- Harry Eustace expressed unbridled joy after winning at Royal Ascot as a rookie
- His three-year-old filly Time For Sandals won the Commonwealth Cup
- Eustace’s father won the 1998 Royal Hunt Cup at the very same racecourse
Harry Eustace wanted to get his words out but all he could manage was a nod of the head in agreement. Had this really happened again? The answer, most definitely, was yes.
Time For Sandals, his little three-year-old filly, had just completed the second part of week that, in all likelihood, has just transformed his career.
Winning a Group One at Royal Ascot, for a rookie trainer, could be dismissed as luck but to do it twice in the space of four days indicates serious talent.
Eustace had started the meeting that matters above all with a bang, when Docklands won the Queen Anne Stakes, but things got even better for the 37-year-old, who only started training in 2021; Time For Sandals might have been a 25/1 shot but she hit the line as powerfully as an odds-on favourite.
There was heartbreak for connections of 28/1 runner-up Arizona Blaze, who wondered what might have happened had they been drawn on the far side of the track with Time For Sandals, but none of that diluted the wonderment which consumed Eustace.
He’s certainly bred for this job. His father, James, was an institution in Newmarket and won the 1998 Royal Hunt Cup here; his uncle, David Oughton, landed the Golden Jubilee Stakes in 2005, when Ascot was staged at York, from Hong Kong, where Harry’s younger brother, David, now trains.
Having the genes is one thing, being able to performer is another. Eustace dropped out of Edinburgh University, where he was studying chemistry, to pursue his dream of training good horses and the last four days, unequivocally, have shown that was the right call.
‘People are waiting for you to prove you can do it – and we have done it twice this week,’ said Eustace, whose other runners at Ascot this week finished second and fifth. ‘This is the big marquee meeting of the entire year. To win here is the greatest stage and it’s enormous for us.
‘I won’t take any of it for granted. I have been very lucky growing up with Dad. But it’s tough. This is a sport and an industry in which it is a marathon, not a sprint. You have to keep going.
‘I promise you we will celebrate it because you never know if it’s going to be a little while between drinks!’
This, in essence, is what it is all about: joy. Everywhere you looked, you could see what everyone is in this for: from Richard Kingscote, who partnered Time For Sandals, to Kieran Shoemark, who emerged from a period of turbulence to take the Sandringham Stakes on 22/1 shot Never Let Go.
‘It has been a tough six weeks,’ said Shoemark, who lost his job as one of John and Thady Gosden’s main riders after losing on Field Of Gold in the 2000 Guineas.
‘I had an opportunity that put me on the map and it is my job to remain there now.’
Staying on the map is something that Willie Mullins will never have to worry about but even this winning machine looked like he was savouring Ascot success for the first time (it was actually his eleventh win) when Ethical Diamond blitzed the field in the Duke Of Edinburgh Stakes.
Then, of course, there was Joseph Murphy, who sent out the 33/1 winner of the Coronation Stakes.
He and jockey Gary Carroll are pillars of this sport in Ireland, the kind of men who keep the wheels turning on a daily basis but rarely get the credit they deserve.
‘It’s a lifetime’s ambition to have a Group One winner,’ said Murphy, who is now 70.
‘This is 50 years of work – that’s what it is. It’s love and care, and all for the owners we have, all our people. It’s just a whole group of people together. This is heaven on earth.’
