Roger Teal is looking forward to the 2,000 Guineas on Saturday so much he cannot wait for it to be over.
“It’ll be nice to get the day out the way, for sure,” says the trainer, whose nerves have been unravelling since he committed to taking a shot at the race with Tip Two Win, a David among the Goliaths of Godolphin and Ballydoyle. “We’ve never experienced this before. It’s all brand new to us.”
Teal’s most notable success in Britain was the Darley Stakes of 2009, in which he beat the big names of Newmarket with a 25-1 winner, Steele Tango. Now he is trying to turn a similar trick at similar odds in a race of much greater consequence.
“You wake up at funny hours of the morning, worrying: ‘Should I have done this, should I have done that?’ I found myself waking up at half three the other morning and then you can’t get back to sleep.”
Teal makes a Classic runner sound like a kind of torture. When the jockey David Probert dropped by the stable in Great Shefford, near Lambourn, on Thursday, the trainer’s first words to him were: “This seemed a good idea two months ago …”
With a laugh Teal added: “I am enjoying it but it’s nerve-racking at the same time. The whole team in the yard is buzzing.”
The 50-year-old Teal and his grey will make a pair of outsiders at Newmarket. The other trainers in the Guineas are, in most cases, backed by big money and have stables well stocked with blue-blooded thoroughbreds. “It’d be nice to go out and have 10 Dubawi’s looking at you,” said Teal, referring to one of the most popular and expensive of stallions. “Some people are spoilt for choice. But I’m not jealous,” he added, laughing again.
Teal, whose mother trained point-to-pointers, started in racing on the bottom rung as a teenage groom with John Jenkins in Surrey. He moved on to Philip Mitchell’s yard, where he may have got a taste for giantkilling through the exploits of Running Stag, winner of big pots in the US and France and the runner-up in the Hong Kong Cup.
Now retired, Mitchell is rooting for Teal, who he remembers as hard-working and eager to learn. “Roger flew round the world with Running Stag and was able to maintain the horse’s wellbeing and fitness to run on three different continents,” he said. “He was very thorough. If this horse is good enough, he will be well prepared.”
Tip Two Win has already done Teal proud, landing a race in Qatar in February that brought more prize money than the stable won in the whole of last year. He sees the horse as “a lively outsider”, adding: “I’m not a trainer that just goes there for days out. He just keeps surprising me. And hopefully on Saturday at 20 to four, he can surprise me again.
“He’ll look out of place in the paddock because he’s not over-big. He’s not muscular or anything but he’s an athlete. He’s got some engine on him.
“This is what we’re in the game for. We’ve worked long and hard for years, the whole team has. Our team does as much prep as Aidan O’Brien’s but we just don’t have the calibre of horse. It would mean so much if we could go there and get a place on the day, it’d be lovely.”
Lingfield 1.50 Chelwood Gate 2.20 Fitzrovia 2.50 Crossing The Line 3.20 Al Barg 3.50 Accomplice 4.20 Waneen 4.50 Storm Again
Chepstow 2.00 Astute Boy 2.30 Coeur Blimey 3.00 Pastamakesufaster 3.30 Narble Bar 4.00 Grandma Tilly 4.30 Desert Ace 5.00 Unblinking
Musselburgh 2.10 Ahlan Bil Emarati 2.40 Lydiate Lady (nb) 3.10 Kodicat 3.40 Mosalim (nap) 4.10 Four Kingdoms 4.40 Trading Point 5.15 Adventureman
Cheltenham 4.55 Monsieur Gibraltar 5.30 Velvet Cognac 6.05 Stoleaway 6.40 Barel Of Laughs 7.15 Frelia 7.50 Supreme Danehill 8.25 Bear’s Affair
Newcastle 5.10 Photographer 5.45 Karawaan 6.20 Highwayman 6.55 Brian Ryan 7.30 Von Blucher 8.05 Independence Day 8.40 Stewardess
Tips by Chris Cook.
