Blast From The Past: Nassau Stakes

The 2006 running of Goodwood’s Nassau Stakes was not just the best renewal of the race since it became a Group 1 for the first time in 1999. It was, said Racehorses of 2006 (which pictured the finish on the dust jacket of the annual that year), ‘a stirring contest which, with the Derby, was one of the strongest candidates for race of the season.’

The Derby had gone to Sir Percy in a four-way photo finish, and the camera also had to decide the outcome of the Nassau as there was only a short head in it between the five-year-old mares Ouija Board and Alexander Goldrun who both ended the year with Timeform ratings of 125. Although contemporaries of each other who had been running at the top level for the best part of three seasons by then, it was only the second occasion that the pair had met. The first had been in Dubai earlier that year when neither mare had been anywhere near her best.

But both arrived in top form when they clashed again at Goodwood in August, the pair having each recently won the fifth Group 1 of their respective careers which had taken them all over the world. Last time out, the Ed Dunlop-trained Ouija Board had won the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot, while Alexander Goldrun, trained in Ireland by Jim Bolger, went to Goodwood in a bid to win the Nassau for the second year running having recently done just that in the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh.

Ouija Board, ridden by Frankie Dettori, was sent off the even-money favourite, with Alexander Goldrun and Kevin Manning (who rode her in all her races) at 9/2. The leading three-year-old filly in the field was 4/1 chance Nannina who had had a couple more of the Nassau field behind her when winning the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot.

Ouija Board, nearer the far rail, and Alexander Goldrun, wider out, had the Nassau between them for much of the last three furlongs of the race but it was impossible to say which way the result would go with the pair locked together throughout. Lord Derby’s mare eventually proved just the stronger, but the part played by the runner-up was also acknowledged afterwards as Racehorses recounted:

‘Ouija Board was given a tremendous reception when Dettori took her on an impromptu parade in front of the stands before returning to the winner’s enclosure where both she and Alexander Goldrun were given a rousing ‘three cheers’ in a show of popularity and appreciation seldom seen after a major Flat race.’

Ouija Board came out on top of Alexander Goldrun again when they met in the following month’s Irish Champion Stakes, though both mares were beaten on that occasion by the three-year-old colt Dylan Thomas. Ouija Board gained a seventh and final top-level success when winning the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf for the second time and she was retired to stud with record earnings, at the time, for a British-trained filly or mare. She has gone on to make an impact at the top level as a broodmare too as dam of the 2014 Derby winner Australia.