Champion Sprinter: Field of Dreams

Young foals might learn some things from mimicry of others in the herd. Playing and practicing, trial and error, could be part of a developmental sequence, and these innate behaviours, often described as fixed action patterns, are rudimentary, important for development. It's reasonable to believe that some of this learning is enhanced by the social structure of a herd, so that the actions of the sharpest one has a releasing effect on the behaviour of another.  

Champions Day at Ascot was designed to determine champions; Champions Avenue in Dublin was constructed to commemorate them, namely the boxers who won the highest amateur honour, the ‘Golden Gloves’, by defeating America’s fiercest fighters, in Chicago, in 1939.

Amongst them were Peter Glennon and John ‘Spike’ McCormack, the original streetfighters, as they were fighters from the same street, spurring and sparring each other on. ‘You had to fight, coming from where you came from,’ said Glennon, who described the legendary Spike as ‘having a naturalness about him, bred to fight, with a great pedigree, like a racehorse.’

Was it nature, or nurture, or both, that explains how these two giants of Gardiner Street grew together, to the top, in collaborative combat? Most likely, the instinct was intensified by influences, with the external environment acuminating the innate ability, organic in that case, but systematic in racing for the programmed process of turning a formless foal into a gladiatorial galloper.

In boxing, beneath the complexity of multiple belts and bodies, lies a simplicity of settling on who’s the champion in each division, with a straight fight between the best. In theory, the same can be true in racing – that is, after all, the raison d'être of Champions Day – but the reality is different, as the top-of-the-crop title is decided by a body of work, over a season, rather than a single bout, and rightly so.

All the same, there are times of fulfilling fusion of a part becoming the sum, when a contest chimes with a campaign in a certain category. It’s happening this year in the miling and staying divisions, in which there’s a distinguished and distinguishable heavyweight – Ribchester and Order of St George respectively – and mandatory challengers who’ve earned their right to fight for the title.

But then there’s the sprint scene, the most dynamic division of all in 2017, with various fireworks at various times rocketing high into the ratings sky, altering the atmosphere, changing the climate for good, as never has there been such a constellation of sharp-shooting stars in a single season.

How, therefore, do we determine the champion sprinter? There are two numbers games. The first and only one for level-headed people is the Group 1 tally, and an implication will become an obligation if Harry Angel makes it three on Saturday. The second one, the top trumps of geeks and nerds at Timeform, is the numbers game of ratings that has Battaash as the reflection in the mirror, mirror on the wall of who’s the fastest of them all.

Harry Angel, by any measure, is a freak of nature, or nurture, yet Battaash has recorded a higher rating and timefigure than him, and not once but twice. Achievement matters more than ability in the definition of a champion, but awarding one over the other is like picking between Prost and Senna, overlooking the fact that both in tandem, in that time, at those speeds, broke boundaries in their sport.

It may be a split decision, insulated by the split division, of 5f and 6f, specialist subjects that have enabled both to power-plough their own fast furrow. When you get two sprinters of such special stature in the same orbit, it’s still a shame that they won’t square up at Ascot, or that they haven’t met before.

But they have.

In fact, they know each other very well, from racing’s equivalent of Gardiner Street, equally entitled to be renamed Champions Avenue.

‘In the year 2000 I bought the farm that is now Ballyphilip Stud, and that grew over the years with my wife Marie doing a lot of the work, if not all, so she tells me!’ At that time Paul McCartan was still attached to Croom House Stud, having gained experience around the world, working for Juddmonte in Britain and America, and expanding horizons as far as New Zealand, before returning to Ireland.

‘We built up from very small beginnings. We had two enterprises, the pinhooking - of buying foals for re-sale as yearlings – and we bought a couple of mares with a view to breeding our own.’

Finding the right broodmares is the secret of success, easier said than done in a money-driven marketplace, dangerous waters where some fish are bigger than others, never mind the superpower sharks swimming around.  

‘The commercial factors are very important for us because that’s the heart of the business,’ explains McCartan. ‘The mares have got to be good-looking. If they’re good-looking, they’ve got much more chance of breeding something good-looking. We won’t compromise on looks, and we won’t compromise on temperament. After that, we get as much pedigree as we can.

‘It’s very hard to tick all of the boxes. It’s only people like John Magnier that can tick all of the boxes.’

It’s a case of quality control: the skill of identifying quality that might not be immediately apparent, like Anna Law, and the control that comes from limiting the broodmare band to around a dozen, to focus on the finer points.

In four races, as a two-year-old in 2012, Anna Law faced 45 rivals and beat two of them, but that didn’t put off McCartan, who stepped in at the October sales. ‘We bought her because of her pedigree, out of Portelet, which goes back to a very good family. On top of that she was a real looker, and had a lovely temperament, so I had it in my mind that she might just make a good broodmare.’

By then, an early Ballyphilip flagbearer, Xtension, was still contesting Group 1s in Hong Kong aged five. ‘Xtension was the first very good one we bred. I sold him to Clive Cox, and we’ve got a great relationship with him: he’s actually trained a winner for us – a half-sister to Xtension called Our Joy.’

When two families join forces, they say to pick a seat and not a side, though the seat would have been on a skywards-soaring rollercoaster when the McCartans tapped into the family of Great Joy, the dam of Xtension, Our Joy and, before them, Beatrix Potter.

‘We bred Beatrix Potter here in Ballyphilip, and sold her as a yearling, but when Xtension started to do well we bought her back.’

Beatrix Potter was home made, and Anna Law was shop bought. And between them they’ve made a feast.

‘We’d never used Dark Angel before. I’d spotted he was doing well with ordinary mares, and he was starting to get a reputation in the industry. It was bloodstock agent Anthony Stroud who said that he’s good value and we should be using him. So we sent him the two mares, Beatrix Potter and Anna Law, and we got Harry Angel and Battaash.

‘We brought the two of them into the world, and we reared them together in the same field.’

Maybe once in every five years there’ll be a European sprinter that can break the 130-barrier on the Timeform scale. To get two, in the same year, of the same age, is virtually unheard of. And for those two to have played and practiced, in fixed action patterns, as per the first paragraph, in the same field in County Limerick as fresh and feisty foals is the stuff of fairytale.

‘They made into two fine yearlings,’ says McCartan. ‘Harry Angel was a big, strong horse; great limbs and powerful. With him, it was only really when he came in for the sales that we realised what a good mover he was.

‘Battaash was a beautiful horse from the day he was born. And that was reflected in his price. He was a stunning yearling, but that’s why he made the money he did [200,000 gns], extraordinary when you think the mare had no rating.’

One field. One family-run stud. One sire. One season. Two monstrous racehorses, cut from the same cloth. The modern-day equivalent of Glennon and Spike, from Champions Avenue.

‘It’s absolutely remarkable,’ says Paul McCartan. ‘We still can’t get over it ourselves.’

Both are to stay in training as four-year-olds, to reap more glory themselves, and to reflect more glory on Ballyphilip, but before then Harry Angel has a decorous date with the Champions Sprint at Ascot on Saturday.

His Timeform rating of 133 puts him upwards of 5 lb clear of the field. He’s not to be messed with, but it’s a good bet that Ballydoyle will try to do exactly that, by upsetting his rhythm, as happened in a Commonwealth Cup that was teed up for Caravaggio, who’s back for more, along with three plot-thickening team-mates – Washington DC, Intelligence Cross and Alphabet.

But this isn’t the same Harry Angel who went to the Royal meeting, because less is more: he less headstrong and more powerful. The Godolphin masterstroke wasn’t only in buying him, but in maintaining the relationships that have made Harry Angel the spectacular sprinter he now is, by keeping Clive Cox behind him and keeping Adam Kirby on top.

If the opposition want to unsettle the horse, they’ll have to get past Kirby, as Harry Angel isn’t a product but a partnership, now at the height of harmony, thereby diminishing the free-racing fault-lines that were exposed and exploited in his younger days, maybe installed in his even younger days by rushing around with the like-minded Battaash.

It's reasonable to believe that some of this learning is enhanced by the social structure of a herd, so that the actions of the sharpest one has a releasing effect on the behaviour of another.