THE TIMES SPORT
Ascot needs to deal in absolutes and that’s what Rosallion’s win in the St James Palace Stakes gave trainer Richard Hannon and jockey Sean Levey the absolute best moment of their racing lives.
The race itself was close to an absolute bringing together the winners of the French, Irish and English 2,000 Guineas: Metropolitan, Henry Longfellow and Notable Speech. The last named had beaten Rosallion decisively at Newmarket was made 6-4 favourite but was a spectacular failure, never making much progress and finishing seventh of the eight runners, some six lengths off the winner.
And that was were the glory lay. The Aidan O’Brien camp played their cards early. Their Breeders Cup winner Unquestionable was jumped out in from the start with stablemate Henry Longfellow on his quarters. The strategy was clear – knowing that both Rosallion and Notable Speech pulled hard and needed to settle off a strong pace, they steadied the gallop up then Ryan Moore drove Henry Longfellow clear with the race seemingly in his gasp.
Looking back Notable Speech was already in trouble and cannot have given his running although the Guineas was his fourth race of the season and had been Rosallion’s first. With the Irish Guineas under his belt Sean Levey was quite magnificently calm as he kept his nerve behind the leaders and threaded his way through the traffic and course down the leader.
For a few seconds the task looked impossible but then the handsome bay’s hooves really bit the turf to run an 11.27 penultimate furlong as he became the only horse to top 40mph. Henry Longfellow still led 100 yards out but Rosallion had it by a neck on the line.
“I knew it was going to be a bit tactical,” said the 36 year old rider who ironically had served his apprenticeship Aidan O’Brien’s when his parent moved back to Ireland from Sean’s mother’s native Swaziland. “He had to be good today and I just knew the stiff track would suit me, and boy was he good. He travelled so well and he picked up strongly – when he has something to aim at he tries.”
Levey moved to Richard Hannon’s some 12 years ago and while he has won a classic, the1,000 Guineas with Billesdon Brook in 2018 his 15 winner total for just 130 rides this season, most of them with Hannon, might make outsiders see him as merely a stable rider. Yesterday’s ice cool tactics and high calibre delivery showed him as a match for the very best .
Richard Hannon took over from his father Richard Snr and has long lived out the joke of his Dad playing “Spot The Lady” with him and his triplet brother and sisters as babies. He is a trainer of the highest class and has long related Rosallion as the best he has trained. “He’s proved it before this, “Hannon said, “but I’m just delighted.”
That last word would hardly seem good enough for trainer Henry Dwyer and owner Akram El- Fakhri who brought the six year old Asfoora up from Ballarat to become the seventh Australian sprinter to win the Kings Stand, now renamed the King Charles III Stakes.
Henry Dwyer forsook an intended career as an accountant to risk all as a trainer and Akram El-Fahkri got the racing bug in Lebanon before building up a taxi firm in Melbourne. Now here they were with their splendid mare running down our top three year old Big Evs to the delirious cheers of the 40 friends brought up with them from Austraia.
They came to win the King’s own race at Royal Ascot received the trophy from the beaming monarch himself. It doesn’t get much more absolute than that.
“We’ve always thought he was an extremely good horse, and he’s proved it before this. I’m just delighted,” Hannon said, before briefly stopping to recompose himself. “I always thought he was going very well and we gave Sean a blank canvas to do what he thought was right. I love being a part of these races but winning them is very hard.
“Quite often you call these horses something that they’re not because you want them to be the best horse you’ve trained, and you’re disappointed. He’s never let me down.”