Scarcely two months remain in Britain’s Flat season before the chasers and hurdlers move to centre stage once more but, for a trainer with one exceptional horse, it could be enough to turn an average campaign into an unforgettable one. A trainer like Clive Cox, for instance, and a horse like Kodi Bear, the odds-on favourite for the Doom Bar Celebration Mile at Goodwood on Saturday.
Cox is no stranger to big-race success, with five Group One winners on his record, including one at Royal Ascot, with the sprinter Lethal Force. Like many trainers just outside the Flat’s elite, however, he sets out each year in hope of another top-level victory, not expectation. Cox won more than £1m for his owners for the first time in 2013 but the total for 2015 has yet to reach £400,000. If there is going to be a horse in his stable to transform Cox’s season, it will surely be Kodi Bear.
The three-year-old has made a start already, giving Cox his first Group-race winner of the year in the Sovereign Stakes at Salisbury earlier this month.
It was a memorable performance for several reasons, including the presence of Gérald Mossé, one of France’s best jockeys, in Kodi Bear’s saddle on his first and, until Saturday, only trip to Britain this year. His four and a half length winning margin made an impression too, but most striking of all was Kodi Bear’s route to victory. An established front-runner, Kodi Bear made all the running but also managed to shift from Salisbury’s far rail to the near side in the space of half a furlong, suggesting that even four and a half lengths was no real measure of his superiority.
Kodi Bear’s victory clearly made an impression on punters and he has been backed down relentlessly all week to a probable starting price of around 4-6 to beat five opponents.
“He’s pretty special and that win was very pleasing indeed,” Cox said on Friday. “He bolted up. I’m not surprised at all by the support, I’d have been more surprised if he wasn’t supported.
“They’d raced down one side of the track earlier in the day and at Salisbury, when it gets soft, they move across. Gérald was out in front on his own and then he realised the rest were going the other way. There’s no disputing the fact that he obviously covered enough ground going from one side to the other, but he was still very impressive.”
Mossé was aboard Cox’s outstanding juvenile Reckless Abandon when he won the Prix Morny and the Middle Park Stakes, both Group One events, in 2012, and the very occasional combination between jockey and trainer is one of the most productive on the turf. Most of Cox’s runners in Britain are ridden by Adam Kirby or Oisin Murphy, but both have retainers elsewhere and when Cox decided he needed a jockey to commit to Kodi Bear, there was just one man to call.
“Don’t get me wrong, we’ve got some very talented jockeys in Britain,” Cox said. “It’s more the case that we’ve got a very strong success rate on the times that we’ve been able to join up.
“Kodi Bear is a three-year-old against older horses and he’s on a weight that Adam Kirby wouldn’t have been able to have done, and Adam has a very good retainer [to ride for Sheikh Mohammed Obaid] as well. Oisin Murphy did a great job on him [earlier in the season] but he’s also got another job, so Gérald came on the radar very much with the knowledge that he was able to commit for races at a higher level, which is what I needed.”
Cox identified Kodi Bear’s talent at an early stage and sent him straight from a second-place finish in a maiden on his first start to run in the Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot last year. He finished fifth behind The Wow Signal, beaten by around three lengths, and improved further on an easier surface in the autumn, running second behind Belardo in the Dewhurst.
He was due to be prepared for the 2,000 Guineas this spring but suffered a setback and is now being aimed towards a Group One target at the other end of the season. “We’ve made no secret after what he did at Salisbury that the QEII [Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot on Champions Day in mid-October] was a strong possibility,” Cox said.
“We thought he’d been cast in his box back in the spring but it turned out he had a pretty serious infection going on in his front leg. He was pretty poorly, so all the more credit to him and my team for being able to get him back. He’s very versatile from a going point of view and, if you’re planning for a campaign in the autumn, you need to be that way.”
Kodi Bear is likely to face Solow, the winner of the Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood, if he makes it to the stalls on Champions Day and is a 14-1 chance to win the QEII, one of only half a dozen events in the calendar with a seven-figure prize fund. The nights may be drawing in but, for Cox, the best two months of his career could start here.
