How Fox Chapel Became Royal Ascot's First 100/1 Winner
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Rain changed everything at Royal Ascot in 1990. It was all going swimmingly for punters and connections alike until Thursday’s downpours that led to the meeting’s first ever 100/1 winner.
A day earlier, Pontenuovo had hinted at shocks to come when becoming the third Royal Ascot winner in history to score at odds of 50/1 - the biggest price of any winner at the Royal meeting since horse racing betting records began. The five-year-old was gifted bottom weight in the Hunt Cup, bounced out of stall 29 of 32 and never saw another rival.
He proved his 50/1 front-running win no fluke by winning twice more at Ascot that season - although never again at such long odds. Those present chalked him down as a "David Elsworth plot done well", and merrily lumped on the next two favourites, who readily obliged. Normal service at Royal Ascot had resumed.
However, by Thursday afternoon the ground had changed from firm to good to soft. By Friday afternoon the notion normal service had resumed took a turn after 50/1 shot Ile De Nisky chased home fellow 50/1 chance Assatis in the Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes. The 4/5f favourite in that race was Old Vic (no less), who was beaten 10 lengths into third.
Betting slips now piled high on Ascot’s muddied lawns, with bookies doing away with umbrellas to revel in the deluge bulging their sacks. As analysts scratched their heads, the concept of no-hoper evaporated into the clouds and down came Fox Chapel.
Why Was Fox Chapel Even Running at Royal Ascot?
“1990 was the year before I lost my claim,” remembers jockey Gary Hind. “I was doing well as an apprentice and I was really busy. The numbers game is a bit different now, but I think that season I ended up having 30 winners, which was alright.
“I was with Reg Hollinshead, who was the person to go to to be an apprentice or get an apprentice, and because of that, I was established as the go-to apprentice of the time. I got the ride on Fox Chapel the day before.”
Trained by Richard Hannon Sr., Fox Chapel was a three-year-old gelding who had won a three-runner maiden at Salisbury the previous summer. In his three runs since he’d beaten a total of six horses home, and thus landed almost bottom weight in the Britannia Handicap - which Hind couldn’t actually do, putting up 5lb overweight.
Famous Fox Chapel emerged victorious at 100/1 with Gary Hind on board
Fox Chapel’s owner Tony Budge was Britain’s second largest owner at the time, nestled behind the mighty Robert Sangster, and was instrumental in the rise of trainer Hannon’s own empire. At that exact moment, they were reeling from the recent successes of their star Rock City, who had won the Group 2 Gimcrack Stakes the previous season. He followed that up with fourth in the 2,000 Guineas, becoming Budge’s horse of a lifetime in the process.
On the Tuesday before 'Fox Chapel Friday', Rock City had been a close second in the Group 1 Prince Of Wales’s Stakes. Budge was on cloud nine and didn’t want to leave Royal Ascot just yet.
When Fox Chapel crept into the bottom of the Britannia field, he couldn't resist being an owner at Ascot one more day. That’s all he wanted. There were no expectations that Fox Chapel would run than his odds of 100/1 suggested, and perhaps that’s why he did.
'Royal Ascot Was Where Other People Rode'
“At the time, Royal Ascot felt like a place where other people should be, and were, winning,” says Hind. “It always seemed to me that jockeys were far more high profile there in my eyes. It’s Frankie Dettori now, but in those days it was Steve Cauthens, Willie Carsons, Walter Swinburns - god rest him - Pat Edderys, and you were really respectful of them. It felt like I should be somewhere else.
“So there I am in the stalls, beside me in the gate is Paul Eddery, and I’m complaining like a spoilt brat that I should be at Catterick. I must have told that story how many times that day because that’s me, rabbiting on.”
He adds: “I think I was originally going to Catterick for a full book of rides, so I was a bit disappointed, ironically, to be going to Ascot for a no-hoper - which it wasn’t in the end. But hindsight is a marvelous thing.”
Eddery was on board Mazag, donning the famous blue and white of Maktoum Al Maktoum for Sir Michael Stoute. He was a maiden, but a Stoute-trained maiden in a Royal Ascot handicap, and thus priced at odds of 7/1. Eddery took over from legendary stable jockey Walter Swinburn, who could not do the low weight of 8st 3lb. His brother, Pat, had already had a double that day. Barely an hour previously he’d won the Wokingham Handicap on Knight Of Mercy for Hannon, which in itself was an indication that Fox Chapel should not be 100/1.
The 100/1 Winning Gameplan
Richard Hannon Sr. was massively on the rise in 1990. He had just won his first British Classic after Tirol landed the 2,000 Guineas - and was dominating the handicaps at Royal Ascot that June.
Before that fateful Britannia, Hannon had saddled the winner of the King George V and the Wokingham. His only other handicap runner that week finishing second in the Bessborough. His winners had scored at odds of 20/1 and 16/1, but that only made it all the more strange that his three Britannia starters lined up at 20/1, 50/1 and 100/1 in the market.
Brian Rouse, who had ridden Lift And Load to win the King George V, got the ride on the most fancied, Petipa, a grey colt successful in a nursery at York last season. Renowned lightweight jockey Nicky Carlisle landed 50/1 Almaghrib under 7st 9lb, and apprentice Gary Hind was called up for Fox Chapel, cantering to the start on a postage stamp for a saddle, his mount 1lb out of the handicap and carrying 5lb overweight at 7st 7lb.
Huge crowds flocked to Royal Ascot in the 90s
“It had rained, the ground was softish and everybody playing jockeys went up the stands rail,” remembers Hind. “Me, carefree - I probably hadn’t been given many orders - I just went, ‘sod that, I ain’t deviating off my line’. I remember just floating up the middle, and I won.”
He adds: “I remember it sinking in on the way home. Imagine a lot of horses all being on top of each other under the stands rail, there were a few hard luck stories, apparently. I went A to B, plodded on up the middle, and won in a blur really.”
It was Hind’s first Royal Ascot winner, but there was no fanfare back then. It wasn’t televised, the crowd had begun ebbing after the King’s Stand Stakes, and the jockeys' room had richer backs to slap than Hind’s.
“At the end of the day, it was a handicap, and there had been nicer horses winning that day,” the jockey says. “For me though, that was a win; it was Royal Ascot. Things were different then, but you always realised where you were. Even though there’s a new grandstand now, the old ascot set up was unbelievable - it certainly beat Catterick.
He adds: “Fox Chapel was there to make up the numbers, but that was his Derby. It was really out the blue, yet he was a really good winner on the day. But that was all of his energy that day.”
It was enough for 9/2 favourite Mutah too, who finished 11th of the 26 runners under Steve Cauthen and never set foot on a racecourse again.
The Tale of North Song
Gary Hind went on to be Champion Jockey in the UAE, Bahrain and Qatar, and only rode one other Royal Ascot winner. Intriguingly, this came in the very same race six years later, on board a very different animal.
North Song was a three-year-old, trained and owned by John Gosden, who made his own luck. Costing 25,000 guineas as a foal, the son of Anshan went for merely 16,000 guineas just 11 months later.
Hind remembers that it was suspected the bay colt had Wobbler Syndrome, a condition affecting the spine that causes young thoroughbreds to develop neurological deficits in their limbs. It often presents simply as a gait abnormality - a deviation from normal walking - or can look like youthful clumsiness.
In 1995, the most common outcome for a horse with this debilitating condition was euthanasia, and so that was the deal for North Song, only he had other ideas.
Gary Hind went on to become a Champion Jockey abroad
“He was at Stanley House at the time, which is of course where Saeed Bin Suroor trains now,” says Hind. “Apparently he got loose as they were about to euthanise him, and as he galloped around, those watching said, ‘that horse ain’t no wobbler’.”
By now the owner had been banged up in America for tax evasion, and so North Song lined up at Royal Ascot in his trainer John Gosden’s colours. Due to his issues, which appear to have just been immaturity, he did not run aged two, beginning his racing career as a three-year-old with two seconds and a win in maiden company.
Frankie Dettori rode him on those first three runs but could not ride at Royal Ascot, handing the reins to Hind for his handicap debut. At the time, he boasted the perfect Britannia Handicap profile; a flashy maiden winner, proven over the 1m distance and lightly-raced.
He was sent off a well-backed 14/1, powering up the stands’ side to take the lead with a quarter mile to go before making Hind work hard for a neck victory, beating out the 13/2 joint-favorite Insatiable. North Song went on to be placed in four more valuable handicaps that year, earning in excess of £50,000 before being sold by Gosden for 80,000 guineas. He never raced again after that one year.
The Collapse of Tony Budge
For Tony Budge, Fox Chapel’s Royal Ascot win was among his last great days as a racehorse owner.
The following year was immense; a third Gimcrack victory with River Falls, the lucrative Goffs Million with Fair Crack, the July Stakes with Showbrook, and a famous Cheltenham Festival win over jumps with Smooth Escort in the 4m National Hunt Chase.
In 1992, Budge proved invaluable to Richard Hannon Sr. as he was crowned British Champion Flat Trainer for the first time. However, just as soon as that peak had been reached, it all came crashing down.
His company, A F Budge Ltd, which employed 800 people across the UK in aviation, engineering and mining, entered receivership that December owing £65million. With receivers finding that he had used investors money to purchase yachts, racehorses, armaments, and antique books, this spelled the end of his involvement in horse racing. It went into liquidation in 1994.
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As much as it had been a year to remember, 1992 also took place under the desperate cloud of Tony Murray’s death. Murray, an ex-jockey, had been Budge’s racing manager for years, buying many of the horses that made both him and Hannon so successful. It was said that health fears, divorce from his wife Jane and the death of his father and brother built a wall he could not climb over.
That January, aged just 41, he was found dead in his Wiltshire house by Hannon, having overdosed on alcohol and drugs. Budge himself succumbed to cancer in February 2010 aged 70.
What Happened to Fox Chapel?
Fox Chapel’s story peaked at Royal Ascot. That ground that day, and Hind’s carefree ride was the magic formula for victory, and it never materialised again - on the Flat.
Budge sent him to his jumps trainer Jimmy Fitzgerald in Malton, but as his business trouble caught up with him, he was forced to try to sell the plain bay with a 100/1 win to his name.
Having already won four hurdle races for him, Fitzgerald paid £6,100 for the then five-year-old in November 1992, and he won again for new owner K F Budge, before setting sail for Worcestershire to join trainer Rod Juckes.
“He was bought by the owner [Barry Hine] to run at the Cheltenham Festival,” remembers Rod’s son Alan, “He had just finished second in the Lanzarote Hurdle at Kempton, and he did run at Cheltenham [twice]. He ran quite well, but I think he was pitched a bit too high and he got a bit sour after that.
“Glen Tormey used to ride him and he used to be a real character in his races. He wouldn’t do much early on, but then would run on really strong at the end.”
In a sorry end, Fox Chapel was put down at Uttoxeter racecourse aged 10, having suffered irreparable damage to tendons on both his front legs.
Bred in Wiltshire at Catridge Farm Stud by Diana Joly, Fox Chapel amassed almost £40,000 in prize money during his 77-race career. He won seven times, and did so as favourite five times - he was only 100/1 once in his life and. Now knowing his mischievous character, it makes sense he chose that day to shine brightest.
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