On which horse did Oisin Murphy win the Ayr Gold Cup?
Cork-born Oisin Murphy, 29, has risen to the pinnacle of his sport, winning the British Flat Jockeys’ Championship three years running, in 2019, 2020 and 2021. Indeed, at the time of writing, he leads the 2024 championship with 141 winners, 46 ahead of his nearest rival, Rossa Ryan, so a fourth jockeys’ title appears a formality. However, he has had a chequered career, including a chastening 14-month ban, imposed by the British Horseracing Authority (BHA), after a string of disciplinary offences.
In 2012, at the age of 17, Murphy joined the famed apprentice jockeys’ academy at Park House Stables in Kingsclere, near Newbury, Berkshire, under the patronage of Andrew Balding. He made an almost immediate impact, riding 41 winners in his inaugural season, 2013, and another 76 in 2014, on his way to becoming Champion Apprentice.
However, it was on September 21, 2013, when, as a 5lb claimer, he won the Ayr Gold Cup on Highland Colori, trained by Balding, that Murphy attracted the attention of the wider racing public. Balding had stated beforehand that the teenage jockey would not be riding in races worth less than £6,000, in an effort to preserve his claim. His decision appeared justified because on that same afternoon, Murphy, who was making his first visit to Scotland, went on to ride three more winners for a high-profile 9,260/1 four-timer. On a memorable day north of the border, he also won on Leviate, trained by John Quinn, Silver Rime, trained by Linda Perrat, and Cockney Sparrow, alos trained by Quinn.
In the exhilarating world of thoroughbred racing, certain names echo through the years, marking the rise of equine champions. Seize The Grey, a striking grey colt born in 2021, is one such name. With a lineage that boasts elite ancestry and a promising career that includes impressive wins, this racehorse is quickly becoming a crowd favourite in the racing community.
Run over a mile at Doncaster in late October and open to two-year-old colts and fillies, but not geldings, the Futurity Trophy Stakes has the distinction of being the final Group 1 race of the British Flat season. The race was inaugurated, as the Timeform Gold Cup, in 1961, and has been run, under various titles, including the Observer Gold Cup, the William Hill Futurity Stakes and the Racing Post Trophy, ever since. The Observer Gold Cup, as it was at the time, was granted Group 1 status following the birth of the European Pattern in 1971 and, sponsored once again by William Hill from 2024 onwards, remains a bona fide Classic trial.
Readers of a certain age may already be familiar with the exploits of Mill Reef, but, for the uninitiated, the son of former American Champion Two-Year-Old Never Bend remains the eighth highest-rated Flat horse in the history of Timeform, just ahead of the likes of Shergar, Dancing Brave and Sea The Stars. Bred and owned by Paul Mellon, trained by Ian Balding at Park House Stables in Kingsclere, near Newbury, Berkshire and ridden throughout his career by Geoff Lewis, Mill Reef won twelve of his fourteen races between 1970 and 1972 and finished second in the other two, amassing the modern equivalent of approximately £3.5 million in prize money.