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Galileo Voted into The QIPCO British Champions Series Hall of Fame

The late supersire Galileo (Ire) (Sadler's Wells), a winner of the 2001 G1 Derby, has been induced into the QIPCO British Champion Series Hall of Fame (video) via a public vote. He beat out his fellow Derby-winning half-brother Sea The Stars (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}) and the 1981 Derby victor Shergar (GB) (Great Nephew {GB}). The public was invited to vote on the three Derby winners in recognition of the special year of The Queen's Platinum Jubilee. The Platinum Jubilee Central Weekend celebrations include the G1 Cazoo Derby on June 4.

Susan Magnier, Galileo's co-owner during his racing career, said, “We were thrilled to hear that Galileo has been inducted into [the] QIPCO British Champions Series Hall of Fame. He was a very special horse to everyone here at Coolmore and Ballydoyle and hopefully his legacy will continue for many years to come.

“Given the special year of Her Majesty's Platinum Jubilee, we were delighted that the panel focused on Derby winners for the shortlist and that the public vote saw Galileo chosen ahead of two other Epsom luminaries in Sea The Stars and Shergar.”

Also a winner of the G1 Irish Derby and the G1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth S., the greatest part of Galileo's legacy is as an outstanding sire, sire of sires and as a broodmare sire. The former Coolmore partners' runner has been Champion Sire in Great Britain and Ireland 12 times to date. In addition, he holds the international record of Group/Grade 1 winners at 93 and the international record for black-type winners with 353.

His greatest runner, the undefeated 14-for-14 Frankel (GB), took his first champion sire title from Galileo in 2021. Galileo was euthanised last July.

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Haras de Saint Arnoult’s Larissa Kneip Dies

France's racing and breeding community is in mourning following the passing of Larissa Kneip, breeder, trainer, sales consignor, and the owner of Haras de Saint Arnoult, who died suddenly at home on Tuesday. She was 51.

Originally from Luxembourg, Kneip gave up a career in broadcast journalism to pursue a life with horses, settling near the town of Exmes, where she ran her picturesque Normandy farm in tirelessly successful fashion while wearing a number of different hats.

Active in all divisions of the sales market, from foals to breezers, she also stood a roster of five stallions, including Elarqam (GB), the Group 2-winning son of Frankel (GB) and Attraction (GB). A licensed trainer and pre-trainer, she was represented by her final winner, Charlotte Tagada (Fr), at Chantilly on May 16, while Haras de Saint Arnoult sold a draft of eight 2-year-olds at last week's BBAG Breeze-up Sale in Baden-Baden.

Multi-lingual and ever the enthusiast on all facets of the Thoroughbred, Kneip explained her various roles in an interview in TDN in 2020.

“Haras de Saint Arnoult is a bit of peculiar stud,” she said. “We don't really specialise in one particular thing but we are really trying to produce racehorses and we are producing them right from the start. What do you need to breed a horse? A mare and a stallion: well, we've got mares and we've got stallions. What do you do with the foals? You can either send them to the sales as yearlings or to the breeze-up sales as 2-year-olds, which we have also been doing quite successfully, or you can send them racing.

“I always felt that it was a bit frustrating if you had gone through so much pain and effort to raise them and then they leave and it's up to somebody else to do their racing career, so I decided to take out my trainer's licence so I could follow through with the horses myself until they go racing.”

Kneip's fellow Normandy stud farmer Julian Ince of Haras du Logis paid tribute to his close friend.

He said, “Larissa was passionate about her horses, about her people, and about striving for success. She loved the game and set herself many challenges that most of us wouldn't set ourselves. She will be sadly missed as she was one of a kind and she was a really good friend to so many people.”

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It’s The Derby, And It’s The Best

“A few minutes, only a few minutes, and the event that for twelve months has been the pivot of so much calculation, of such subtle combinations, of such deep conspiracies, round which the thought and passion of the sporting world have hung like eagles, will be recorded in the fleeting tablets of the past. But what minutes! Count them by sensation and not by calendars, and each moment is a day and the race a life.”

Words to make you put down your cup of coffee and summon up the blood, written by Benjamin Disraeli back in 1845 to describe the Derby.

By that stage the great race had been in existence for 65 years. For some of us those words still ring true 177 years later. As much as I am a Derby devotee, I cannot deny that not everyone shares my passion for the supreme test, and that other races now dangle a far more alluring carrot when it comes to the term that is catnip to stud masters: 'stallion-making'.

But, just for a moment, let's not grubby ourselves with such commercial concerns. Because, well, it's Derby week, and even if it looks like Britain's 96-year-old monarch will have to miss Epsom on Saturday, we all know it is the place where Her Majesty would enjoy celebrating her Platinum Jubilee the most, just as she did her Coronation. And while thousands upon thousands of Londoners may no longer walk the 20-odd miles to reach the Downs, on this special weekend of jubilation the bunting will be strewn as high as our spirits while we temporarily forget the politics, the wars, the dreadful loss of young lives, and immerse ourselves in the thrill of being present for those precious few minutes of sport.

We have Lord Derby to thank, of course, not to mention his chum Sir Charles Bunbury. Had the flip of a coin gone the other way we would be celebrating Bunbury week. But, no, the 12th Earl of Derby won the toss, and the race that has come to enthrall the purists and define the breed has thereafter been run permanently in his name. His home in Surrey, The Oaks, not far from the Epsom Downs, was used to name the fillies' race, which began a year before the Derby in 1779.

Imitation, some say, is the sincerest form of flattery. Cast your eye to the four corners of the racing world and you will find a Derby. But not the Derby.

The Derby belongs at Epsom. And the pedants among us, a group for which I am in the running to be honorary president, will not hear talk of the Epsom Derby or the English Derby, it's the Derby.

May God bless the Irish Derby, the Kentucky Derby, the Deutsches Derby, and especially the dear Jersey Derby at Les Landes, but they are all copies. As someone in a faux gravelly voice once croaked in a film trailer, 'There can be only one'.

The Derby, the original and the best, will be run at Epsom on Saturday. For we lucky few, the race is a life, or at least a very important part of it. Enjoy every fleeting moment.

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Remembering Lester: A Personal Recollection by John Hammond

It was Wednesday morning, 5 December 1990. The phone rang. 'You running anything at the weekend?'. Inwardly I groaned, I knew what was coming. I was running a handicapper slightly past his best in the 2,100m handicap at Saint-Cloud on the Saturday. An older horse with his issues, not a comfortable ride, Lester had ridden him 11 days earlier when he was a well beaten third. 'Ok, I'll come and ride him'. And so, to my embarrassment, he flew over at his own expense for one, dodgy ride.

It was Lester Piggott who was responsible for my being in France. Returning from America in early 1985, jobless, I had bumped into him and he asked me if I had any plans. I didn't.

'You should go and work for this Fabre guy in France, he's very good, you know.'

He wasn't wrong there. It was the year he was to spend much of riding for André so he kindly made the phone call and got me the job. I got to know him quite well, often ferrying him from the airport to the races in my Austin mini. He was fun, chatty. Those in the car park at the races were always baffled by the mode of transport of this icon of the sport but I think it rather amused him. Lester was never about bling; limousines weren't required to go from A to B.

Returning to Saturday, 8 December 1990. It was a miserable day, raining hail. The old horse cocked his jaw, pulled Lester's arms out, came to win then faded to be third. Returning to the unsaddling enclosure dripping wet, freezing cold, Lester got off and gave the horse a friendly pat before trudging off to the jocks' room. There wasn't much to say.

Back in the car, returning to the airport after his one ride, he said 'He's silly that old horse, he shouldn't pull like that, he could have won, you know.'

I think most jockeys would have used considerably saltier language about the horse or, more so, the fact that he had paid for his own plane ticket and sacrificed a day to come to France for one average ride in shocking weather. But he wasn't unhappy, more the opposite: I had the impression he'd enjoyed his day. It was a month after his famous comeback ride on Royal Academy in the Breeders' Cup and he knew how much he'd missed it.

He had a unique empathy, relationship, with horses. It wasn't sentimental, more mutual respect. He would ask for more when they had more to give but not when a horse was empty. He knew the difference, sometimes being unjustifiably penalised for easing one down. Never did I hear him using pejorative language about a horse that, occasionally for understandable reasons, some do. He liked them.

I feel lucky to have known him.

John Hammond
Chantilly

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