Search for Yorkshire ‘wonder horse’ gets underway with £100,000 prize

The novel bonus has been announced by Go Racing in Yorkshire as part of a new incentive to encourage owners and trainers to support the county’s racecourses.

The search to discover a ‘Yorkshire Wonder Horse’ is supported by leading equine suppliers McIvors and McClarrons Sport.

In recent times, the durable dual purpose horse Gralmano, trained at Hambleton by Kevin Ryan, won at eight of the county’s tracks between 1999 and 2003.

The sequence started at Redcar and included a victory at York’s Dante meeting in May 2002 before the horse got the better of Sue Smith’s Royal Emperor in the West Yorkshire Hurdle at Wetherby.

Gralmano’s one omission was Beverley where the horse, owned by Coleorton Moor Racing, could only finish runner up in June 2000 in his sole appearance at the Westwood track where its tight configuration is unsuited to National Hunt horses.

However all nine of the county’s tracks do now stage Flat fixtures – including Wetherby which was a jumps-only track until relatively recently.

John Sanderson, acting chairman of Go Racing In Yorkshire, hopes the initiative will generate additional interest in the sport.

“This feat has not been achieved in Yorkshire before and while it’s a significant challenge, we believe this is possible,” he explained.

“In 2020, Main Point, trained by David Pipe, won at nine different courses in 11 months. £100,000 is a great incentive to encourage owners and trainers to run their horses at the Yorkshire tracks.

“We are thrilled to launch this exciting and unique initiative where hopefully a remarkable sporting story will unfold across nine racecourses resulting in the crowning of the first Yorkshire Wonder Horse.”

Meanwhile Jason McIvor, of www.mcivors.co.uk, said: “We’re celebrating our 50th year in business and historically, the racing community, along with agriculture, has played a significant role in our success.

“This is a great opportunity to be able to give something back to an industry that has been integral to our growth and we’re thrilled to be part of it.”

Racing bonus schemes can be popular.

When the WH Stayers’ Million bonus was unveiled in 2018 for any ‘staying horse’ that won one of four races in May – including the Yorkshire Cup – followed by the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot, the Goodwood Cup and the Lonsdale Cup at York’s Ebor Festival, the £1m prize was duly won by the John Gosden-trained Stradivarius in successive years, with many of the wins under the mercurcial Frankie Dettori.

In addition to the £100,000 bonus, McClarrons Sport, who brokered the deal, McIvors and Go Racing In Yorkshire will combine to donate £5,000 to Racing Welfare should the challenge be completed.

Tom Landale of McClarrons Sport said: “We are delighted to have been able to facilitate the Yorkshire Wonder Horse bonus.

“McClarrons Sport specialise in the insurance of sports related bonuses and it’s great to be able to support a creative performance bonus mechanism covering every racecourse in our home county.

“Our experience tells us that this will be hard to achieve but it’s not impossible and we hope to see the bonus won.”

North Yorkshire trainers have already given their backing to the initiative. “This is something that all owners can target and makes a large prize pot available for all abilities of horses,” said Ruth Carr who trains at Stillington.

“We just need to find the right races for them. Hopefully we’ve got something progressive enough in the yard to tick off the nine courses before next December.”

Meanwhile Malton trainer, Nigel Tinkler, is keen to target the bonus. “Anything that encourages people to run their horses in Yorkshire and racegoers to attend meetings has got to be a good thing,” he said.

“I think this is a great initiative and we’ll definitely be targeting it. It will probably suit a middle-distance horse and we may have to alter our training methods a little to encourage our horses to stay a bit further.”

Meanwhile Tinkler was delighted with Acklam Express’s comeback effort at Meydan on Friday and is looking forward to running him twice more at the Dubai course next month.

The four-year-old only found the race-fit Lazuli too good by a length and a half in the Blue Point Sprint, on his first start for 248 days.

Acklam Express had finished second to Equilateral in that Group Two race 12 months ago and will continue to follow the same route as in 2021 by going for the Group Three Nad Al Sheba Turf Sprint on Super Saturday (March 5) followed by the Al Quoz Sprint on World Cup night three weeks later.

He was third in both contests last year.

“He ran very nicely. I couldn’t be more pleased and he stays out there now. He’s going to run on Super Saturday and then World Cup night, all being well,” said Tinkler. “He’s bucking and squealing so we’re happy.”

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