It was the sight of Doncaster station for the first time in 12 months that brought it all flooding back for Ralph Beckett. “I came up on the train this morning, and I thought about the last time I was there,” Beckett said here on Thursday after Simple Verse’s battling success in the Group Two Park Hill Stakes. “That train journey home after the Leger last year was about as low as I’ve ever got. I was in a bad way.”
The worst day of Beckett’s training career played out live on Channel 4 last September, when several hundred thousand viewers watched his joy as Simple Verse recorded a narrow success in the St Leger turn to utter despair as the stewards demoted her from first to second after a barging match with Bondi Beach in the home straight. She was reinstated as the winner following an appeal a few days later but the memory is still raw, not least because it was the second top-level race that Beckett had lost in the stewards’ room in the space of three weeks.
“It was a miserable, miserable time,” Beckett said, “most of all because we were appealing in America at the same time [after Secret Gesture’s demotion in the Beverley D Stakes] and the two appeals were running concurrently.
“I remember running into Bill O’Gorman at the sales, he’d trained for 40 years and he told me that in all that time, he lost two races in a stewards’ inquiry. I’d lost two in a month.”
There were some distinct similarities between Simple Verse’s St Leger and her victory here on Thursday, not least that the runner-up in both races was trained by Aidan O’Brien, and also that in both races, it was Simple Verse’s dogged determination that got her over the line.
Oisin Murphy, the winner’s jockey, had particular cause to be grateful for her never-say-die attitude, as he was caught in a pocket halfway down the straight and still had four lengths to make up on Pretty Perfect with just a furlong left to run. Since Simple Verse had folded rather tamely in her most recent start at Ascot, there was also the question of what she would find, but she answered with a brave, sustained challenge to the post which got her home by a neck.
“It didn’t look good at the half-furlong pole,” Beckett said, “but this is her optimum [trip], and possibly even two miles, I’d be tempted to go that way next time and something like the Long Distance Cup [on Champions Day at Ascot in October] looks like the obvious race for her.
“It’s great to get her back, because it hasn’t been easy, and I’m thrilled because the other two good fillies I had, Talent and Look Here, neither of them won at four.”
Simple Verse’s win completed a double for Beckett and Murphy in the card’s two Group Two events, following Rich Legacy’s success in the Group Two May Hill Stakes.
Rich Legacy had finished only fourth behind Kilmah, the favourite for Thursday’s race, in a Group Three at Goodwood in August but showed the benefit of her first start in Pattern company to reverse the form comprehensively and beat Grecian Light by three-quarters of a length.
“She raced very lazily but she really put it to bed well,” Beckett said. “I thought we were beat when she came past me at the half-furlong but she really came forward and did it well in the end.”
The Group One Prix Marcel Boussac at Chantilly on 2 October is one option for Rich Legacy, while Charlie Appleby, the trainer of the runner-up, was encouraged by her performance as he feels he has some better juvenile fillies at home. “She’s not at the top of our pecking order, so I’m just pleased she’s been competitive at this level,” Appleby said.
Mubtasim took the richest prize on the card, the £300,000 2-Y-O Stakes for graduates of last year’s St Leger yearling sale, but only after a nasty incident in the stalls that robbed the race of its favourite, Spiritual Lady.
The filly was unruly and unseated Silvestre de Sousa, the champion jockey, before being withdrawn. De Sousa, who is locked in a tight battle for the Flat jockeys’ championship with Jim Crowley, initially appeared to have sustained in injury in the incident but he was later reported to be unhurt and travelled to Chelmsford City racecourse for five booked rides on its evening card.
