2012

ROYAL Ascot can be all about timing, and Dermot Weld got things absolutely right with Princess Highway, who ran out a very easy winner of the Group 2 Ribblesdale Stakes.

She came home six lengths clear of the unlucky Oaks runner-up, The Fugue, who just reversed placings with Shirocco Star, though neither had any chance in the closing stages. A handful of Oaks fillies took part and different tactics were employed, especially on Vow and Shirocco Star.

The former led to a mile out, where Darryll Holland not only took over on Shirocco Star, but he pressed on in earnest, looking to make stamina count.

Briefly, she looked capable of remaining clear, but Pat Smullen had matters well in hand and sent Princess Highway in pursuit, hitting the front before the furlong pole. She then stayed on in tremendous style to beat The Fugue and Shirocco Star.

Although things become clearer with the benefit of hindsight, it was surprising that Princess Highway was allowed to start at 17/2. She had beaten the Oaks heroine, Was, at Naas, and Weld waited for this race.

The trainer, who won this race with Princess Highway’s dam, Irresistable Jewel, in 2002, another Moyglare homebred, believes the daughter of Street Cry could be the best of the fairer sex he looked after.

“She beat Was in the Blue Wind Stakes at Naas, and Blue Wind was probably the next-best filly I’ve trained, because she won the Oaks and the Irish Oaks,” he said. “Blue Wind was a very special filly, but hopefully this one can progress to be even better. We were not surprised she won.”

[Princess Highway’s only significant subsequent effort was to finish third in the Group 1 Irish Oaks, and she is the dam of a single winner from her first four foals.

Her family is in the news again this year as her relation Homeless Songs (Frankel) won the Group 1 Tattersalls Irish 1000 Guineas.

By contrast, The Fugue (Dansili) went on to become a champion, winning the Group 1 Red Mills Irish Champion Stakes, Group 1 Nassau Stakes, Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes and Group 1 Yorkshire Oaks, and she amassed just short of £2 million in earnings. She is the dam of a single winner to date.

Shirocco Star (Shirocco), never managed to win a stakes race, but she subsequently was runner-up in the Group 1 Irish Oaks and third at the Curragh in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes. She has a great stud record, however, and her first three foals are winners, Telecaster (New Approach) and Al Suhail (Dubawi) at Group 2 level, and Starcaster (Dansili) won a listed race in Australia.

Among the unplaced runners in that year’s race were Group 3 winner Hazel Lavery (Excellent Art), the dam of the Group 1 Queen Elizabeth II Stakes winner The Revenant (Dubawi), and the stakes-placed Colima (Authorized), dam of three winners with her first three foals, including two stakes winners]

Hill gets a rousing reception in Tralee

1982

RACEGOERS at Tralee on Wednesday gave the remarkable Mrs Charmian Hill a rousing reception after she won the last race on her own mare, Dawn Run.

They lined the pathway and cheered as Mrs Hill returned to the winners’ enclosure for the last time. She recently received a letter from the Turf Club informing her that the stewards were not, for medical reasons, renewing her licence.

Mrs Hill has ridden seven winners on the racecourse since 1977. She was the first lady rider to compete against the men over fences when the rule was altered, and those seven victories included one in the Ulster Bank Novice Chase at Clonmel on Yes Man. The horse was a particular favourite of the owner-rider, and she won four races on him.

All her winners have been trained by Paddy Mullins. Mrs Hill’s greatest success as an owner was achieved by Slaney Gorge, who won the Guinness Chase at Punchestown.

Dawn Run made virtually all the running and, when headed by Paka Loco and Espeut before the straight, rallied to regain the advantage, racing between horses. Espeut tried to get back on terms over a furlong down, but was held by a length.

[Dawn Run (1978–1986), a daughter of Deep Run and Twilight Slave (Arctic Slave), is arguably the most successful racemare in the history of National Hunt racing.

She won the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival in 1984 and the Cheltenham Gold Cup two years later. Dawn Run is the only racehorse ever to complete the Champion Hurdle - Gold Cup double. She was only the second mare to win the Champion Hurdle (and one of only six to win it in total), and the last of only four mares who have won the Cheltenham Gold Cup.

Dawn Run is the only horse ever to complete the English, Irish and French Champion Hurdle treble]

Fame comes at a price

1932

GREATNESS of an embarrassing nature can be thrust upon a man.

For example, when he finds himself the happy winner of a big sweep, or some great gift of similar kind, and discovers that there are thousands of persons who feel that they have a claim on him, and are desperately anxious to share in his good fortune.

Mr Tom Walls is one of the latest to make such a discovery.

It is said that there was no more delighted, but embarrassed, man than he at Epsom on June 1st when his colt, April The Fifth, won the Derby.

Walls was a sort of somebody before the race, for as an actor and screen star all the world seemed to know him, but after the race he found himself a tremendous somebody.

It was in the aftermath of the success, and in the crop of begging letters that he received, that he found real embarrassment. He says that he received between four and 5,000 letters, and that quite 3,000 of them were begging appeals, the demands for assistance varying from a humble 10 shillings to £1,000. Had he acceded to them all, he says, he would have had to pay out something like £150,000.

Curious, is it not, this trait of one section, the begging section, of the public. As soon as it learns of success it jumps at the chance to take advantage of it. That is to say, it begs. It would not do so if it had not found, by experience, that such appeals were profitable.

[Tom Walls was an English stage and film actor, producer and director, and was best known for presenting and co-starring in the Aldwych farces in the 1920s, and for starring in and directing the film adaptations of those plays in the 1930s.

Walls spent his early years as an actor, from 1905, mostly in musical comedy, touring the British provinces, North America and Australia and in the West End. He specialised in comic character roles, typically flirtatious middle-aged men. In 1922 he went into management and had an early success in the West End with a long-running farce, Tons of Money.

Walls commissioned and staged a series of farces at the Aldwych Theatre that ran continuously over the next decade. He and his co-star Ralph Lynn were among the most popular British actors of their time. In addition to his work in the theatre, Walls directed and acted in more than 40 films between 1930 and his death in 1949.

Away from acting, Walls’ passion was horse racing. He set up stables at his home in Surrey and trained about 150 winners, his best being April the Fifth]