Will Hayler on the Flat yards firing in the winners


Our Will Hayler looks at some of the Flat stables who have started the new campaign in the best form.

Being happily married, I know the importance of getting the excuses in first. It is, of course, too early in the season to be drawing any hard-and-fast conclusions when the sample size of races is so small. Once getting beyond the raw data, there are several stories which highlight the dangers of getting carried away with statistical snapshots.

On the other hand, it’s impossible not to have the eye taken by several of the stables who, in the short time since Flat racing resumed on turf at Doncaster three weeks ago, have clearly started the new campaign in flying form.

Our Will Hayler looks at some of the yards who have started the new campaign particularly brightly.

Roger Varian 6-17 (winners to runners on turf in 2017 so far – figures correct before racing on Monday April 24)

If you’re the sort of person who enjoys moving house, I’d suggest that you’re in a somewhat masochistic minority. But having had to relocate his team at the start of the year for reasons outside of his own control, Roger Varian has already clearly shown that the inconvenience of that move has come at no cost to his horses.

A meticulous man, Varian has a reputation in Newmarket for demanding high standards from his team, but he has also attracted some of the town’s most capable staff to his workforce and it is impossible not to admire his achievements since taking over from the late Michael Jarvis, who he assisted until 2011.

Speaking to Sportinglife.com after he saddled four winners on Thursday, including two on the final day of the Craven Meeting, Varian played down the element of inconvenience in his move to Clive Brittain’s former base at Carlburg.

“If you want to talk to someone about moving, talk to Ed Walker, who I think has now had to move four times in five years, but he’s a very good trainer who has overcome that,” he said.

“The hardest thing about the move was getting the office right, and that took a good couple of weeks. On the other hand, the horses just went up to the gallops, stretched their legs and were walked into their new boxes straight afterwards. Only four needed to be moved by horsebox, so they hardly even knew what was happening.

“We have a nice-looking team, including more than 80 two-year-olds, and plenty to look forward to.”

Away from Newmarket, one of Varian’s most well-touted horses (thanks more to his owner than to the trainer) was on target when UAE Prince took a particularly competitive-looking handicap on Thursday at Ripon off a mark of 93. Could he belatedly live up to expectations this season?

“He hasn’t shown us in that victory that he’s a Group horse, but he hasn’t shown us that he isn’t either,” was Varian’s verdict. “He got a bit fractious in the paddock beforehand, but it was only the third start of his life and he’s still got a plenty to learn.”

Mick Easterby 8-27

Five winners from seven runners at Redcar’s two meetings so far this year have skewed things slightly, but it’s still been a notably impressive start from a stable that has also been in cracking recent form on the All-weather too.

Bowson Fred translated his improved form on the All-weather back to turf with a very good second at Newbury on Saturday, which offers encouragement as to his prospects in the weeks ahead in some nice sprint handicaps, while the ex-French Roller also ran well enough at Nottingham on Saturday evening to suggest he can win more races.

Yes, there’s a danger that things will tail off as most of the yard’s runners have been race-fit from the All-weather and tackling rivals making their first appearances of the year, but that’s not the case with all of them.

Furthermore, the form of Mick Easterby’s team highlights the relative lack of early turf success of some of the other yards from a similar parish, for example Tim Easterby (1-46) and Karl Burke (1-40).

Godolphin: Saeed bin Suroor 6-12 & Charlie Appleby 4-24

In 2012 and 2013, Saeed bin Suroor sent out no winners at all on turf in Britain April. In 2014 and 2015, he managed five apiece. Last year, that number was back down to two. With entries at Doncaster, Sandown and Epsom this week, he’s clearly not protecting his impressive strike rate so far this year – and he has a host of other entries on the All-weather at Chelmsford and Lingfield too. Interesting.

Two-year-old winners at this stage of the season for the main Godolphin stables are not unheard of, but they are rare. Last year, Charlie Appleby saddled no juveniles at all until May. Saeed bin Suroor had a third at the Guineas meeting, and just two runners in April, a runner-up at Doncaster who won next time out and wasn’t seen again, and Lingfield winner Kananee, who won four of his five starts in 2016, but came up well short at Royal Ascot.

It’s not just that Godolphin’s only two two-year-olds to run so far this year have both won and won well, it’s that they both looked such consummate professionals on their way to success. Interesting.

I am not quite sure what’s different this year about the two Godolphin private trainers, but there’s no doubt that the runners from both yards look sharper this year. Appleby might be comparitively lagging a little at present, but he had three seconds at the Craven meeting. Put simply, both trainers are enduring fewer blow-outs than has been the case at this stage of the season in the past.

New blood in the training teams? Probably a factor. New energy from the management team? Maybe. A seemingly-endless stream of blueblooded horses ready to strut their stuff and some of the best jockeys in the world available to ride them? Most definitely.

Whatever the reason, the Godolphin ‘place layers’ have been hit hard in the first few weeks of the campaign and while there’s no guarantee that the good results will continue, a resurgence this year from horses trained by Appleby and Bin Suroor would be good news for the game, given the decades-long investment made in the sport - and in Newmarket itself - by Sheikh Mohammed.

John Gosden 13-46

Godolphin’s expansion has reached John Gosden too in the past couple of seasons, albeit some of the horses he trains in the royal blue silks are almost certainly the same ones he would have trained in seasons past in Princess Haya’s green ones or Sheikh Mohammed's own maroon-and-white set.

His only winner so far on turf this year for Godolphin though has been Valcartier, and the others have represented a wide spectrum of ownership interests, from other UAE-based owners to those from Saudi Arabia, Qatar, South Africa, China and the US.

That diversity reflects the fact that the considerable expansion in numbers which Gosden has made over the last four or five seasons has not come from any one source, but has been achieved against a background of consistently high performance.

There have been minor ripples. May and June have been relatively quiet for the last couple of years, but August and September are repeatedly excellent, and Gosden’s strike-rate during the turf season has only twice dipped below 15% in any given month since 2013. That sort of record is undeniably impressive.

Some find Gosden's expert disposition hard to warm to, and it’s certainly true that whatever happens in any race, he rarely seems to be left surprised by the outcome afterwards.

However, Gosden is a man who at his core wants only the very best for racing, and an admirably loyal friend to many - just ask Frankie Dettori, whose career he has undoubtedly helped to resurrect in the post-Godolphin days.

It was also pleasing last week to see the trainer in the winner’s enclosure at Newmarket and Newbury, flanked throughout by suspended jockey Rab Havlin. Gosden has also shown the sidelined Nicky Mackay the ropes in similar fashion in recent weeks. The experience of shadowing such an important figure around the racecourse for a few days will do neither any harm in the future, whether those futures involves training or not.

Another feather in the cap must go to Gosden for his use of the unfashionable-but-far-from-untalented Robert Tart, who joined the team several years ago, but has had to wait a long time for the opportunities he is now rightly receiving with Havlin and Mackay out of action.

I’m not convinced that either Daban or Dabyah, the stable's winners of the Nell Gwyn and Fred Darling last week, will quite make it at Grade One level this season. But I liked the way Shutter Speed stretched away from a good yardstick at Newbury on Friday and if we’ve seen a Classic winner from among his team in action so far this season, it could just have been her.

That said, recent Kempton handicap winner Monarchs Glen could well emerge as a serious Derby contender if he takes his place in the line-up for the Bet365 Classic Trial at Sandown this Friday. There is a great deal of buzz in Newmarket about this particularly-imposing colt.

Luca Cumani 1-14

This is a big year for Luca Cumani, whose record in the first few weeks of the new campaign is a good example of why the bare statistics can only ever be used to tell some of the story.

Yes, Banksea in Newbury’s Spring Mile on Saturday became the trainer’s only winner on turf so far this year, but from a very limited pool he has also saddled four second-placed finishers in the last fortnight and two more thirds.

There’s no doubt that Cumani’s team are further forward than would usually be the case at this stage of the season and the trainer still has a point to prove after the loss of a good chunk of his team to Roger Varian in 2015.

He has a particularly interesting bunch of three-year-olds to get out this season, with Gorgeous Noora – representing Authorized’s owners – still engaged in the 1000 Guineas, and Frankel filly Aljezeera, one from one in a decent Doncaster maiden last year, an Oaks possible for Al Shaqab.

It surely won't be long until that 1-14 strike-rate is further improved.


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