AROUND THE WORLD
Volume 1 | Week 3
🏆 TOMMY’S REPORT
Five stories from around the racing world, gathered by our young globe-trotter Finn and retold by Tommy.
🇯🇵 Japan
Jason Collett Is Feeling Right at Home
Young Finn reckons Australia keeps exporting more than wheat and wine these days. We seem to send jockeys everywhere too, and Jason Collett is proving he’s just as comfortable in Japan as he is back home.
Last weekend at Niigata he rode a lovely double, but it wasn’t just the wins that caught Finn’s eye.
His first winner, Toshin Magic, defeated Danon Dax, a colt out of the Australian mare Yankee Rose. Racing has a funny way of tying little knots together because Jason was the jockey who rode Yankee Rose to her first victories all those years ago.
Imagine that.
One chapter closes and another quietly opens on the other side of the world.
Jason wasn’t finished there either. He backed it up in the very next race aboard Spinning Globe, producing a commanding five-length victory that had plenty of the Japanese racing media talking.
Finn says you don’t need to win a Group 1 every weekend to make an impression. Sometimes two beautifully judged rides say just as much.
Another Aussie making friends wherever horses run.
🇬🇧 England
Kalpana Announces Herself
Every now and then racing reminds us that champions aren’t always the ones everyone expects.
The King George at Ascot is one of the world’s great races, and most eyes were fixed firmly on defending champion Calandagan.
Then along came Kalpana.
She produced a powerful finish to claim one of Britain’s biggest prizes and in doing so defeated a field packed with international stars from across Europe and beyond.
Finn tells me trainer Andrew Balding was understandably emotional afterwards. His late father, Ian Balding, won the very same race more than fifty years ago with the legendary Mill Reef.
There’s something rather special about that.
Different horses.
Different generation.
Same family.
Racing has a wonderful habit of passing the baton from one generation to the next, and this was one of those moments worth quietly smiling about.
🇮🇪 Ireland
A Young Rider’s Week to Remember
If young jockey Dan King ever forgets the last week of July, somebody should remind him.
Finn wandered into Galway expecting plenty of stories. He came away with one of the best.
Dan King won the famous Galway Plate on Wednesday.
Most riders would happily celebrate that for weeks.
Instead, he came back the very next day and won the equally famous Galway Hurdle.
The remarkable part?
It hadn’t been done for more than forty years.
The old racing folk over there couldn’t quite believe what they’d witnessed, and trainer Tony Martin spoke glowingly about the young rider afterwards.
Racing is always searching for its next star.
Perhaps Ireland has just found another one.
😂 Neigh Bother
Even the Racing Gods Have a Sense of Humour
Every stable has one of those seasons.
You feed them.
You work them.
You scratch your head wondering what else you can possibly do.
Irish trainer Joe Murphy hadn’t led in a winner for 282 days.
Then along came Pivotal Attack to finally break the drought.
Now, the victory was terrific…
…but it was Joe’s interview afterwards that had Finn laughing.
“Sometimes you’re left wondering if you’re praying to the right Gods.”
Then he compared it to taking a calf to market and coming home without enough money.
That’s racing.
One minute you’re wondering whether the game has forgotten you.
The next you’re back in the winner’s stall, smiling for every camera in sight.
Sometimes you’ve just got to keep turning up.
🇦🇺 Aussie Abroad
One Last Charge From Asfoora
Finn admitted he nearly got caught celebrating too early.
So did plenty of Australians.
Our wonderful mare Asfoora lined up at Goodwood for what looked set to be the final race of her remarkable career.
With the field split right across the famous straight course, Asfoora charged through along the rail side. For a few glorious seconds she looked home.
I reckon every Australian watching was already halfway out of the chair.
Then, over the final twenty or thirty metres, the horses racing down the middle of the track swept home and she was run down to finish fourth.
Trainer Henry Dwyer admitted afterwards he had “the left foot stomping”, convinced for a moment that she was about to pull off another famous overseas victory. He felt she had been left without cover too early and that the effort told over the final fifty metres.
It wasn’t quite the fairy-tale ending.
But perhaps it didn’t need to be.
Asfoora has already carried Australian racing with enormous pride across the world. She won at Royal Ascot, conquered Europe’s finest sprinters and earned the respect of racing fans wherever she travelled.
Fourth place won’t define her.
Courage will.
And what a wonderful mare she’s been.
“Asfoora didn’t need to win on Friday night to cement her place in Australian racing history. Royal Ascot, York, Longchamp… she’d already conquered some of the biggest sprint stages in the world. Goodwood wasn’t the ending we’d all hoped for, but it certainly didn’t diminish a remarkable international career.”
Until Next Week…
Well, that’s another notebook full.
Finn’s probably already packing another bag somewhere while I’m still trying to finish my cup of tea.
Wherever racing takes him next, we’ll keep saving him a chair here at the table.