIPCO British Champions Sprint Oct. 21. He was last seen finishing 13th in the G1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot June 23.

“He's had a few niggly things after Ascot, but he's back in work and we're hoping to run him in something this autumn,” said Wall. “I don't think he'll be ready for the Haydock [Betfair Sprint Cup Sept. 9], that's not far away now so he won't make that. But we hope we might have him back for a run perhaps in the Champions Sprint and we'll go from there.

“It's been one of those years really where things haven't quite gone his way, but we hope we can get him back on track and if not we'll have to hope things go right for him next year instead.”

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‘The Sport’s Been Good To Me’: Chris Wall Bows Out

Big freeze permitting, at 7.30 on Thursday evening Spit Spot (GB) will jump from the stalls at Chelmsford as the final runner for Chris Wall.

Of Newmarket's many trainers, which number almost 80, Wall is not the most well known, but he is certainly well versed in all manner of racing's nitty gritty, from the development of the Pattern to good old-fashioned horse husbandry. His absence from the town's training ranks next year should and will be lamented, for British racing really should not be losing a professional of Wall's standing, which mixes decency and intelligence in equal measure. 

Having trained in the town since 1987, Wall and his wife Carole, who has worked tirelessly by his side, will doubtless find the coming weeks and months disconcerting, but as he discusses the situation in the days building up to sending out his last runner, Wall, typically, speaks without a hint of bitterness. 

Of his decision to cease training, which came as a shock announcement last month, he says, “Although our numbers have been sort of dwindling gradually over the years, I thought that we'd always be able to maintain enough horses, and enough horses for us is probably 25, 30. We'd had 30 this year, and if we could have had something between 20 and 25 horses, we'd have probably kept going. The way it's happened is that we were selling a lot of horses this year that had done their bit and there were a couple of others that were being retired or off to stud, so we were losing 11 or 12 horses.”

The flip side to the strength of the bloodstock market in Britain is that it is making it harder for smaller trainers to keep restocking their yards, as Wall explains. 

“We have quite a few owner-breeders, but of course what they put for sale was by and large getting sold, which is fair enough. But it meant that we didn't have many yearlings last year and we were going to have not enough yearlings this year. We always have a few partnerships, we usually buy horses in training for that, but the price of horses in training has gone through the roof. I think that's gone up 50% in two years.

“And so you can't get the quality of horse that you're used to having and you don't really want to just buy one for the sake of buying one. So things were looking a bit grim and then a longstanding owner, who had actually been with us from our very first season, died unexpectedly. So that was another two horses that weren't going to be with us. And so we had a long conversation, Carole and I, about whether it was worth going on. I'm always optimistic with racing because the pendulum swings both ways, usually, and you think 'well something will happen', but at the moment I don't think there's cavalry about to come over the hill, galloping to the rescue.”

It is hard to argue with the Walls' reasoning, but it is harder to fathom why those numbers have dropped so dramatically when the results on the track have not. This is a trainer still doing what he has always done: conjuring decent results from his string at Induna Stables, a yard which is rarely without a group-class horse and which operates year after year at a thoroughly respectable strike-rate. This year's 20 wins – and hopefully counting – came at a rate of 16% with Salah Fustok's homebred Double Or Bubble (Ire) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}), a sister to former stable star Mix And Mingle (Ire), bringing home two Group 3 victories this season, in the Abernant S. at Newmarket and Supreme S. at Goodwood. 

“We've had a good year,” Wall adds. “I thought, 'Well if you can't get support off the back of a good year, you are certainly not going to get support off the back of a couple of ordinary ones'. It is disappointing, but it was going to come one day so we might as well take the decision and move on.

“We've always had some nice horses. We've been very lucky in that regard whether they've been bred [by their owners] or one or two that we've bought have worked out well. And we've been lucky also that I've had patient owners who will allow horses time to develop, and we've had good staff that help with that process too. We've sort of punched above our weight for a yard of our size for quite some time.”

Racing will be the poorer if its grassroots are cut off, because that's where the interest begins

Wall refers to himself as “an analogue creature in a digital age”, and certainly technology has revolutionised racing in recent decades. There is still, however, no substitute for good horsemanship and the kind of experience honed, as his has been, throughout a lifetime in racing. Wall's father Ron trained jumpers in Essex, and having learnt his trade initially at his father's hand, riding out before school, Wall spent stints in Newmarket with Bruce Hobbs and in Lambourn as pupil assistant to Barry Hills, before returning to the town that has been his home for four decades to work as an assistant for Sir Mark Prescott then Luca Cumani.

“Dad trained jumpers, but jumping in the late seventies was quite a small sport and and the future didn't look all that bright. So I thought if I was going to train I could train 30 Flat horses and have a reasonable living,” he recalls. 

“When I was at Luca's, one of his big owners was Ivan Allan, who had Commanche Run, and he asked me would I be interested in training a string for him privately.”

Having started out with 18 horses for Allan, Wall was soon a public trainer retaining that owner's support and gaining others. In the ensuing 35 years he has trained almost 800 winners.

“David Allan, who just died, was with us from the word go,” Wall says. “And there's Chris Hughes, who's been with us right from 1988. I feel a bit guilty for giving up because they've given us such tremendous support. All our owners have been with us quite some time. But they've all been very good about it, which has made telling them that much easier.”

Friendships, too, have been forged on Newmarket Heath. 

“It seems hard to believe that my generation of trainers are now the senior trainers in the town, but we are: James Fanshawe, William Haggas, William Jarvis, James Eustace, who has handed over to Harry, we all started at much the same time. In the early days, of course you were all trying to outdo one another because you were trying to find your place, but we are all good firm friends really. There's no animosity, and you don't always get time through the core part of the season to socialise but you try and do your best to stick together and help each other out. And if anybody's in a bit of a muddle, you do your best to give them some support.”

Those aforementioned contemporaries vary in size when it comes to numbers of horses, with Haggas training one of the largest strings in Newmarket. Wall is of the opinion that that diversity is key for the sport as a whole.

“If it just comes down to a dozen super yards contesting everything between them, it's going to get very tedious and I think it'll put people off the sport,” he says.

“Racing's always been a sport where you can all compete. What's the saying, 'We're all level on the turf and under it'? It would be a great shame if that spectrum of trainers is lost, and I think there's a very real danger at the moment that that could happen. I don't have any beef particularly with big yards, except that nowadays probably there's nearly as many horses again that they have in their own yard parked out somewhere else.”

It is certainly the case that pre-trainers now mostly do bigger business than a lot of the small-to-medium-size stables in and around Newmarket.

Wall continues, “Until reasonably recently, when big yards were full those horses had to go somewhere else, so there was a trickledown and the smaller trainers used to benefit from that. But that tap's been turned off now and that's probably why some have struggled for numbers.

“That's a difficult thing to remedy. Obviously, what you can't do is limit numbers. You can't say to somebody they can only train 200 horses, because there'd be legal challenges to that for restriction of trade. But perhaps what you can say is that you have a licence to train for the number of stables that you actually have, plus say 10%. And then it doesn't put the pre-trainers out of business because there'll still be horses parked out. But it means that those owners have got to think, 'Well I need to put that horse in training somewhere, so we'll send it to somebody, alright less exalted but someone who does a competent job', and then it trickles down and it makes it a bit more interesting.”

Those concerns are not reserved just for the training ranks, as a number of smaller owner-breeders are also shutting up shop in Britain. 

“I think all sport at the moment is suffering from huge amounts of investment at elite level which isn't filtering down as quickly or as much as you would like,” Wall says. “And it will be the poorer if its grassroots are cut off, because that's where the interest begins. If somebody can't get in as a small breeder, a small owner, a small trainer, or just even going racing, if you cut that off, it's got to be to the detriment of the sport.

“People at the elite end, if things don't work out here or if they perceive things here to be not in their favour, can afford to up and go somewhere else. And if they go, what are you left with? I think we are in a situation at the moment where we need to nurture the grassroots a bit more. I don't bash on about prize-money. I think our races of international standing at the top end of the Pattern on the whole compare very favourably. I know there are some super-rich races dotted around the world, and they might have the money but until they've been going for a long time, they'll never have the prestige.

“But if we have more prize-money generally it would mean that the smaller person gets a better return for the money that they put in. And so therefore the existing ones might be able to afford a little bit more, or it's a much more attractive proposition for people to come in, because it's actually quite hard to sell racing at the moment. If we're going to have a vibrant future, which we should have because racing's always been a major sport and it still features quite large in people's minds as a leisure activity, we need to make it more attractive for the smaller person to get involved.”

Much as I've stopped training, I don't feel that I'm ready to retire, and I'd like to give something back to the sport

Wall, the unofficial 'King of Yarmouth', has of course enjoyed plenty of days on the big stage: from the G1 Gran Criterium win of Candy Glen (GB) in the early days of his training career to the wonderful Premio Loco, whose 16 victories included eight group wins in three countries. 

“The headline horses, the ones that you've taken up to stakes level, they get the juices flowing, but in fact, there are lots of things that I've always enjoyed about training,” he says. “This time of the year generally I really like because it's when you have a fresh intake of horses, particularly yearlings, and you are trying to learn a bit about them. And then there's the horse that perhaps is one of your less talented individuals who goes and wins a race. I get almost as much fun out of doing that, as I would from training Premio Loco to win the races that he did. The ones you've had to work a bit harder at to get them where they are, that have been slow learners or they had problems or they're just a bit limited in ability, and then you've suddenly got everything right and the right race comes, and boom, you think 'that was worth the effort'.”

He adds, “Lots of things go towards making it all worthwhile. I think one of the joys of training in Newmarket is that you have that community, whereas if you train on your own, it must be sometimes terribly lonely. I like the banter on the Heath with the other trainers and the staff.”

Wall is fascinating to listen to on the subject of race-programming and laments the rise of small-field races, both on the Flat and over jumps, which do little to establish a horse's true ability. He is in the majority camp that believes the fixture list needs pruning. In previous years, with his former boss Luca Cumani and in consultation with the TBA, he helped to establish a clear progression for fillies within the Pattern – one that he he believes has since been inverted. He has also served a stint as president of the National Trainers' Federation.

“There's no good complaining that things could be better if you don't get involved in the process that actually makes it better,” says the 64-year-old. “I wouldn't mind doing something in a political role because I'd like to keep my hand in. Much as I've stopped training, I don't feel that I'm ready to retire, and I'd like to give something back to the sport. The sport's been good to me.

“And doing something like that would stop me annoying Carole,” he adds with a laugh as his wife judiciously pretends not to have heard him and continues her work behind the computer in their racing office. 

Though he is about to stand down, Wall is optimistic for the future of his home town as a training centre. 

He says, “We've some excellent young trainers. George Boughey is probably growing the quickest, but there's Harry Eustace, Charlie Fellowes, James Ferguson, Amy Murphy, who've all done very well, and Alice Haynes has got off to a good start as well. So I think the future is quite good in Newmarket and elsewhere in the country, but we've got to make sure that the racing industry that we leave them with is something that will last their career and not give them too many more problems than they would expect to have along the way.”

These are certainly comments not just that we can all agree with, but which show why it is imperative for a man of Chris Wall's level-headed sense of appraisal to be retained for a key role within the sport, even though that really should be as a trainer. 

 

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