Defoe ready to score for Town Moor hero Atzeni
IF you want to know which horse will win this afternoon’s William Hill St Leger, best go to the very top and ask the King of Doncaster. The most influential figure in this corner of South Yorkshire is not a political oligarch, but 26- year- old Sardinian Andrea Atzeni.
Fellow jockey Frankie Dettori, also from Sardinia, may have built his castle at Ascot but Town Moor, the strip of land on the eastern side of Doncaster where racing has been staged since the 16th century, is Atzeni’s manor.
The historic Lincoln Handicap has eluded him so far, but Atzeni has won almost every other big race staged here in the last few years.
That includes the last four stagings of the Group One Racing Post Trophy — and on this day last year Atzeni won four races.
Atzeni has already won three times at this week’s St Leger meeting, and after successes with Kingston Hill in 2014 and Simple Verse in 2015, he goes into the £700,000 final Classic of the season not only defending a 100 per cent race record, but confident he can extend it on 9-2 third favourite Defoe.
Atzeni’s authority to comment arises not just because of his dominance of big races at the track. He has ridden three of his major rivals — favourite Crystal Ocean, Coronet and Stradivarius — and his experiences have only served to boost his confidence in his Roger Varian-trained mount.
Atzeni said: ‘Defoe has been brought along steadily. This race was always in the back of Roger’s mind after he won at Newbury (in May).
‘We know he’ll stay and handle the soft ground you can get at this time of the year. He goes there with a big chance.
‘Crystal Ocean is a very good horse. He might be the class horse in the race, but I am not sure he will get a mile and six furlongs on soft ground.
‘Stradivarius is an improving horse and Group One winner of the Goodwood Cup.
‘He stays well but ideally he would want better ground.
‘Coronet will like the ground. She is consistent and a Ribblesdale Stakes winner but she needs to step up again. Her last run was behind Enable (in the Yorkshire Oaks), but she was well behind!’
Defoe won the Geoffrey Freer Stakes at Newbury on his last run by threequarters of a length from older rivals.
Atzeni added: ‘Defoe had an easy race. There was no point in getting too serious. It was a prep race and we didn’t want to leave the Leger at Newbury.’
Atzeni rides Defoe for his boss, owner Sheik Mohammed Obaid.
When 2016 International Stakes winner Postponed, the pair’s top horse, retired this spring the jockey admitted he questioned where his big winners would come this year.
He need not have worried. His victory on Decorated Knight in last Saturday’s Irish Champion Stakes was his sixth Group One win of 2017.
That horse and Varian’s Nezwaah, winner of the Pretty Polly Stakes at the Curragh in May, look like being Atzeni’s first rides at the Breeders’ Cup in California in November.
The King of Doncaster has some fresh foreign lands to conquer, but first there’s some local business to deal with. Andrea Atzeni is sponsored by MS Amlin, a leading global insurer with specialists in bloodstock and sport horse insurance. www.amlinplus.com