Better times ahead for Alan King and Philip Hobbs

Alan King

For most of last season, it looked as though Edwardstone’s win in the Game Spirit Chase would be the only bright spot in an otherwise disappointing jumps campaign for Alan King’s stable. But on the last two Saturdays of the 2023/24 season the yard picked up a couple of valuable handicap hurdles, with Favour And Fortune winning the Scottish Champion Hurdle followed a week later by Helnwein winning the Novices’ Championship Final at Sandown.

Even so, that still left the stable’s total of winners for the jumps season at 36, the lowest since King’s early years with a licence (down from 50 in 2022/23 and 63 in 2021/22), and with a modest strike rate of 11%. Without those two valuable late-season wins, King would have finished even lower than 17th in the prize-money table.

That’s a far cry from when King finished third in the trainers’ championship in 2007/8 and again a year later. In both those seasons, King saddled three winners at the Cheltenham Festival. In 2007 there were Grade 1 wins for My Way de Solzen in the Arkle, Voy Por Ustedes in the Queen Mother Champion Chase and Katchit in the Triumph Hurdle, with the last-named going on to win the Champion Hurdle a year later. The 2008/9 season was also the yard’s most successful campaign in terms of winners, with 136, a season in which it ran more than 200 individual horses over jumps which was more than any other yard.

But King’s operation is a very different one nowadays and if the stable is no longer sending out more than a hundred winners a season over jumps it’s largely because Barbury Castle Stables has evolved into a dual-purpose yard. Since 2018, King has had at least 28 Flat winners a year (the current season’s total is 24) with stalwart stayer Trueshan, the flag-bearer for the stable’s Flat string, winning his 16th race in 2024 and taking his earnings past the £2m mark.

However, the signs are that the current jumps campaign will prove a more successful one than last season. There were seven winners in November followed by another four so far this month. Edwardstone, who fell when bidding to win the Tingle Creek for a second time last Saturday, remains the yard’s top jumper but there are some promising younger chasers who have already notched wins this season.

They are headed by Masaccio who followed a successful chasing debut in a handicap at Newbury with a good second in the John Francome Novices’ Chase at the same track. Helnwein showed plenty of promise on his debut over fences at Warwick and could bid to go one better at Windsor on Sunday, while Menaggio, another to have shown useful form and open to further improvement, has won both his starts over fences at Plumpton.

Another good winner this autumn is Grandeur d’Ame who had the first two in the Paddy Power Gold Cup behind him when making a successful reappearance at Chepstow in October. He was fourth in last year’s December Gold Cup and heads the Timeform weight-adjusted ratings for this Saturday’s renewal of that race at Cheltenham.

Philip Hobbs and Johnson White

Another leading trainer enjoying something of a renaissance this season after some quiet years is Philip Hobbs, now joint licence-holder at Sandhill Farm alongside his long-time former assistant Johnson White. That promotion came during 2023, not long after Hobbs became just the fourth jumps trainer in Britain to reach 3,000 winners when Zanza won the Denman Chase at Newbury.

As that total suggests, Hobbs has regularly figured among the top ten top jumps trainers this century, often sending out over a hundred winners a season and topping over a million pounds in prize money. The yard’s best seasonal total came in 2002/3, with 134 winners, including Rooster Booster’s victory in the Champion Hurdle, while three years later Hobbs finished runner-up in the trainers’ championship behind Paul Nicholls, with the winners that season including Detroit City in the Triumph Hurdle and Lacdoudal in the Betfred Gold Cup at Sandown.

Another constant for much of that period was stable jockey Richard Johnson who enjoyed four seasons as champion, after being the perennial runner-up to Tony McCoy, before calling it a day in April 2021. Johnson rode most of Hobbs’ twenty Festival winners, including Defi du Seuil who provided the stable’s two most recent wins at the meeting in the 2017 Triumph Hurdle and the JLT Novices’ Chase two years later.

But at the latest Festival, the stable had just the single runner Celebre d’Allen, a 50/1-shot who unseated in the Kim Muir. That reflected a lack of firepower in the yard in recent seasons resulting in seasonal totals of just 31 in 2022/23 and 34 in 2023/24. With the notable exception of Defi du Seuil’s owner J. P. McManus, Hobbs’ success has largely come without the support of big-spending owners.

However, with 18 winners on the board so far this season, Hobbs and White are on course for a more successful campaign this time around. Eight winners in November have been followed by another five already this month, including a treble at Exeter last week.

Putting his Festival mishap behind him, veteran Celebre d’Allen showed he retains plenty of ability when returning with a win at Bangor but as White outlined in last month’s Sporting Life Stable Tour, there are plenty of good younger prospects coming through. Chief among those is the potentially smart Lowry’s Bar who won his first four races over hurdles last season and looks a promising chaser after getting off the mark over fences as one of those recent Exeter winners.

Imperial Saint disappointed at Newbury last time but prior to that had looked another young chaser going the right way after winning his first two starts over fences at Aintree. Over hurdles, Georgi Girl was a stylish winner of a mares’ handicap at Warwick on her reappearance last month when looking better than ever and could go for a similar event at Cheltenham on Saturday, while four-year-olds Kap Vert and French Ship, winners at Exeter and Chepstow respectively, are other hurdlers who could go on to better things.

Another of last week’s Exeter winners was Sober Glory who has now won both his bumpers in the manner of a good prospect and is out of a close relative to the stable’s Challow Hurdle and Pertemps Final winner Fingal Bay.

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