Kirsten Rausing’s breeding operation, centred around her Lanwades Stud in Newmarket, added yet another Group 1 to its growing list of major successes as Alpinista landed the Yorkshire Oaks. In so-doing the mare took her own tally of Group 1 wins to 5.
Miss Rausing has had the female line for five generations since buying the mare Alruccaba from the Aga Khan in the 1980’s. She’s continued the Aga Khan’s tradition of naming the mares in the family with the first two letters ‘Al’ with the latest being appropriately named as, according to Miss Rausing “she’s certainly scaled the heights.”
The York test, designed as a prep race for a tilt at the Arc for Alpinista, was no walkover on paper with both the English and Irish Oaks winners, Tuesday and Magical Lagoon respectively, taking her on.
In the race Alpinista was settled in third, with Tuesday on her inside and Magical Lagoon cutting out the early pace with La Petite Coco. Into the straight and Alpinista was edged out by jockey Luke Morris but had to fight to, firstly, get past La Petite Coco and then hold off the sustained challenge of Aidan O’Brien’s filly Tuesday. In the end Alpinista never quite looked like being headed and she stayed on gamely to win by a length.
Having had just the one run this season prior to York, a win in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, Alpinista has been aimed at a campaign targeted at the Prix de L’Arc de Triomphe according to trainer Sir Mark Prescott. “The original intention was to go Coronation Cup and then King George, but it then became Saint-Cloud and here or the Vermeille. Miss Rausing was very keen to come here because Alpinista had not won a Group 1 in England.”
The bold move to try their hand at York paid off but, with the mare now only an 8/1 shot for the Arc, Prescott is dreaming of bigger things. “I think she’s just good enough to go for the Arc. You’ve got a chance. Therefore you must go.”
He was also keen to stress that he attributed her success as much to her temperament as to her ability, “She’s not worrying, not boiling over, not off her grub, not lame, all the things these horses do so far we’ve escaped and I just wouldn’t want it very soft in France. That said it’s been so dry for so long I’m expecting a swimming race over there.”
The York crowd, treated to a procession the day before when Baaeed cemented his unbeaten reputation with a facile success, welcomed the winner in warmly after her battling victory, and it could just be that the French crowd may do just the same in just over six weeks at Longchamp.
