Workforce out to put record straight for Khalid Abdullah in Breeders’ Cup Turf
Records are there to be broken because the pursuit of excellence is one of the fundamentals of sport itself. But rarely can such a quest have started from such small beginnings.
It is over 30 years since the green silks with the pink sash and cap that have become a constant theme of the great races in Europe and America were carried into the winner’s enclosure after Charming Native, trained by Jeremy Tree, won a minor race at Windsor in May 1979 for Prince Khalid Abdullah.
Less than a year later Known Fact's success in the 2,000 Guineas was not only Abdullah's first Classic victory, but also the first for any Arab owner and the start of one of the great success stories of the last quarter of a century.
Abdullah, a member of the Saudi royal family, started out with just four horses in training and now has 250 spread across Europe and America in what has become the most high-profile individual transatlantic racing and breeding operation. And he takes the greatest pleasure from those winners he has bred himself, through his Juddmonte Farms studs. Of the current total of 165 Group One victories, 134 of them have been home-bred runners, which includes both Midday and Workforce who will be running at the Breeders’ Cup meeting at Churchill Downs next week.
Despite being the quiet man of world racing, his horses have been making the big noise with 16 Group or Grade One victories already this year, just two below Abdullah’s personal record for any year which his racing manager, Teddy Grimthorpe, describes as “exceptional in every way”.
Not least because of Abdullah’s support of Henry Cecil - when others had dismissed him as yesterday’s man - which has been rewarded with no less than six Group One victories this year. Three of those have come from Midday – in the Nassau Stakes, Yorkshire Oaks and Prix Vermeille – and the filly will now attempt to defend her title in the Filly & Mare Turf that she won at Santa Anita 12 months ago.
“She’s been exceptional throughout,” Grimthorpe said, relying on a word that fairly sums up a horse who has won five championship-level races in two seasons. “What you see is really what you get with her and this year she’s better than last year. She quickened twice to win the Nassau, beat all the top fillies at York and repeated the same in the Vermeile. I saw her work on Saturday morning and she looked in really good shape.”
Cecil has had the Breeders’ Cup in mind all season but Workforce had the collective Juddmonte think-tank calling for extra supplies of midnight oil as they sifted through the wreckage of his run in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot just three months ago. Then the odds of the Derby winner coming back for the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe would have made unlikely seem like a racing certainty. “After Ascot we really did find nothing,” Grimthorpe recalled. “We checked him out extensively over a period of almost two weeks – he had tests, scans the whole lot - but we just didn’t find anything. In one way we’d have almost preferred to have found something.”
It was left to Sir Michael Stoute to find something, the spark that made the colt a champion at Epsom. Grimthorpe travelled to Longchamp wondering just what might happen but his anxiety was exchanged for anticipation as the race unfolded. “For me, my heartbeat went down a few notches when I saw him jump out and Ryan [Moore] had him on a nice, long rein. Michael and his team did a tremendous job to get him back after Ascot to win the Arc.
“Our initial reaction was, having won the two greatest mile-and-a-half races in Europe, that maybe he’d done his bit for the year. But I think the way he came out of it was a telling factor. Michael was very happy with the way he done since the Arc.
“He’s come back and you can’t give him much of a break and he went back into his work rhythm pretty quickly. Again, Saturday morning, he worked and I have to say he looked in tremendous shape.”
A record of 0-12 for Abdullah’s runner in the Turf is hardly inspiring and the memory of the day that Dancing Brave went to post at Santa Anita in 1986, as the great hope for Europe, only to trail in fourth behind Manila still lingers 24 years later.
Grimthorpe considered the figures. “You’re forgetting another statistic,” he replied. “I think Michael Stoute’s won the race four times.
“Records are meant to be broken and we’ve got to try and put the record straight.”
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