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Thanks for clearing that up for me apracing , I knew someone would have the correct details.
Good stuff Betlarge, look forward to your remaining choices
The ostensibly useful but serial refuser and thrower of jockeys Wisley Wonder perhaps?
Top 3 I reckon
Drone
Wisley Wonder would definitely be one for the rogues gallery. However, you’ll be dismayed to know that most of the remaining 8 horses actually managed to get to the end of a race or two!
Mike
I was at Sandown the day Vodkatini declined to take part in the Tingle Creek – he got almost as big a cheer from the crowd as he cantered back past the stands, as Desert Orchid did when he won the race
Great stuff AP!
Mike
I thought first of Trelawny I often think of him as my dad was a great fan of his He said that he would walk around the parade ring with his head hung low as if he had all the cares of the World on his shoulders and then would go out and run like the clappers. They piled the weight on to try to stop him but he still won.
His trainer George Todd was a gambler and bought the Manton Estate from Tatts and I read that he paid off the balance of £47,000 wth money raised from a series of successful gambles on Dramatic in the Lincoln handicap in 1950 he reputedly carried this money to London in a paper bag.
Hope Trelawny makes your list Mike.
Love the stories especially your Vodkatini tale ap
I remember that dreadful accident now so very sad for both horses.
Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...Rather sadly, this excellent video of the 1988 Tingle Creek (which includes a shot of Tingle Creek himself), confirms that my memory has been blurred by the passage of years. The fact that Vodkatini was favourite probably responsible for the reception heard on this replay – apologies for the misleading sentimentality!
Oh dear, poor old Vodkatini getting the ‘cheers’ of the crowd..!
Great video that AP, so much to like. Especially good to see Taffy Jones who won endless small races over his long season career but was a bit out of depth here. Also impressed by the way the racecourse announcer repeatedly manages to balls-up the result of this 5-runner race at the end!
Mike
Number 8
HOMECOMING QUEEN (2011-2012) Aiden O’Brien
Most high-quality horses are remembered for a number of very good performances. However, a rare few manage just one top-class outing, seemingly from out of the blue. Homecoming Queen is most definitely in the latter category, her extraordinary win in the 2012 1000 Guineas being something that looked extremely unlikely prior to that race and even more inexplicable subsequently.
Homecoming Queen’s 2yo career had been steady enough with a nursery and listed fillies’ to her name and she seemed thoroughly exposed after eleven runs in the year, ending with a tailed-off last at the Breeders Cup. Well beaten on reappearance, she scrambled home in a Leopardstown classic trial and started at Newmarket as a 25-1 shot which seemed about right. As an habitual front-runner, she bounded out in an attempt to make all. Only this time, they never saw which way she went.
Seemingly quickening repeatedly throughout the race she passed the post 9l clear of the subsequently high-quality runner-up Starscope, trashing multiple group one winners Maybe and The Fugue back in third & fourth. The form looked bombproof and the time – a full two seconds faster than dual Derby winner Camelot’s effort on the same ground the previous day – only underlined this.
The Observer’s Richard Baerlein once advised his readers that “now was the time to bet like men” in relation to Shergar’s participation in the 1981 Derby and I took this belatedly to heart for Homecoming Queen’s next run, in the Irish 1000 three weeks later. I made her a three’s-on-shot to follow up yet she was available at a ridiculously generous 6/4 prior to the race, which in hindsight should have set some alarm bells ringing! However, value is value and I saw this as a straightforward “point & shoot” for her pilot Joseph O’Brien against what looked like a far more modest set of opponents than she’d disposed of at Newmarket.
Homecoming Queen never picked up at all when challenged and finished fourth, before heading to Ascot for the Coronation Stakes where she was out the back, more than 13l behind Starscope – who she’d slammed at Newmarket. She was favourite on both starts. It was all utterly bemusing and despite some predictable excuses from her camp, she was soon bundled off to an unimpressive broodmare career, presumably before any more reputational damage could accrue.
Homecoming Queen will forever be a horse that ran one exceptional race and as a consequence, I doubt if she’ll be much talked about in the future. After 30 years in the gambling business the Curragh race made me re-learn that the hard way that there’s no such thing as a certainty, although at the odds available, I’d be more than happy to strike exactly the same bet today.
Mike
did the half-hour delay affect the others’ performance? Doesn’t account for the good time, of course
did the half-hour delay affect the others’ performance? Doesn’t account for the good time, of course
I wondered if it helped, but having watched the race no end of times in recent years, I don’t buy the idea that somehow everything else ran miles below form. It’s just a fantastic performance – incredible visual turn of foot around 2f out after a sustained pace attack. Couldn’t believe my eyes!
Mike
Number 7
SULUK (1988 – 1993) Reg Hollinshead
All-Weather Jumping was an ill-fated experiment that lasted from late 1989 until February 1994. When War Beat became the 13th fatality over AW obstacles that year, the BHB immediately paused it and it never resumed.
However, one man’s meat and all that…Suluk’s 26 victories (18 over jumps, 8 on the flat) netted his connections a mathematically-neat sum of £52k, which says plenty about UK prizemoney but also how perfectly such a fairly moderate horse was placed. This was largely down to his penchant for running in modest AW hurdles, especially around Southwell where he twice ran up winning sequences in 1990 and 1993.
Ironically, Suluk was injured as an 8yo in his final race in August 1993, failing to get the better of the also prolific, splendidly-named Hiram B Birdbath. Surprisingly, he was still an entire and he enjoyed a very modest career at stud soon after.
Training locally to both Southwell and Wolverhampton, Reg Hollinshead had been an early-adopter to AW racing and knew the time of day when it came to placing his horses, as many bookmakers throughout his seemingly-eternal career would no doubt attest. However, it would be fair to say that not everyone was on-board with AW jumping – fields could be small and uncompetitive (Suluk himself was often sent off at odds-on) and punters never seemed to be fully behind the idea. There was little mourning when it was abandoned.
In recent times, there have been whispers about a potential revival for such racing, supporters of the idea convinced that the surfaces nowadays are vastly improved from when it was last tried, which to be fair was at the very start of AW racing in this country. They may have a point, but the last thing racing needs is any more self-inflicted PR wounds so I’d be surprised if such an idea ever really gets off the drawing board.
Suluk was never a champion and never threatened to become one. But in his own quiet way, he was a revolutionary, carving a slightly heroic niche for himself in an almost-forgotten and rather unloved area of jumps racing. He showed that with plenty of heart and a degree of specialisation any horse with some ability can become a winner – which is ultimately what the game is all about. For that at least, he deserves to be remembered.
Mike
Nuaffe was a great favourite of mine in the 90s (turned up everywhere, highly-tried, a few howlers in every race), but this race was full of my favourites; Riverside Boy (an awesome jumping display), Party Politics, Cool Ground, Just So, Run for Free, all legends, all displaying their quirks.
We don’t seem to see races like this anymore
On the point about prize money: Mark Johnston pointed out that when Trojan Horse won a race named after Double Trigger at Redcar yesterday, he earned just £30 more than Double Trigger himself won when he was victorious in the equivalent race 28 years earlier!
Suluk wasn’t just a Southwell horse – he won a 10F maiden in Ireland when owned by Hamdan Al Maktoum, and then five 12F handicaps on turf as a 4-y-old after he’d been bought by Reg Hollinshead.
I can’t claim to have remembered all this from when it happened, but I did research Suluk when writing this;
Number 6
PROVIDEO (1984-1985) and TIMELESS TIMES (1990-1991) Bill O’Gorman
In 1975, Barry Hills’ filly Nagwa set a modern-day record for 2yo wins with 13 from her 20 races. Five years later, Sir Mark Prescott’s Spindrifter equalled that in one less run. However, back in the 19th Century, a colt called The Bard had won no less than 16 races, which looked impossible to match until along came Bill O’Gorrman…and did it twice!
Provideo was speed-bred by the smart sprinter Godswalk and banged out the gates winning the Brocklesby, before landing a host of minor events throughout the mid-season. As the year progressed, he was tried in better company, winning the Star Stakes at Sandown and the Ripon 2yo Trophy. He also ran well in defeat in Listed company, notably behind Petoski in the Champagne Stakes over 7f at Goodwood.
Timeless Times was a fairly cheap yearling purchase who enjoyed a really prolific start of the 1990 season. By early July, he’d already won 14 races, all of them modest stakes affairs, and looked a certainty to pass Provideo’s modern-day record. However, he was only to run another six times and added a couple more wins including the Timeform Futurity at Pontefract. Appropriately, both Timeless Times and Provideo won Pontefract’s Spindrifter Stakes, named after the Prescott horse.
The final tally shows Provideo winning 16 of his 23 2yo races, mostly with Tony Ives up, and Timeless Times 16 of 21, under Alan Munro.
In strict form terms, Provideo was probably better than Timeless Times by a few pounds although neither were in the same street as the leading 2yos from their respective seasons. Bill O’Gorman had a fine reputation for handling older sprinters, I remember African Chimes winning multiple times in the early 90s with his daughter Emma up, but he began to fall out of favour, perhaps being stereotyped as a precocious-style sprint trainer only. By his own admission, he was also a bit too frank with owners at times! I understand he retired in the late 90s but would be interested to hear if he’s still involved in racing.
Indeed, the whole business of winning lots of races as a 2yo now seems distinctly out of fashion. I can only presume that the modern calendar or race conditions mitigate against it (Anybody know why that should be? There seems to be a preponderance of nursery handicaps nowadays, which can’t help). And there maybe a welfare angle as well, with trainers less keen to be seen racing young horses ‘excessively’. It should be noted that both Provideo and Timeless Times only showed modest form at three and both were packed off to stud soon after, Timeless Times proving quite successful.
I doubt if we’ll ever see the likes of these two again therefore, so they could be in the record books for a long old time. I remember when Provideo was running every week, the publicity surrounding him was huge, making the national TV & press. It speaks loudly of racing’s media footprint back in those days. By the time Timeless Times was running, there was far less coverage and in the unlikely event that such a feat should re-occur nowadays, I should think BBC Sport would report it somewhere below Cristiano Ronaldo’s favourite cheese.
Mike
Mike,
Those record breaking 2-y-olds were able to rack up that many wins because they could run every week in a race where they only got one penalty, no matter how many times they had won. Take a race like the one that Timeless Times won at Windsor on June 25th, 1990, a race I saw live. He’d already won ten races by then, but he was facing a field of maidens (with one exception), but he only carried 8lbs more than the other colts/geldings. His SP of 4/6 was a gift.
Nowadays, in a novice stakes, the penalties are cumulative and designed to deter any horse that has already won two races, let alone ten. The same changes were made to juvenile and novice hurdles after Mr Pipe demonstrated the ability to win nine or ten races in a season with horses like Hopscotch and Marcel. Multiple winners are now excluded as part of the race conditions in those types of hurdle race.
As for Bill O’Gorman, at a guess he’ll be helping out his daughter, who has a thriving business in pinhooking – buying yearlings, breaking them and teaching them to race, then selling them at breeze up sales.
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