Royal Ascot Memories: Yeats

Aidan O'Brien has trained many very special horses, champions whose toughness and determination have shone out as brightly as their class. The current globe-trotter Highland Reel (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}) follows in the footsteps of not only his own sire but also the likes of Giant's Causeway, Rock Of Gibraltar (Ire) and High Chaparral (Ire), as well as triple Champion Hurdler Istabraq (Sadler's Wells). One horse, though, deserves to stand supreme even among this parade of heroes: Yeats (Ire) (Sadler's Wells), who topped the bill at Royal Ascot four years running.

Royal Ascot ranks as Great Britain's premier race-meeting. Most would describe it as Europe's premier race-meeting. Many would call it the best in the world. Its heroes through the ages represent a 'who's who' of great horses of history, and the Gold Cup has always been its flagship race. It takes a very special horse to run up a sequence in any race at the meeting; to do so in the Gold Cup is the hardest thing of all.

First run in 1807, the Gold Cup has only ever produced 20 dual winners, starting with Lord Cavendish's Bizarre (GB), who scored in 1824 and '25. Of these 20 dual winners, only two have gone on to win it again. Sagaro secured his place in history as its first triple winner when strolling home under Lester Piggott in 1977. Thirty-two years later, Yeats re-wrote the history-books when, aged eight, he landed the great race for the fourth consecutive year. One can rarely say, 'never again,' but it is hard to see this wonderful feat ever being repeated.

Yeats's four-timer does not represent the longest winning streak in Ascot history. In 1934, Brown Jack (GB) set a record which we can surely say will never be broken, scoring at the meeting for the seventh successive year. He won the Ascot S. in 1928 before taking the Queen Alexandra S. in each of the next six years. In 1933, “he was cheered the whole way up the straight.” In 1934, as The Times reported the following day, “Never have such scenes been witnessed. Everyone flocked from the Royal Enclosure; they rushed from the lawns and Tattersall's Ring, they arrived through the famous tunnel breathless in the paddock…and when he reached the gates of his enclosure, which he was entering for the sixth time after winning this race, he stopped and looked around. None could make him walk in until he was certain that everyone who wanted to see him go in was present.” His rider, ten-time champion jockey Steve Donoghue, recalled, “Never will I forget the roar of the crowd as long as I live: Ascot or no Ascot they went mad…all my six Derbys faded before the reception that was awaiting Jack and myself as we set out to return to weigh-in. I don't think I was ever so happy in my life.”

While Brown Jack's Ascot sequence was three years longer than Yeats's, that tells only half the story. The Ascot S. (a handicap) and the Queen Alexandra S. (run at weight-for-age plus penalties) are big races, but their status pales into insignificance alongside that of the Gold Cup, whose winner each year generally ranks as the undisputed champion of the staying ranks. Brown Jack was almost certainly good enough to win the Gold Cup, but never ran in it for one simple reason: he was a gelding, and thus ineligible to take part. And therein lies the added dimension of Aidan O'Brien's feat in masterminding Yeats's achievements: keeping a gelding sound and willing for years on end is hard enough, but doing the same with a mature stallion is harder still.

Yeats's longevity as a racehorse did not stem from a late or gentle introduction to racing. He was a good winner at The Curragh as a 2-year-old, a dual group winner at three and a Group 1 winner at four, all before he was belatedly reinvented as 'Cup horse' at the age of five. Having been an easy winner at The Curragh on debut as a 2-year-old in September of 2003, Yeats resumed the following spring with a 10-length triumph in the G3 Ballysax S. over 10 furlongs at Leopardstown. Three weeks later he went off the 1-5 favourite for the G2 Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial, and won again. He was a rock-solid favourite for the Derby–but then fate trod on his connections' dreams. A few days after the Derby Trial, O'Brien reported that the colt was showing signs of “recurring stiffness” in his hind quarters. There is only one Derby, and the trainer was clearly loath to admit defeat. However, three days before the great race the trainer finally bowed to the inevitable: the Derby favourite was scratched, and Yeats's season was over.

The road to the Classics (on either side of the Atlantic) is an attritional one. Likely Derby candidates who fall by the wayside never to be heard of again are seemingly a dime a dozen. For Yeats, though, his aborted Classic campaign proved to be merely the beginning. He bounced back as a 4-year-old, prompting thoughts of what might have been by taking the G1 Coronation Cup over the Derby course at Epsom. Come the end of the season, though, his career seemed (again) to be at a crossroads. As a well-bred and handsome Group 1 winner, Yeats had done enough to retire to stud, albeit not at the height of fashion. Alternatively, he could continue to contest the big 12-furlong weight-for-age races. There was, though, a third option, a 'wild card.' The big Cup races had gone out of fashion as the breeding community had turned its back on stayers but, even though Coolmore's fortunes are based on the commercial realities of the bloodstock world, the sporting option clearly appealed to John Magnier. The decision was taken that Yeats would go for Gold.

Over the next four seasons, Yeats proved himself one of the greatest and most popular heroes in Ascot's history. In 2006 he won the Gold Cup by four lengths under Kieren Fallon. In 2007 he scored by a length-and-a-half under Mick Kinane. In 2008 he and Johnny Murtagh slammed their rivals by five lengths. And in 2009 he and Murtagh justified favouritism by 3 1/2 lengths, thus triggering possibly the greatest outpouring of emotion seen on the Heath since Brown Jack's swansong 75 years previously.

During those four seasons Yeats ran 18 times, winning 11 races including the G2 Goodwood Cup in 2006, the G1 Irish St Leger in 2007, and the G2 Goodwood Cup and the G1 Prix Royal-Oak in 2008. His record, however, was not unblemished. He was a beaten odds-on favourite four times, most notably when tailed off in a listed race at Navan in his Gold Cup lead-up race in 2009. However, he bounced back from that poor run to take the Gold Cup seven weeks later, just as he had bounced back from his disappointments previously. Paradoxically, his tendency to put in the odd stinker merely added to his massive appeal: he was only human, fallible rather than invincible, but you could never, ever, ever write him off. To use a currently fashionable phrase, 'he wore his heart on his sleeve,' galloping his rivals into the ground with a stamina-packed display of overwhelming determination. Just as Steve Donoghue had adored Brown Jack, so did Johnny Murtagh come to revere Yeats.

“Yeats was a very special horse,” he said. “He really rose to the occasion. He loved coming out under the stand at Royal Ascot and the big crowd on the big day brought out the best in him. It was a powerful performance to get him back to Ascot each year in top shape: winning four Ascot Gold Cups is a tremendous credit to Aidan O Brien, the staff around him and, of course, to the horse himself.”

Bred by Barronstown Stud and Orpendale, and raced by Mrs John Magnier and Mrs David Nagle, Yeats retired with a record of 15 wins and four minor placings from 26 starts. He began covering at Coolmore in 2010 at the age of nine, but inevitably he has subsequently been moved across to join Coolmore's National Hunt roster at Castle Hyde. He is clearly one of the brightest stars of the jumps breeding firmament, notwithstanding that, from limited opportunities, he has shown himself to be a very capable sire for the flat too.

Yeats may well produce a National Hunt great, a winner of a Cheltenham Gold Cup or a Grand National. However, he is long odds-against to produce a son who can match his own supreme majesty, one who can hold the crowd in the palm of his hand as he himself did on those four glorious, unforgettable summer's afternoons when he reigned supreme as the King of Ascot.