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I’ve been working on this for a couple of weeks and have realised that it woud be better to put up each of the ten stories as a separate post on a single thread, rather than one post which would be the length of a short novel!
These are tales in the same mould as past ‘Memory Lane’ posts, and although some of the names will be familiar, hopefully all will prove of interest and will prompt memories for the readers. The first four are ready, the rest will follow over the next few weeks.
During my varied career as an owner, I claimed a number of horses and had horses I already owned claimed from me as well. I never managed to find a top class horse entered to be claimed for ten grand, but it can be done. This is a personal selection of horses that have been bought cheaply via the claiming process and gone to bigger and better things – there are eight of those and two that anybody could have claimed, but nobody did.
ALWAYS WAINING
A colt by Unfuwain, he was trained by Mark Johnston, for whom he ran 10 times as a 3yo in 2004. He won a maiden at Chepstow and a handicap at the Ascot July meeting, both over 12F. His final run that year was in a valuable 12F claimer at Newmarket in October, which he won comfortably as the 11/10 fav.
He was claimed by Derbyshire trainer Patrick Clinton for £30,000, a tidy sum, but a well bred 93 rated 3yo colt might well have made more at the Autumn sales. From then until the end of his career, he ran in the colours of Peter Douglas, owner of an engineering firm and a regular sponsor of races at Uttoxeter. His first run for new connections was not a great start, tailed off last in the November Handicap, with Tony Culhane reporting that he was unsuited by the soft ground. That looked pretty silly after he won a juvenile hurdle at Uttoxeter on heavy ground in January, which he followed with two more wins, the last over 2M 4F against older horses back at Uttoxeter in February.
He was then gelded and put away for the summer. After four modest runs in handicap hurdles later in 2006, he was moved to Robert Stronge – I believe that was down to Pat Clinton giving up training. Stronge won a handicap hurdle at Bangor at the third attempt and after switching him to fences, a beginners chase at Taunton in January 2007. Another trainer change followed, with Always Waining placed in the care of Peter Bowen.
He won a novice handicap chase at Newbury first time out for him in March and a good class chase at Uttoxeter in May – in between those two he was also first past the post at Ayr, but was later disqualified for failing the dope test.Those wins took his chase mark above 140 and he couldn’t handle that, so Bowen reverted to hurdles in the summer of 2008, winning a 3M handicap off a mark of 120. Back over fences, he made three visits to Market Rasen, winning a £34k first prize in a Listed handicap chase at the end of October.
Up went his handicap mark again (134 to 147) and he was pulled up in the Welsh national, the Great Yorkshire Chase and the Midlands National. Then came a spark of light, with a 4th/29 off a mark of 140 in the Topham Trophy at the National meeting. Then he was pulled up in the Whitbread (aka the Bet365 Gold Cup by then!). But Peter Bowen now had something to work with, a horse that had shown he liked the Aintree fences. But later that year he fell at the fence before Bechers in the Grand Sefton! Undeterred and with his chase mark now down to 128, Bowen gave him a couple of runs over hurdles before returning to win the 2010 Topham Trophy by 12L from 26 rivals.
It was the start of a remarkable run, winning the race again in 2011 by 4L off a mark of 133 in a field of 30 – and yet again in 2012 by 4 1/2L off 138 with 26 runners that time. Almost unbelievably, the Aintree stewards in 2012 asked Bowen to explain the improvement in his form – his reply is a masterpiece:
“trainer said, regarding apparent improvement in form, that the gelding is better suited to jumping fences and enjoys Aintree, adding that the prep hurdle races were too fast for it to compete.”
He returned to Aintree one last time for a shot at the National as a 12-y-old – he got round again but could only manage 10th, for which connections collected £975 in prize money. That took his total under NH rules just short of £300k. A nice sum, but probably nothing compared to the pleasure he must have given his owners.
FAIR ALONG
He raced nine times as a 2yo when trained by Willie Jarvis, winning the last one, a seller at Wolverhampton. He’d been gelded after the first three of those races and an initial handicap mark of 72 had fallen to 60 by the time he won. He changed hands at the auction and moved to the stable of Paul Blockley. He was kept busy on the AW, won a 1M 3F handicap at Southwell, then after two defeats, he was dropped back to selling company again at Wolverhampton in March. He finished third there when 2/1 favourite and was claimed for £6k by Welsh trainer John Flint.
After a three month break, Flint started him off in summer juvenile hurdles and it didn’t go well. At Stratford on debut, he deposited Choc Thornton on the turf when trying to refuse at the third hurdle. But that proved to be a one-off – in 45 subsequent starts under NH rules, he only once failed to complete the course and even that was just a tired unseat at the last. Sent out again twelve days after Stratford, he bolted up at Bangor by 30L and repeated the feat under a penalty by 25L, both wins in the colours of his trainer.
He was then sold privately to Philip Hobbs and owner Alan Petersen, where he remained for the rest of his career. Hobbs immediately won the juvenile hurdle at the Cheltenham November meeting and much of the rest is well known history. The biggest prizes always seemed just beyond his reach, but seconds in the Triumph Hurdle, the Arkle and the Chester Cup tell the story of his versatility. Later in life he was mainly kept to hurdling and won the early season staying hurdle at Wetherby in 2009 and 2010. And after finishing second in that race in 2011, he threw in a third in the Hennessy, ridden by Nina Carberry.
A career spanning nine years and sixty seven races, began in a 5F maiden at Windsor in April 2004 and ended in the Pertemps Final at Cheltenham in March 2013. He earned £433k in prize money, just over half of that being place money. And anybody could have bought him for six grand plus commission (£6,300 in total) at Wolverhampton. In fact, anybody almost did, as I was always on the lookout for horses at that time and he was on my radar. But the runner-up in that selling race was a filly with an official rating of 35 (!) and I reckoned if he couldn’t beat her, he wasn’t worth trying to buy.
FIRE DOME
This one is a bit different, an older horse claimed in the hope of a quick return. Fire Dome was a very useful sprinter, first for Richard Hannon and then for Dandy Nicholls, reaching a career high mark of 105 for the latter. He’d fallen to 79 by the time Nicholls ran him in a 6F claimer at Windsor in May 2000, which the then 8-y-old won as the 11/8 favourite. He was then claimed for ten grand by Andrew Reid, a regular at the claiming game in those days. The handicapper played along and dropped Fire Dome to 75 for winning!
Reid got an immediate return on his investment, winning a 6F (turf) handicap at Lingfield and a valuable 6F handicap at Epsom less than three weeks after the Windsor race. Two unplaced runs followed in quick succession, then a ten week break, after which he won a handicap at Salisbury off a raised mark of 87. By the end of that year, he’d picked up almost £50k in prize money.
He continued to pick up the odd win, then in a neat irony, as a 10-y-old, Reid returned him to the same Windsor claimer from which he’d been bought. He finished second, beaten by an 8-y-old trained by Dandy Nicholls, called Further Outlook. Inevitably, Reid claimed Further Outlook, but although he was placed a few times, he wasn’t as good a claim as Fire Dome.
HEARTBREAK CITY
He began his career in France, winning a 10F handicap as a 3-y-old which saw his French mark raised to the equivalent of 81 on this side of the Channel. He then appeared in an AW claimer over 9.5F at Deauville and finished fifth – he was claimed for 23,006 euros and clearly his owner had no wish to keep him as that was just 6 euros over the minimum possible bid. He was exported to Ireland and arrived in the stable of Tony Martin.
Martin gelded him and then initially ran him over hurdles, without success, and breaks of 7 months and later of almost a year, suggest he wasn’t easy to keep sound. Almost two years after he’d been claimed, Martin reverted to the flat, a third place at Galway, followed by a win in a £50k 2M handicap at the York Ebor meeting. Subsequent visits to the UK for the Cesarewitch and the Chester Cup produced wide margin defeats, but in between those races, he’d hacked up first time out as a 6-y-old, That was over 1M 2F at Cork on heavy ground, where he won by 12L in a time more than 28 seconds slower than standard! The Irish handicapper reacted to that by putting him up 15lbs to a mark of 103, which was enough to stop him in that Chester Cup.
After Chester, he returned to hurdling, winning a Tipperary maiden and a handicap at Galway. But Martin had entered him for the Ebor, and researching this I wondered if that was simply because his new handicap mark meant he could expect to get a run, or did he really believe it was a race his horse could win. History tells us it should have been the latter, as he did win it comfortably by 4L! The runner-up was called Shrewd – nice try, but not shrewd enough to outwit Tony Martin.
But the biggest day was still to come – winning the Ebor got him into the Melbourne Cup and he almost completed the double, beaten a head as the first two fought out the finish well clear of their 22 rivals. Sadly, after a couple of runs the following year, he broke a leg on the gallops at The Curragh. He earned just over £700k in prize money, most of it in that breakout year as a 6-y-old.
I always enjoy these trips down memory lane. Thanks for posting them apracing, and I look forward to reading the others.
One of the things that most saddens me about the loss of the Timeform annuals is that horses who have contributed so much to the sport no longer have their career summarised anywhere as you have done so well here.
This is especially the case for Jumps horses and those that are not Group class on the Flat. Looking at form in a database is not the same.
Here’s number five.
MADISON DU BERLAIS
It’s fairly well known that Martin Pipe was the first trainer to have the French racing channel Equidia piped into his yard, and that he was always on the lookout for horses he could claim relatively cheaply. Since claims needed to be made in person at the track (not sure if that is still the case), he also had contacts in France that could act for him.
Madison Du Berlais was, to put it politely, not much good based on what he did in France and he had an alarming tendency to finish second – which he did in 6 of his 11 starts there. His only win came in a modest 4yo chase over 4000 metres at Lions D’Angers. It was a clear indication of how little his French connections thought of him, that when he ran in a claiming chase on Nov 16th, 2005 he was entered for a minimum bid of 18,000 euros. He finished second, giving 6kgs to the winning filly and was claimed for 25,100 euros by French agent Hubert Barbe on behalf of Pipe.
He was allocated a handicap mark of 112 in the UK and it didn’t take Pipe long to improve on that. He ran up a hat trick of 2M handicap chases in Feb/Mar, the last win at Newbury off a mark of 125. He followed that with a 3rd in the Grand Annual and filled the same position in a 2M handicap at Ayr, ending the season rated 135. He was then switched to the care of son David Pipe and continued his improvement with three more wins, including a valuable Group 3 handicap at Newbury, his mark rising to a new high of 151.
The following season he was stepped up to 3M for the first time, running well without winning in the Charlie Hall and the Hennessy, second at Ascot just before Xmas, but a faller at the Canal Turn on the first circuit when tried at Aintree. But the best was yet to come, with the 2008/9 season seeing him win the Hennessy (at 25/1) off a mark of 150, beat Denman by 23L at Kempton in a re-arranged Gold Cup trial and shrug off a disappointment in the Gold Cup by taking the Bowl at Aintree (Denman fell) from Exotic Dancer. His official mark at that point was 169, a remarkable four stone higher than when he arrived in the Pipe yard.
He never won again, possibly disheartened by a very remote view of the rear end of Kauto Star when finishing second in the Betfair Chase and the King George. But I don’t suppose that anybody involved with him was too bothered. If you pay less than 25 grand to buy a horse out of a claimer and win a Hennessy, a Grade 1 chase and almost £450k in prize money, you’d be entitled to think that this ownership lark is easy! He was never a Cheltenham horse, but given a flat track, his record at places like Aintree and Newbury was top class.
And number six.
MAKE A STAND
Another Martin Pipe miracle and the ultimate one season wonder. He was bred by the Barnett family (High Line, Time Charter etc) and sent to Henry Candy, winning a 1M nursery at Newmarket on his final start as a 2yo off a handicap mark of 74. His first six runs as a 3yo were all hopeless – after the first of those he’d been passed on to a syndicate of owners in the yard and gelded. Since he clearly couldn’t win a handicap, Candy ran him in a 1M 4F claimer at Leicester, which he won and Martin Pipe claimed him for eight grand (that figure isn’t shown on the result page of the Post website, but it’s what I remember).
He subsequently raced in the colours of Peter Deal, and I think he was one of the partners that had owned him with Henry Candy, but I’m not 100% certain of that. He had horses with Pipe previously and also owned a good staying hurdler called Hebridean, who was trained by David Nicholson. Pipe ran Make A Stand once on the flat and then in a novice hurdle at Exeter in October, where he was beaten a long way at odds of 15/8. Pipe then put him away and waited for the following NH season, perhaps because the horse sustained an injury.
Whatever the reason, the results were immediately better, winning three novice hurdles in May 1996. He was then sent back to the flat and produced a couple of second places in decent company, either side of a win in the Queen Mothers Cup at York, ridden by Mrs Lydia Pearce. But after another wide margin defeat at Newbury in July, he had another three month break before resuming over hurdles.
That was at Stratford, his first run in a handicap hurdle and his mark was 117. He won easily despite a blunder at the last in that race over 2M 2F+, but then ran at Uttoxeter over 2M 4F and plainly failed to get that trip. Pipe got the message and never ran him over more than 2M thereafter.
It was the start of a remarkable run of success that saw him go from a handicap mark of 127, to winning the Champion Hurdle in the space of five races. He won a valuable handicap at Sandown on Dec 7th, a Grade 2 novice hurdle at Ascot on Dec 21st, the Lanzarote Hurdle (then a 2M race) in January and the Tote Gold Trophy in February. I was present for all of those wins and recall the comments of other regulars at the time. At Ascot, one of the bigger players backed him down from 11/10 to an SP of 8/13 and told us afterwards that it was the best 11/10 bet he’d ever made. At Newbury, the usual collection of punters by the pre parade ring stood around, bemused that such an unlikely looking horse had managed to demolish the field in the biggest handicap of the season.But that win came off a mark of 140 and I don’t think any of us felt he’d manage to do the same in the Champion Hurdle – yes he’d go tearing off in front, but surely class would tell and he’d be picked off from two out. Of course everybody knows now that we had the first part right, but were utterly wrong about the outcome. To this day, I still feel that the vast majority of NH trainers would have a) rejected him on sight and b) never considered the possibility that he should run in the Champion Hurdle. Even if he’d shown the same level of form pre Cheltenham, custom and tradition would have convinced them to run him in the Supreme Novice Hurdle.
Make A Stand was subsequently beaten in the Aintree Hurdle, again failing to stay the longer trip. And there was just one more race, a doomed attempt at a repeat in the Champion Hurdle three years after his win. A one season wonder then, but what a season. He was the fastest jumper of a hurdle I’ve ever seen and that was the key to his success, but there’s no question that it helped being trained by a genius.
His Tote Gold Trophy win is well worth watching again:
Seven up:
THE TATLING
It was the opening day of the Tattersalls July sale at Newmarket in 2001 and I was at the auction site with trainer Pat Murphy, looking to buy a horse for our syndicate. I had a short list of possibles, and Pat and I had toured the stable yards looking at those horses. The Tatling was Lot 128, then a 4yo that hadn’t raced since April, current handicap mark 100, but a patchy record and he didn’t make much appeal to either of us on inspection. We agreed he’d be worth taking a chance on if we could get him for ten grand or less – Dandy Nicholls bought him for 11,000 gns and we went home with Lot 137, Colonel Mustard!
It didn’t look as if we’d made a mistake when a year later, Nicholls ran The Tatling in a 5F claimer at Catterick after several unplaced runs in handicaps. He was down to a mark of 87 and Dandy was trying to get his money back by entering him for £15,000 at Catterick. He won that race easily by 5L and tempted Milton Bradley to pay the asking price. At the time, I envisaged a subsequent career spent in sprint handicaps at Bath and Chepstow, but, not for the first time, Milton showed he had a better eye for a horse than most of his colleagues.
To go into detail about the years that followed would require two to three thousand words, and much of it will be familiar to TRF members anyway. Perhaps the most astonishing fact is that The Tatling ran 154 times for Milton – he must have spent more hours on the M4 and M5 than the average traffic cop. The highlight of course was his victory in the Kings Stand, although it was still a Group 2 then. He never did manage a Group 1 win, but second places in the Nunthorpe and the Abbaye were testimony to his speed and how well Milton developed him.
His later years were spent mainly in handicaps and he was granted an honourable retirement after winning a 5F handicap at Wolverhampton just three weeks before he would have reached the age of 15. Great that he came through it all in one piece. And how lucky was he to have been blessed by the Milton Bradley magic touch. I talked to Milton a few times on the racecourse and he was one of the most easy going and approachable characters in the game. He never wanted any fuss, thought that training horses was easy – feed them, gallop them, let them relax out in the paddock. And it certainly worked for The Tatling!
Number 8, Vagog, is a horse I’ve written about previously on here, a tale of multiple claims, and another one that Martin Pipe took from a claimer to a Grade 1 success. To save me writing the relevant parts of that story again, this is the original thread:
Finally, the two that could have been claimed, but weren’t.
MYSILV
In the early 80’s, the Triumph Hurdle was often won by something bought cheaply at the sales. Heighlin cost 14,000 gns, Baron Blakeney failed to find a buyer with an £8k reserve so his owner sent him to Martin Pipe. Shiny Copper was bought for 2,800 gns at Ascot sales not long after he’d been beaten in a selling hurdle in France when trained by Martin Blackshaw. Saxon Farm had been trained on the flat by Stan Mellor before switching to hurdles, and he’d only made 2,500 gns as a yearling.
The race began to change after that, with better and more expensive horses off the flat being successful – First Bout, Kribensis, Ikdam and Oh So Risky for example. But Mysilv was a missed opportunity, although I confess it would have taken remarkable foresight to have seen her as a potential Triumph Hurdle contender at the time. She was trained on the flat by Chris Wall at Newmarket and broke her duck at the fifth attempt, in a 3yo claiming race over 1M at Nottingham. It was a drop in class, but with the benefit of hindsight, the fact that it was her first run in soft ground was also significant.
I’ve no record of exactly what it would have cost to claim her that day, but my best guess is that she’d been entered for £12,000, which would have been the usual top price for that grade of race at the time. As her official handicap mark before that race was 60, perhaps the lack of interest was no surprise. She went on to run in handicaps, with little success until again racing on soft ground, when she scored in a 10F handicap, again at Nottingham. Several placed runs followed and she even ran in a 10F 0-65 Limited Stakes at Redcar (3rd as 10/11 fav) two days before she went into the sale ring at Tattersalls.
She was bought on behalf of the Million in Mind syndicate for 28,000 gns and the rest is well known. An unbeaten run in juvenile hurdles that culminated in the Triumph Hurdle, where her dominance was reflected in the market – she was 2/1 favourite, 11/1 bar. She was beaten at Aintree before going to the Doncaster May sale as required by the rules of Million in Mind. Just a year after she’d been available to claim for £12k, she now fetched £155k on behalf of Elite Racing, who sent her to Charlie Egerton. She won a Tote Gold Trophy and four other minor races for him, ending her racing career with a second in the Stayers Hurdle and a second in the French Champion Hurdle.
She picked up £165k over hurdles in the UK and another 84,000 euros from those two runs in France – not bad for a filly that never had a flat rating higher than 65.
YOUNG MICK
On the 23rd of January, 2006, Young Mick ran in a class 7 Maiden Claimer at Wolverhampton, at which point he was a 4yo rated 54, and he won by 3L. His trainer submitted a friendly claim to retain him – I don’t know if there were other claims which would have led to a ballot to decide who got the horse for the fixed asking price of £5,000.
On the 23rd of August, 2006, Young Mick ran in the Ebor Handicap at York, at which point he was rated 100. He finished a close third, beaten a head and a short head, not helped by a 7lb penalty for multiple wins since the weights had been published, when he’d been on 93.
A month later, Young Mick ended his remarkable season by winning the Group 3 Cumberland Lodge Stakes, his fourth win at Ascot, following on from the Duke Of Edinburgh at the Royal meeting, a heritage handicap at the July meeting and the 1M 4F race at the Shergar Cup. He thus ended that year rated 57 pounds higher than he had been at Wolverhampton.
Between Dec 3rd, 2005 and Sep 24th, 2006, he ran 22 races, winning 10 of them. Then he had a year away from the track and on his return, inevitably found things a lot harder from his elevated handicap mark. He usually ran well when sent to Ascot, picking up some decent place money there, but there were only two more wins, a conditions race at Leicester and a handicap at Nad Al Sheba. Not quite a one season wonder, but quite unique in my experience, as a horse that climbed from class 7 to class 1.
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