Richard Hannon planning 2011 campaign for Canford Cliffs
Richard Hannon is still mustering the ammunition as his battle with Sir Michael Stoute for this season’s Flat trainers’ championship enters the final days.
Hannon is on course for the second title of his career and he has three entered for the Group Three Horris Hill Stakes at Newbury on Saturday; Big Issue, Vanguard Dream and Royal Exchange who finished second in a Listed race at Pontefract on Monday.
Speaking on his website Hannon said: "We have three entered in the Horris Hill Stakes at Newbury and will definitely run one, maybe two, while we also have a few maidens and Face Reality in the Radley, so we'll keep Richard Hughes, who returns from suspension, going right through to November 4th, when he will leave for Kentucky to ride Paco Boy [Mile] and Tale Untold [Juvenile Turf] at the Breeders Cup at Churchill Downs."
One horse who has done more than any other for the cause is triple Group One winner Canford Cliffs, who had been scratched from the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot last month just two days before the race after scoping unsatisfactorily.
Officials at the Japan Racing Association had been trying to lure connections to run the colt in the Grade One Kyoto Mile Championship on November 21st. But Hannon decided to wait for next season with a horse who could be the dominant player in Europe over a mile. “With the JRA doubling the prize money under a bonus scheme, for which Canford Cliffs qualified, there was £1.5million on the table should we win, which is both generous and very tempting, but the welfare of the horse comes first and he had done enough for the season,” Hannon explained.
“Remember, he has been in full work since being prepared for the Greenham at Newbury in April – he ran in two Guineas, Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood, and you don’t have an easy race winning these top races, so, while I left the owners to decide what to do, I am glad that they opted out.
"It’s a long journey to Japan, only to find that the ground is firm and we are drawn out in the car park, and I have always thought that those big foreign races at the back-end are best left to the older horses rather than the classic generation. I am sure that the Japanese would have been excellent hosts and everyone would have been well looked after, but there is always next year.
“Canford Cliffs can now have a long holiday and come back for a four-year-old career. He has improved physically and mentally since Ascot and I am sure that he’ll progress again through the winter, and we will probably get him ready for the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury in mid-May en route to the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot and the Sussex at Goodwood, and the fact that he will start off that much later next year means that if the owners want to go globe-trotting in the autumn they will still have something left in the tank to do so."
America has not been on Hannon’s radar in recent years – in part because of the miserable experience when his July Cup winner, Mr Brooks, was killed in the Sprint in 1992 – but he has decided to try and send Paco Boy into retirement on a glorious note when he will represent the Hannon stable in the Breeders’ Cup Mile.
“That is a totally different ball-game,” Hannon pointed out. “Paco Boy is five and this will be his last race before he goes to stud at Highclere, so there is nothing to lose, whereas Canford still has another year’s racing in front of him before he joins the Coolmore team.”
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