Channon Hoping For Dream Result

[Wandering Eyes]

Mick Channon doesn’t wait to be asked what would, to most trainers, be too fatuous a question to dignify with an answer. “I think she’ll win,” he declares. “I don’t know what Aidan’s bringing to the table. But I’m not frightened of anything I’ve seen up to now. She’s still got to get the trip, I suppose, so there’s always that question mark. But I think she’ll win.”

He is known for plain talking, of course. But in a world of polite equivocations, such bald confidence is far more startling than any of the salty epithets excised from this record of his conversation.

To be fair, Channon had been no less adamant when saddling Dan’s Dream (GB) (Cityscape {GB}) for her recent trial at Newbury.

“Realistically, she was probably rated something like 78 which shouldn’t be good enough,” he says. “But I told the 2-year-old handicapper, I told everyone, going out the paddock I said: ‘This’ll win.’ Her work has always been first-class. Last year she looked a very good filly before she went wrong. I remember arriving at Newmarket for the first meeting last year, and Angus Gold came up and said: ‘What’s this I hear about you having a flying machine by Cityscape?’ And I said: ‘Who’s been talking to you then!'”

In his 70th year, Channon has been on the scene long enough for his confidence to deserve every respect. In fact, he has become so familiar in his second calling–this tall, hobbling figure, cheerfully grousing and cursing–that it now seems more remarkable that he should ever have been an international footballer than that he mastered so very different a walk of sporting life.

His old club, Southampton, is on the brink of relegation from the Premier League. As the four-wheel drive bounces alongside the all-weather gallop, where the next crop of fillies are cantering towards a breathtaking panorama across Oxfordshire, an owner asks him whether he’d forfeit the vividly contrasting form of his yard for the survival of the “Saints”. “They can look after themselves,” he grins, without hesitation.

For Dan’s Dream heads towards the Qipco 1,000 Guineas on Sunday riding a remarkable wave. The day before her trial, Channon sent out five winners: three at Bath and two, including Adorable (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) in what has often proved a significant maiden, at Newbury. The yard has not missed a beat since the opening day of the turf season, when Izzer (Ire) (Clodovil {Ire}) won the Brocklesby. A couple of weeks beforehand, in fact, he had even won a race at the Cheltenham Festival with one of a handful of jumpers stabled at West Ilsley.

One possible reason suggests itself in the poached condition of the grass gallop alongside the car. Many trainers have been kept off the turf by a wet spring, but Channon evidently had no choice. “That was flooded, couldn’t get on it for two months,” he says, gesturing at the all-weather. “We’ve ripped this to pieces but it’s come back well last two weeks.”

Could that account for his flying start? “Could be a help,” he shrugs. “But more likely it’s the quality of the horse, I think you’ll find. We’ve known from early on that the 2-year-olds are a far better bunch than we’ve had for a while. Over the years we’ve had some very good batches, but they are patchy and the last couple of years been pretty moderate.”

On the numbers, 2017 was a mediocre season overall and Channon did brief “Jack and Gill”–that is to say, son and assistant Jack and agent Gill Richardson–to seek fresh impetus when they browsed the yearling sales. “I said we’re going to have to try and buy some cheaper horses, and some sharper horses,” he recalls. “Let’s get up and running. Because our clientele, they’re basically looking to have some fun–and that’s what we have to try and deliver.”

Channon has always known how to ignite a precocious youngster and is enjoying the flying start at stud by one such graduate in Bungle Inthejungle (GB) (Exceed And Excel {Aus}), the Rathasker Stud rookie who has already had four winners.

“Maurice [Burns of Rathasker] is a good owner of mine and he came and saw him and he loved him,” Channon recalls. “Everybody says he must have been a right little running 2-year-old. But he was a big strong brute of a horse, a monster. Wouldn’t be the prettiest, but he had an engine. And a great temperament. Unfortunately he didn’t train on, he put so much into his 2-year-old career. But I said he’d be champion first-season sire on winners.”

Training the stock of stallions or mares who have passed through his hands gives particular pleasure to Channon, whose first ventures on the Turf were as a breeder.

“That’s a full sister to Epsom Icon (GB) (Sixties Icon {GB}),” he says, pointing. “Made up into a smashing filly. Epsom Icon was much lighter. And they say the foal that’s come back from Ireland is a smasher. Turning out to be a real good mare. And that one is out of half-sister to Imperial Dancer (GB) (Primo Dominie {GB}). Done nothing yet but she’s a lovely filly. Thirteen grand! I saw her come in and thought, ‘I can’t let her go.'”

He finds due release in his continued involvement at Norman Court Stud, which he sold to his very first owners, the Trant family. “Between us we’ve probably got well over 1,000 acres there to move the mares and yearlings around,” Channon says. “I knew the place as a kid, growing up, and it’s a smashing little stud. It’s produced winners going back to Phil Bull’s time. In the early days a lot of the Meon Valley horses boarded there, too.”

“The breeding has always been the fun side. That’s where I came from, originally. I started off trying to breed Flat horses and ended up with winners of the Hennessy [Steeplechase] and the Schweppes [Hurdle], that’s how good at it we were! And we’ve gone on from there.”

He most certainly has, in a fashion that must prompt particular admiration in Sir Ian Botham and Gareth Edwards, whose prowess on in cricket and rugby respectively once caused them to share the back pages with Channon the footballer. Now, thanks to their involvement in the charity profiting from the Dan’s Dream fairytale, they could be back in the headlines together.

True, Silvestre De Sousa dismounted at Newbury and immediately advised Channon that the filly might be too fast to last an eighth furlong. “But he did have a ride in the Guineas!” Channon smiles. “So I put him on the spot!”

Pending talks over the weekend, Channon was plainly convinced that the filly should be supplemented to the Guineas at today’s forfeit stage. Even if De Sousa turns out to be right, regarding her stamina limitations, there would be ample time to let Dan’s Dream regroup before the Commonwealth Cup.

“What she’s got is cruising speed and a turn of foot,” Channon says. “Even when she got knocked [leaving] the gate at Newbury, she still settled. I’ve always been confident she had class, she’s always been push-button. This time last year I was thinking Ascot. But she pulled a muscle behind, and then it was stop-start all the way to Goodwood. So I gave up, said to the owner: ‘I’m going to send her up to you now, turn her out, feed her, and send her back January 1.’ But I’ve always thought she compared with those good fillies, a Queen’s Logic (Ire) (Grand Lodge) or a Flashy Wings (GB) (Zafonic).”

Those names remind you that Channon, for all his no-nonsense style, has always shown particular sensitivity with fillies. Yes, there have been top-class colts, too–not least the triple Arc runner-up Youmzain (Ire) (Sinndar {Ire})–and Channon said he feels that he has only done so well with fillies because they tend to be more affordable. Either way, while his last Group 1 winner was Samitar (GB) (Rock Of Gibraltar {Ire}) in the Irish 1,000 Guineas, he feels overdue a change of luck in the Newmarket original.

“When you look back, Nahoode (Ire) (Clodovil {GB}) should have won,” he says. “She finished fifth, beaten a length and a half, and never came off the bridle. Music Show (Ire) (Noverre) won the race on her side. Flashy Wings, it went heavy, and for Lahaleeeb (Ire) (Redback {GB}) it went like a road when they wanted it the other way round. And Queen’s Logic had an abscess in her foot, and because I thought she had the rest of the year I said we’d wait for the Irish Guineas, there was no point taking a chance. And the annoying thing [given her subsequent premature retirement] is that I could have run her. Because she would have gone through it that day, wouldn’t have bothered her once her blood was up.”

“Talk about being patient, I shot myself in the foot that day. If they’re good, I can be patient. If they’re not, I’m the most impatient person in the world. We do have a lot of runners. We don’t spare them, we run them, don’t we! But it’s easy to be patient if they’re good.”

“This run we’re having, with the horses in good nick–the good thing is that a lot of the ones that have been winning are moderate horses, and to hit the jackpot with them; Well, it’s always easier with good horses, isn’t it? I’m not a racehorse trainer, I’m a racehorse dealer basically. That’s what we are now, when you look at it realistically. All right, there’s your John Gosdens and your Aidan O’Briens and a few others. But the rest of us are basically trying to make horses valuable, to move them on. The art of training is to maximise the ability the horse has got, whether that’s a selling plater or a Group 1 horse. And if you pick the right races you’ll probably win five in a day!”

Channon said he doubts whether there is anything self-sustaining about stable momentum, in terms of buoyant staff morale. But while he shares concern about the demographic changes that have made recruitment such an issue in the industry, he is certainly satisfied with those he has got.

“The staff have been brilliant,” he says. “But it’s not just my staff. People in racing in this country are unbelievable really, it’s amazing how hard they work in the conditions they do. When I was a kid on Salisbury Plain, I used to able to write my name on the ice on the inside of the window. But all the kids now come out of centrally heated homes. Go out there in the winter when there’s two dead polar bears on the gallops and a penguin nicks your scarf, it’s hard-and most of them are absolutely fantastic.”

“But the rewards can be great. It’s very difficult to get people from the city, the way Franny Norton come out of Liverpool; and Geoff Lewis, he was a bellboy at the Savoy and they pushed him because he was a little fella. And he became a champion jockey. So it’s there for you–if you want it. He went out and did his time in Epsom and made a great life for himself, and a great name for himself. Frankie Durr was the same, going back a few years. They all got off their arse. [And you see that in] the foreigners we have riding here. They’re prepared to work, they don’t mind the cold, and there’s a few of them are bloody good; you won’t believe how they improve.”

One way or another, the place is buzzing right now. And, in Dan’s Dream, the feelgood factor could go into overdrive. But Channon is too seasoned to be getting carried away, too familiar with the glib exaggeration of sport’s fickle fortunes.

“I remember this little winger, played for Nottingham Forest,” he says. “And he always used to say: ‘I’m only fat when we get beat.’ And the same applies when we’re racing. If they’re getting beat, it’s the end of the world. But if they’re winning…”

He raises his eyebrows expressively. A man who means what he says, and says what he means. His effing and blinding, of course, only reflects a deeper candour, an admirable honesty; but perhaps people don’t always see the wood for the sheer colour of the trees. Nobody, at any rate, can say they haven’t been told.

“I think she’s a good thing,” he shrugs.

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