The Weekly Wrap: Don't Dream It's Over

We are in that strange week of the year after Champions Day, with much tweeting about the end of the Flat season but with at least one highly informative juvenile race yet to be run. It's a misconception aided largely by the fact that the jockeys' and apprentices' championships both end that day, representing only a subset of the season as a whole.

John Dance has been a breath of fresh air since joining the British owners' ranks, his joy for the game understandably heightened by being associated with the brilliant Laurens (Fr) (Siyouni {Fr}). With Karl Burke he has campaigned her sportingly and openly and we wish the mare continued success from the paddocks via her offspring.

Last year, Dance's company took on the sponsorship of Britain's final Group 1 juvenile contest of the season, the Vertem Futurity Trophy at Doncaster. And while some of us may be forgiven for still occasionally and erroneously referring to it as the 'Racing Post Trophy' following that long sponsorship association, it is unforgivable, both for Doncaster and for Vertem Futurity, that racing fans are encouraged to have looked upon last weekend as the end of the season. Three of the last eight 2000 Guineas winners have come from the race—Camelot (GB), Saxon Warrior (Jpn) and Magna Grecia (Ire)—and at a time when racecourses desperately need sponsors outside the stalwarts of the betting and breeding industries, ensuring this race is given more kudos is essential.

However, as the three names listed above show, it is a contest in which Aidan O'Brien has enjoyed much success and, dauntingly, he has a strong chance of winning it for the tenth time on Saturday. From the 12 remaining entries, 11 are trained by him at Ballydoyle, while the only home challenger is Qatar Racing's Kameko (Kitten's Joy), whose trainer Andrew Balding won the race in 2014 with Elm Park (GB) (Phoenix Reach {Ire}).

Dream Sequence
An announcement will be made later this week with regard to the new home of Saturday's G1 QIPCO British Champions Sprint winner Donjuan Triumphant (Ire) (Dream Ahead). While the name of the stud is yet to be revealed, it has been confirmed by bloodstock agent Richard Venn, whose Anglo-French transactions have led to him being dubbed 'Le Stallion Man', that the 6-year-old will be standing in France, where his sire has been resident for the past two seasons.

Dream Ahead rarely missed a beat in his own outstanding racing career and he has been enjoying something of a purple patch of late. Not only was he responsible for the first and third home in the Champion Sprint, with Forever In Dreams (Ire) finishing just a neck behind runner-up One Master (GB) (Fastnet Rock {Aus}), but he also had the G1 Qatar Prix de l'Abbaye winner Glass Slippers (GB) during the Arc weekend, and Dream Shot (Ire) has been runner-up in both the G2 Flying Childers S. and G3 Mercury S.

While Richard Venn is not yet at liberty to confirm the destination of Donjuan Triumphant, he did reveal that Ireland's Whytemount Stud will have a new recruit for next season in Feel Like Dancing (GB). The 9-year-old son of Galileo (Ire), bred by Lady Bamford from the Darshaan (GB) mare Maid Of Killeen (Ire), won the G3 Bahrain Trophy and has been standing at Haras du Lion since his retirement in 2014.

Dream Ahead's stud career began at Ballylinch Stud, which is represented in the current freshman sires' table by Make Believe (GB), who notched his second group winner on Sunday. Ocean Fantasy (Fr), winner of the G3 Preis der Winterkonigin at Baden-Baden, was bred by Haras du Mezeray and is out of a half-sister to the G2 Prix Maurice de Nieuil winner Watar (Ire) (Marju {Ire}), who stands at Moortown Stud in Ireland. Among the members of Watar's first crop is the Jonjo O'Neill-trained 5-year-old Stony Stream (Ire), a dual winner this season.

Change For The Good
When King Of Change (GB) (Farhh {GB}) chased home Magna Grecia in May to finish second in the Guineas at odds of 66/1, he perhaps wasn't given the respect he was due, and it hasn't helped that until Saturday we'd only seen him once more in action when winning the listed Chasemore Farm Fortune S. at Sandown. However low a profile he's been keeping, Richard Hannon's charge has done little wrong in his short racing career, never having finished out of the first two in six starts, and in conditions that members of his sireline often favour he duly became a second Group 1 winner for Farhh. Equal credit should go to his dam Salacia (Ire), however. The 10-year-old daughter of the late Echo Of Light (GB) had the rare distinction of being represented by two of her sons in Saturday's G1 Queen Elizabeth II S., with the seven-time winner Century Dream (Ire) (Cape Cross {Ire}) finishing seventh. The 5-year-old was his dam's first foal and his best result to date has been winning last year's G3 Diomed S. on Derby day for Abdulla Belhabb and Simon Crisford. A third of Salacia's sons, Thawry (GB) (Iffraaj {GB}), was also in action on Saturday at Wolverhampton.

State Of Play
It has been interesting to watch from afar the stand-off between Victoria and New South Wales when it comes to the spring racing programme in Australia. Traditionally, of course, spring is all about Melbourne. But with the valuable Everest now vying for attention on the same day as the G1 Caulfield Cup, and Racing NSW chief executive Peter V'landys having brazenly called for the Melbourne Cup to be moved to a later date, there have been plenty of column inches devoted to the inter-state rivalry of late.

Certainly the Everest has gained traction in a very short space of time and, bar U S Navy Flag (War Front) last year and Ten Sovereigns (Ire) (No Nay Never) on Saturday, it has included only domestic runners. From a punter's perspective this is doubtless preferable. The great unknown of the Melbourne Cup these days is not just how the overseas form stacks up but also how well each individual has travelled and acclimatised to life on the other side of the world.

But, as my colleague Chris McGrath pointed out in yesterday's TDN, racing is now truly international. We cannot claim to have the best racing in the world and then rue the appearance of horses of all nations wanting to sniff that rarefied air.

Australia lost its way in the breeding of stayers some time ago, and in this part of the world we are on a similarly narrow path—how is it possible that there is only one other staying-bred juvenile to take on the might of Ballydoyle at Doncaster on Saturday, for example?

One nation which has stuck to its middle-distance guns with flamboyant success is Japan. The only fly in the ointment for this year's Japanese Derby winner Roger Barows (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) in his future stud career is that he didn't really race for long enough, with injury curtailing his career at three. Here, potential stallion masters worry about keeping a good 2-year-old in training lest he blot his copy book on the racecourse and spoil his market value.

After the G1 Nassau S. win of Deirdre (Jpn) (Harbinger {GB}) in Britain, another high-profile international race went to Japan on Saturday when Mer De Glace (Jpn) (Rulership {Jpn}) won the G1 Caulfield Cup. He marked a good week for Japanese-breds in Australia with Wolfe (Jpn) (Novellist {Ger}) having landed last Wednesday's G3 Coongy Cup to earn himself a Caulfield Cup slot, while another son of Rulership, Hush Writer (Jpn), won the ATC St Leger S. at Randwick. These followed the previous weekend's victory of Fierce Impact (Jpn) (Deep Impact {Jpn}) in the G1 Toorak H. The 5-year-old had previously been trained in Britain by David Simcock for Sheikh Fahad but was bought by his current trainer Matthew Smith for 120,000gns at Tattersalls two years ago.

Both Wolfe and Hush Writer were picked up by Gai Waterhouse as foals at the JRHA Sale in 2014. The trainer clearly likes what she saw in Hokkaido as she has been a repeat visitor to the sale ever since and bought another Rulership foal there this July. A son of the recently deceased King Kamehameha (Jpn), Rulership has been at Shadai Stallion Station since 2013, making Hush Writer and Wolfe members of his first crop, and he has not been short of support, with his foal crops numbering between 133 and 185 during that time.

O'Sullivan's Illuminating Work
We could probably all do with a little light relief between sales and those of an artistic bent should make their way to London this November to take in the latest exhibition by one of the world's finest sporting artists, Katie O'Sullivan.

We hear plenty on social media from the artist's husband, the highly amusing trainer-cum-Mick-Jagger-lookalike Jamie Osborne, but O'Sullivan prefers to let her paintbrush do the talking and her seventh solo show should not be missed.

Enable dons the front cover of the brochure but O'Sullivan's theme is not solely equine. Hounds, whippets, songbirds and all manner of wildlife—even Frankie Dettori—are included in the exhibition entitled Illuminations at the Osborne Studio Gallery in Motcomb Street, which runs from Nov. 7 to 28.

To Those Far Hills
This is not the first time that the name Wicklow Brave (GB) has been mentioned in this column but it will be the last.

As has been recorded, the 10-year-old gelding died on Saturday at Far Hills in New Jersey after falling when in contention for the GI Grand National Hurdle.

There are few racehorses of his ilk. In many ways, Wicklow Brave was a throwback, far removed from the type of horse that those breeding for the commercial market set out to breed these days. But he was absolutely the type of horse we would all want to own. Not just a Saturday horse, but a Festival horse. Not a Frankel or an Enable, but one who would turn up to the big occasion and give you every reason to hope and dream that today would be his day.

It wasn't always his day—he was as quirky as he was talented—but on 17 occasions, in bumpers, over hurdles and fences, and, most thrillingly of all when winning the G1 Irish St Leger, it was all about him.

To this biased eye, much saddened since Saturday, Wicklow Brave posted one of the best performances in defeat at this year's Cheltenham Festival when kidded through the field under a genius ride from Patrick Mullins in the Coral Cup, coming from all the way out the back to be beaten a short-head for second.

To have lost him in some corner of a foreign field is heartbreaking. We are fortunate to live in an era blessed with some truly great racehorses, but there have been few so versatile, so enduring and so brave.