Guineas wasn’t a fluke.. horses like him are few and far between

ENGLAND can’t lift the World Cup without beating the likes of Brazil, Germany or Spain before the referee blows the final whistle in Moscow’s Luzhniki Stadium on July 15.

And Roger Teal knows Tip Two Win must down colts from racing’s huge stables – Aidan O’brien, John Gosden and Sir Michael Stoute – to emerge triumphant from the knockout stages of today’s featured St James’s Palace Stakes (4.20).

“We’re talking about Royal Ascot – it’s probably the hardest place to have a winner,” said Teal, an ardent Three Lions fan who trains a team of “about 30” horses at Great Shefford, five miles from Lambourn.

“The bookies and the press don’t think that Roger Teal is going to rock up the St James’s Palace Stakes.”

But the experts dismissed the grey son of Dark Angel’s chances in the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket last month.

Tip Two Win was allowed to start at 50-1, but beat all bar O’brien’s then unbeaten Saxon Warrior. A head behind in third was Masar, who four weeks later made history as Godolphin’s first Derby winner. Fifth-placed Roaring Lion ran third at Epsom.

“I said before the Guineas, ‘He won’t disgrace me,’” recalls Teal (left). “He should never have been a 50-1 shot. That was an insult.

“It was just to do with fashion. We don’t bang the winners in every day, but the fact is that we train a lower level of horses, and they’re harder races to win.

“But they shouldn’t have taken that against the horse, because he had done nothing wrong.”

Tip Two Win’s second triggered a conflict of emotions for Teal, who rode at the age of 12 at his mother’s pointto-point yard in Wales.

“The jubilation that we felt afterwards was amazing – God knows what it was like to win – but on the way home I remember looking at my wife Sue, and I said, “We’ve probably just had our best chance of winning a Classic – and we’ve finished second.’

“That was a bit of reality.