Clive Cox returned from a short post-Royal Ascot holiday abroad on Friday and immediately began preparing for his next assault on a major race. The Lambourn man punched well above his weight at the Royal meeting, where he was the only trainer to win two Group One races and can therefore be said to have had a better week than Aidan O’Brien.
He hopes to foil the Irishman once more at Sandown on Saturday when he sends My Dream Boat, one of his Ascot heroes, to the Eclipse Stakes. The recent rain which has been so disruptive to the life of the capital city has brought only happiness to Cox, as the Esher going will surely have some juice in it now and nothing could suit his horse better.
“We just took a couple of days off,” Cox said at his Beechdown Farm Stables on Sunday. “It wasn’t particularly a celebration. We always try to get some time away with our daughters in the week after Royal Ascot but it was made all the more pleasing by the week we had.
“We all dream about it, having a winner that week, and to actually pull it off is very satisfying. Being an ex-jump jockey, I’ll make sure we enjoy it first before thinking about what comes next.”
Setting such jollities to one side, winning the Prince of Wales’s Stakes with My Dream Boat could be a significant moment in Cox’s career. He has had Group One success before with Gilt Edge Girl, Reckless Abandon and Lethal Force, and also with Profitable in the King’s Stand on Ascot’s opening day, but those were sprint races or juvenile races, of a kind that can fall to a variety of trainers.
A contest like the Prince of Wales’s is generally won only by stables with access to the very best bloodlines and carries more prestige. Cox says he is “extremely proud” just to have a horse of that calibre in his yard.
He can also take pleasure in the improvement he has wrought from My Dream Boat, who joined him after three defeats in maiden races in 2014. The four-year-old began life with Cox as a 76-rated handicapper. According to official ratings, he has improved by more than three stones in a year.
“It’s been an astonishing rise through the ranks,” Cox says, though he approached the Ascot race with more hope than the betting market, which allowed My Dream Boat to go off at 16-1 in a field of six. He points out that the horse gave weight away all round when landing Sandown’s Gordon Richards Stakes in April and was especially impressed by the times recorded for the final two furlongs.
Cox accepts that the Japanese raider, A Shin Hikari, sent off at odds-on for the Ascot race, did not show his best form. On the other hand My Dream Boat won despite hanging towards the stands in the closing stages, as some horses seem to do at the royal track.
“We’re delighted with the way he’s come back from the race,” Cox adds. “Any horse that wins a championship race at Ascot, it can take something out of them, but the impressions at the moment are very favourable. All being well, we’ll turn up at Sandown.”
Having been available at 10-1 for the Eclipse on Thursday morning, My Dream Boat is now 4-1 following news that the course took such a soaking last week that it was waterlogged in parts for about 48 hours.
While the round course has since dried out to soft, good to soft in places, more rain is forecast for this week and some cut in the ground seems very likely. Few of those entered will cope better than Cox’s runner.
The market is led at 7-2 by Time Test, who would prefer a faster surface, and The Gurkha, who shortened up on Sunday after O’Brien named him as a possible runner. The Irishman added: “Listen, I suppose the ground is going to depend but he’s definitely a possible.”
O’Brien’s Minding was a comfortable winner of the Pretty Polly at The Curragh on Sunday , coasting home four lengths ahead of Bocca Baciata, who made a spirited attempt to pinch the race from the front. The winner of the 1,000 Guineas and the Oaks, Minding may return to Britain once more for the Nassau Stakes at Glorious Goodwood next month, with O’Brien suggesting he would run Even Song in the Irish Oaks.
