REWIND the clock two years and the build up to Longines Irish Champions Weekend was all about one filly.

All was rosy in the garden for Jessica Harrington’s Alpha Centauri. On her previous four runs, she delivered four Group 1 wins, steamrolling the European mile division with victories at the Curragh, Ascot, Newmarket and Deauville. She was rated the best three-year-old in the world and it had just been announced that she was going to be staying in training at four. So much success and so much more to look forward to.

Sent off long odds-on at Leopardstown, Harrington watched the incomparably big, grey frame of Alpha Centauri all the way in the Matron Stakes. The daughter of Mastercraftsman moved up to make her challenge early in the straight but it was here that she took a false step. The untrained eye wouldn’t have seen it live but Harrington registered it straight away and she knew it was trouble. The next day, as racegoers flocked through the gates at the Curragh, the news came through that the daughter of Mastercraftsman had to be retired due to a chip on her fetlock.

It was a savage blow but as is her wont, Harrington reflected on the positives. Speaking to journalists then, she said: “She gave me my first classic winner, my first Royal Ascot winner, my first French winner – she’s done an awful lot of firsts for me. I can’t thank the Niarchos family enough.

“Now we’ve got to try and find another.”

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Triumph or disaster, ask anyone involved at the top of their profession in racing and they’ll tell you that dwelling on either is seriously counter productive. The moving belt never turns off. It’s next horse, next race. Still, towards the end of her season of firsts, Jessica Harrington thought it was worth reflecting back on what she and her Commonstown team had achieved with a view to a future gameplan.

With 44 winners and over €1.5 million in prize money, career-best totals had been registered. Beautiful Morning, Pincheck and I’m So Fancy were prolific group race performers. Alpha Centauri was the catalyst. It was time to get to the next level as a flat trainer.

Fast forward a few months and, signed up to write a column in these pages for the 2019 season, Harrington wrote: “You might be a bit surprised to know we have more flat horses than jumpers at Commonstown now. That is partly a result of a brilliant season last year.

“We wanted to capitalise on what we achieved with Alpha Centauri last year. We felt we never had a better chance to show ourselves off than now. It’s worked out because we have a few more horses as a result of different syndicates we have set up.”

In the same column, Harrington reflected on Cayenne Pepper’s win at Leopardstown, her third two-year-old winner of the campaign and mooted that she thought her juveniles were really starting to motor.

They fairly motored from there alright. Harrington would go on to register 31 two-year-old wins from 24 individual horses. She had her total for the whole of the previous season beaten before Galway, finishing up on 70 winners in all.

As a happenstance, the vast majority of her two-year-old winners were fillies. That was just how it went. If you saw a two-year-old filly in a maiden trained by Harrington, it invariably won. There was Albigna, there was Millisle, there was Cayenne Pepper and there was Alpine Star.

Earmarked

When Harrington talked about finding the next star after announcing Alpha Centauri’s retirement, Alpine Star would have been earmarked as a bona fide contender to be that filly, not least because she is also owned by the Niarchos family and is a half-sister to Alpha Centauri.

However, when the daughter of Sea The Moon arrived in Commonstown, there may well have been an underwhelming feeling. Alpha Centauri was a huge filly. She always was, having tipped the scales at a monumental 530kg when she was just a yearling.

Alpine Star looks nothing like her half-sister. Different colour, different size, different character. Asked on whether she was surprised that out of all the fillies who won as juveniles last year, that Alpine Star has turned out to be the best so far, Harrington replied this week: “Probably a bit surprised, yes. She has the pedigree and she has the breeding and everyone knows what her half-sister did but she just looks so different to Alpha.

“Physically Alpha Centauri is a very big imposing filly. She is a fantastically big 16.2hh grey filly while Alpine Star is quite small, about 15.2hh. She is not a great colour chesnut, as I always say, but it doesn’t matter. What she has inside is probably bigger than what Alpha Centauri had when she was racing. She’s all heart.”

While Alpine Star may look nothing like her half-sister, she isn’t doing a bad job emulating her record, most notably by running out a hugely impressive winner of the Coronation Stakes under Frankie Dettori.

That set her up for a Prix de Diane bid.

“Unfortunately we couldn’t get a plane to take her to Chantilly so we had to take her by road,” Harrington says. “That wasn’t ideal but she ran out of her skin to finish second (to Fancy Blue) on ground that was probably a bit too quick for her. Then she went on to Deauville and took on everyone, the boys, the older horses and she ran an absolute blinder. We were really delighted with her there.”

Now two years on from Alpha Centauri and Irish Champions Weekend, it’s Alpine Star and Irish Champions Weekend. Harrington has found another one and this time its the Irish Champion Stakes she is gunning for.

“I think she’ll enjoy coming back up in trip,” the trainer asserts. “She’ll enjoy that and she’ll enjoy Leopardstown. She’s very versatile. The ground will be perfect for her as well. I can’t see it drying out to good to firm or anything like that.

“The Irish Champion Stakes is one of the best races on the calendar and the ratings tell you that year in year out. There’s probably going to be Magical, there’s going to be Fancy Blue, there’s going to be whatever is coming from England which is seriously scary so it’s going to be a very, very good Group 1.

“But Alpine Star has earned her chance to run in the race and I think she goes there with a big chance.”

Restrictions

Alpine Star will be in Leopardstown in seven days time but her owners won’t, having been able to attend both of her previous two races in France, where restrictions on crowds at the races are comparatively much looser.

Harrington completely accepts that the priority for Irish racing is to keep itself going but having yearned for a return to the track when she was not allowed to attend, as an over-70, she now often finds herself staying away from the races.

Alpine Star emulated her half sister with an equally impressive win in the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot \Healy Racing

“When I have gone racing, it was fine when the weather was good but you’ve actually got no facilities there – nowhere to sit down, nowhere to hide inside,” she explains. “There was no coffee for a long time but you can get that now, which was a big step forward!

“But then you’re just standing around having your cup of tea or coffee and when the rain is coming in horizontally, it wasn’t the most pleasant of experiences.

“If they are going to push to get owners back they must improve that experience. They’ve got to open the restaurants in racecourses and have people social distancing. Fine, keep them segregated away from the trainers and jockeys, but they’ve got to put in facilities for them.

“How come you can go and have dinner in a restaurant but you can’t do that at the races? Why can’t they organise restaurant bookings? Especially at the Curragh, they’ve got that lovely restaurant overlooking the parade ring. You’ve got all those lovely restaurants at Leopardstown as well.

“Surely people could go and sit in there. I’m not saying open the bars or anything like that, I’m saying live within the guidelines that are apparent in everyday life. I don’t want to put racing against the wall because I think people have done a brilliant job so far but I think we must look outside our little bubble.”

Alpine Star emulated her half sister with an equally impressive win in the Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot \Healy Racing

Success

Just before we spoke, Harrington sent out her 48th winner of the campaign at Gowran Park. The word she uses to describe the year is ‘strange’ but on the track, she and her team have carried on their success from last season. Her winners-to-runners ratio equates to a 13% strike rate which suggests she is very much on target to continue a fifth consecutive year of ascending total winners on the flat.

She also already has two Group 1 wins in the bag, Lucky Vega accounting for the other in the Phoenix Stakes. That was an important win, a first Group 1 for Chinese owner Zhang Yuesheng, which was universally well received around the Irish racing industry for his investment in Irish bloodstock.

Mr Zhang has bought into Harrington as well, moving his horses from the likes of Jim Bolger and Dermot Weld up to Commonstown. Lucky Vega’s success was a vindication of that belief and there is significant promise for more Group 1 glory with the Lope De Vega colt, who takes on the National Stakes tomorrow week.

Lucky Vega won the Group 1 Phoenix Stakes for Harrington at the Curragh \Healy Racing

There is also Cadillac, who produced an astonishing performance in his Leopardstown maiden before finishing second to Mac Swiney in the Group 2 Futurity Stakes two weeks ago.

He represents the Alpha Racing Syndicate, an ownership vehicle borne out of Harrington and her team’s desire to go at the flat game towards the end of the 2018 season. The syndicate is designed to allow investors to spread their investment among a group of eight to 10 yearlings, spreading the risk and enjoyment, with the aim of making the project sustainable when trading opportunities arise.

“Everything is sold out of the first group, the Alpha 1 syndicate, bar one filly, Punita Arora, who’s going to the December Sales,” Harrington explains. “We didn’t do too badly at all. I’m not saying it made a profit and it didn’t quite wash its face but they had a lot of fun.

“The Alpha 2 syndicate that we started last year has gone very well. They’ve had a listed winner and a Group 2 second and we’re hopeful that we have some very nice ones left to run. It has worked and I hope we’ll do it again and buy another eight to 10 yearlings at the sales.”

It’ll be trickier at the yearling sales this year however with Goffs and Tattersalls moving their major sales to Britain and Harrington says this is just another challenge to overcome in 2020.

“I’ve had to have a think about it this year,” she says. “Normally the only sales I go to are the Tattersalls Ireland at Fairyhouse, the Orby, the Sportsman’s and for the last couple of years I’ve been going over to Newmarket for the Book 1 sale.

“With all the big sales in England this year, you’re going to be buying in Sterling. There are also different VAT rates and you’ve got to ship the horses home. It’s not just like sending the lorry up to Goffs or Tatts to simply pick up the horse and bring it back.

“You’ve got to pay commission rates in Sterling also. There’s going to be a lot of extra charges which you’ve got to factor in. It’s going to be a different equation.

“The Goffs Premier Sale was 38% down this week at Doncaster. That’s a very big percentage to be down. That would be a true reflection on the current market because that is a sale that has obviously always been in England, as opposed to these Irish sales which are moving over.

“It’s hard for the breeders as well, they’re shipping horses and staff over, they come back and they have to self-isolate. The whole thing is not going to be easy but as long as the sales go ahead and we can keep the industry going, we’re going to have to put up with it. There is no use moaning about it because it is what it is and so we have to make the best of it.”

That is exactly what Harrington has been doing on the track. She is in an envious position for the autumn riches that are set to come thick and fast, and it all starts next weekend at Leopardstown and the Curragh.

Alpine Star will lead a serious team. Cadillac will return to Leopardstown for the Champions Juvenile Stakes. Lucky Vega will return to the Curragh for the National Stakes. Albigna has come out of her first run since the Irish 1000 Guineas in fine shape and is now in line for the Matron Stakes along with Valeria Messalina.

One Voice could run in the Blandford Stakes, alongside Cayenne Pepper, who Harrington thinks they may be better now back at 10 furlongs. Ancient Spirit goes for the Boomerang Stakes. No Speak Alexander is in the Ingabelle.

On one of the best weekends of flat racing in the world, Jessica Harrington is going to have serious representation. She is most certainly making the best of it.

2020: It has just been a very strange year. From the very beginning of the season, it started and then we knew it was going to stop imminently. We had all that uncertainty through lockdown and then the anxiety that every other racing nation was going to get going again and we’d be left behind.

We didn’t know what to be doing with the horses, the stop-start nature of it. Then we got going and thankfully our horses hit the ground running. Shane (Foley) was riding out of his skin which was lucky. Of course we had a couple of disappointments and we’ve had 60 seconds this year already but on the whole the horses have been running really well.

National Hunt team: I’m going to have a smaller team for the jumps this year but I do have some nice horses. My winners-to-runners ratio at the moment is quite good so we’ll be hopeful of doing well. It’s more of a quality-over-quantity approach.

Stable staff-owned horses: This was an idea we had to get our staff, who have been amazing this year, involved in a couple of horses. The purpose was to further strengthen our good team dynamic and with a bit of luck, create something financially viable. The two fillies, Malaysian and Summer Ambition, have each run once, which is in itself a minor miracle that they even got to the track. There will be more opportunities for them both and everyone at least has got a lot of fun out of it so far.

Harrington says that facilites have to and can be improved on racecourses to allow owners and then general public to come back \Healy Racing