When the nerveless Rossa Ryan squeezed Annaf through a gap tight to the inside rail at King Abdulaziz Racecourse in Riyadh to win the G2 1351 Turf Sprint in February 2024, the durable entire sealed the biggest payday yet for his connections and booked a ticket to Dubai for the G1 Al Quoz Sprint. But the fairytale almost had a tragic twist.
“It was a bit touch and go at one point, we’re probably lucky that he’s still here,” Mick Appleby, the six-year-old’s trainer, told Idol Horse.
“He got pneumonia on the flight to Dubai afterwards and was sick for quite a while so the Al Quoz didn’t happen. After that it was a lot of rest and antibiotics, and he was on the nebuliser. To be fair, the vets in Dubai were very good and looked after him really well.”
Annaf eventually recovered, returned to action for a four-race autumn campaign in England, and after a couple of months off to freshen up, he will take the same route to Riyadh as last year: via Sunday’s Listed Kachy Stakes on the Polytrack surface at Lingfield. In that leafy corner of Surrey, he will face fellow 1351 Turf Sprint entrant Topgear from Christopher Head’s Chantilly yard.
“He’s done really well the last couple of months, he’s in good order and we’re pleased with him,” Appleby said, expressing understated satisfaction with how Fosnic Racing’s flagbearer has wintered since his second on the Tapeta track at Newcastle in November.
Should Annaf’s Saudi return and subsequent campaign progress as Appleby hopes, then travel to East Asia could be on the cards later in the year for the G1-placed speedster who tried Seoul’s sand track two and a half years ago when seventh in the G3 Korea Sprint.
“We definitely won’t be going to Dubai this time, he’ll be coming straight back home after Saudi, but we might look at another trip abroad with him later in the year,” Appleby said. “Maybe Hong Kong, or we might go back to South Korea with him, I really liked it out there and they couldn’t do enough for us.
“We thought about Hong Kong last year after he’d won in Saudi, but with him being sick we had to put that on the back burner, but hopefully we can do it this year.”
Annaf picked up “about £900,000” for the Saudi win, marking an incredible three months for Appleby’s yard, which is located in Rutland, England’s smallest county. At Del Mar, California the previous November, his star sprinter Big Evs had won the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint and a first-place cheque that paid about £430,000.
Appleby has risen to the heights of ‘Group 1-winning trainer’ from unassuming beginnings as an amateur jump jockey and head lad for the late John ‘Mad’ Manners, a unique personality who won the prestigious Foxhunters Chases at Cheltenham and Aintree in his time.
“I was there three or four years: good times. He was a character!” Appleby said.
He rode six winners under Rules in the mid-1990s, trained a bit, worked as head lad for Andrew Balding “for a couple of years” from 2008, and then set out on his own with firm intent. He had three wins from 10 individual runners during 2010, but soon grew: 15 winners in 2011, then 40 in 2012, 61 the year after, and then up regularly around the 90-mark until he hit his first century of wins in 2020; he has reached 100-plus wins four times in all.
Big Evs, now retired to stand at Tally Ho Stud in Ireland, lifted Appleby’s yard to a new level, but with Annaf and the three-year-old Big Mojo – in the same Paul and Rachael Teasdale ownership as Big Evs – the trainer has the quality in his string to continue hitting the big days.
The G3 Molecomb Stakes winner Big Mojo was an unlucky fourth in the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint in November and the team has Group 1 hopes for the season ahead.
“I’ll have a sit down with Paul and decide where we go first with Big Mojo, we’ll probably go six furlongs. The Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot is one target we’ll have,” Appleby said.
“I would say we’ll travel with him again as well, he was unlucky in the Breeders’ Cup, he was hampered twice and with a clear run he’d probably have won. We’ll probably go to Goodwood with him again and Royal Ascot, and we’ll look at some trips abroad with him.”
But first comes Annaf at Lingfield and then Riyadh where Appleby is hoping the horse that came back from the brink will repeat his US$1 million heroics ∎
