John Gosden | Horse Racing Free Tips

Stradivarius Will Try To Regain His Crown In British Champions Long Distance Cup

The world's top rated stayer, Stradivarius stands out among the 15 entries still in the mix for the £300,000 (approximately US$350,000) QIPCO British Champions Long Distance Cup on Saturday, Oct. 17.

The exceptional 6-year-old, bred and owned by Bjorn Nielsen, won the Qatar Goodwood Cup for a record fourth time at Goodwood in July, having landed the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot for the third time the previous month.

Trained by John Gosden, Stradivarius has won a record 13 races that fall under the QIPCO British Champions Series umbrella, including the QIPCO British Champions Long Distance Cup in 2018. He has run 13 times over two miles or further and been beaten just twice – when a length third to Order Of St George as a 3-year-old in the 2017 QIPCO British Champions Long Distance Cup and when pipped a nose by Kew Gardens in last year's riveting renewal.

The opposition to Stradivarius is headed by two-time Comer Group International Irish St Leger winner Search For A Song. She will be having her first run over two miles but has hinted she will stay and her trainer, Dermot Weld, has been responsible for two previous Long Distance Cup winners in Rite Of Passage (2012) and Forgotten Rules (2014).

Andrew Balding has two possible challengers in Spanish Mission, fluent winner of the Doncaster Cup on his latest start, and the mud-loving Morando, whose exploits last season included an eight-length drubbing of Kew Gardens in the Boodles Diamond Ormonde Stakes at Chester.

Balding said: “Spanish Mission was very impressive in the Doncaster Cup last time but I would have thought he would be effective from a mile and a half to an extended two miles. He's a horse who historically has not wanted the ground too soft, so that's a concern for him. If the ground got pretty testing, we'd have to think twice about running him.

“Morando, on the other hand, loves it when the mud is flying. It would be a new venture going two miles with him but the way he's shaped in his races in the last two seasons suggests that two miles is well within his compass now and he goes well at Ascot.”

Fujaira Prince, trained by Roger Varian, was returning from a year off when an emphatic winner of the Copper Horse Handicap at Royal Ascot in June and followed up in the Sky Bet Ebor at York two months later. He chased home Search For A Song in the Irish St Leger last time out.

Aidan O'Brien has won the race three times with Fame And Glory (2011), Order Of St George (2017) and Kew Gardens (2019). This time he could be represented by Sovereign, winner of last year's Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby; Broome, who was a close fourth in last year's Investec Derby; and Dawn Patrol, third in this year's Irish Derby.

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Magical Set To Defend Her Title In Saturday’s QIPCO Champion Stakes

The £750,000 (approximately US$885,866) QIPCO Champion Stakes held on Saturday, Oct. 17, will be the richest race in Great Britain this year and looks set to be the race of the season with Magical and Addeybb, who dominated the finish of last year's renewal, renewing old rivalries again.

Magical prevailed by three-quarters of a length 12 months ago, after which her trainer Aidan O'Brien intimated she had run her final race.

However, the daughter of Galileo was kept in training and the decision has been handsomely rewarded, with the mare chalking up three more Group 1 victories (taking her overall haul to seven) and probably running as well as she's ever done when getting the better of Ghaiyyath, the world's highest-rated turf horse, to win a second Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown last time.

She could be joined in the line-up for the mile-and-a-quarter showpiece by star stablemates Serpentine, this year's Investec Derby winner, plus Mogul, winner of the Juddmonte Grand Prix de Paris, not to mention last year's Juddmonte International winner Japan, and Sovereign, winner of last year's Dubai Duty Free Irish Derby.

Addeybb has not rested on his laurels, either, chalking up two Group 1 victories in Australia in the spring before finishing runner-up in the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot. He swiftly got back to winning ways in a Listed race at Ayr last time.

Standing in the way of the O'Brien contingent and Addeybb are two outstanding candidates trained by John Gosden in Mishriff, the Prix Du Jockey Club victor, and Lord North, emphatic winner of the Prince of Wales's Stakes at Royal Ascot in June.

Mishriff followed up his French Classic success by landing a Group 2 contest at Deauville, while Lord North was third behind Ghaiyyath and Magical in the Juddmonte International at York on his latest start.

Another fascinating runner among the home team is the William Muir-trained Pyledriver, who drops half a mile in distance after being beaten just over a length into third in the Pertemps St Leger at Doncaster last time. His exploits earlier in the season included emphatic wins in the King Edward VII Stakes, at Royal Ascot, and Sky Bet Great Voltigeur, at York.

Muir is delighted by the well-being of his stable flagbearer and is relishing dropping him back in distance. The trainer, seeking a first Group 1 win after 29 years with a licence, said: “He's getting stronger and is starting to retain his weight easier. His work has been good, the same as ever, and I'm very confident I've still got him at his best.

“I think if it hadn't been for this type of year, we would probably not run him over a mile and a six in the St Leger. You can't be dogmatic and say he didn't stay because he ground it out, but that was his class. He wasn't as effective because we took his gears and speed away from him. Martin [Dwyer] was sitting, waiting and having to hold him on to him when he wanted to kick.

“I'm not worried about the ground and the trip won't be a problem. Straight after he won the Voltigeur, the jockey went on TV and said he had the pace to win a Group 1 over a mile and a quarter.”

Pyledriver will be staying in training next year. Muir said: “We've got loads to look forward to with this horse and, no matter what else, the boys [the trio who own the horse] have had a fantastic time. We've enjoyed every minute of it and we've got next year and the year after with him, when we will be looking at the big races all around the world.”

Cirrus Des Aigles (2011) and Almanzor (2016) have been French-trained winners of the QIPCO Champion Stakes in the past decade and Skalleti will attempt to again take the prize across the Channel.

The 5-year-old grey, trained by Jerome Reynier, has won 12 of his 15 races and scooped the Group 2 Qatar Prix Dollar for a second time at Longchamp this month. Before that, he had mastered Sottsass, the subsequent Qatar Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner, in a Group 3 contest at Deauville.

Other possibles among the 16 entries include three-time Group 1 winner Benbatl, who is also engaged in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes (sponsored by QIPCO).

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Enable: One For The Ages

On most mornings there are more than 2,000 horses being exercised on Newmarket Heath, Britain’s epicentre of the Thoroughbred industry.

Plenty of them will end up as minor winners and a decent number of stakes winners will progress from the blustery East Anglian acres of turf to sun-drenched winner’s enclosures across England and beyond. Every now and then a champion will emerge.

It is perhaps a term used too liberally. Each year there’s a champion 2-year-old, champion 3-year-old, champion stayer, champion sprinter. To call Enable (GB) a champion doesn’t really begin to do her justice.

Just months after Frankel (GB) strode up Warren Hill for the final time in October 2012, Juddmonte sent Concentric (GB) (Sadler’s Wells) on a 30-minute journey from Newmarket to Royston to be covered by his old rival Nathaniel (Ire). It would have been almost too indulgent to imagine that Newmarket could become home to another Thoroughbred of such alluring presence so soon after Frankel’s retirement, let alone one emerging from the same stud. But, by the summer of 2017, the foal resulting from that mating had started to write her own exciting chapter in the history of Juddmonte Farms.

Thunder and lightning announced Enable on the world stage when she stormed to the first of her 11 Group/Grade 1 victories as the rain lashed down on Epsom. To the Oaks, she added the Irish and Yorkshire versions and, in a stellar 3-year-old season, won her first of three King Georges and first of two Arcs. For many owner-breeders that would have been more than enough to ensure that she was hastened to stud to start work on the next generation.

Happily, for Enable’s growing legion of fans, this temptation was resisted for three years running. For keeping his great mare in training to the age of six, all who love racing owe Prince Khalid a huge debt of gratitude.

Enable more than upheld her side of the bargain. With each passing year she grew more statuesque, clearly thriving on her routine of emerging from John Gosden’s Clarehaven stable at the end of Newmarket’s Bury Road, either crossing the road for easy cantering days on Warren Hill, or heading away from town for more testing work mornings on the Al Bahathri or the Limekilns.

It is too easy to anthropomorphise horses but in watching Enable make her casual saunters to and from the gallops of a morning, a fanciful mind could interpret the air of regal serenity as her knowing that she was simply better than every other horse she passed. In truth, it is more that physical exertion came much more easily to her than to most and, generally, a racehorse who finds work easy is one who is at ease with life.

As Enable’s reputation grew, so must the pressure have increased on those closest to her. With John Gosden as her trainer the mare had the perfect statesmanlike spokesman to deliver tantalising updates on her training along with insights to her character. “She’ll tell me,” he said often. A wise man taking his lead from a powerful female.

Enable’s competitive froideur was very much in contrast to that of the jockey who rode her in all bar her first two races. But every good double act needs a flamboyant showman and there is no-one better to assume that role than Frankie Dettori.

The one sad footnote to an extraordinary story is that its final act came in the year of a global pandemic. Coronavirus has taken a terrible toll on the world but within our own small racing hub, it was a cruel twist indeed that Enable’s final four runs took place in front of a handful of raceday officials, owners and trainers. If ever there was a horse who deserved to bow out—win or lose—with the roar of an adoring crowd ringing in her enormous ears it was Enable.

Over the last few weeks of sales, a growing number of yearlings have been signed up to join Clarehaven, not to mention the blue-blooded homebreds who will be added to Gosden’s books in the months to come. Boxes will be filled and new champions will emerge, but it is nigh on impossible to replace a horse for the ages.

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Enable Retires, Will Visit Kingman

Prince Khalid Abdullah’s superstar mare Enable (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}–Concentric {GB}, by Sadler’s Wells) has been retired from racing and will visit Kingman (GB) at Banstead Manor Stud next season.

“After consulting her trainer John Gosden and his racing manager Teddy Grimthorpe, Prince Khalid has decided that Enable will be retired from racing and will now join the Juddmonte broodmare band to be covered by Kingman in 2021,” said Juddmonte Chief Executive Officer Douglas Erskine Crum.

During an illustrious five-season career, Enable raced 19 times, winning 11 Group 1 races, including the Oaks, Irish Oaks, the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe twice and three victories in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. In her 19 starts she accrued record earnings for a European-trained horse of £10.7-million.

Teddy Grimthorpe said, “She has brought so much joy to everyone who has been involved with her. Her elegance and forceful personality have been nurtured by John and his team at Clarehaven, especially by Imran [Shahwani] who has looked after her with such calm and devotion. In her, Frankie found a willing partner to execute her ability on the racecourse. Her CV withstands the closest of inspections. Very few can match what she has given to racing.”

Enable: A Juddmonte Homegrown Great

A fourth generation homebred for Khalid Abdullah, Enable is the fifth foal out of the Andre Fabre-trained French stakes-placed Concentric and from the first crop of the G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S. and G1 Coral-Eclipse winner Nathaniel. She made just one start at two, taking a mile Newcastle maiden by 3 3/4 lengths, and soon established her superiority among her generation at three. Re-bounding from a season-opening third in a Newbury conditions race, Enable took the Listed Cheshire Oaks and would not be beaten thereafter for more than two years. She pulverized her Oaks opposition by five lengths and was similarly impressive when taking the Irish Oaks by 5 1/2 lengths. She faced older males next out when taking the first of her three King Georges, and handled older mares next out when taking the G1 Yorkshire Oaks prior to her first Arc victory at Chantilly, where she had the likes of Cloth Of Stars (Ire), Ulysees (Ire), Order Of St George (Ire), Winter (Ire), Zarak (Fr) and Capri (Ire) in her wake.

Connections soon revealed that Enable would stay in training at four with a tilt at an Arc defense the top priority, but fate did its best to intervene, with a minor injury sidelining Enable for much of the season. She got going only in September with a defeat of Crystal Ocean (Ire) off an 11-month layoff in Kempton’s G3 September S.-a satisfactory but less than ideal preparation for Europe’s great race. No matter, though: with the Arc back at its traditional home at the revamped ParisLongchamp, Enable and Frankie Dettori put on a show to remember, hitting the line a short neck the better of the flying 3-year-old filly Sea Of Class (Ire). Having just gotten warmed up for the season, Enable jetted across the Atlantic to Churchill Downs for the GI Breeders’ Cup Turf, where she justified favouritism with a three-quarter length victory over that evergreen Group 1 winner Magical (Ire), with the following year’s Arc winner Waldgeist (GB) and the prior year’s Turf winner Talismanic further down the field.

Few would have blamed Khalid Abdullah at this stage should he have chosen to send Enable to the paddocks in anticipation of racing her offspring, but to the delight of racing fans the Juddmonte team soon announced that the mare would remain in training at five and go for an unprecedented third Arc win. The stage looked set last fall, with Enable having extended her win streak to include scores in the Coral-Eclipse, King George and Yorkshire Oaks. The rainfall that appeared in Paris ahead of last year’s Arc did little to dissuade most that Enable would enter the history books-she had already won Group 1s on soft going, of course-and victory looked almost a foregone conclusion when the mare stormed to the lead with 300 metres to run. But at the same time as the very soft ground began to blight her brilliance, a true mile-and-a-half Group 1 horse in Waldgeist was flying down the middle of the course, and he snatched the lead with just 50 metres to go, with Enable settling for second in an excellent effort.

History had spoken and it was not to be for Enable, and the Arc would go on without a treble winner. Or would it? Weeks after the mare’s first defeat since the first race of her 3-year-old campaign, the team at Juddmonte once again stunned the racing world with the supremely sporting decision that Enable would give it another try in 2020.

Enable’s followers could be forgiven for being discouraged by a season-opening second to Ghaiyyath (Ire) in the Coral-Eclipse, but as the season wore on, the 6-year-old mare rounded into fitness and Ghaiyyath justified that victory with a career-best score in the Juddmonte International. Albeit against just two rivals, Enable recorded another historic treble when taking her third King George, but that accomplishment stayed largely in the shadows of what could come at ParisLongchamp 10 weeks later. Choosing to bypass a clash with the new 3-year-old filly wonder Love (Ire) in the Yorkshire Oaks, Team Enable opted for the warm up that had worked so well in 2018 and again went the route of the September S., which she won by seven lengths.

This year’s Arc was framed as a clash between Enable and Love, but as the week leading into the race wore on far more drama unfolded than could have been anticipated. Biblical rainfall in Paris quickly deteriorated the course, and three days out Love with withdrawn. As Longchamp continued to dissolve into a quagmire, Love’s four stablemates set for the Arc joined her on the sidelines after becoming embroiled in a case of feed contamination. As the ground turned heavy, the most testing Enable had ever faced, the pace fell out of the race with that unfortunate withdrawal of Sovereign (Ire) and Serpentine (Ire).

While Enable put in her typical valiant effort without ever looking like winning in trying conditions, her first and only off- the-board finish takes none of the shine off her illustrious record.

Dettori Hails ‘One of the Great Mares of Our Generation’

Speaking in an emotional interview on At The Races on Monday, Dettori paid tribute to “one of the great mares of our generation.”

“Lord Grimthorpe rang me last night,” he said. “Obviously I shed a tear as I was a bit emotional. I went to see her this morning. I accept the decision and she doesn’t owe anyone anything. It has been a great journey for 3 1/2 years. She has touched my heart and has been one of the great mares of our generation. She has won 11 Group 1s and has simply been amazing.”

Dettori described Enable’s 2017 Arc win as her best performance, while also giving note to her second King George win, in which she prevailed in a stirring stretch drive from Crystal Ocean, and the Oaks.

“The best performance was the first Arc,” Dettori said. “I knew we had the race won by the chateau in Chantilly, she was just in unbeatable form that day. The King George against Crystal Ocean stands out–she had every chance of throwing in the towel and she didn’t. The Oaks would be the other standout race as that is when she first really burst on to the scene.”

Dettori said he felt her Arc run was her last in the race’s immediate aftermath.

“After walking back in after the Arc I was trying to enjoy it, as I knew in my heart it was going to be her last race,” he said. “It is a tough task after finishing sixth in the Arc to have one more dance, so I half-expected this decision.

“It would have been unfair on her. Maybe she is now telling us something, but she has left the game in one piece and luckily for me she is still in Newmarket, so I can still see her. I will go feed her Polos at the stud. I’ve been begging John to put me on her one last time in a morning so I can give her my last goodbye.”

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