It’s a summer afternoon and the missus shouts “get off your computer and watch the Sussex Stakes“. The Sussex Stakes is the champion race over a mile for younger (3 year old) and older (4 year old and more) male and female horses. For the experts, it is Goodwood’s top race and this year was an opportunity for an Arab owned but English trained horse to put things right in the world.
This isn’t just the Sussex States – it’s the “Visit Qatar Sussex Stakes“. The stakes are very high indeed!
Nothing was to go wrong, the owner’s race managers brought in a pacemaker at the cost of £70,000 to make sure of that and that pacemaker was and is called Qirat.
All the pretenders to the throne new they didn’t really have a chance because Field of Gold was so strongly thought of that the bookers would only pay 30p more than your stake back if the horse won.
But Qirat went and won because unlike human’s in athletics , who politely withdraw from the race at a given point, horses don’t know the rules, thoroughbreds are bred for racing and jockeys are paid to win and despite being reckoned 150-1 to win in a 7 horse race, Quirit wouldn’t stop!
Field of Gold was a hopeless failure, everyone connected looked a little downbeat in the unsaddling area after the race, except for the trainer of Qirat who had a sheepish smile on his face. His horse had done what shouldn’t happen and upset the narrative of Field of Gold and John Gosden (the trainer) and the racing manager and co.
You may have noticed that the favorite and the rag were in the same colours, the colours of Juddmonte.
Prince Khalid bin Abdullah and family, owners; Douglas Erskine Crum, CEO; Barry Mahon, European racing manager; Simon Mockridge, stud director England; Garrett O’Rourke, general manager US
The Prince is dead , Juddmonte is a corporation, the whole enterprise is managed by the most upright British people headed by Douglas Erskine Crum. Everyone was rather embarrassed.
There in the photos are the big wigs talking to the jockey (William Buick), specially brought in to ride this race. Eyes are cast upon the failed favorite who has villain #1.
But it wasn’t just Field of Gold that let the side down. Racing Post, the trade mag shows that Irish horses also let the side down. One of the Irish Jockeys explained that he did not want to chase down Qirat in case his horse got overhauled and he got criticised for playing his cards too early.
Ryan Moore, the top Irish jockey wasn’t saying much, it was all rather mould breaking and the truth is it was one big cock-up.
The biggest priced winner of a race this important, Qirat and his trainer Ralph Beckett and the rider Richard Kingscote were filmed giggling. But the truth is that the big stables, are either owned by Irish or Arabian corporations and they dish work out to Gosden and Beckett and to Aidan O’Brien on their capacity to make sure this kind of cock-up doesn’t happen.
The value of Field of Gold and other superstars in this race is not just in prize winnings, indeed their capital value is in their capacity to breed more horses like them. Even Frankel, the greatest horse of the 20th Century is valued most these days for his progeny.
As of 2025, Juddmonte has eight stud farms – four in England, two in Ireland and two in the US. Banstead Manor Stud near Newmarket is home to the operation’s European stallion roster, consisting in 2025 of Bated Breath, Chaldean, Frankel, Kingman and Oasis Dream. The stallions cover both mares from the Juddmonte broodmare band and mares sent to them by other owners. Covering fees in 2025 ranged from £8,000 for Bated Breath to £350,000 for Frankel.
That is of course for the elite, of whom most were on show at Goodwood yesterday, there to be at the crowning of Field of Gold. Letting down the elite is not something that happens on television.
My missus and I had a good laugh, I have a maximum bet of £2 , my partner only bets on horses with nosebands (furries as she calls them). We suspect that most of the people who aren’t in the elite are giggling too. The elite few will recover and be back at Goodwood this afternoon for more elite racing and the rest of us will be rather hoping something “unexpected” happens again!
This isn’t like the Darts or Snooker!
This has happened with human runners too.
During the Berlin Marathon in 2000, Simon Biwott was hired as a pacemaker, but crossed the finish line as the winner.
Even earlier, Tom Byers beat Steve Ovett in Oslo in 1981 at the Bislett Games over 1500 metres. Byers maintained a huge lead until the last lap where Ovett closed it dramatically but still lost by less than a second.
Ovett and other runners protested they had been confused by an official who had erroneously supplied them with Byers’ split times instead of their own during the early part of the race.