Rolf’s Ramblings
By Rolf Johnson
Team tactics were the topic of the summer. In the World Cup the England football manager Thomas Tuchel decided he’d defend a one goal lead against Argentina, forgetting other ‘impregnable’ defensive walls that didn’t work: Hadrian’s, Berlin’s, The Great Wall of China, France’s Maginot Line. Sheep skip over Hadrian’s and the one in Berlin only lasted twenty-five years – Teuchel’s back line held out for twenty-five minutes. The German Army simply walked round the Maginot Line – a bit like the Argentinians did round our defence. You can see, so astronauts say. China’s Wall from space. Fans could soon see, on television, Tuchel’s tactics weren’t working.
Tactics are apt to take precedence over strategy in racing. Yet the best laid plans, ploys, can be undone by the unimaginable: Qirat was ‘sacrificed’ for the sake of his connection’s odds on Field of Gold in last year’s Sussex Stakes. Unconsidered Qirat kept going: those who claimed to have benefitted from his 150-1 odds were regarded with some scepticism. There hadn’t been a top level winner at that price since the 1826 St Leger. This year Qirat finished ninth, a place ahead of Dorset bestowed the frontrunner role on behalf of his Coolmore stablemate Gstaad.
In this Sussex the unlikely gave way to the irresistible - Bow Echo. George Boughey’s unbeaten colt ‘unaided’ (other than by the exceptional Billy Loughnane – and even, perhaps, the pacesetters!) took on the might of Coolmore: Puerto Rico was also there understudying stablemate Gstaad’s cause. Bow Echo extended his unbeaten career to six.
After Bow Echo’s comprehensive defeat of Gstaad in the Guineas, where there was no pacemaker, Aidan O’Brien adopted different tactics with his trio in the Sussex, but he looks to be banging his head against a ‘wall’ (not brick, concrete or granite).
O’Brien’s ‘blockade’ of Bow Echo, a tactic suggested by the Royal Ascot stewards after the St James’s Palace Stakes, cost Christophe Soumillon on Puerto Rico an eight-day suspension. The stewards ruling was that Soumillon had moved his mount away from the rail thereby ensuring a clear run for Gstaad up his inner.
At the inevitable appeal the BHA Disciplinary Panel was “satisfied that there was a breach of Rule (F)46 on the basis that the appellant rode Puerto Rico in such a way which gave an advantage to Gstaad, a horse from the same stable. For the avoidance of doubt, we are not satisfied that the appellant intended so to do.” Students of syntax are still working that one out.
Soumillon’s ban was reduced by a cosmetic three days. It is important to recall Aidan O’Brien’s consistent assertion that when such occurrences happen, “I can guarantee you, every horse runs on their merits to do their very best and there would never be a plan to do this or do that to any other horse.”
The £5000 fine for O’Brien and the seven-day bans on Johnny Murtagh and Colm O’Donoghue after the 125-1 shot Red Rock Canyon had breached former ‘team tactics’ Rule 220 (iii) “assisting” Duke of Marmalade’s victory as far back as the 2008 Juddmonte Stakes, wasn’t the last occasion the Coolmore team were asked to explain their manouevers.
The defendants didn’t appeal, considering it was “time to move on”. The St James’s Palace case looks like we have not. But O’Brien’s words after Royal Ascot’s latest contretemps ring authentically.
“I love when the best horses are running together and I’m always very happy to get beat, as long as everyone gets a clean shot. For us, competition is what we all want to see.” He could have added that that was the best way of sorting out the wheat from the chaff. But he doesn’t do clichés.
In the King George and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes it was Aidan O’Brien’s Action’s job to run the steam out of Kalpana and Calandagan but if the tactic found out anyone it was Coolmore’s Benvenuto Cellini who showed how well he stayed, but not the necessary acceleration at Group One level. Minor placings don’t cut it for Coolmore; there’s always a next time. Don’t bet against master tactician Aidan O’Brien having a fourth crack at Bow Echo. Asked how he was ever going to beat the champion miler Ryan Moore muttered gnomically, “We’ll have to find a way.”
The Sussex itself was a race to go down as competition and spectacle which define racing, the crowd engaged as if they were combatants, the betting a side order, the result in doubt nearly all the way across the Downs. Bow Echo went off slight odds on - which he will likely be forever more: Frankel was only once odds against – his debut. And even if, much like Calandagan’s worthy efforts to join the greats, the figures don’t, yet, add up to Bow Echo being the ‘next Frankel’. Unlike the sans pareil Bow Echo hasn’t had a Bullet Train, a constant aide to his half-brother Frankel, setting the appropriate pace. Bow Echo is doing it off his own bat – seemingly helped rather than hindered by the O’Brien ‘hares’.
When the Coolmore operation produces so many top class horses there is bound to be conjecture if not actual conflict, not least when the inevitable outsider intrudes. What was Serpentine doing making all in the 2020 Derby when there were five O’Brien’s, mostly better fancied. The clue, perhaps, is that none were apparently strongly fancied (Andrew Balding’s Kameko was favourite) and strategy - a cunning plan putting a lesser known jockey on Serpentine and allowing him the freedom of Epsom, might be interpreted as strategy rather than ‘in plain sight’ tactics.
Serpentine never won again: nor did Wings of Eagles for the same team after his shock victory in 2017; hopefully this year’s winner, stable second string Christmas Day, will not follow their example of subsequent failure. In 2025 Lambourn, once again not the operation’s first choice, made all.
Such results confirm that Coolmore, while it has a master trainer in Aidan O’Brien and inscrutable ‘lads’ in the operations room, plus the inestimable presence of Ryan Moore in the saddle, will get their tactics right more often than anybody else – but aren’t infallible.
By now you might have concluded that I have the antipathy to pacemakers as causes controversy and headlines. Not so, I was all in favour of Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile barrier in 1954 with the sacrificial assistance of two equally fine athletes, Christopher Chataway and Christopher Brasher. And we should take O’Brien’s reasoning at face value.
And of course tactics are always vulnerable to ‘events’. Back in 1993, at Toby Balding’s, we had the ‘good thing’ for the Grand National, Romany King. After Toby’s last minute instructions, which tended to take half an hour, to Adrian Maguire, the trainer’s brutal instruction to the ‘reserve’ jockey on the stable’s ‘vanity’ runner, a 200-1 shot, were brief. Pointing to Romany King, the trainer bellowed, “Your job is to keep out of his way.” They were of course totally unnecessary – tactics, Pah – the race was voided after the false start