A £30,000 yearling that turned out to be a Classic winner hooked Phil Cunningham into the racing game 20 years ago. A similarly shrewd purchase gave the owner one of his best days at the track on the final day of Glorious Goodwood.
Two Tribes, one of three runners in Cunningham’s colours in the Stewards’ Cup, picked up the £75,000 first prize in a valuable handicap at Ascot last week and added £125,000 for this feature race with an emphatic two-and-a-quarter length defeat of Strike Red.
His two stable companions at the Richard Spencer yard crossed the line in fourth and fifth. “He was a four-grand foal,” Cunningham said. “That makes it even sweeter.”
Better yet for Cunningham, Two Tribes is by the stallion Rajasinghe, who won the 2017 Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot for the owner in a course-record time. Cunningham was so frustrated at breeders’ lack of interest in Rajasinghe in the early years of his stud career that he announced this year that he would offer his services for free.
“It’s massive,” he said. “We believed in the horse, but unfortunately not many others have, so it’s great to see him start getting some results. He’s still a track-record holder at Royal Ascot and at three grand [per cover] I couldn’t give him away, so in the end, I did give him away.
“He did 58 covers after we did the free deal and at least I know he’s going to have some runners on the track in a couple of years’ time. If we hadn’t made that decision, he’d have been sub-10.”
It was Cockney Rebel, the winner of the 2,000 Guineas in England and Ireland in 2007 and the first horse Cunningham owned outright, that gave a huge kickstart to his career on the turf. The colt is remembered in the name of his Rebel Racing and “it has just got bigger and bigger” ever since.
“It’s my passion and fortunately it’s not my job,” said Cunningham, the founder and chief executive of an insurance business, . “That makes it a bit easier to speculate. We changed the policy [two years ago]. This is the second year where we’ve tried to buy a better quality of horse, spent more money. I wanted to come to days like today, you do get spoiled when you get a taste for it.
“We’ll be reinvesting again at the yearling sales this year. We’ve already got six homebreds to come in as two-year-olds.”
Waardah could be a horse to look out for in the last three months of the season after Owen Burrows’s lightly raced three-year-old stepped up to a mile-and-three-quarters in ultimately decisive style in the Group Two Lillie Langtry Stakes. Waardah has an entry in the Group One Yorkshire Oaks this month, but the Fillies & Mares event at Ascot on Champions Day in October is a likelier assignment.
Chester: 2.10 Princess Rascal (nap) 2.45 Laazm 3.20 Lucky Hero 3.52 Kassaya (nb) 4.22 Abduction 4.52 Yanifer 5.22 Risen Again.
Yarmouth: 2.32 Moon Target 3.07 B Associates 3.42 Argentum 4.12 Arundel 4.42 Last Outlaw 5.12 Ventura Dream.
“I thought she was going to get outstayed, but in the last half-furlong she was probably going away again,” Burrows said. “She will have no trouble going back to a mile-and-a-half either, so she is an exciting filly.
“She is in the Yorkshire Oaks, though it’s important she gets a little bit of juice in the ground. We will see how she comes out of this, but Ascot at the end of the year for the [Group One] Fillies & Mares would be right up her street.”
