Harry Findlay gives up share in Denman
On a raw afternoon in November, Harry Findlay stood in the winner’s enclosure after Denman had won the Hennessey Cognac Gold Cup for a second time.
Paul Nicholls, Denman’s trainer, was at his most emotional and Findlay, part-owner with Paul Barber in an association that had long been dubbed as the “odd couple”, was not far behind.
“I'm so happy for the people here and coming to the last I saw the race as I would as a teenager,” he said. “I just wanted him to win and it is something we will all remember.”
That memory is all the more distant now because it is the emotions that have become raw. The ongoing saga of
Findlay’s six-month ban from running horses or attending any race meetings took a new twist when Findlay effectively ended his association with the Nicholls yard that reached its peak when Denman won the 2008 Cheltenham Gold Cup.
Findlay (pictured right) is currently preparing with his legal team for an appeal next week to an independent BHA panel over the ban he received last month for backing one of his horses, Gullible Gordon, who was trained by Nicholls, to lose. This was in contravention of BHA Rules regarding owners or those connected with horses laying them to lose on betting exchanges, although it is accepted that Findlay stood to win more if the horse, who was laid to lose in two races, had won.
The horses that Findlay owns run in the name of his mother, Maggie, and her comment, given to The Times, suggest that the move away from the Nicholls yard is due to a perceived lack of public support from the champion jumps trainer. “We have had horses at Ditcheat for eight or nine years and many people there will know just how honest and straight Harry is with his gambling. Yet the support, from the place where Gullible Gordon was trained, has simply not been loud enough or strong enough,” she said.
In what amounts to a bout of horse-trading, Barber Denman now falls in his sole ownership while the reverse deal takes Big Fella Thanks, who finished fourth in the Grand National, away to be trained by Ferdy Murphy. Beshabar, the winner of two valuable handicaps last season, will be moved to Tim Vaughan and another eight horse who ran under the name of Barber and Mrs Findlay will be put up for auction at Doncaster Sales in August. Gullible Gordon has already been sold but remains in the Nicholls yard.
The break with the Nicholls yard brings to an end one of the most colourful associations but it is a break of a far more brutal nature that gives Tom Queally to make an unexpected association with Special Duty at Newmarket tomorrow.
Queally has been handed the ride on dual Classic winner Special Duty for Criquette Head-Maarek in the Group One Etihad Airways Falmouth Stakes after the two previous jockey who were down for the ride ended up on the sidelines instead.
The filly’s regular jockey Stephane Pasquier, who rode her when she won the 1000 Guineas and Poule D'Essai Des Pouliches, fractured his right tibia in a paddock incident at Saint-Cloud in May and Christophe Lemaire, his intended replacement, sustained a leg fracture in a fall at Compiegne on Monday afternoon.
Queally has had a good run of late for Special Duty’s owner, Prince Khalid Abdullah, winning the Eclipse Stakes on the Henry Cecil-trained Twice Over on Saturday.
The jockey, who missed out on the ride of Fleeting Spirit for the Darley July Cup at Newmarket on Friday, whom he rode to win that race last year, will be hoping for a change of luck where Special Duty is concerned.
He rode Jacqueline Quest to finish a nose in front of Special Duty in the Guineas, only to lose the race in the subsequent stewards’ inquiry. A victory now would help heal that raw wound.
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