Racing: Stoute vindicated by Golan's fairy-tale win

Richard Edmondson
Monday 29 July 2002 00:00 BST
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Always back the fairy-tale they tell you about the Grand National. The theory can now be extended to the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes.

Victory for Golan on Saturday, four days after the death of his owner, Lord Weinstock, suggested there was orchestration about the result from a greater power, but it was for this sort of race that Sir Michael Stoute's colt had been kept in training. It was vindication.

This was all reason to make this year's running of the great race memorable and an element the course executive will be keen to promote. For, just as in the 2,000 Guineas, this was a championship dominated by outside forces from the flesh and blood on the racecourse.

Rock Of Gibraltar won at Newmarket because he was both a good horse and drawn on the advantageous part of the track. Golan won because he was not greatly inconvenienced by the peculiar ground provided by Nick Cheyne and his groundsmen. It was no coincidence that this horse, who has won with cut in the ground, battled it out with Nayef, whose first great moment came when he won in an Ascot bog as a two-year-old.

The clue was in the pattern of the race. Golan was slowly away and pumped along by Kieren Fallon, on the early available evidence the first horse beaten. Stoute later explained this as a signal of the horse's lethargy, an attribute not shared by his jockey.

Fallon kept working away on the four-year-old, burrowing along the rail in the straight, seemingly struggling but nevertheless passing horses which behaved as though they were at the culmination of a three-mile chase. When the Irishman became locked in a duel with Richard Hills on Nayef it did not take a brave man to volunteer who would end up on top. Fallon himself knew he had done a good job. Not often does he gesticulate in self-congratulation as he crosses the line.

By then, Frankie Dettori, on the favourite Grandera, was already spitting feathers. His mount has behaved like a debut skater all the way round, on going even Cheyne admitted had been "greasy".

The build-up to the race had been dominated by ground conditions. Water had been ladled on in an effort to encourage the likes of Sakhee to participate, and the irony was that by race hour the going was perfect for the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner yet he had already been taken out of the race. Dettori said afterwards he would have preferred to ride Sakhee on the terrain he found. He would probably have preferred Red Marauder too.

Cheyne gambled and, like many at a racecourse, he lost. The 5mm of water administered failed to fully get into the ground and the die was cast. Now we have to wait to discover if Grandera is really a good horse, whether Golan can cross the rope bridge to the very highest level.

Stoute was again annoyingly coy about his horse's future, particularly as horses like Golan virtually map out their own future. The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe looks a virtual certainty, in result almost as much as participation, as this was one of the few races which evaded Weinstock. He coveted it. Golan is 6-1 from 16-1 with Coral for the Arc. Fate has him at a much shorter price.

Questions too remain about a King George beyond the pudding ground its competitors came up against. The growing prestige of the Arc, the increasing focus of the Breeders' Cup meeting, mean the race is in danger of losing its top table position.

Aquarelliste was a rare French visitor at the weekend and her fate will not encourage those from her land to use Ascot as part of their programme. There was no three-year-old in the field either, which takes away the course's promotion of providing an inter-generational champion of Europe.

Most worrying all of perhaps was the absence of a runner from Balldoyle, for whom block bookings in leading races are commonplace. Two representatives – one legitimate, one pacemaking – are usually par for the course.

Even so the alchemy continues to work for the Irish team. John Magnier bought into a share of Golan before last year's Derby and was probably reluctant to agree to keeping the horse in training as a four-year-old. That is not the Coolmore way.

On this occasion, though, the policy has worked. Whatever happens from now, Golan will retire to his breeding shed a more valuable prospect than he was at the end of last season.

* Tony McCoy, who equalled Peter Scudamore's career total of 1,678 winners last week, completed a four-timer at Newton Abbot yesterday. McCoy now needs just 18 more winners to beat Richard Dunwoody's record tally of 1,699. All of McCoy's winners yesterday ment were trained by Martin Pipe.

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