Major fancy Pride Of Arras and highly rated Stanhope Gardens represent leading trainer whose career reached new heights with Bluestocking’s Longchamp victory and Breeders’ Cup success
If Ralph Beckett has been left wondering how he could ever hope to top last year’s climax when Bluestocking’s victory in the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe was followed by Starlust at the Breeders’ Cup, then he might not have to wait too long to find out.
For while the Arc is acknowledged as Europe’s most prestigious race and the Breeders’ Cup bills itself as horse racing’s world championships, it is the Epsom Derby that habitually tops the wish list of any aspiring British trainer.
For an avowed traditionalist such as 53-year-old Beckett (right), now regarded as one of the nation’s pre-eminent trainers, that must go doubly so.
Just listen to the man himself. “After the Arc last year I was asked by a French journalist if it was the race that I most wanted to win," he says. “My response was that the Derby was the race I wanted most to win and the Arc was second to that. I haven’t changed my mind.
“I think if you are an Englishman and you train racehorses winning the Derby is, and hopefully always will be, the summit. Few people get to do it and if it ever came off, never mind this year but in any year, it would be more than I ever could have hoped for when I started out training. That is for sure.”
Now Beckett has two chances of success in Saturday’s Betfred-sponsored Classic via unbeaten Dante Stakes winner Pride Of Arras and highly rated Stanhope Gardens.
What is more, Beckett’s Epsom party is by no means confined to the senior Classic. He has a chance of a third win in the Oaks with Revoir on Friday, while Irish Oaks winner You Got To Me lines up in the G1 Coronation Cup.
However, the Derby is the race he covets above all others – and Beckett, who is based at Kimpton Down in Hampshire, has yet to finish closer than the third place achieved by Westover in 2002, when the race was won by Desert Crown. With a clean run, Westover would surely have finished second, and he duly won the Irish version by the small matter of seven lengths.
Now Beckett fields another leading contender against the might of Aidan O’Brien’s Ballydoyle battalion in the shape of Pride Of Arras, who posted a stylish victory over Derby rival Damysus in the G2 Dante Stakes at York, the race generally regarded as the foremost trial. Also beaten at York was longtime ante-post favourite The Lion In Winter.
Minimal concern
Though the son of New Bay has raced only twice, an apparent lack of experience is of minimal concern to his trainer. “I wouldn’t have any worries about that judged on the way he went through the Dante,” says Beckett, “and I’d be staggered if he didn’t get the longer trip given that his Wootton Bassett sister got a mile and a half well.
“He learned plenty on his debut last year, perhaps more than we realised, and he’s a well-balanced colt who should handle the track. His work since York has gone very well, so we are in good shape.”
Beckett made no fewer than 12 entries for the Derby but Pride Of Arras was not among his leading fancies at that early stage.“We were always high about Stanhope Gardens, and then there were a couple of others who appeared to have better credentials but have had issues since, like Centigrade and Starzintheireyes,” he explains.
“Pride Of Arras would have been second division at first glance, but he did do a very good bit of work when we took him away to Lambourn in April.”
Stanhope Gardens, however, suffered a minor hiccup in training and returned to action only on May 24 in a minor three-runner event at Salisbury.
Though he was successful on that delayed comeback, he is now available at around four times the odds of his stablemate. “Stanhope Gardens was our number one through the winter,” reports Beckett.
Very competitive
“But he came back with an issue when we galloped him away from home in April and subsequently had two weeks off, so missed all of the trials. His win at Salisbury has hopefully put him right, and although the bookmakers have probably priced them up about right considering his issues, I won’t be in the least surprised if he is very competitive.
“I always felt that his second to Delacroix at Newmarket was particularly encouraging and obviously the form has worked out extremely well,” he goes on. “It wasn't just the way he ran his race, but also the way he came through it over the next fortnight or so.
“He was so well afterwards that I very nearly ran him in a Group 1 in France, but I resisted the temptation as he’s one who puts everything into it every day and I didn’t want to risk leaving his whole career behind at two, particularly with a staying pedigree both top and bottom side. I’ve always felt that he’ll handle Epsom too.”
Twenty four hours before the Derby, Beckett saddles last month’s Newbury Listed second Revoir in the Oaks 24 and he is quietly optimistic about her chance in a race he has won already with both Look Here, who was a breakthrough first G1 winner back in 2008, and Talent, who led a stable one-two in 2013.
“She was still green at Newbury, so I’m hopeful she’ll take a significant step forward for that as well,” he says.
“Revoir’s grandam is a sister to Look Here, and it’s the family of Scope [winner of the G1 Prix Royal Oak over just short of two miles], and he’s by Study Of Man, whose best runners have been over ten or twelve furlongs, so I don’t see the trip being an issue.”
Another level
Beckett may have taken his status to another level with Bluestocking’s Arc win but he first captured attention on the other side of the Atlantic as long ago as 2008, when the notoriously tricky Muhannak won the now-defunct Breeders’ Cup Marathon on the former Pro-Ride artificial surface at Santa Anita.
“It was the first running of the Marathon, and at the time it didn’t have Graded status,” Beckett recalls. “Muhannak wouldn’t train when he arrived in the second half of July yet went from a Kempton handicap win to land a Dundalk Listed race, which I didn’t know existed when he won at Kempton, and then on to the Breeders’ Cup Marathon, which I was also unaware of until he won at Kempton!
“It was a huge expense to travel to Santa Anita without incentives in those days, and we were doing it on a shoestring,” he continues. “What’s more Muhannak was so difficult that in his week at Santa Anita we just hacked around the training track because we were petrified he would plant himself if he went on the track and then we wouldn’t be able to run.
“It all came together on the day and the late Pat Smullen was masterful in what was perhaps one of his greatest rides, but we felt like a very small fish in a very big pond out there. I’m not sure winning there made that much difference to us from a business point of view, but on a personal level it was hugely significant.”
The trainer was a much bigger fish by the time he returned to California with Starlust, who won a dramatic Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at last year’s championship.
“Starlust was very well suited by Santa Anita as a two-year-old so I was confident that returning for Del Mar was the right thing to do but I don’t think any of us expected him to go and do it in that manner,” says Beckett.
Brave man’s route
“I have a great picture that they kindly sent me of Starlust nine lengths off the lead going into the first bend, but they’d gone a breakneck pace and he went the brave man’s route, so it worked out really well. It was a great day and I’d love to be going back there with him, but he’ll be at stud in Australia by then.”
Starlust’s Breeders’ Cup win was Beckett’s sixth G1 success to cap an amazing season for the trainer, and if he wasn’t firmly established before Bluestocking’s Arc win among British racing’s elite trainers like the Gosdens, Charlie Appleby and William Haggas, then he certainly is now.
Beckett’s team has grown year on year from around 20 in his first full season 25 years ago to 195 listed in the latest edition of Horses In Training. The quality of that team has arguably improved yet again on the back of Bluestocking and it includes plenty for the leading owner-breeders on whom Classic success tends to depend.
Reflecting on his stellar year, he says: “It’s funny but Bluestocking is often mentioned and so I think people perhaps perceive me differently as a result.
“In the run-up to the Arc we were always walking a tightrope with her, as she was going to have to be supplemented and she’d had a long year, so at the time I was caught up in the middle of it all.
“But through the winter and now into another year I realise how important it all was.”
The run-up to the Derby has been a bit more relaxed than it was for the Arc, but should either Pride Of Arras or Stanhope Gardens prevail the impact is likely to be equally significant.
• Visit the Ralph Beckett website and the Betfred Derby Festival website
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