The St.Leger

JOHN SANDERSON: please phone Peter Jones! I suggest Sanderson's secretary at Doncaster Racecourse places this message discreetly on the Chief Executive's desk. It could be the saving of England's oldest Classic, the St Leger. The Leger, as it has been known for 222 years, came under fire from the critics yet again this season on two grounds: firstly, it doesn't complete a viable Triple Crown anymore and, secondly, breeders shun stamina stock. Or are these really one and the same complaint: that, because owners prefer not to risk their Derby winners in the Leger, the race has become a late-season stayers' benefit producing winners without breeding prestige? Should the Leger be restored to the glory days of Nijinsky, the last colt's Triple Crown winner 28 years ago? Or is it an anachronism, a tool of the past in the thoroughbred's evolution? Peter Jones, the marketing man who became chairman of the Tote, launched a new bet - the Trifecta - at Goodwood in the brief summer that England had this year. The Trifecta is nothing new in America or Australia, and in fact replaced a similar "trio" bet on the English Tote, but that's reckoning without a marketing man. Jones made sure he guaranteed early Trifecta pools on big-race days and was rewarded with dividends way ahead of the bookmakers' tricast returns on the same races.
Then came the touch which should have Sanderson reaching for his phone: Jones hired an insurance company and "bet" that no single unit stake of Ł1 would scoop the Trifecta pool in the Ayr Gold Cup, a 28-runner sprint handicap with a big field run in the third week in September. The actuaries did their stuff and were so happy with the risk - that this would be a rare event indeed - that the Tote was able to offer a Ł1million tax-free bonus to the winning punter. Since the Tote guaranteed a Ł100,000 pool, it meant that a single Ł1 ticket would collect at least Ł1,071,000, after the 29% deduction from the pool. For the first time, a horserace challenged the English National Lottery for attention on a Saturday.	Nedawi St.Leger 1998
There was no single winner and, in the event, the trifecta return (of Ł14,210) was outstripped, for once, by the tricast (Ł20,742) with the first three finishers on 16-1, 33-1 and 50-1. But the publicity was special. And it prompts the question: what price a single winner of three English Classics, 2,000 Guineas, Derby and St Leger? Sponsors' bonuses are not unusual in racing, and a Ł1million, duly underwritten, to the first Triple Crown winner since Nijinsky would revitalise the Leger and restore the flagging position of English prestige races as the Derby slips further and further behind the Japanese "classics" and the Arc de Triomphe re-registers its dominance over the autumn scene in Europe. John Sanderson, for many years Clerk of the Course at York, not for nothing regarded as the Ascot of the North - and he the architect - is just the man to do a Jones and correct the image of the Leger as nothing but a trial race for future Gold Cups. The benefit of there being three tracks involved (Newmarket and Epsom as well as Doncaster) makes a bonus Triple Crown the more probable if they can all get together. Should the fillies' "triple" also be included, then we wouldn't need such long memories: it's only 13 years since the unforgettable Oh So Sharp. What does fate hold in store for Nedawi, this year's Leger winner? Is he "just" a stayer. The lasting memory of his victory was how green he was - he jinked off a true line inside the distance and looked most bemused by the occasion - and how it seems to be the fashion now for late maturing, lightly raced animals to win the Classics: like High-Rise before his Derby, Nedawi had had had only three races prior to his Classic victory and all in his Classic year. Nedawi foiled the brave front-running High And Low by only half a length, thanks to his high jinks, with Derby fourth Sunshine Street two-and-a-half lengths back in third. Fourth was Sadian - the Epsom seventh - who had been switched from Henry Cecil to John Dunlop earlier in the summer and was supplemented for the big race. For me, the greatest delight was to see John Reid winning his first Leger: the shy Scotsman is the most reliable jockey for my money - and I do mean carrying my money! Reid was substitute for Frankie Dettori who was due to ride Swain 20 minutes later in the Irish Champion Stakes at Leopardstown. In the defeat of a horse called High And Low, so aptly describing the racing scene and John's recent career, Reid robbed Jimmy Fortune, his replacement for the top rides on the Robert Sangster horses.