APRIL 2022
As you can imagine we are all in a state of high excitement here at HTR HQ as the weekend of weekends draws nigh! With Royal Patronage in the QIPCO 2,000 Guineas (Gr 1) on Saturday and Cachet in the QIPCO 1,000 Guineas (Gr 1) on Sunday it is simply amazing.
Cachet storming to victory in the Nell Gwyn Group 3 at Newmarket
Jake Warren bought both horses for only 60,000 gns apiece which demonstrates a terrific eye especially in such a competitive global market. I am so proud of my nephew’s achievements and whatever happens this weekend, congratulations Jake on buying us two Group winning Classic contenders!
The breeze up market in Newmarket was incredibly strong but Jake once again was as thorough and patient as ever and ended up buying two really lovely horses - a filly by Mehmas and a colt by Showcasing. She is a Queen and is so like Cachet as an individual. She will have her first piece of work this weekend with a view to running in mid May, possibly at the same meeting in Newmarket that Cachet made her debut in last year.
Mehmas ex Misfortunate (IRE) 2020 Br.F.
The colt, named Estate, is fully subscribed and has already impressed in his first piece of work last Saturday at Andrew Balding’s Park House gallops. The trainer messaged me today to say that he will have an entry at Chester next week!
Estate (Showcasing ex Cashla Bay 2020 B.C.)
We sponsored two races at Newbury’s Spring Trials Meeting which I thought was really important to kick off our 30th Anniversary celebrations. Newbury is a really special track for me - my father was Chairman there for many years and I have been a Director for quite a number of years also. I remember so well going with my parents when I was very small and heading up the long flights of stairs to watch the racing from an old wooden style box which you could just squeeze six people into! Of course things have moved on a bit since then and I am so proud that we now have our own Highclere box which is always such a fun and buzzy place for us to catch up with shareowners.
The Highclere Thoroughbred Racing 30th Anniversary Spring Cup Presentation won by the Charlie Appleby trained Modern News, presented by Clodagh McKenna and Chloe Herbert
Trudie Watson presenting winning jockey, William Buick with his Taittinger after The Highclere Maiden Fillies Stakes
The Highclere Thoroughbred Racing 30th Anniversary Spring Cup was won by the Charlie Appleby trained Modern News and the Highclere Maiden Fillies Stakes was won by Life of Dreams also trained by Charlie and owned by Godolphin. She looks very special and is now quietly fancied for the Oaks at 10/1!
Life of Dreams, the 10-1 favourite for The Oaks
I do hope that you will cheer on both Royal Patronage and Cachet this weekend. To see those pale blue silks in the first two Classics means the world to me and my wonderful team so give them a huge shout! May I also take this opportunity to wish our owners in these two stars the very best of luck.The nerves will be a jangling that’s for sure!
Harry Herbert, Chairman
On the track - April 22
By Frances Howard
Royal Patronage getting the better of rival Coroebus
Well the flat season proper could not have got off to a more exciting start with Cachet powering to an easy victory in the Nell Gwyn Stakes at Newmarket at the beginning of the month. In doing so she secured her spot in the 1000 Guineas this coming Sunday. Her performance in the trial would suggest she has improved from 2 – 3, it was mightily impressive and her record at the track now reads 13231. Whilst her two victories have come over 6 and 7f, she was beaten less than a length at the Breeders Cup over a mile and her pedigree would indicate that the trip is well within her grasp.
Cachet is actually Part 2 of the entertainment this weekend as amazingly we are also represented in the 2000 Guineas by Royal Patronage. This Mark and Charlie Johnston trained son of Wootton Bassett was our star 2yo last year – victorious in the Group 2 Acomb Stakes, which he followed up with an absolute thriller in the Group 2 Royal Lodge at Newmarket, beating the Godolphin hotshot Coreobus. That horse also makes his 3yo debut on Saturday – his season ended with a victory whilst Royal Patronage finished pulled-up having sustained an injury in the Group 1 Futurity, however, the discrepancy in their ante-post prices (5/1 vs. 33/1) is surely questionable. This is needless to say a monumental task on return for Royal Patronage who has been the subject of many debates regarding his optimum trip now, and a mile on fast ground might not be that, at this stage in his career. He is bred to stay and ultimately we beleive that he is a Derby horse in the making, so here's hoping that he is running on strongly at the finish on Saturday and we can keep the Epsom dream alive!!
Spycatcher trained by Karl Burke
Elsewhere, Spycatcher finished agonisingly close in the AW Sprint Championships on Good Friday – a £150,000 pot no less. It was another mighty race from this improving Karl Burke trained sprinter who should continue to give his share owners a lot of fun in some nice races through the summer. A few days before – Broadspear was sent up to Thirsk by trainer Roger Varian for his 3yo debut and third career start, where he was beaten just half a length and is very much one to watch next time out. As is Atrium – another nice 3yo who was sent even further North to Musselburgh for his first start of the season for what was a very painful race to watch! The combination of a wide draw and a slow start saw Atrium right out the back of the field and when attempting to make a stylish looking challenge, he got caught in all sorts of traffic and had absolutely no chance of being competitive.
The jumping side of things has all but dried up now but I must mention Coolnaugh Haze, our juvenile hurdler trained by Philip Hobbs who bolted up at Huntingdon earlier this month – making it two wins for the season from just five runs and he’s not finished out of the 3 to date! He is not an overly big horse but he is terrifyingly quick over his obstacles and has a high cruising speed to boot. He is due to run again next week and thereafter a return to the flat may well beckon.
Coolnaugh Haze winning at Huntingdon
Before we hit the dizzy heights of Newmarket action this weekend do look out for Lysander – a very nice 3yo trained by William Haggas who makes his second career start in a fiercely competitive looking 1m2f novice at Newcastle on Friday. This colt ran an eye-catching race on debut at Newbury last Autumn and we hope that he has the makings of a top level middle distance colt this year – tomorrow will tell us more!
William Haggas trained Lysander, heads to Newcastle on Friday
BUICK FASTRACKING TO TITLE
By Rolf Johnson
William meeting Highclere owners before the Nell Gwyn
It would have been a different conversation with William Buick last Saturday, outside the weighing room at Sandown, if either of us had the premonition of developments twenty-four hours later when he was claimed to ride for his Godolphin boss in the 1000 Guineas.
William had been positive about his chances on Highclere’s Cachet - understandable considering how well they gelled winning the Nell Gwynn Guineas trial. “She’s a filly who takes you there, she will skim through the Dip – and then it will just be a question if we can last home.”
So he knows how to beat her! Had we known that the favourite, Inspiral, was about to be withdrawn and that Godolphin would change tack and run Wild Beauty, instead of asking the opposition’s jockey about his own strengths I’d have been pumping for his weaknesses!
To be fair, when I asked William which had priority, a first jockey’s title for which he is odds on favourite, or his retainer with Godolphin, he was emphatic: “Godolphin every time.”
The chat we had after the announcement of his switch to Godolphin’s Fred Darling winner (longer odds than Cachet) is not for publication.
Offspring of ‘the great and good’ have, naturally, hard acts to follow – “They’ll never be a patch on their parents”. There are exceptions: they said Sinatra’s daughter couldn’t sing; Mohammed Ali’s daughter couldn’t box: wrong! in both cases. Then again we may have a long wait for another Frankel – despite the ‘daddy of them all’ being champion sire in 2021.
William Buick, son of Scandinavia’s eight-time champion jockey Walter Buick, has surpassed expectations – except those of his mentor, Ian Balding who backed him at 500-1 to be a champion jockey before William had even ridden in public.
Walter Buick, William's father
He hasn’t landed the bet – but in 2022 surely William’s time has come. It could have been 2021 but he lost by two to Oisin Murphy. Late in the season he had four fancied mounts at Wolverhampton, After winning on the first, the next three were withdrawn, incredibly, before entering the stalls!
An eleven-day whip ban for winning on a 66-1 shot Reshoun at Royal Ascot wasn’t any help either.
“Yes,” said William, “I regret that day but my horse kept responding, it was Royal Ascot, and…” This most engaging of young men, now thirty-three, renowned for his sympathetic handling and ‘feel’ for his mounts, doesn’t pursue justification. “I’d left my brain in the weighing room.”
He went on: “I had problems with my whip early in my career until Ian called in Joe Mercer. I was star struck, there’s never been a better example to follow.”
William’s father is strong-minded regarding the hardy annual topic.
“They tried to ban whips in Norway, Sweden, and Denmark,” said Walter. “Nonsense, you can’t have racing, riding horses competitively without whips. It’s how you use them that matters. It drives me mad when some commentator (Walter does ‘Close-up’ analysis for the Racing Post and dabbles, successfully, in the bloodstock market) comes out with such and such ‘wasn’t knocked about’. It sends out all the wrong messages.”
Plainly father’s influence cannot be overestimated.
“Yes, well, Mum introduced me to ponies and Dad kept my feet on the ground,” said William. “We had a great upbringing (he has two brothers, Martin and Andrew both making successful careers in racing, away from the public glare). Dad asked Ian Balding if he could take me on and I would come over from Norway (his birthplace) in school holidays to Kingsclere - from when I was eleven."
“I was strict with myself, always on the mechanical horse in the Kingsclere colours room. I had a plan to improve day to day. And if I couldn’t make it as a jockey then I would have been off to get a proper education.”
Articulate Buick, fluent in four languages, would have been an A-grade student.
“Dad was strict but never demoralizing. He sent me to America to ride upsides the greats, Angel Cordero and Jorge Velasquez. You listen and watch such guys; you don’t want to miss anything they say and do.”
Typically Buick Snr singles out his son’s cajoling, front running ride on Nahanni in the Blue Riband Trial at Epsom’s first 2022 meeting as better than the one he gave Masar to win the Derby in 2018.
William Buick winning the Blue Riband Trial (Listed) on Nahanni
“He timed everything to perfection, always giving the right signals to the horse who wasn’t a natural for Epsom. He made it easier for the horse than it was. A masterclass."
“We speak every day; I keep a scrapbook up to the minute. As a kid he used to always be drawing pictures, not doodles either, of jockeys – Johnny Murtagh, Mick Kinane – you knew he was steeped in the game.”
From the outset William was that archetypal young man in a hurry carrying the inevitable soubriquet “baby-faced assassin” – but not burdened by it. He moved seamlessly from a first winner in 2006, within a month of his first ride, to champion apprentice (a dead-heat with another Balding tyro David Probert in 2008), and on, via classic wins for John Gosden, to a blizzard of Group Ones for Godolphin; and now to champion jockey presumptive.
"I've come close and it's something I'd love to have on my CV.”
William repeatedly refers to the CV; nothing goes unplanned. And he could have had two Derbies on that document had he chosen Adayar and not Hurricane Lane as his Godolphin Epsom mount last year.
He smiles, but not ruefully: “That’s history”. (Repeated by Cachet? I’ll get the dig in if that eventuality comes to pass in the Guineas).
“Towards the backend of last season I think the ground worked against Adayar. He's going to be very exciting this season and Hurricane Lane has never run a bad race. They're both exceptional," he insists.
As is his 2000 Guineas favourite, Native Trail: the look said it all when asked how good the unbeaten Godolphin colt can be? “And we’ve got more where he came from.”
His homework is thorough: of Royal Patronage’s chances in the colt’s classic, his answer was straightforward: “The Guineas is the best trial for the Derby.”
So too his take on lurid headlines about the weighing room..
“I ride round the world and I have never known weighing room violence or a malevolent ‘culture’. I just don’t recognise such stories.”
In the saddle he has become as readily identifiable as past masters: Lester Piggott, the incomparable, perched high in his irons; Joe Mercer - streamlined; Pat Eddery a bouncing bomb; A P McCoy - indestructible; Frankie Dettori – well, Frankie Dettori. William Buick folds himself in the saddle, tight as a scout’s penknife.
William had his first Group One success for Godolphin on Sajjhaa, at Meydan in 2013. Less than two years later he was retained by Godolphin as first jockey. And the real hard work began.
“I compete in 800 to 1000 races a year. I travel 40,000 to 50,000 miles in the UK alone. On top of that there’s constant crossing continents. One week I’m in Australia and Dubai. The next week it might be Japan and America. Godolphin is a worldwide operation. If I last that long I aim to ride until I’m fifty.”
If he does, William Buick could be riding against his three-year-old son. Wonder whether I can get 500-1 about Thomas following his father and becoming champion jockey one day?
