Five Dubai Duty Free-sponsored races with prize money totalling GBP 350,000 on day two of the Dubai Duty Free International Weekend stage at Newbury Racecourse on Saturday, 21 September, were spearheaded by the ‘100,000 Group 2 Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes for two-year olds. It was the 51st running of the race commemorating the great Mill Reef, trained locally at Kingsclere by Ian Balding.
Mill Reef was Horse of the Year 1971 when he won the Derby, Eclipse Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe among many other triumphs. In recent years the race run in his name has seen the racing careers of such as Ribchester, Harry Angel, Kessaar and Dark Angel take off, before becoming top class stallions.
Richard Fahey who came down from the north to win the Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes in 2015 with Ribchester and 2013 with Supplicant, fielded Powerful Glory in the colours of Dubai Racing Club Chairman Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum. He was bought at the Breeze-Up Sales and after his debut win in August and the trainer expressed his gratitude that Sheikh Rashid had granted him liberty to “Do what you want with him.”
“So this was always the target,” said Philip Robinson, the former top jockey representing the owner. “Yes, he was favourite but he hated the ground. His extra class got him home,” said Robinson of the unbeaten colt who only imposed on the field’s outsider La Bellota in the last hundred yards, but a bright future undoubtedly lies ahead of him.
The romance of racing exceeds mere figures and statistics. Twelve’year-old Not So Sleepy, twice the age of any of his opposition in the GBP 70,000 Dubai Duty Free Autumn Cup Handicap, proceeded to make all the running to repeat his victory of last year. Early in the morning the heavens had opened, as they did last year, to provide Not So Sleepy’s favourite going but it was his courage and Tom Marquand’s perseverance that saw him home.
It was the result everyone bar his rivals wanted. There was a spontaneous round of applause from an appreciative audience when Not So Sleepy returned to the winner’s circle.
“He works on his own at home and they left him alone today,” said his trainer Hughie Morrison, sticking to last year’s script. “You know, he ran here as a two-year-old back in 2014, and finished last. He’s run respectably in the Champion Hurdle. It’s character horses like Not So Sleepy that make this game what it is. He pleases himself. We thought we should have retired him three or four years ago, and he said ‘no’.”
