Godolphin’s Awesome Foursome From Newmarket to Kentucky

[Wandering Eyes]

NEWMARKET, UK — “Awesome, awesome, awesome,” chanted William Buick after galloping off across Newmarket Heath with Desert Flower, beyond the winning post, into history.

When Good Cheer slipped through the slop at Churchill Downs on Friday evening, few could have predicted how many more cheers were to come for the global Godolphin team, in the Kentucky gloom and the chilly Suffolk sunshine. 

A Classic double double, the breadth of which has surely not been seen before, despite the extraordinary achievements of some of Godolphin's regular rivals among the vast owner-breeder operations. Two homebred winners of the Kentucky Oaks and Kentucky Derby, and a homebred 1,000 Guineas victrix to complete the quartet after Ruling Court, the most expensive breeze-up horse ever purchased in Europe at €2.3 million, stamped himself as the next big stallion prospect for the Darley line-up in the 2,000 Guineas. 

Brad Cox and Bill Mott kept the American half of the bargain, and Charlie Appleby, who won his first 1,000 Guineas on Sunday after landing his third victory in the corresponding colts' Classic just 24 hours earlier, took both of his home Classics, as well as saddling last year's champion two-year-old Shadow Of Light to be third in the 2,000 Guineas. 

Joking with press pack, he said, “I rang the American team last night and said 'Thanks for putting the pressure on'.”

But Appleby never really does look pressured. With a sizeable Godolphin entourage around him, as well as his wife Aisling and children Erin, Emily, Edith and Sean, he has enough support to be able to throw one hell of a party when things go right and share the frustration when they do not. This weekend, everything went his and Buick's way, including a facile win in the only other group race on Newmarket's Sunday card with Cinderella's Dream in the Dahlia Stakes. 

After the glory days of the 1990s, when Godolphin's more select team cherrypicked some of the biggest international prizes, came some years of frustration. Appleby was there for those years and will have felt the lows as he grafted his way into a position of influence. His success over the last decade has not changed him, and that could well be telling in the results that he is enjoying now. He's the team captain, but still very much part of that team. 

These days, when Sheikh Mohammed is seen publicly in Britain, it is likely to be at the yearling sales, rather than at the racecourse, but he was not far from the thoughts of some of his most senior and trusted allies. Diana Cooper, a longtime member of the Godolphin team through the ebb and flow of goods days and bad, was close to tears as she watched  the presentation rostrum heaving with representatives of the operation. 

“The thing is that everyone who works at Godolphin is doing this for Sheikh Mohammed,” she said.

Liam O'Rourke, director of studs, stallion and breeding at Darley's Dalham Hall Stud, could take pleasure in observing the filly in the winner's circle whose strapping physique promises so much more to come. Desert Flower is out of the homebred Promising Run, whose best day came on the Rowley Mile when winning the Rockfel Stakes, and who throws another line across the Atlantic as a daughter of Hard Spun, who has spent his entire stud career on the Darley roster.

“It's a complete life-changer in terms of achievement,” O'Rourke said as he summed up the fab four.

“Sheikh Mohammed has been so brilliant in supporting our business, but what he has achieved and helped us to achieve over the last 48 hours is quite extraordinary. 

“With two homebred Classic winners on consecutive days in the US, and then winning the Classic here yesterday and then a homebred Classic winner here now. I mean, it's what you dream about and then wake up and pinch yourself. But I think it's safe to say we'll never do that again.”

Just as importantly, 20 years after Dubawi became the sole Classic winner for Dubai Millennium, the baton is being passed as some of his stallion sons come to the fore. Desert Flower's sire Night Of Thunder is in the vanguard at the moment, with Too Darn Hot, sire of the third-placed Simmering, laying down his own challenge across the hemispheres.  Dubawi himself was responsible for the fourth-placed Elwateen, who ran a terrific race on only the second start of her life and ensured that Saaeed Bin Suroor, took the fourth prize in both Guineas. 

O'Rourke added of Night Of Thunder's first Classic success, “He's still a young stallion who was a Guineas winner here himself and we've got some fabulous young stock by him to get excited about for the future. It's very exciting at the moment and it's hugely satisfying, especially for all the stud staff who are the unsung heroes of the day.”

Spare a thought, too, for Ollie Sangster, a trainer who has wasted no time in making his mark and who fired both barrels in an audacious attempt at an upset with his runners Flight and Simmering taking second and third at odds of 33/1 and 28/1.

“I don't know whether to be happy or disappointed – we were so close – but if someone had offered me that this morning I'd have bitten their hand off,” Sangster said.

He'll be back to try again, but this weekend the Rowley Mile belonged to Appleby, Buick and the team in the royal blue.

 

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