No Half Measures stuns July Cup rivals with 66-1 success

Richard Hughes’ No Half Measures ran out a shock winner of the Al Basti Equiworld, Dubai July Cup Stakes at Newmarket.

At 66-1 she was a real outsider in the Group One contest, and from stall 15 she kept out of trouble under Neil Callan on the far side of the track.

As the six-furlong event reached the business end she was picking off rivals and after locking horns with Big Mojo, it was No Half Measures who came out on top by a neck with a further length and three-quarters back to Run To Freedom in third.

Hughes steered Oasis Dream to victory in the 2003 July Cup and after taking up training in 2015, No Half Measures is his first Group One winner as a handler.

An emotional Hughes said: “I’ve just got a bear hug off William Buick and he’s cut my lip!

“It’s brilliant. Disappointments when you’re training are very hard and the highs don’t meet the lows. We fancied the filly yesterday Mood Queen and she finished last, which was excruciating, and the highs aren’t even high enough.

“It’s an up and down game, but I’m coping better with it now than I used to. It’s been a tough enough ride to get to here, but I’m definitely appreciating more now than when I started.

“I didn’t appreciate all those good horses when I was riding, I just took it for granted and I was very lucky to be riding for Richard Hannon and having the Khalid Abdullah job – I was privileged to be riding good horses every year.

“We get a good horse through the yard now and again and I’m trying to mind it like a baby and I’m watching it every day in case it goes wrong because you probably only have one or two bullets. In Hannon’s, if one broke you’d get on another one next day or I’d get another ride. There was a flow of horses and I found it very easy.

“I was a little bit naive when I started training – I thought if I bought 20 horses one of them was going to be good. Then I bought 20 the following year and still no good one.

“This is harder, but more rewarding for sure.”

Of gaining his first Group One as a trainer, he added: “I’ve got the monkey off my back that’s for sure and I can retire now saying I rode a July Cup winner and trained one, so that’s really nice.

“Of course I want more, it’s my nature as I’m very competitive, but if you don’t have the horses you can’t train them.”

No Half Measures won a handicap at this meeting last year before graduating to Group Three and Listed success, but Hughes admitted he had not expected to hit the mark at the highest level.

He said: “She won here last year in a handicap and when Ryan (Moore) got off her I asked him if we’d get a bit of black type and he said ‘she’s better than that’, which is something Ryan never says! He’s a realist, so I was quite surprised by that.

“We plotted to get our black type and we got it and she’s done nothing but improve.

“There was very little pressure today really. At halfway I thought she was going OK and then I just held my head because I couldn’t believe what was happening!

“I just thought if she’s going to get caught she’s going to caught, because they normally do, but I would have been pleased even with second or third, so to win is just a bonus.”