Thirty Years On: Old Vic’s Classic Year

[Wandering Eyes]

I have two Australian friends who spent six months in the UK in 1989. Both returned home towards the end of that year, each reflecting how lucky he had been to have savoured an English summer enriched by the sight of an outstanding racehorse. The irony, of course, is that each nominated a different horse! One headed back Down Under in awe of the successive victories of Nashwan (Blushing Groom {Fr}) in the G1 2000 Guineas, G1 Derby, G1 Eclipse S. and G1 King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Diamond S.; while the other held the outstanding miler Zilzal (Nureyev) most dear, particularly cherishing the memory of the little chestnut’s outstanding victory in the G1 Queen Elizabeth II S. at Ascot. To complicate the picture further, it was a different horse again who most captivated me that year: Old Vic (GB) (Sadler’s Wells), the dominant winner of the G1 Prix du Jockey-Club Lancia and the G1 Budweiser Irish Derby, as they were known as back then. If it is hard to accept that Mill Reef (Never Bend) and Brigadier Gerard (GB) (Queen’s Hussar {GB}), two of the greatest horses in thoroughbred history, were of the same vintage but only ever met once, it is even stranger in retrospect to reflect that the contemporaries Nashwan and Old Vic, two of the best middle-distance horses of the modern era, never competed against each other. But at the time it made perfect sense, even if it made a poor comparison with events on the other side of the Atlantic, where Sunday Silence (Halo) and Easy Goer (Alydar) locked horns throughout that year’s Triple Crown series and then thrilled fans with a final duel in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Classic at Gulfstream Park in the autumn.

After winning the 2,000 Guineas, Nashwan obviously had the Derby as his main target, while Old Vic had hardly been on the radar as a potential rival at the start of the season. The previous season’s champion 2-year-old High Estate (GB) (High Estate {GB}) had appeared to be the most likely of several potential Derby candidates in Henry Cecil’s stable; with Old Vic, the winner merely of a maiden race at Haydock Park from two appearances at two, seemingly merely a possible contender for the second-tier 3-year-old staying races. That all changed, though, when Old Vic started racing.

Old Vic’s 1989 season began at the Newbury Spring Meeting in a conditions race, which he won by 10 lengths. He then headed to Sandown for the G3 Guardian Classic Trial, in which he cruised home by four lengths, putting up a very impressive display in a race which had been won by four Derby winners (Troy, Henbit, Shergar and Shahrastani) in the previous ten years. Cecil then dispatched him to the Chester May Meeting, where he won the G3 Chester Vase by two and a half lengths from Golden Pheasant (Caro {Fr}) with the favourite Warrshan (Northern Dancer {Can}) 12 lengths farther back in third. The merit of the performance was emphasised when it was announced that he had broken the track record, and was further reinforced two years later when Golden Pheasant won the G1 Japan Cup.

Old Vic clearly had the potential to be a major thorn in Nashwan’s side in the Derby. However, he was a very big horse with a mighty stride. He had relished wet tracks when winning at Newbury and Sandown, and Cecil reported that he had come home slightly jarred up from the faster conditions at Chester. His verdict that it would be unwise to run this young horse over the undulations of Epsom on fast ground was easy to understand, as was his declaration that the colt would instead be supplemented for the Prix du Jockey-Club, set to be run on a flat track and almost certainly on softer ground, if dry weather persisted through the second half of May.

Nobody was either surprised or disappointed, therefore, when Old Vic did not take on Nashwan at Epsom, but instead headed across the Channel to Chantilly three days earlier. At the time there was a widespread belief that British horses found winning in France difficult (which was particularly understandable in this case as no English-trained horse had ever won the Prix du Jockey Club) and that making the running (which was the modus operandi of Old Vic and his jockey Steve Cauthen) would make it even harder to win there. However, no jockey in the world had more (justified) confidence in his own ability to set the correct fractions on a front-runner than Steve Cauthen.

French punters sent Old Vic off only the fourth favourite, but Cauthen’s faith in his mount’s ability and in is own judgement of pace was absolute. Jumping straight to the front, Old Vic never saw another horse. He passed the post seven lengths clear of the runner-up Dancehall (Assert {Ire}) with the five-length G1 Prix Lupin winner Galetto (Fr) (Caro {Fr}) a further eight lengths back in third. It was an outstanding display of galloping, whose merit became even more plain when Dancehall won the G1 Grand Prix de Paris Louis Vuitton three weeks later.

“We went to the French Derby thinking we had a chance, but that was the day he showed what he was. Of course nobody ever wanted to make the pace over there, so I did. He just kept quickening and quickening through the stretch and won very impressively,” Cauthen told TDN earlier this week.

The Irish Derby was not on Nashwan’s agenda because Dick Hern and Sheikh Hamdan had plotted a course which would take the magnificent chestnut to Ascot’s King George VI And Queen Elizabeth Diamond S. via the Eclipse S. at Sandown. The Irish Derby, though, was the obvious next race for Old Vic. He was even more majestic there, again making all the running and winning with his head in his chest. Derby fourth Ile De Nisky (GB) (Ile De Bourbon) finished third and was a length closer to Old Vic than he had been to Nashwan, but that only tells half the tale: Old Vic could have won by a lot farther as Steve Cauthen let him coast through the final furlong, winning by four very unhurried lengths.

“Everything leading up to it was good and we got there and he had this big boil on his back. You almost couldn’t put a saddle on him, and it was all touch and go if were going to run,” said Cauthen. “Somebody came up with the idea-I don’t know if it was Henry or someone who worked for him-well why don’t you try this. They got a real thick pad, and they cut out the part over the boil, and the boil didn’t affect him as much, and then it was pretty much the same deal as the French Derby. He controlled the race and won very impressively again.”

The clash between Nashwan and Old Vic at Ascot was clearly going to be a race for the ages, on a par with the epic battle between Grundy (GB) (Great Nephew {GB}) and Bustino (GB) (Busted {GB}) in the ‘Race of the Century’ in the same event 14 years previously. Sadly, the great duel never happened. In retrospect it became even more clear why Cecil had been so wary of running Old Vic at Epsom. Old Vic, it transpired, had been struggling with the firm ground on Newmarket Heath in the run-up to the Curragh and had been doing almost as much work in the swimming pool as on the gallops. He clearly wasn’t himself in the lead-up to Ascot. A pulled muscle was diagnosed and he was scratched from the race (which, it turned out, he wouldn’t have contested anyway because of the continuing dry ground). Plans to get him racing again in the autumn came to nothing, and he failed to recapture his best form when kept in training as a 4-year-old. The low-key end to Old Vic’s career, though, cannot detract from the fact that he was superb at Chantilly and even better at the Curragh, one of the very best winners in the rich history of Ireland’s premier Classic.

Old Vic does not merely hold a special place in the history of the Irish Derby, but also in the careers of his trainer and jockey, and of Sheikh Mohammed’s racing empire. John Dunlop had been the Sheikh’s first trainer when he started owning horses in the 1970s, but Henry Cecil was an obvious candidate to be added to the expanding roster. Not only was he England’s leading trainer of the 1980s, but he was also the trainer for the Philipps family, from whom Sheikh Mohammed bought Dalham Hall Stud ‘lock, stock and barrel’ in 1981. Among the stock included in the sale was Oh So Fair (Graustark), in foal to Kris (GB) (Sharpen Up). When the time came, the resultant foal, born in the spring of 1982, naturally went into training with Henry Cecil, as would have been the case had Jim Philipps still owned her. Named Oh So Sharp, she won the Fillies’ Triple Crown in 1985, taking Sheikh Mohammed into the major league of Britain’s ownership ranks and cementing the relationship between Henry Cecil and Steve Cauthen in the first season in which the great American rider was the retained jockey in Warren Place.

Cauthen has fond memories of his time with Cecil. “Henry was great. He was a genius. No question. He was so good at knowing where a horse was, how they were doing mentally physically. He knew when to get them in a race and give them some confidence-when they were ready to step up and take a challenge.”

“He was fun to be around, he was so eccentric and different, but we got along great right from the start. He was great for me. He would tell me he would rather I be two pounds overweight, and be strong. He was very supportive.”

The several seasons during which Steve Cauthen rode for Henry Cecil were a golden era not just for the two master horsemen but also for the sport in general. Cauthen had arrived in the UK in the spring of 1979, still a teenager, to ride for Robert Sangster and Barry Hills, and within weeks had become the first American jockey to win the G1 2000 Guineas since George Archibald in 1922, guiding the Hills-trained outsider Tap On Wood (Ire) (Sallust {Ire}) to victory up the Rowley Mile. He became Champion Jockey with 130 wins in his final season with Hills (1984) but took his career to a higher level still when teaming up with Cecil, Europe’s dominant trainer of the time. Champion again in 1985 and ’87 with totals of 195 and 197 winners, Cauthen rode the Derby winner for Cecil in each of those seasons, courtesy of breath-taking front-running performances by Slip Anchor (GB) (Shirley Heights {GB}) and Reference Point (GB) (Mill Reef). Cauthen subsequently moved on to ride as retained jockey for Sheikh Mohammed’s horses, irrespective of who trained them, and he is still revered as one of the greatest jockeys ever to have ridden in Europe.

The partnership between Henry Cecil and Steve Cauthen was highlighted by some outstanding horses, over and above their Derby winners. Many of the brightest stars were owned by Sheikh Mohammed, with the star fillies racing in the maroon and white including not only Oh So Sharp but also Indian Skimmer (Storm Bird) and Diminuendo (Diesis {GB}). Which horse ranks as the most special of the champions who lit up the alliance of Sheikh Mohammed, Henry Cecil and Steve Cauthen? Well, many of the racegoers who were lucky enough to be at the Curragh on 2 July 1989 think that the answer to that one is easy: the mighty Old Vic. Old Vic’s Irish Derby triumph is commemorated on the Curragh’s training grounds in the form of the very popular Old Vic All-Weather Gallop, donated by Sheikh Mohammed as a tribute to his horse’s memorable victory.

 

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