Canford Cliffs and d**k Turpin stay in training next year
It was Edward VII as who described the Glorious Goodwood meeting as “a garden party with racing tacked on”.
Richard Hannon is man who is easily moved to a party mood. He may not be able to promise every owner that their horse will win, but he will make damned sure that they have fun trying.
Hannon’s record at Goodwood is outstanding. Since Crespinall won there in 1972, the trainer has saddled 195 Goodwood winners, making him the most successful current trainer at the course. Of those victories, 47 came at Glorious Goodwood and he could reach the 50-mark this year.
He will have a team of between 16 and 25 horses at the meeting next week, headed by Canford Cliffs in the Group One Sussex Stakes over a mile on the Wednesday. These are heady times for Hannon, with a record haul of four Group One winners already this season, with Canford Cliffs winning the both the Irish 2000 Guineas and the St James’s Palace Stakes and d**k Turpin finally receiving the reward for a string of placed efforts in championship races when he won the Prix Jean Prat at Chantilly three weeks ago.
Hannon has been trying to find a way of keeping these two colts, and his top older horse, Paco Bay, out of each other’s way as they all chase the glittering mile prizes on offer. d**k Turpin may yet run against Canford Cliffs for the third time this year in the Sussex Stakes but at least Hannon now has another season in which to allow both of them to reach their full potential.
“Both Canford Cliffs and d**k Turpin will stay in training as four-year-olds,” he announced. Hannon never lost faith in Canford Cliffs, despite defeats in the Greenham Stakes and the 2000 Guineas, and said: “I think Canford Cliffs will handle Goodwood well - he didn’t like the dip at Newmarket but would not settle that day. The Sussex Stakes is going to be one of the highlights of the week and if we happen to get rain then d**k Turpin could run as well.
“Canford Cliffs has really matured and put on a lot of weight. We took him to Kempton on Monday and he worked around there with one of the Queen’s - Quadrille. He’s improved beyond recognition and I’m sure he's getting better. He’s certainly going the way to be being the best horse I’ve ever trained. We’ve now got him to settle - he settles nicely in his races and shows a good turn of foot. Now he drops his head and relaxes in races which he wasn't doing earlier in the season. I thought he'd win the Guineas but he didn’t settle.”
One thing that Hannon may have to settle for is another meeting between the two colts, which currently stands 2-1 in favour of d**k Turpin, who could be stepped up to 10 furlongs to offer his trainer more options. “I don’t want to really run Canford Cliffs and d**k Turpin against each other in the Sussex,” he admitted. “They’re two very good horses and I don’t want to keep knocking their heads together. They are owned by different people so there's not a lot I can do about it.”
Not many other trainers have been able to do much about Hannon’s two-year-olds this year and he will be well represented next week from a juvenile team that still boasts an almost unfeasible 27% strike-rate for the season.
After a clean sweep of the major prizes at Newmarket’s July meeting, Hannon is likely to have runners at all levels at Goodwood. “We’ll certainly have runners in the nurseries and the maidens. There are a couple of very nice colts who will probably run in the maidens - one is by Dubawi, a lovely horse his owner Malih Al Basti gave £140,000 for at the Doncaster breeze-ups called Big Issue.
“Pausanias, one of Sir Alex [Ferguson], is very nice too and this Kyllachy colt will go to Goodwood too.”
Casual Glimpse, King Torus and Libranno, who all won at the July meeting, could be out again in a variety of permutations for Goodwood’s premier juvenile races but, for pure speed, Hannon is likely to rely on Zebedee in the five-furlong Molecomb Stakes. “He’s very quick and I don’t think he will be far away in the Molecomb,” Hannon said. “The course will suit him.”
Any Goodwood winner would suit Hannon. Just the thing to put a spring in his step and into a party mood.
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