Midday strikes in Yorkshire Oaks
The fashion parade that passes for a day at the races sometimes may be a little trying for those who go mainly for the horses but the feminine side came to the fore in true style at York.
The Group One Darley Yorkshire Oaks brought together an impressive field and Midday proved herself the queen of the track.
A field that brought together the three leading lights of the distaff generations – Sariska, Midday and Snow Fairy – meant that someone had to give but few expected Sariska so early in the contest. The mare had kicked her trainer in the back last month but this time it was her refusal to move that felled Michael Bell.
Sariska had been a little difficult load into the stalls but when they opened she refused to budge, leaving Jamie Spencer with a lonely trudge back to the paddock. At the sharp end of the race Barshiba took the field to halfway down the home straight, where Snow Fairy seemed to be cantering for Richard Hughes, who replaced the injured Ryan Moore.
However, Snow Fairy was all dressed up with nowhere to go, stuck behind a wall of horses, and was further hemmed in when Tom Queally edged right, quite legitimately, on Midday as she took the lead with a little over two furlongs to run. But in the end it did not matter because Snow Fairy found very little when Hughes did get a clear run. Midday quickly came two lengths clear and increased that advantage to three lengths, even allowing for her idling in the last hundred yards, with Eleanora Duse in third to give Henry Cecil his fourth winner in the race.
In the moment of victory Cecil was able to spare a thought for Bell, who cut a disconsolate figure a few yards away, but felt that Midday – beaten in all three previous meetings with Sariska – would have been capable of defeating her nemesis this time. “It was a great performance. She was always going so easily,” he said. “I think she won it about three furlongs out.
“It was a pity Sariska didn’t join the troupe but that’s the way it goes. But she was good today and second, she’s won two Oaks and is a very good filly. She was very impressive and I was thrilled for everybody. I think that’s the best race she’s ever run –and of course when she’s won her race she thinks she’s done enough.”
Queally has ridden eight Group or Grade One winners in his short career, four of them on Midday and his regard for the filly is obvious. “She’s good and it’s fair to say she’s probably getting a little bit better as she gets older,” he said. “I was waiting for Sariska to come at some stage but I had my head down, driving as hard as I could. She’s one h**l of a filly and very special to me.”
There are plenty of sharp minds who try to read the smoke signals that come from some yards but the only smouldering that eminates from Sir Mark Prescott’s Heath House stables at Newmarket is from yet another cigar as the trainer ponders his next move.
When he decided to run Hooray in the Albany Stakes at Royal Ascot many took the hint of a rare two-year-old Group-race runner for a trainer whose horses tend to show more as slow-maturing three-year-olds. An eighth place there to Memory was followed by third behind the same filly in the Cherry Hinton Stakes and then a disappointing fifth, when dropped back to five furlongs, in a Listed race at Newbury last Friday.
By now the faithful were dwindling to a hardy few but, like Henry V’s followers, they were a happy few when Hooray gave them reason to cheer in the Group Two Jaguar Cars Lowther Stakes. Having used hold-up tactics in her previous runs Seb Sanders had the filly smartly away and then tacked over to take the stands’ rail, which had become regarded the prime position by jockeys at this meeting.
Once she got the lead Hooray held on to it tenaciously to repel the late run of Margot Did by three-quarters of a length. Prescott, whose public emotions rarely change between victory and defeat, said: “A change of tactics – I was surprised it worked. She’s been keen before, a little bit too keen and badly drawn twice. We tried five and so we decided to try six and let her bowl. So I suppose, eventually, the trainer has got it right.”
Having decided on his latest game plan, Prescott than put it to the filly’s owners who are well used to his ways of thinking. “We ran it through with Mr Thompson, of Cheveley Park Stud, and I thought I’d obviously managed his expectations right because he said ‘I notice there’s prize money down to sixth’. So everybody will be thrilled – she’s a homebred filly so it’s a great day for them.
“She’s better than I thought she was. I thought she was plenty good enough to run in these races – I didn’t think she was good enough to win one unless everything went her way.”
That was pretty much how it looked although Sanders was not as certain as others that the strip of ground along the stands’ rail was such a guaranteed fast-track to success. “We were always going to slip forward today. She got there very easily, they might say it’s a golden highway but I think the ground’s pretty much the same all the way across. But this filly’s tended to go a bit to the right so we thought it was important we got the rail.”
At least it was one plan that did not go up in smoke.
http://www.senore.com/Wootton-Bassett-hits-jackpot-at-York-a22412
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