Cambridgeshire Day has been a gamblers’ graveyard many times over the course of nearly 200 years but this year it was the card’s Group One events, and not the historic 31-runner handicap, that left the punters broken and confused. Both the Cheveley Park Stakes and the Middle Park Stakes were won by 25-1 chances as hot favourites failed to deliver, and for Joe Fanning in particular it was a day to cherish as The Last Lion gave him his first win at the highest level, at the age of 46.
Fanning has been attached to Mark Johnston’s stable since his apprentice days but, as The Last Lion’s trainer pointed out, he has often been passed over on the biggest occasions. He has always been recognised as an outstanding judge of pace, however, and the ride that saw off Blue Point, the 11-10 favourite for the Middle Park, was textbook Fanning. He was in front from the off and, though it seemed a furlong out that he had simply given Blue Point a smooth lead into the race, The Last Lion kept finding more all the way to the line to hold the favourite at bay.
This was The Last Lion’s 10th run in a season which started with victory in the Brocklesby Stakes at Doncaster on 2 April, the first juvenile event of the turf campaign. Life rarely gets any better for Brocklesby winners after their early moment in the spotlight but The Last Lion is a rare exception who has finished in the frame in every one of his runs and is now a Group One winner as well.
“I keep saying you shouldn’t pigeonhole horses after one or two runs,” Johnston said. “After the Brocklesby, Franny Norton said he’d be far better on faster ground and here he is on fast ground running the race of his life.
“It’s fantastic for Joe, he’s ridden a huge number of winners for us over the years and usually he doesn’t get the opportunity to ride in the Group Ones. Many times he been jocked off over the years and never complained; he never lets us down.”
Fanning said that it was “nice to finally nail one” at the highest level. “I’ve ridden a lot of Group Twos and Threes, but never a Group One. I’ve had a few goes at it and came unstuck, so it’s nice to get it out of the way,” Fanning said. “But I won’t be retiring, I’ll keep kicking on.”
The Last Lion is part-owned by John Brown, a former chairman of William Hill, and the sight of a delighted former bookie in the winner’s enclosure was salt for the wounds of punters after Lady Aurelia’s defeat at odds-on in the Cheveley Park earlier on the card.
Wesley Ward’s filly, a runaway winner of the Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot, tried to make all the running in her familiar style but the effort started to tell inside the final furlong and she was running on empty at the line as Brave Anna and Roly Poly, both representing Aidan O’Brien, fought out the finish. Seamie Heffernan drove Brave Anna past the post a short-head in front of Ryan Moore and Roly Poly. Frankel’s daughter Queen Kindly was slightly disappointing in fourth.
The Cheveley Park was one of the very few Group One events on the British calendar to have eluded O’Brien in the past but Brave Anna filled that gap on his record while also taking making her trainer the first to pass £6m in prize-money earnings in a British season.
“It’s been a hard race to win,” O’Brien said. “We knew Lady Aurelia was going to make the running and we were just hoping we could lay up with her. Until they were past that line, I never really believed it was going to happen.”
Spark Plug’s 12-1 success in the Cambridgeshire seemed quite predictable when set against the results in the feature events, and Jimmy Fortune’s mount had two and a quarter lengths to spare at the line after grabbing the rail from a draw on the stands’ side.
“This horse fell in the Hunt Cup last year and Jimmy was out for a long time because of it,” Brian Meehan, Spark Plug’s trainer, said. “He always looked like a horse for a race like this.”
Godolphin deny Doyle departure
Godolphin moved swiftly on Saturday to dismiss a newspaper claim that James Doyle, one of their retained riders, will leave the organisation to ride as Sheikh Hamdan al-Maktoum’s principal jockey next season.
The claim that Doyle was being lined up to replace Paul Hanagan in the blue-and-white silks followed the news that he is no longer the automatic first choice rider for Saeed bin Suroor, one of Godolphin’s two principal trainers in Newmarket.
Doyle, who rode Godolphin’s Best Of Days to a narrow victory in the Royal Lodge Stakes, described the demotion as “a bit of a low blow” as he was led back to unsaddle, but John Ferguson, the operation’s chief executive, insisted that Doyle is “an absolutely key member of the team and will continue to be so”.
Ferguson added: “Ultimately you’ve got to allow Saeed to make the decisions that best suit his yard. Saeed is not saying James is not a great jockey, he’s just saying that sometimes he wants to use other people and that’s his choice.”
