Racing thrills among gloom
Equine stars have kept us entertained
Well that certainly was a year to forget.
A pandemic which led to lockdowns and seven months of racing behind closed doors at Ayr.
We lost the Coral Scottish Grand National, staged the QTS Ayr Gold Cup in front of a few owners and now can only hope that sometime in the spring we can welcome crowds back to watch racing.
But despite the adversity there were still some highlights to be had amongst the gloom and doom and I’d like to share with you my racing highlights of 2020 at Ayr Racecourse.
I’ll start with the strangest Ayr Gold Cup Festival ever staged. We had 22 thrilling races, saw some of the leading jockeys in the land riding some very talented horses and also witnessed one of the most exciting Gold Cups.
Newmarket trainer Willie Haggas rarely has a runner in the Gold Cup so when he declared his four year- old colt Nahaarr and booked Tom Marquand to ride eyebrows were raised. When the horse was gambled into 7- 2 favourite for the 24 runner handicap we sensed on track we could be in for something special and we weren’t disappointed.
Nahaarr was drawn in the middle of the field and after having his run checked on a few occasions was still well back in the pack with under two furlongs to run and then his class kicked.
With a turbo charged run he scythed through the field hitting the front less than 20 yards from the line and winning by half a length from Spanish City. It was the performance of a Group class horse and I can’t wait to see where Nahaarr goes next.
It will almost certainly be over six furlongs again as he has won four times from six attempts at the trip.
The same connections had earlier in the afternoon won the Doonside Cup with the brilliant Addeybb, the highest rated horse ever to run on the Flat at Ayr.
A month after that success he picked up the Group 1 middle distance race on Champion’s Day at Ascot.
The Festival was a landmark for two time champion jockey Paul Hanagan who rode his 100th winner at Ayr on the
Friday on Exceptional in the Listed Arran Scottish Fillies’ Sprint Stakes and then the following day rode Umm Kulthum to victory in Scotland’s only Group race the Firth Of Clyde Stakes.
Incidentally Paul landed his 2,000th career win later in the year.
On June 22, the first day racing returned to Ayr after lockdown, the speedy filly Que Amoro won the Listed EBF Land O’Burns Fillies’ Stakes with Paul Mulrennan in the plate.
She had three lengths to spare over American Lady and the time of 57.12 seconds for the five furlong dash was super fast.
I must also mention Mike Smith’s Glasses Up who continued his love affair with Ayr winning three times there over the summer and taking his number of wins at the track to six.
Over jumps in the absence of the Coral Scottish Grand National Festival my stand out memory would be the win of Nicky Richards young chaser Castle Rushen in November where he won by 26 lengths .
He has raced four times – all at Ayrand won three finishing second on his only defeat. He has a big future.