Featuring Britain’s most significant Classic trials ahead of Epsom’s Derby and Oaks – plus three more high-class G2 events – the three-day Dante Festival at York is a hugely significant pointer to the season ahead. Julian Muscat reports
GB: There are several signposts to the Derby, yet none projects the route to Epsom quite like the Dante meeting at York.
The signature contest at this three-day fixture is the G2 Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Dante Stakes, won last year by the subsequent Derby winner Desert Crown, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, who has won the race a seven times alt
ogether - a record he shares with his longtime rival, the late Henry Cecil.
No other Derby trial has proved as fertile. Desert Crown was the 11th Dante winner to follow up at Epsom, while Workforce, the Dante runner-up in 2010, went one better in the blue riband. That’s why all eyes will gravitate towards York when the premier Derby trial is renewed on Thursday.
As Stoute prophesied in last year’s Derby preamble after Desert Crown had won at York: “If you win the Dante, you don’t have to improve much to win the Derby.”
With prize-money of £180,000 this year, the Dante is comfortably the most valuable of all the trials. It is also the last recognised trial in the sequence, which allows for inexperienced horses to take in an earlier race en route.
The race assumed a golden hue over a 13-year period from 1994, when five Dante winners followed up at Epsom, and the roll call of horses to complete the Dante/Derby double features some suitably illustrious Thoroughbreds.
However, the three-day Dante meeting is no one-race show – not least because it is a similar story with the Tattersalls Musidora Stakes, the highlight of the Dante meeting’s opening day on Wednesday.
This G3 prize for fillies is the only Oaks trial flaunting Pattern-race status. Like the Dante’s relationship with the Derby, the Musidora has come to be seen as the definitive trial for the Oaks at Epsom.
Newmarket trainer Michael Bell won the Derby with Motivator in 2005 and the Oaks with Sariska three years later. In each instance he used the York trials as his springboard.
“Once we decided to miss the 2,000 Guineas with Motivator we pointed him towards the Dante,” Bell reflects. “I love Chester but you can be very unlucky there. I also didn’t want Motivator to run down the hill at Lingfield before the Derby, so we locked on to the Dante early on as our preferred route.
“The Knavesmire is a very fair track with few hard-luck stories, which makes the Dante the best trial in my opinion,” Bell adds. “The timing is also ideal if you are Derby-bound. It is where trainers who have the ante-post Derby favourite (as Motivator was) are increasingly playing their hand of late.”
Motivator advanced from his 1½-length Dante victory to win the Derby by an eased-down five lengths. He earned rave reviews in the process – as did Sariska after her Oaks triumph. Much the same thought process governed Bell’s decision to prep Sariska in the Musidora.
“It mattered to us that the Musidora is a Group race, while the other Oaks trials are Listed races,” Bell recalled. “It makes a big difference for fillies. That’s why I think the Musidora is traditionally the strongest Oaks trial.”
All told, seven Musidora winners have followed up at Epsom. It would probably have been eight had Emily Upjohn, last year’s winner, not fluffed the Oaks start before failing by a short-head to overhaul Tuesday in a driving finish. However, the double was competed the previous year, when Snowfall scored by 3¾ lengths at York and a staggering 22 lengths in the Oaks.
The relevance of York’s trials to Epsom is what heightens the sense of expectation among racing afficionados. But there’s more to the Dante meeting than the blossoming of three-year-old talent. There are three further Pattern races – all G2 – at a fixture where every race is worth at least £25,000.
And then there’s the unique ambience of York racecourse in spring. Unlike the vibrant Ebor Festival in mid-August, where merriment comes intertwined with melancholy at the imminent passing of summer, the Dante meeting signifies that the entire Flat season lies ahead.
“Lots of people I know tell me that the Dante is their favourite meeting of the year,” says William Derby, York’s chief executive and clerk of the course. “It’s not as busy as our summer Saturdays or the Ebor meeting but it attracts plenty of quality horses. It is one for the racing enthusiast.”
For older horses two longstanding Pattern races, the 14-furlong Boodles Yorkshire Cup and the six-furlong 1895 Duke Of York Clipper Stakes, are complimented by the Al Basti Equiworld Dubai Middleton Stakes over an extended 10 furlongs. The natural stepping stone for horses contesting these races is Royal Ascot.
Three-time Yorkshire Cup winner Stradivarius often made his seasonal reappearance in that race, which is worth £180,000
this year, while last year’s sprint sensation Highfield Princess did likewise in the Duke Of York Stakes, run this time for £145,000.
Racegoers can savour all this while indulging themselves. No front-line British racecourse can match York’s pricing of house champagne at £40 per bottle, or its “champagne of the meeting” at under £50.
Food menus and snacks have been recalibrated in a year when the racecourse adopts its strategy for environmental sustainability, Green Knavesmire 300, which aims to achieve net-zero carbon emissions by 2040. And a new feature is the ‘Flying Frankie’, a cask ale pub backed by local brewers Theakston to commemorate Frankie Dettori’s final year in the saddle.
These multi-faceted attractions are not lost on Bell. “York does a fantastic job all round, be it improvements to the track, prize-money levels, race programming and owner and trainer liaison,” he says. “It is an example of a very well-run racecourse and I much enjoy having runners there.”
For all that, the quality of the Classic trails is what defines York in May. The Dante, inaugurated in 1958, commemorates the northern-trained horse of that name who won the wartime Derby at Newmarket in 1945.
“The Dante has always been part of the fabric but it took off as a trial from 1978, when Shirley Heights won it before going on to win at Epsom,” says Derby. “Then Shahrastani and Reference Point did the Dante/Derby double in consecutive years [1986 and 1987], when the race became a clear pathway to Epsom.
“We boosted the Dante’s prize-money early in the new millennium, when three horses in four years did the double, and it now stands out as the most valuable Derby trial. Obviously we take huge pleasure when a Dante winner goes on to win the Derby, as Desert Crown did last year.”
From York’s perspective the standout year was 1997, when Benny The Dip’s Dante/Derby double was emulated by Reams Of Verse in the Musidora and Oaks. That might have happened again last year had Emily Upjohn not blown the Oaks start.
Ah well, you can’t have it all.
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