The Group 2 Jockey Club Stakes had a one-horse look to it with hot favourite Yibir bringing strong credentials on the back of a Breeders Cup Turf win last term along with a runners-up spot on his 2022 debut in the Sheema Classic.
But races aren’t run on the form book and in the race itself Living Legend, an 11/1 shot, produced what was a surprise result to many, if not to connections, for whom the win was a fairy-tale end to a long struggle to get the horse back to fitness after a serious tendon injury had kept him off the track for two years.
In the race the pace was made by the keen running Outbox with Living Legend always close up on his outside. Favourite Yibir was held up, tracking in behind Living Legend. Three and a half furlongs out Hollie Doyle began to apply pressure to Outbox and he responded but Living Legend’s jockey Joe Fanning was quick to cover the move and by the three pole he was in front. Yibir never really appeared to be going well enough to win and he never got closer than the length and three quarters he was beaten into second at the line.
Trainer Charlie Johnston was elated after the race, stating that the horse had a “5% chance at best” of recovering from the tendon injury and racing again. The owners, Barbara and Alick Richmond, had originally given the horse to the trainer following the injury, the horse’s chances of recovering well enough to race again at that time being bleak, but the Johnstons (Charlie and his co-trainer and father Mark) felt the gamble of a waiting game to see if the injury could be overcome was worth taking given the potential the horse had shown prior to breaking down.
Living Legend was off for two years, “a field ornament” according to Johnston, before returning last autumn and winning at Pontefract.
When the horse had come back into trainer the Johnstons offered the horse back to the Richmonds, who have 3 other horses in the yard, and they duly accepted. They’ll be happy they did so as they now have ambitious plans with a supplementary entry for the Group 1 Coronation Cup at Epsom being mooted. The horse also has an entry at Royal Ascot in the Hardwicke Stakes with Charlie Johnston ruing that he didn’t enter him in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes at that meeting, something they’d considered.
