‘I’m Sitting Here On My Own, Shaking’: Williamson Revels in More Classic Success

[Wandering Eyes]

NEWMARKET, UK — “Well that was good timing,” said a beaming Freddy Powell, a man with a sale to sell next week. The work had just been done for him. 

Ruling Court was known only as Oak Tree Farm's Justify colt at this time last year – a colt that would soon top the Arqana Breeze-up Sale at €2.3 million. Next year, he will be the sale catalogue's cover star.

Big prices, however, are not always a guarantee of big results, but this horse had on his side the fact that he had been prepared for the sale by a man known to a certain generation as one of the finest jump jockeys of his era. Norman Williamson's skills have been transferred so smoothly to this sphere – it really just comes down to horsemanship – and he now has a list of Classic winners to his credit as impressive as most of the major trainers, though he would quickly deflect the credit elsewhere. 

He was too busy to be at the Rowley Mile on Saturday as at lunchtime, Williamson had dispatched the latest batch of horses to Deauville for this year's date at Arqana. There just happens to be another son of Justify among the quintet en route, and it is a safe bet that Anthony Stroud and David Loder will be beating a path to the Oak Tree Farm draft having bought two Guineas winners from Williamson in the last four years. Native Trail, Godolphin's 2022 winner of the Irish 2,000 Guineas, came from the Craven Sale for the more modest sum of 210,000gns. The son of Oasis Dream was also champion two-year-old.

“I loaded the horses onto the lorry and Josh and Janet have gone to Punchestown,” said Williamson by telephone. “I'm sitting here on my own, shaking.”

He continued, “I'm so delighted for Godolphin – they are such great supporters of the breeze-up sales. And this is great for the breeze-up consignors, too, as we've proved that we can breeze a St Leger winner, a Guineas winner, a top sprinter, you name it.”

We could soon be naming a Derby winner. After a racecourse gallop in Craven week for Ruling Court and his third-placed stable-mate Shadow Of Light, Charlie Appleby was already then speaking of today's winner with Epsom in mind, and the race won by his damsire High Chaparral 23 years ago.

He said that morning, “They always say that the Guineas in the best Derby trial, so we'll start him there.” 

They do say that, and let's not let ourselves get carried away by the thought of a Triple Crown bid. But it's hard not to allow the mind to wander, particularly in a year when Betfred, the sponsor of all five British Classics this year, has put up a £2 million bonus for a winner of that particular challenge, not completed for 55 years. 

The trainer doesn't appear to have changed his view. “You could see him as a Derby horse and that's what we had our minds set on in the winter. There will be nice, healthy discussions on Derby plans,” Appleby said amid a press scrum at Newmarket after Ruling Court had been cut to 5/1 favourite in the Epsom betting. 

A Derby winner would give Williamson a kind of Triple Crown all of his own, as he was also responsible for breezing the 2022 St Leger winner Eldar Eldarov, while his first brush with the Classics had come with a horse who, like Ruling Court, had been bought at Keeneland. War Of Will, another Arqana graduate, returned to America and won the Preakness Stakes after finishing seventh in the Kentucky Derby.

“It was such a thrill that day when War Of Will ran in the Kentucky Derby,” he recalled. “But then came Native Trail and now this lad. From the day we started breezing [Ruling Court] he showed us that, and you could see it in the way he quickened. In a way he's too kind, in that he'd almost run through a brick wall for you, but then when he pulled up after the race he was like a pony. I think this horse really is something special.”

Brick walls he won't need to face. Just Tattenham Corner and all the wonderful weirdness of Epsom. After that, who knows? 

 

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