The bookmakers no longer fancy Richard Hughes’s chances of a Guineas victory in his final season, both his Classic mounts for this weekend having been beaten in their trials, but the champion Flat jockey was convincing here on Monday as he explained why both may run well above their odds.
The jockey was speaking at an event to launch the new-style Flat jockeys’ championship, for which 10 enormous Stobart lorries were parked around the paddock, each with the name and image of a different jockey gloriously displayed along the sides.
Ivawood, Hughes’s mount in the 2,000 Guineas on Saturday, is a 16-1 shot, having been 5-1 before running a disappointing third in the Greenham on his recent reappearance. The jockey is of the view that Ivawood “blew up very badly” but feels the horse is now fully primed, having worked impressively on Sunday.
“We thought we had him fit enough to do himself justice but in hindsight he looked very big in the paddock and I’m kind of the assumption that, because he’s pretty good, he was doing his work too easy,” Hughes said. “It’s a little bit like me going for a run with Richard [Hannon, the colt’s bon vivant trainer]. He would get tired quicker than me. We worked him again on Sunday and he blew the house down. So I’m coming to the conclusion that he wasn’t ready [at Newbury]. But sure, that’s what the trials are for. We like to run them in trials because we don’t gallop them that hard at home.”
Hannon will run four in the 2,000, including the Sheikh Hamdan-owned Estidhkaar, who finished second in the Greenham and is now 7-1. Hughes is clear in his belief that Ivawood is the pick of the four and was expected to finish in front of Estidhkaar at Newbury. He now feels that Estidhkaar possibly puts more effort into his homework than Ivawood and was therefore sharper.
Hughes’s 1,000 Guineas mount on Sunday, Tiggy Wiggy, is disregarded at 33-1, despite having been a blisteringly fast Group One winner as a two-year-old. She must overcome stamina concerns and was a poor third in the Fred Darling on her reappearance.
“Put a line through it,” urges Hughes, who feels the filly sulked about the application of a chain that was intended to help her rider restrain her. “When you get on her, she fly-leaps and one day, I ain’t gonna stay on. We put this chain on, across her nose, that she’s supposed to respect.
“But she didn’t respect it and she ended up getting a few yanks, probably four or five, [on the way to the start]. It would be like getting a few thumps in the face and she got to the start and she was very quiet. It just might have had an effect on her. She certainly didn’t have the zest when she jumped out that she normally does.”
So, no chain this time? “No, it’ll be just hang on Hughesie,” the jockey said, laughing. “I’ll get on her on the chute, let her go and hope she doesn’t behave too badly.”
Hughes is pleased about the shortening of the championship period, with this year’s winner to be crowned on 17 October, and will try to win the title for a fourth year in a row. But he concedes he will have to take days off in the second half of the year in order to attend the sales that will provide his training business with talent for 2016.
Also present was Andrew Tinkler, chief executive of the Stobart Group that is now the first sponsor of the championship. Tinkler has become a significant figure in Flat racing, eight years after his first involvement, and he indicated here that his firm would at least consider extending their backing to the jump jockeys’ championship.
“We’re in the sport, we support it and anything we can do to promote the jockeys and help them in their careers, all the better,” said Tinkler, who reports he has 26 horses in training now.
As part of the sponsorship, which will provide prize money to several Flat jockeys each year, a converted Stobart trailer will turn up on the sport’s bigger days, stocked with promotional material and, eventually, merchandise of a kind that other sports have long used to engage fans, but which racing has been slow to embrace. Apparently, many of the Flat jockeys have agreed to make themselves available to meet the public for an hour or so before racing on these occasions, which must be a worthwhile exercise, even though there will, inevitably, be at least one high-profile dissenter.
Paul Hanagan and William Buick, who were also at Ascot to promote the new championship, are two chatty young men for whom engaging with fans would hold no terrors. Hanagan expects to ride Estidhkaar (“crying out for this extra furlong”) in the 2,000 and Fadhayyil in the 1,000. Buick, now with Godolphin, will be on Dutch Connection in the 2,000 and Jellicle Ball in the 1,000.
“Sheikh Mohammed’s more interested now than what he’s probably been for a long time,” Buick reported, significantly. “He came to the Craven, came to the stables, he’s really getting behind me and James [Doyle]. It’s good for everybody, good for racing.”
