Spent £80,000 For Seven Colts

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30715, 2 April 1965, Page 5

Spent £80,000 For Seven Colts

(By

NIGEL GEE

Mr David Robinson spent over £50.000 to acquire seven colts which are in this vear’s Derby. In 1964 the yield on nis outlay was rather less than 2 per cent, but the longterm prospects are still sound. He had two winners, Enrico, which was rated 201 b below the top in the Free Handicap, and Cambridge, which was not rated at all. It is really Impossible to assess either With any confidence. Enrico cost 14.000 guineas

as a yearling in 1963, a figure largely pre-detennined by the success of his dam. which had bred three very good horses in succession, Enticement, Matatina and Showdown.

All those three won only at sprint distances, and though Enrico may follow the same pattern, he has a sire with more stamina than theirs, Sica Boy, winner of the Prix de I’Arc de Triomphe. Enrico was unplaced in his first race, but he demolished a small field for a six-furlong race at Ascot in September. Cambridge cost 6700 guineas and here again the pedigree counted. He is by Saint Crespin out of Cantelo, which won the St. Leger, a superb pedigree that could take him any distance. He won his second race of 1964 easily over an extended mile at Windsor.

Three more of the Robinson horses, Blackhall and Suvretta (both by Never Say Die) and Court Gift (by Tanerko, sire of Relko) had one or two races each and were placed. Two, Tybalt (bv Cre-

pello) and Shy Boy (a £12,000 yearling by Alycidon) did not race.

The Derby colts trained bv Dick Hern for Lord Astor and Mr J. J. Astor had a quiet season. Two of them, Nearside and Dashing, won, and five more ran just once or not at all.

Nearside won twice, but he looked out of his depth in the Royal Lodge Stakes and is probably not up to classic standard. Dashing won at the second and final attempt. He was 191 b below the top of the Free Handicap, 31b better than Nearside.

It is impossible to assess the remainder of the Astor horses, except on pedigree. They are, as ever, bred to stay, and those of especial interest as Sepoy, a halfbrother of one of the great post-war marathon-runners, Trelawny, and Craighouse, a half-brother of Ruantallan, one of last season’s best three-year-olds. On last season’s form, Lester Piggott’s likely ride in the Derby is Leonardo, but the Murless stable has three other colts which showed promise in 1964, Crispian, which was discussed earlier, Alan Adare and Kirsch Flambee.

Alan Adare, by Alcide, did not run until October when he finished a very promising fifth in the Dewhurst Stakes at Newmarket. Noel Murless gave him one more race, over the same course and distance, and he got home by a head. That result was not perhaps quite as encouraging as his Dewhurst effort, but he is the

staying type and could conceivably improve with experience to classic level. Kirsch Flambee also ran twice, unplaced behind the smart Irish colt Carlemont at Ascot in October and second to Foothill later at Newbury. Foothill, which carried 11b less, beat him narrowly and was rated 111 b below the top in the Free Handicap.

Kirsch Flambee thus looks potential classic material and his pedigree, by the Derby winner, Crepello, out of a Hard Sauce mare, is a conventionally sound one. Of the Queen’s three Derby entries, Zaloba showed most promise. He ran three times, and was fifth to Prominer in the Royal Lodge and fourth to Foothill and Kirsch Flambee at Newbury.

Both Zaloba’s sire, Zarathustra, and his maternal grandsire, Alycidon, won the Ascot Gold Cup. He too may need extreme distances to show his best form. (All rights reserved.)