Weekend Preview: The Unusual Suspects

Each was instructed to step forward and repeat the phrase they’d been given – ‘Hand me the keys you f***ing c***sucker.’  An iconic scene in an iconic film, The Usual Suspects, when the main protagonists appear in the police line-up, was actually done out of character. It was supposed to be played straight, even serious, but the version that made the cut– the one we’ve all seen– was in fact the actors goofing around. The lesson to be learnt is that doing things out of character can often be more interesting and rewarding.

Some developments in racing this week could be described as uncharacteristic in nature, for better or for worse. For better, the BHA has been atypically pro-active in devising countermeasures for small fields, while another battered fish that temporarily jumped out of the barrel was ARC with its enhancements to the All-Weather Championships.

For worse, Brown Panther was out of character and out of control in Canada, and Paul Nicholls is allegedly out of form and out of the trainers’ title race already following an unconventionally slow start to the jumps season; a slow start that sees him just outside the top ten British trainers, ahead of Twiston-Davies, O’Neill and Hobbs amongst others, on the daily-updated Timeform table which reckons with ratings rather than rumour.

A normal service was running on other lines, including another increase in fixtures for 2015, which seem only to be countermeasures to the countermeasures of small fields, and another jockeys’ championship for Richard Hughes, resulting in some calls for a format change with a proposal entitled ‘let’s give Ryan Moore the accolade he deserves’, kind of missing the point that part of the reason he’s not going to be crowned the best rider in Britain is that he’s busy being the best rider in the world. Bar once or twice a decade, the business of champion jockey, or trainer for that matter, sparks only sporadic debate and interest, and as the racing world becomes a smaller place the national title becomes a smaller relevance. 

There’s usually a significance to acting out of character, and in the highest-profile races this weekend there are two such examples of horses– and more to the point their trainers– taking uncharacteristic steps, therefore worth honing in on. The horses in question have a connection of sorts, founded in the 2007 Queen Mary at Royal Ascot in which Elletelle and Starlit Sands fought out the finish.

Starlit Sands, an uncharacteristic debut winner for the yard, proved just how consequential that is by doing what she did at Royal Ascot a fortnight later. Between Starlit Sands and this summer, a space of seven years, Sir Mark Prescott had only five first-time-out juvenile winners, including Hooray, the Cheveley Park winner and champion two-year-old of 2010, and Clinical, who won Group 3s and contested Group 1s.

It’s meaningful in itself that the SP of those five when making their debut was 6/5, 7/2, 7/4, 3/1 and 5/4; in other words, though atypical of the stable’s modus operandi, they were identified by the market as being so, with a higher level of expectation. There was a drought of almost three years, during which time all the Prescott jokes were just about worn out, and then Celestial Path came along, at York, and at 16/1.

The performance was taking: taking us by surprise and taking off in the straight. Raw power was the catchline for Celestial Path, not only at York but also at Haydock, on his next start in a small-field listed race, and nothing screams potential like a horse that looks like winning by a length and ends up winning by four.

Those races weren’t strong, nor strongly run, as would have suited him better, but the form doesn’t count for so much as the impression in the case of Celestial Path, a big colt with a big stride and a big engine, still to be fine-tuned. On top of that, the Racing Post Trophy looks a substandard renewal, and the stage is set for a different character, out of character.

Reversing back through Starlit Sands to the 2007 Queen Mary and the other side of the collector’s coin, on the other side of the world, Elletelle’s relevance in all of this is that she’s the dam of Adelaide.

The abnormal – and therefore meaningful – element to Adelaide’s date with the Plate on Saturday is that Aidan O’Brien has handpicked him for Australia, where he hasn’t sent a horse since the 2008 Melbourne Cup. There’s perhaps a score to settle from that day, when O’Brien was heated to boiling point by the Racing Victoria stewards who recalled him several hours after he’d left the track to question the tactics employed on the three tailed-off Ballydoyle runners.

His one and only juvenile start came on the same day as the Cox Plate, and Adelaide has gone from strength to strength this year, thriving on an expansive campaign that has already taken him to Royal Ascot, Belmont, Arlington and Longchamp. The form he’s shown puts him up there with the last three winners of the Cox Plate, and there’s a feeling that the Australian defence is thin bar Fawkner, who won the Group 1 Caulfield Stakes last time with a still-going-strong Side Glance back in third.

Aidan O’Brien targeting a big international prize and a Sir Mark Prescott horse on a roll might sound like business as usual, but the backstory reveals rather more significance attached to the development and placement of both Adelaide and Celestial Path, the pair and their trainers doing something different. It could pay to take the hint from these unusual suspects.