Well, well, well. Against all the odds, 2021 turned out to be quite a year for British-trained horses abroad. Not just a good year, but an all-time record year, in terms of money earned at least.
From mid-November onwards, it was a nail-biter to see if the previous best of £29.7 million (set in 2018) could be exceeded. Then, in Hong Kong on December 12, the exploits of Pyledriver (second to Glory Vase in the HK Vase) and Dubai Honour (fourth behind Loves Only You in the HK Cup) at Sha Tin, a venue where the Brits had made little impact since 2012, raked in over £577,000 to ensure that a new benchmark would be set.
BRITISH TRAINERS’ EARNINGS OVERSEAS 2021
Furthermore, 11 days later the £30 million barrier was breached when Charlie Fellowes pulled off a remarkable 1-2-3 in Qatar’s Al Rayyan Stakes with three horses that he had bought at the sales less than two months earlier, all bound for Qatari trainers but having their one-and-only outing for their temporary Newmarket-based handler.
Stan Moore put a full stop on the tally with the £10,000 his Magical Wish pocketed for finishing second in the Al Dana Cup in Bahrain on New Year’s Eve itself, and a new high of £30,100,716 earned over the previous 12 months was inscribed in the record books.
The onset of post-Brexit travel regulations? No problem. A global pandemic making international travel more difficult? No problem. Owners being anxious about foreign forays in uncertain times? No problem.
All three of these factors did play a role in just 654 British horses taking part in races staged outside their homeland, which represents a huge drop from the four-figure totals registered in each of the six years prior to the onset of Covid.
Brexit meant that the biggest hits came in the number of equine exports to France and Ireland. Cross-Channel challengers came to just 370, having regularly topped the 500-mark pre-pandemic despite a big increase in jumps runners.
And the number of raids on Irish races was a paltry 83, way down on the average of the previous two decades of 231.
The Saudi factor
Yet, somehow, an annus mirabilis was still enjoyed. The main reason, of course, is the inauguration of the world’s richest race, the Saudi Cup, and Mishriff’s triumph there.
Up until 2020, no horse had even set foot in the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia under the auspices of a British trainer. Thanks to Mishriff’s downing of Charlatan and Knicks Go plus a handful of other lucrative placed efforts under the Riyadh floodlights, two years later Saudi Arabia was the single biggest patron of British overseas booty, contributing £8.135 million.
Five weeks on and Mishriff doubled up in the Dubai Sheema Classic just a few minutes after his stablemate, Lord North, had lifted the Dubai Turf, meaning that John and Thady Gosden were already assured of being the top British trainers abroad – their final total came to a remarkable £12.2 million.
TOP 20 BRITISH TRAINERS BY 2021 OVERSEAS EARNINGS
But there were numerous other fantastic foreign foragers. Over and above his triumphs in the Irish Derby and Grand Prix de Paris with Hurricane Lane, Charlie Appleby enjoyed a sensational North American campaign, winning eight of the ten G1s he contested there, not to mention the Jockey Club Derby at Belmont, which has G1 prize money if not status.
Ralph Beckett had an October Longchamp love affair, annexing three G1s courtesy of Angel Bleu and Scope. And dear old Lord Glitters, at the age of eight, took part in five intercontinental contests, winning three and contributing over half a million pounds to the coffers of the David O’Meara yard.
Over jumps, Paul Nicholls won with all three of his Irish raiders, including two in G1 events, while Sophie Leech made so many visits to France from her Gloucestershire base that she had 70 runners there, accumulating £300,000 in the process.
The bottom line is, with less than 65 per cent of the foreign runners that they have been sending out in recent years, British trainers managed to accrue a record amount of overseas prize money during 2021. That is some achievement.