ed-gc – Page 6 – Racing Review

Henry Cecil

Henry Cecil was one of the most celebrated and succesful horse trainers of all time. Specialising in flat racing he won all there was to win during his career including multiple wins of all of the British classics (including the 1000 Guineas 6 times and the Epsom Oaks 8). He consistently outshone his contemporaries and was awarded Champion Jockey status 10 times over a 17 year period.

Cecil’s introduction to racing took place at his Stepfather’s Freemason Lodge stable in 1964. Going his own way in 1969 it wasn’t long before he had his first Group one winner, Wolver Hollow in the Eclipse Stakes. The next year saw him win the Queen Alexandra Stakes at Royal Ascot with Parthenon. Success breeds success, and the early 70s saw his first Classics win with Bolkonski at the 2,000 Guineas. It was a sign of things to come with many more wins in the Classics in the years that followed.

It wasn’t all plane sailing for Henry Cecil though. There followed a spate of deaths and relationship breakdowns in his working life, impacting his career in a big way. A fall out with Sheikh Mohammed had an especially significant effect with many horses suddenly removed from Cecil’s stable.

Like all winners in life though he would later bounce back. All it took was for an Oaks win in 2007 and the momentum was with him once more. 2011 saw him saddle 55 winners and rake in close to £3 million in prize money. The success of that and the following year was in no small part due to Frankel, a horse that would go on to have a flawless career featuring nine group one wins in a row including the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes and Champion Stakes.

Henry Cecil died in 2013 but more than set the bar for others over a decades long career. It was evident how at home he felt in racing, and his gentlemanly yet competitive way will not fade quickly from the minds of his peers or of horse racing fans in general.

Trainers

Nicky Henderson

Nicky Henderson is a successful British horse trainer best known for his winning habit at the Cheltenham Festival where he’s amassed some 58 wins over the years – and 3000 winners in total. He’s also been crowned British Jump Racing Champion Trainer five times.

Henderson came from a racing family, and his Father was a founder of Racecourse Holdings Trust. Upon his death one of the Cheltenham Festival races was renamed the Johnny Henderson Grand Annual Chase. Nicky Henderson went on to win this very race, which was a fitting tribute to his Father. Many put his love and affinity for the Cheltenham Festival down to this connection to the event.

His successes at the Cheltenham Festival are numerous. There’s Remittance Man, the 1992 winner of the Queen Mother Champion Chase, Champion Hurdle wins with Binocular in 2010 and See You There in 1985, 1986 and 1987, and Cheltenham Gold Cup wins with Long Run in 2011 and Bobs Worth in 2013.

Henderson has himself rode as a jockey in his younger years, riding 75 winners in the process. His training career started as assistant to Fred Winter, before going it alone after 4 years.

Although he’s known for his Cheltenham successes, Nicky Henderson lacks a Grand National win and has had numerous attempts at rectifying this since his first entry, Zongalero, in 1979. Despite the omission he did experience plenty of success at the wider 2018 Grand National meeting. Henderson’s Might Bite won the Betway Bowl on the opening day of the meeting, while We Have A Dream and L’Ami Serge also won. It’s clear that 40 year in, Henderson has lost none of his love for the sport.

Jockeys

Oisin Murphy

Oisin Murphy is the nephew of Jim Culloty and spent his formative years as a jockey under the tutelage the Cheltenham Gold Cup-winning trainer and jockey, as well as spending school summer holidays with Tommy Stack and Aidan O’Brien. In 2012, at the age of 17, Murphy left school and became apprenticed to Andrew Balding at Park House Stables in Kingsclere, near Newbury, Berkshire.

Murphy had his first ride on Feeling, trained by Dai Burchell, who finished last of seven, in lowly 0-65 handicap at Chepstow on May 14, 2013, but rode his first winner, Imperial Glance, trained by Balding, in an apprentice handicap at Salisbury just over a month later. He quickly distinguished himself from the hoi polloi of apprentice jockeys, riding 41 winners in his debut season – more than enough to lose his 7lb claim – including a memorable 9,260/1 four-timer at Ayr that September.

On his return from a successful winter in Australia, where he rode 13 winners, in 2014 Murphy was, as widely anticipated, crowned champion apprentice with 76 winners. He rode out his 3lb claim on Presburg, trained by Joseph Tuite, at Sandown in July that year, but the previous month, while still an apprentice, had the distinction of being offered a ride in the Derby – in which he couldn’t claim his allowance – on Red Galileo, trained by Ed Dunlop.

In his first full season competing on level terms with his weighing room colleagues, in 2015, Murphy increased his total to 91 winners and, in 2016 – following his appointment as the only jockey retained by Qatar Racing – rode over a hundred winners in a season for the first time. In 2017, he rode his first Group 1 winner, Aclaim, trained by Martyn Meade, in the Prix de la Floret at Chantilly and, at the time of writing, has added ten more victories at the highest level, including four on Roaring Lion and one on Lightning Spear, both owned by Qatar Racing, in 2018.

Jockeys

Silvestre De Sousa

Nowadays, Brazilian-born jockey Silvestre De Sousa is familiar to British racegoers, having won the Stobart Flat Jockeys’ Championship in 2015, 2017 and 2018 and finished runner-up to Jim Crowley in 2016. A graduate of the racing academy in Sao Paolo, De Sousa was champion apprentice in his native country in 2000, but lost his claim and broke his arm shortly afterwards. After an enforced spell on the sidelines, he found rides harder to come by and, in February, 2004, left Brazil, along with five of his countrymen, to join Irish trainer Dermot Weld. However, in nearly three years in Co. Kildare, promised rides failed to materialise and, following a chance meeting with the late David ‘Dandy’ Nicholls at the Curragh, De Sousa opted to join the erstwhile ‘Sprint King’ at his yard in North Yorkshire.

De Sousa rode his first winner in Britain, Sonic Anthem, in a lowly median auction maiden stakes race, at Southwell on New Year’s Day, 2006. The Nicholls-trained four-year-old won by 16 lengths and De Sousa later described the experience as “like being on Frankel”. By the end of the 2006 season, De Sousa had ridden 27 winners but, with Nicholls employing his son, Adrian, as stable jockey, he was picking only a few ‘spare’ rides for the yard. Consequently, on the advice of Nicholls Snr., he became a freelance jockey, riding 21, 35 and 68 winners, respectively, in the next three seasons.

In 2010, De Sousa rode exactly 100 winners, many of them for unfashionable trainers, at long odds and, in so doing attracted the attention of Middleham trainer Mark Johnston. In fact, it was Johnston who provided him with his first Royal Ascot winner, Namibian, in the Queen’s Vase in 2011. That season, De Sousa rode 167 winners and failed, by just four, to overhaul Paul Hanagan in the race for the jockeys’ title.

Shortly afterwards, he became a retained jockey with Goldolphin, an association that would yield his first domestic Group 1 winner, Farhh, in the Lockinge Stakes at Newbury in 2013 and the biggest win of his career, African Story, in the Dubai World Cup – worth £3.6 million to the winner – in 2014. However, despite finishing second and third in the jockeys’ championship in 2012 and 2013, respectively, both times behind Richard Hughes, he lost his job with Godolphin after three years. Nevertheless, he bounced back, winning the jockeys’ title – revamped to exclude any winners ridden before May 2 or after October 17 – in 2015, with 155 winners. The rest, as they say, is history.