O'Callaghan sets sights on Ascot

Irish-born trainer Carl O’Callaghan could be a new face at Royal Ascot in the summer after hitting the big time with his American raider Kinsale King in the Golden Shaheen at Meydan.

Although he currently resides and trains in California, O’Callaghan was born in County Clare and has trained in America since 1990, working for the likes of Todd Pletcher.

His 7-1 chance travelled strongly throughout the six-furlong contest under Garrett Gomez and quickened to the front in the straight.

Hot favourite Rocket Man was making ground all the way to the line but Kinsale King kept responding to his rider’s urgings to take Group One glory.

His jovial trainer, also a part-time pub singer in south Los Angeles, now has his sights set firmly on a trip to Royal Ascot in June.

He said: “I’m Irish through and through, as are the owners who are from Kinsale and that’s how the horse got his name.

“He’s always proved he’s a grinder from whatever position he’s been in.

“We’d done all of our homework and I wasn’t too worried about the opposition - I only concentrate on my horses.

“I wasn’t watching Rocket Man at the finish, it was my own rocket man I was looking at.

“I knew he had won when I put the saddle on and the race went exactly like I wanted it to.

“To win here is amazing and is what I always wanted to do with my life.

“I’ve now proved I can do it and hopefully it will open more doors.

“We’ll be off to Royal Ascot next for the Golden Jubilee.”

The runner-up could also be Ascot-bound. His trainer Patrick Shaw said: “We’ll see how he pulls out but Royal Ascot is a possibility and the track there would suit him.”

Al Shemali sprung a huge surprise when landing the Dubai Duty Free at Meydan under Royston Ffrench.

The six-year-old was sent off at 40-1 for the Group One contest but while a number of strong closers such as Luca Cumani’s market leader Presvis failed to get a run, Al Shemali had already kicked for home halfway up the straight and passed the post nicely clear of Bankable.

Cumani said: “That is horseracing for you. In a 16-runner race with a short straight, things like that are always going to happen.

“If we’d gone for the Sheema Classic, we would have had an extra three furlongs to recover but if you get blocked over this trip, that is it.

“He was travelling strongly when it happened and was still on the bridle, but got put in prison.

“He’s not had a hard race and will often do more in a gallop.

“We’ll take him back to Hong Kong now.”

There was a dream start to Mahmoud Al Zarooni’s career as an official trainer for Godolphin as his first runner Calming Influence (14-1) landed the Godolphin Mile.

Godolphin racing manager Simon Crisford said: “He’s always been a nice horse and this victory is not a surprise.

“To have Mahmoud winning with his first runner is huge.

“Sheikh Mohammed has put his trust and faith in him and to start with a winner here at Meydan is very special.”

Hot favourite Musir (11-8) and jockey Christophe Soumillon led home stablemate Raihana to give South African handler Mike De Kock a one-two in the UAE Derby.

De Kock was delighted with the winner’s performance but revealed he will now head to Australia to be trained by David Hayes.

Hong Kong struck gold in the Al Quoz Sprint with the Derek Cruz-trained Joy And Fun taking top honours under Brett Doyle. 

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No worries for Libaud

Eric Libaud is unconcerned about the change of surface for Vision D'Etat as the Royal Ascot winner prepares to encounter Tapeta for the first time in Saturday's $10m Dubai World Cup.

The French raider is the 9-2 favourite with Coral to confirm his Prince Of Wales's Stakes win over Twice Over and follow up his Hong Kong Cup triumph in December. However, both of those victories came on turf and the five-year-old will be racing on Michael Dickinson's all-weather surface for the first time this weekend.

"I have no concerns over the change of surface," said Libaud. "It is not a surface which is foreign, it is soft enough and the European horses did well during the Carnival. The horse travelled here very well. He likes to travel and does so very easily."

Although down the field in the Prix de l'Arc d'Triomphe over a mile and a half, he appreciated the drop back in distance to this weekend's trip of a mile and a quarter in Hong Kong, where he beat Collection by three-quarters of a length.

Libaud added: "The horse did his final piece of work in France last Thursday and I think he is as well as before Hong Kong. In fact he may have even put on weight."

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Gold finale is a must for Cheltenham

It's vital that racing's marketing men, in searching for a new audience, don't cheese off the old one or desecrate what is cherished within our sport Which brings me to proposals to shunt the Cheltenham Festival into the weekend.

From 2012, the four-day meeting is set to start on Wednesday and finish on Saturday.

The Gold Cup will, as now, be run on the Friday of the fixture, with the Champion Hurdle on Wednesday, the Queen Mother Champion Chase on Thursday and the World Hurdle moved from Thursday to Saturday.

The bulk of what I've read this week seems to put this proposed move firmly in the 'win-win' category, but it's not that simple.

Parallels have been drawn with Ascot's fifth day, in which Ascot Heath was turned into the final day of the Royal meeting - but they are bogus.

For a start, Ascot already raced on a Saturday, and the Heath fixture was dying to be souped up - the feature, the Listed Churchill Stakes, was a joke.

And Royal Ascot doesn't have a shape - you can kid yourself that the Gold Cup, on Thursday, is the highlight, but at the expense of the other Group 1 events run during the week? Get away with you.

Ascot doesn't build through a crescendo to a climax - it has five days that are roughly the equal of each other, and then it ends.

The Cheltenham Festival, three days or four, isn't like that. It has to increase towards a finale, and that finale requires the Gold Cup as its centrepiece.

And the differences don't end there.

Much of Cheltenham's crowd camps in the town for the whole week. There's a team feeling among them that, win lose or draw, they're there for the long haul.

Ascot's customer base is made up largely of daytrippers, who get on the train at Waterloo in the morning then return there, often unable to stand, 10 hours later. As a rule, they are not as bothered, or as knowledgeable about the racing as the Cheltenham throng - they just want to get hammered.

In trying to push the old Thursday crowd of 60,000 to 65,000 on Saturday, Cheltenham's top brass might find those who have stayed for the first three days decide to give their wallets, and livers, a day off and watch the final day on the box.

They will also find that Cheltenham on Saturday has plenty of competition when it comes to sports bulletins - and, therefore, exposure.

Around this time of the year, there are FA Cup quarter-finals to think about, not to mention the conclusion of the Six Nations rugby.

Do you think the racing will get a look in if England are on the verge of the Grand Slam? Thought not.

Let this be a warning to Cheltenham bosses and Racing For Change, who might be looking to embrace the change.

If you meddle by moving the Thursday card to Saturday, not only will you destroy the character of the Cheltenham Festival - you could end up poorer as a result.

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Saturday at the Cheltenham Festival would be a royal success

The popularity of weekend racing at Royal Ascot shows Cheltenham could find a new and lasting audience.

There is a sense of inevitability that the Cheltenham Festival will run from Wednesday to Saturday some time soon, if not in 2012 then probably the year after that. There are still plenty of issues to address, not least what will happen to the Midlands National, the biggest race of the season at Uttoxeter, but there is also a widespread acceptance that racing needs to make more of its major assets. On that basis, a Festival held entirely on weekdays looks like an event with an afternoon going to waste.

The potential for a Cheltenham Festival Saturday to open up the meeting to a new audience has already been demonstrated by the remarkable success of Ascot's fifth day at the Royal meeting.

The conservatives did not like it, because a four-day Royal meeting was the way it had always been done, but even the most reactionary elements could not object to a "one-off" Royal Saturday in 2002 to celebrate the Queen's Golden Jubilee. Then, when 57,000 people turned up, it was duly confirmed as a permanent fixture, and less than 10 years later, it has now overtaken Ladies' Day on Thursday as the best-attended day of the meeting.

It might seem unfair to compare a midsummer Flat festival with one over the jumps in March, but in many ways, Cheltenham has more in common with Royal Ascot than it does with an ordinary jumps card.

The point about both meetings is that people are willing to buy into the event itself, rather than any particular race. The Cheltenham or Ascot "brand" guarantees the quality of the sporting action, and the relative standard from one day to the next is a secondary consideration. After all, if the quality of the racing was the only thing that mattered, Ascot would have its best crowd of the week on Tuesday, and its worst on Saturday. In fact, it's often the other way around.

Not all of the 80,000 people who went to the Royal Saturday last June were first-timers, but at the same time, you cannot summon up that many fresh ticket sales in less than 10 years simply from the existing customer base.

So several thousand people, perhaps several tens of thousands, have decided to go to the Royal meeting since 2002 because, at last, it is relatively easy for them to do so. Some will never go again, some will return but only to Ascot, others may try a different day at the Royal meeting, or branch out to Goodwood or Newmarket or a course that is closer to home. And a few may even be so taken with the sport that one day they buy a horse of their own, with the dream of racing it at Ascot.

Such are the potential benefits of broadening racing's audience. It is not the initial £20 or so from the gate money that matters most, but the hundreds or thousands that could follow. The punters cramming into Ascot on Royal Saturday were willing to take that first step, they just needed a little encouragement.

That is why a closing Cheltenham Saturday with the World Hurdle as its feature race, rather than the Gold Cup, makes a great deal of sense. Cheltenham would make lots of extra money from ticket sales, conceivably ending up with another attendance to rival the Gold Cup the previous day, a good chunk of which will go back into prize-money.

Thousands of people would get a chance to experience Cheltenham for the first time without taking time off work (and as anyone who has been there will testify, it tends to be an experience you want to repeat).

And the diehards who never much cared for the four-day Festival in the first place? They can give it a miss, and go back to their three-day experience.

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Moss Bros Day - Wednesday 28th April - FREE Raceday

Ascot Racecourse joins the new Racing for Change initative to offer FREE racing at Ascot on Wednesday 28th April in the Grandstand Admission area.

The Flat season curtain raiser features the £65,000 Group Three Sagaro Stakes, one of the most important trial races for next month's Gold Cup on the third day of the Royal Meeting. Additionally, there are two Listed races which are also sure to provide clues to races at the Royal Meeting – the Cleanevent Pavilion Stakes and the Britain’s Got Talent Paradise Stakes.

Buy Royal Ascot tickets throughout the UK and Europe from premierevents.co.uk.Tickets for all Royal Ascot races are available at Premierevents,every Royal Ascot transaction is 100% guaranteed to be safe and secure.