The inner calm of Mikel Delzangles | Trainer Magazine | European Trainer Article Index

Jun 29

Jun 29 The inner calm of Mikel Delzangles

I’D BE silly to say that I don’t get stressed. Of course I do but there’s no point making a big fuss about things,” he says over breakfast at a friend’s home in Newmarket ahead of Hermival’s engagement in that afternoon’s 2,000 Guineas. Of course Delzangles had every reason to feel quietly confident: his record in British Classics up until then read one win from one run following Makfi’s 33-1 victory in the 2,000 Guineas of 2010. The result probably left those in the Shadwell operation, which bred the horse and sold him as an unraced back-end two-year-old, wishing they’d never heard of Mikel Delzangles, while the rest of the racing world outside France hastily scribbled his name in their notebooks as one to follow. But Delzangles’ equilibrium ahead of his second Guineas assault is not born of past success, according to his American-born wife Ann, who says: “He was exactly the same before Makfi ran in the Guineas. That morning he had disappeared upstairs and when I went to see what he was doing I found him asleep. He’s so amazingly calm.” Along with Hermival, Delzangles took to Newmarket his diminutive six-year-old horse Dunaden, the €1,500 yearling purchase whom Delzangles inherited on the move of his friend Richard Gibson from France to Hong Kong, and who is now known the world over following back-to-back wins in the Melbourne Cup and Hong Kong Vase. That triumphant spell at the end of last year helped to boost Dunaden’s current career earnings to £3,343,470. After our interview was concluded, both horses finished third in their respective Newmarket races – Hermival coming home best of those racing on the far rails in a split- field Guineas and Dunaden staying on dourly under a 5lb penalty in the Group 2 Jockey Club Stakes on his first run back from a much deserved spell. It’s unlikely, though, that we’ve heard the last of either of them for this season and the same can be said for their owners. While Dunaden runs in the increasingly familiar yellow and blue-starred silks of Sheikh Fahad Al-Thani’s Pearl Bloodstock, a 51 percent stake in Hermival was bought pre-Guineas by his uncle, Sheikh Abdullah Bin Khalifa Al- Thani. The Qatari royal family has made a dramatic impact on European racing in the last few years, with the two-day Guineas meeting at Newmarket carrying their financial backing under a variety of guises. The QIPCO 2,000 Guineas heralded the start of the second British Champions’ Series, sponsored in its entirety by Sheikh Fahad Al-Thani and his brothers under the same banner, while Qatar Bloodstock, the breeding wing of the Al-Thani family, lent its name to the Jockey Club Stakes. The most familiar of the titles, however, is undoubtedly Pearl Bloodstock, which, even in its fledgling days, has already enjoyed extraordinary success. Ger Lyons gave Sheikh Fahad his first Group 1 winner with the juvenile filly Lightening Pearl in last year’s Cheveley Park Stakes but Delzangles cranked the excitement up by several notches with his handling of Dunaden, who was bought privately for the sheikh in October 2010. Delzangles says: “Dunaden came to me when Richard Gibson stopped training [here]. He’d been bought as a handicapper really but he had already won a Listed race for Richard and he just kept improving.” The son of Nicobar won the Group 3 Prix de Barbeville on his first start for his new stable on April 30 last year followed by a low-key domestic preparation for the world’s biggest staying race. “I still can’t believe that it works, taking horses all the way to Australia,” says his trainer. “It’s such a big journey for them and you have to admire how they cope with it. “Dunaden’s a very easy horse though. He does no less and no more than he needs to and he only lost a few kilos when he was travelling.” While Dunaden’s longer-range 2012 target could be the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe on home soil in October, Hermival may aim to improve on his Classic placing with a tilt at the Irish 2,000 Guineas, the race won by his sire Dubawi in 2005. Both horses could also be seen at Royal Ascot however, with the marathon Gold Cup a possibility for Dunaden. Collecting the cup from the Queen in her Diamond Jubilee year would surely be another item high on the racing wish list of his 22-year- old owner. It was at the Royal Meeting in 2005, during its one-year tenure at York, that Delzangles made his first successful international foray with the King’s Stand Stakes winner Chineur. Having spent two years from 1989 working for the late Malton-based jumps trainer Jimmy FitzGerald, it was a return to familiar territory for Delzangles, who says: “Chineur was my first really good horse and it was lovely winning at Royal Ascot. It was especially good to go back to York as I knew it pretty well and enjoyed my time there.” The sprinter ran in the colours of the trainer’s godmother, the Marquesa de Moratalla, more readily associated with good French jumpers but happy to support the young Delzangles in the early days of his training career. In fact, when he started out in his first full season with just six horses at his disposal, the Marquesa was also owner of the best of these, Saratan, who gave the trainer his principal success at Deauville in August 2001. The Aga Khan-bred son of Tirol would go on to secure a hat-trick of competitive ‘tierce’ handicaps the following year before landing the Group 3 Prix du Palais- Royal in May 2003. The owner/trainer combination struck again when Delzangles landed his first Group 1 victory, this time with Corre Caminos, an early top-flight scorer for Montjeu in the 2006 Prix Ganay. Born in Biarritz in the south of France, “Australia was fantastic in every way but the build-up to the race and the interest in it was so intense” Mikel Delzangles Delzangles, now 41, has seen his string grow from single figures to the current tally of 140 in just over a decade. The ten years prior to that, though interspersed with National Service, were spent productively, working at the right hand of France’s pre-eminent trainer Alain de Royer-Dupre, whom Delzangles emulated by winning the Geelong Cup and Melbourne Cup the year after his former boss had completed the double with Americain. “Of course that was a fantastic place to learn,” he says. “You learn different things from different people but in the end you have to develop your own method.” His particular method has drawn plenty of admirers, not least de Royer-Dupre’s major patron, the Aga Khan, who first sent a batch of ten horses to Delzangles in January 2008. The owner/breeder’s faith was rewarded when the trainer sent out Shalanaya to win the Prix de l’Opera on ‘Arc’ day in 2009, and he has a live Derby candidate with the trainer this year in the unbeaten Kesampour, who won the Group 2 Prix Greffulhe at Saint-Cloud while Delzangles was on duty in Newmarket for the 2,000 Guineas. The Aga Khan is not the only major player on Delzangles’ books as the trainer also enjoys the support of the increasingly ubiquitous Gérard Augustin-Normand, who remains the co-owner of Hermival along with a number of other horses in the stable, and, of course, Sheikh Fahad and his family (see panel). Despite a desire to stay close to his roots in Chantilly with Ann and their three young daughters Olivia, four, and 18-month-old twins Charlotte and Alexandra, Delzangles has had to adopt a somewhat nomadic lifestyle in pursuit of his runners around the world. He has also had to endure increased probing from the racing media. “I only ever wanted to train in either England or France, nowhere else,” he says. “Australia was fantastic in every way but the build-up to the race and the interest in it was so intense. It was like being in a dream really. It’s not necessarily something I enjoy [being in the limelight] but I felt I couldn’t refuse the Australians anything, they were so hospitable. “It’s difficult to compare the big races around the world. The 2,000 Guineas was my first Classic so nothing can compare to that but the Melbourne Cup is a legendary race.” Whether or not Dunaden returns to Melbourne, Delzangles has another potential candidate for the race in recent Pearl Bloodstock purchase Vadamar. He says: “It would be nice to go back to Australia with Dunaden but we’ll see how the first half of the season goes for him here. He had a holiday for a month after Hong Kong but he’s back into his routine now. He’s very straightforward, he doesn’t stress, and he knows what he has to do.” Sounds rather like his trainer.

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THIS ARTICLE FIRST APPEARED IN - EUROPEAN TRAINER - ISSUE 38

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