MONGOLIANS WIN OVER THE WEST, ONE STEPPE AT A TIME
THE Mongolian pioneers, led by a romantic Buddhist called Enebish Ganbat, brought sparkle to Royal Ascot but got only one of their wishes. They managed to meet the Queen. A great admirer of the human form, only last week Ganbat went to pick flowers for a woman he smittenly described as the most perfect he had set eyes upon. It might have been impertinent to go that far with the Sovereign. He merely called her, respectfully, a very beautiful lady. Ganbat was here with his friends in the parade ring wearing their traditional dress of a deel (tunic), elaborate belts, brocade hats and welly-like shoes that are designed to be worn on either foot. Ganbat, born in Mongolia but now living in America, did not fulfil his dream in the King’s Stand Stakes, a five-furlong sprint in which the horse he trains, Mongolian Saturday, started at 16-1. So enamoured is Ganbat with his charge, the 20-1 winner of October’s Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint, that he called him ‘Champion’ from the moment he won his first race by 10 lengths. But he could do no better than ninth yesterday and his Frenchborn American jockey, Florent Geroux, said: ‘He broke sharply enough from the gate and was travelling well. I don’t know what happened then. When we came to the 200 mark he was flat.’ Not that the Mongolian intervention was entirely futile, given that they are trying to put their homeland’s opening market on the world map. Accompanying Ganbat was owner Ganbaatar Dagvadorj, the younger of two brothers who made their fortune in the early Eighties when Soviet communism faded out. They started out selling furs on the black market, ran fast-food franchises and now own a business conglomerate called Max Group. And here they are exporting Mongolian horsemanship that goes back to when Genghis Khan was criss-crossing the Steppes. But while their dreams must await fulfilment, there was joy in the Queen Anne Stakes for American project Tepin, owned by Robert Materson of California, trained by Mark Casse, and ridden by Julien Leparoux, a 32-year-old Frenchman having his first ride in Europe after moving to America to find success. Indeed, none of that triumvirate had participated at Royal Ascot prior to this week’s opening race on the rain-sodden ground. Tepin runs on drugs in America, where Lasix — a diuretic — is a permitted race-day medication. Here it is not and to win on a straight mile, alien to US thoroughbreds which race exclusively on left-handed ovals, and bravely holding off a late challenge from Belardo by half a length represented a worthwhile trip across the Atlantic. Casse said: ‘She is a great horse and she showed her greatness today. ‘There were a lot of things stacked against her but her greatness prevailed. I think I pulled a muscle watching. Luckily it was on my right-hand side. If it had been on the left I would have thought I was having a heart attack.’ But, fear not, we have not seen the last of that old charmer Ganbat. He and ‘Champion’ will take part in the Diamond Jubilee Stakes on Saturday and the July Cup at Newmarket.