In the first of a new series leading up to Britain’s most prestigious race meeting, Steve Dennis talks to US trainer Mark Casse about a never-to-be-forgotten visit to Ascot with his superstar mare
Ask anyone, the imminent prospect of achieving a first success at Royal Ascot is something close to heaven. Ask Mark Casse, and he’ll admit that the prospect was perhaps a little too close for comfort.
Casse was the trainer of the magnificent mare Tepin, the architect of the audacious and ambitious plan to make the five-year-old a G1 winner on both sides of the Atlantic at the biggest occasions in US and British racing.
As the field for the Queen Anne Stakes came up Ascot’s straight mile, Tepin prominent just behind the leaders, Casse began fleetingly to wonder whether heaven would come at the finish line or at some point before it.
“It was a funny thing,” he says, nine years’ remove lending the situation humour where originally things had been more serious.
“During the first part of the race I began to have chest pains, and I thought for a moment that I might be in trouble. Then it struck me that the pain was on the right side of my chest, so I was off the hook, just nerves I guess, and after that I was jumping up and down. It was a very special moment.
“It’s certainly my biggest win, the one that means the most. I’ve won a few races at the Breeders’ Cup, I’ve won the Preakness and the Belmont, and that’s great, but as an American trainer I have a chance to try for those every year. This was essentially a one-off, an incredible thing.”
The plot to bring Tepin, who had won the Eclipse Award for turf female after a stellar four-year-old season that culminated in victory in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Mile, over to Royal Ascot for the G1 Queen Anne had been bubbling for a while.
Foreign field
She had beaten the Europeans in her own back yard at Keeneland; now the urge to see if she could do the same on a foreign field was irresistible.
“We’d spent a few months talking about it,” says Casse, 64, a member of the Hall of Fame in both the US and Canada and almost certain to pass the 4,000-winner mark this year.
“Her owner Robert Masterson was very excited about the prospect. Tepin had basically done all she could do in the US and we were looking for something new.”
This was new all right, and there were significant challenges to overcome. Tepin would have to ship long-haul for the first time, she had never raced over a straight mile before, she would have to do so without her usual dose of Lasix. And then, of course, there was the traditional English summer weather to overcome.
“There was a lot of rain that year and the ground was soft. That scared me, to be honest,” says Casse. “She’d never run on i
t, it was a totally unknown quantity. It made me nervous.
“Yet she overcame it all to show people just how great a horse she was. At the time I may have appreciated the scale of what she achieved a little less than I do now. She really was the most special horse.”
Tepin had won all her four starts that year, including the G1 Jenny Wiley at Keeneland, a busier schedule than the majority of her European rivals – “I like running my horses, I run when I can,” says Casse.
Her reputation had long preceded her, and she was an 11-2 joint-third-choice in a field of 13 under her regular rider Julien Leparoux. Victory was more straightforward for Tepin to achieve than it was for Casse to witness, or indeed to prepare her for.
“In the US, there are valets to help saddle your horse,” Casse recalls. “That doesn’t happen in Britain, so my son Norman joined me in the barn area to saddle the mare.
“Anyway, it was Norman’s first time doing this sort of thing. I had a hold of the girth on one side, he had his hands on the saddle, I pulled the girth and he let go of the saddle and the whole thing landed on the floor.
Come on guys …
“Tepin stood calmly there, just turned her head to look at us both, as though saying ‘come on guys, big day, let’s get it right!’”
The guys got it right second time, and after the rest of the job had been left up to Tepin she rose to the occasion like the champion she was, travelling strongly, easing through to lead with a furlong to run and then always doing enough to fend off the challenge of the persistent joint-favourite Belardo.
Casse had pulled off one of the great training feats with his first runner in Britain, but the elation of a difficult job very well done was soon joined by a great disappointment.
It was nothing to do with Tepin, the heroine of the hour, but solely the result of Casse’s generosity of spirit. He spent so long talking to the press in the winner’s enclosure that it left a hole in his bucket list.
“I did a whole bunch of interviews, and then I asked someone when I would be able to meet the Queen. I was told that I’d missed her, missed my chance, and I was so disappointed,” he says.
“A little later, I was being interviewed for the Racing Post newspaper, and was asked whether I would be coming back to Ascot any time. I said I would, but only if I could get to meet the Queen.”
By royal appointment
Famously, the Queen was said to read the Racing Post every morning at breakfast, and she had a very good memory for this sort of thing. Twelve months later Casse went back to Royal Ascot with the filly La Coronel (fifth in the G1 Coronation Stakes) and had the nicest surprise of his life.
“One of the royal representatives came up to us and said that the Queen would like to meet me,” he says. “It was one of the greatest experiences of my life.
“We talked for a fair amount of time, about horses, about [major owner and US ambassador to the UK] Will Farish, who we both knew. In the end it was getting close to the race, I had to go, and the Queen said: ‘Off you go and saddle your horse!’ I’ll always remember that.
“She was such a lovely woman, and meeting her is something I’ll never forget.”
Casse is keen to return to Royal Ascot again when the right horse comes along – “My wife Tina describes it as ‘the Kentucky Derby on steroids’, it’s a truly special place” – but sadly the two racing queens who made his earlier visits so lifelong memorable are no longer with us. Queen Elizabeth II died in 2022 and Tepin died the following year at the too-early age of 12.
There is, though, a chance that Tepin’s indelible Ascot legacy will be further enhanced by her son Delacroix (by Wootton Bassett), who is one of the favourites for this year’s Derby at Epsom and could also be part of trainer Aidan O’Brien’s team for the royal meeting thereafter.
We may be in for another ‘Tepin summer’; after all, what’s a heaven for?
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