Racing: Bandari adds to trainer's dilemma

Trial winner leaves Johnston counting cost of an embarrassment of riches with Classic potential

The sport at Leopardstown and Longchamp today is likely to have more bearing on future Classics than the Epsom practice session round the Tattenham Corner lookalike here yesterday. The Surrey course's Derby Trial has a fine recent record in highlighting the real thing, but the latest winner, Bandari, who scored by a spectacular 13 lengths, is not currently on the list of contenders. His omission is rather a raw nerve as far as his trainer, Mark Johnston, is concerned, as this was the third recognised trial of the season he has won with a colt who was not put into the Blue Riband at either of the entry stages thus far.

It costs £300 to enter a horse as an untried yearling, for the Derby, which offers a first prize of some £600,000, with a £9,000 supplementary stage last month for those who missed the early boat and a final chance, at a cost of £90,000, the week before the race. But Johnston's gripe is not so much cost as value. He tends to avoid the elite levels of the yearling market on behalf of his owners and it is just sod's law that his budget-priced collection has developed into what may prove the cream of the crop. Bandari's stablemates include Fight Your Corner, the winner of the Chester Vase, Simeon, who took the Sandown trial, and Sir George Turner, beaten a short-head in the Dee Stakes at Chester.

Bandari, owned by Dubai-based businessman Abdulla Al-Rostamani, was the most expensive of the four at 44,000gns. "Even at £300, you can't enter every single yearling," said Johnston, "and the £9,000 entry stage comes before the trials, before you really know what you've got. Ironically, the one of ours we did put in at that stage, the one who had been doing best on the gallops, was the only one who has been beaten in a trial."

The Derby, with a total purse of £1.25 million, is the only European race that gets into the top 20 on the world's prize-money leaderboard. "How can I ask an owner to spend £90,000 for a possible prize of £600,000?" said Johnston. "If the Derby really is the race it is supposed to be, the first prize should be at least £1 million. You get more than it is worth for going on quiz shows."

The last-ditch fee equates to fourth prize-money at Epsom and such was the style of Bandari's victory, leaving Long Goodbye and Derby entries Wahchi and Mamool for dead in his wake as he rocketed clear under Kevin Darley's urgings, that he must have claims for at least that place. But Johnston is not convinced that, even if the colt's owner agrees to supplementing him, the hurly-burly of the race would be the best thing for him. "He is still a bit soft and immature and I am not sure if he is man enough yet," the trainer said, "and it would not be the end of the world if he missed Epsom."

The most significant dress rehearsal of the weekend may be the Derby Trial at Leopardstown this afternoon, where the Aidan O'Brien-trained High Chaparral, who is second favourite for the Derby to his stablemate, Hawk Wing, in most lists, faces four rivals in the contest taken by the last two Epsom heroes, Galileo and Sinndar. Another stablemate, Ballingarry, takes on the unbeaten French-trained Act One in the equivalent test at Longchamp, the Prix Lupin.

Earlier in Paris, the Ballydoyle-dominated 2,000 Guineas form faces its first examination when Redback, such a game third to Rock Of Gibraltar and Hawk Wing on the Rowley Mile eight days ago, turns out again in the French equivalent, the Poule d'Essai des Poulains. The Richard Hannon-trained colt, running for the fourth time this term, is one of a powerful, nine-strong raiding party.

Two of the three away victories in the past decade, Vettori in 1995 and Bachir two years ago, came courtesy of Godolphin. This time Sheikh Mohammed's Dubai-based outfit fields Firebreak, unplaced in the UAE Derby in March but tough and consistent last year and Frankie Dettori's choice, and Waldenburg, who disappointed in his private trial at Nad Al Sheba. The mile contest is one of the few at the top level in Europe yet to be annexed by Ballydoyle. O'Brien sends three to try to rectify the omission, with Sahara Desert the cannon fodder for Landseer (Mick Kinane) and Della Francesca (Kieren Fallon). The André Fabre pair, Bowman and the unbeaten Shaanmer, lead the defence, though the latter's connections have their eyes more on the greater prize at Epsom next month.

In the fillies' Classic, the Poule d'Essai des Pouliches, the French, headed by Pascal Bary's Glia, outnumber the foreign opposition nine to eight. Sophisticat and her pacemaker, Pietra Dura, represent the O'Brien stable, which was successful last year with Rose Gypsy.

First Group One blood of the weekend went to Dettori and Team Godolphin in Singapore yesterday, when Grandera took the third leg of the World Series, the International Cup at Kranji, by two lengths. From an unpromising pitch coming into the home turn, the four-year-old burst through in the final furlong to deny German representative Paolini and the Hong Kong pair Indigenous and Olympic Express, with the Michael Jarvis-trained Hawkeye fifth. The winner had luck on his side – as he went past Universal Prince, the Australian horse stumbled and crashed to the ground. Happily, neither he nor his rider, Justin Sheehan, was hurt.