Richard Hannon goes for sales pitch
According to the song from the musical Cabaret “money makes the world go around”.
The autumn yearling sales season in full swing and so is the sales-race season. This breed of contest, with their bumper prize cheques, has multiplied at some speed over the last 15 years but the purists have often questioned their place. The argument is that the sales races are a potential detriment to Pattern races, which are designed to attract the best horses in an attempt to arrive at a pecking order from which breeders can decide on the best bloodstock for the future prosperity of the breed.
The point was underlined last week when Wootton Bassett won the DBS Premier Yearling Stakes at York. The race does not carry Pattern status, so has none of the black-type so sought after by breeders. However, it did carry a first prize of £147,720.00 which dwarfed the prestige that Approve garnered for winning the juvenile highlight of the Ebor fixture, the Group Two Gimcrack Stakes, the fiscal reward for which was a more modest £89,962.61.
Even as he was congratulating himself on a job well done for his owner, Richard Fahey, Wootton Bassett’s trainer, was questioning the merit of his decision when he said: “The problem is that I think he’d nearly have won the Gimcrack and I’ve come for a sales race. It’s massive money. He’s in a few more sales races and we’ll have a look.”
He would not have had to look far because the next sales race is at Newmarket this weekend with the Tattersalls Millions Auction Stakes. The first prize of £55,769.64 is less than a grand behind the far grander Group Two totesport.com Celebration Mile on Goodwood’s card, but the money will be very welcome for Richard Hannon as he continues his pursuit of Sir Michael Stoute in the battle for the trainers’ title which, unlike the jockeys’ version, is decided by prize money rather than winners.
Hannon has two in the Tattersalls race led by Zebedee, who has already proved himself at Group-race level by winning the Molecomb Stakes last month. Hannon, speaking on his website, said: “He’s won four out of five, including the Molecomb at Goodwood, but he’s never raced on anything worse than good and he is only a pony, so how he will handle soft ground is anybody's guess.
"However, we’re told that the ground will only get better, so we can only hope. It's Zebedee's first time over six furlongs and he has to give weight away all round, so we know that it won't be easy. Hughesie [Richard Hughes] will drop him out as he did at Goodwood and ride him to get the trip, and there’s no doubt that he has the best form in the race, but everything will depend on how he copes with the conditions.”
Zebedee’s owner, Julie Wood, has an enviable choice between watching Zebedee on the July course or travelling to Goodwood for the latest run of a filly who could literally be her dream horse. Date With Destiny, the only foal of George Washington, steps up from her win in maiden company at Newbury last month when she runs in the Group Three Chichester Observer Prestige Stakes.
"We’ve no idea whether Date With Destiny will handle soft ground, but there is only one way to find out,” Hannon said. “There were mixed messages of the form of the Newbury race, but she could not have done the job better, and this is the natural progression. They'll be racing on fresh ground up the straight, so, hopefully, conditions won't be too bad."
A win for Date With Destiny would not be too bad for racing as a whole. The current fixation that the sport’s administrators to have a narrative forgets one small point. The best stories cannot be force-grown within a greenhouse of spin, they develop by themselves and that will happen if Date With Destiny can live up to both her name and her sire’s aura.
Money may indeed make the world go around, but what price a dream?
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