Under The Radar: "we could have a Guineas contender on our hands"

Jack Davison travelled to Naas on Sunday full of hope.  It doesn’t happen often, he tells you.  He thinks that it has only happened four or five times in his training career, that he went to the races at ease like that.  But, with Take Me To Church, he thought that he had a big chance of winning the Madrid Handicap.  There was hardly a box that wasn’t ticked

“He did a lot of work during the winter,” says the trainer now.  “He was good in winning at Dundalk last month, and we thought that he would be about a stone better on turf.  We knew that we had him 110% fit, and we thought that the bit of juice in the ground would help him.  Not that he needs soft ground, it’s just that he handles it better than most.  And I was looking forward to making the running with him again."

Take Me To Church missed the break a little but, given a squeeze by Ronan Whelan, he quickly made up the ground and he was in front before they had gone a furlong.  He settled nicely there in his cheekpieces and noseband, about three horse-widths off the inside rail. 

Davison looked on as his horse travelled nicely into the home straight and as, one by one, his rivals started to come off the bridle behind him.  When they rounded the elbow and approached the two-furlong marker, Ronan Whelan was still motionless on the Churchill colt’s back as every other horse in the race was under a ride.  It wasn’t until they were on the approach to the furlong marker that his rider asked him for his effort and, when he did, Take Me To Church picked up.  He stretched away from his rivals on the run up the hill to the winning line and, when he got there, he was six and a half lengths clear of his closest pursuer.

“It was a lovely race to watch,” says the trainer, “and it was a lovely race to win.  To be honest, I wasn’t surprised that he was still on the bridle two furlongs out.  I set these little goals for myself, and the Madrid was one of my goals.”

Davison sent out Black Magic Woman to finish second in the Madrid Handicap in 2019.  She was a special filly for the trainer.  When she won her maiden at Dundalk the previous August, she was registering his first win on the track.  Since that day in March 2019, when the Camacho filly finished second in the Madrid Handicap to the Aidan O’Brien-trained Never No More, who went on to win the Guineas Trial at Leopardstown two weeks later, the Madrid was a race that was high on the trainer’s wish list.

“We’re beginning to get the hang of things now,” he says.  “We have a really good team of horses and a great team of people.  We like to keep things tight, concentrate on quality, otherwise you could spread yourself too thin.  We have a few nice horses now that we can work with, so we have a fair idea where we stand.”

Thunderbear won a Group 3 race at Newbury last September, Bergamasco won twice at Dundalk earlier this year, two out of two this year, and, with a turf rating of 97, could be on track for a good handicap at Ascot. She’s Quality was beaten at Dundalk there two weeks ago, but she wasn’t beaten far, and she’s probably better on turf anyway.  She goes for the Listed Cork Stakes on Saturday.

“Ronan Whelan is a huge help, he’s in to ride work at least one day a week," Davison says. "He has a great analytical mind.  He thinks a lot about the horses, about the races, about what might suit.  And my business partner David Byrne is a big part of it.”

It was Jack and David Byrne who spotted Take Me To Church at the breeze-up sale at Goresbridge in May last year.

“We liked him then.  He was a good mover, athletic.  And his time was good, even though he showed signs of immaturity.  They’d have to be in the top 25% on times for us, and he was, even though he was green.  I can see how he might have slipped past the big buyers, he was out of an unproven mare, a Dandy Man mare who hadn’t had a winner.  And I’m not saying that €38,000 was cheap, but we thought that it was value, and sometimes you just have to back your own judgement.”

Take Me To Church raced three times last autumn and, on the third of those, he went down by just three parts of a length in a maiden at Naas in October.  The following week, he was back at the sales, back at the horses-in-training sale at Newmarket.

“There’s obviously a trading element to what we do,” says Davison.  “We thought he had some good maiden form, and we didn’t have any private offers, so we thought that we would go the public route.  But we were pretty lonely over there in Newmarket!  There wasn’t much interest in him at all.  But we had our value on him, we thought that he could make six figures, and we weren’t going to let him go for any less than what we valued him at, so we had him home with us.  The following week, literally about five days after he had been over and back to Newmarket, he went to Dundalk and won his maiden.”

Davison has had some big winners in his nascent training career to date.  As well as that Group Three win with Thunderbear at Newbury last September, he won the Listed Woodlands Stakes with Mooneista in April 2021, and three months later, he sent that filly to The Curragh and won the Group 2 Sapphire Stakes.  Ask him how a Madrid Handicap compares, and he tells you: it’s bigger.

“I just feel that it’s more significant,” he says slowly.  “To win a Madrid Handicap as easily as that.  We have to look at a Guineas trial now.  The Madrid is a Guineas trial in many ways, so it’s not unrealistic to think that we could have a Guineas contender on our hands.”

Still travelling full of hope.