'It's a Really Important Moment': Leovanni Roars for Wathnan

ASCOT, UK — Her name means brave as a lion, and it is hard not to admire the two bold showings by Leovanni (Ire) in her brief racing career to date as she has led home the pack, first at Nottingham and now here on the big stage at Ascot.

The Kodi Bear (Ire) filly will not go down in history as the first Royal Ascot winner for Wathnan Racing – the owner had of course burst onto the scene on this day last year when Gregory (GB) (Golden Horn {GB}) won the Queen's Vase – but her Queen Mary victory felt like another important first in the evolving history of the racing operation of Sheikh Tamim bin Hamad Al Thani, the emir of Qatar.

The ruler wasn't at Ascot on this occasion but plenty of his advisors were in attendance, and for Richard Brown, the bloodstock agent charged with assembling a team of 26 runners for this year's royal meeting, the mixture of joy and relief was palpable. 

“It has been well documented that there has been significant investment by Wathnan, but that doesn't guarantee success, especially in our game,” he said. Indeed, and four of the seven Wathnan starters on the opening day had finished in the frame, including second and third in the Coventry Stakes. Close, but no cigar. 

“We hit the crossbar a couple of times yesterday, so to get this one in the back of the net is great for all the team,” added Brown, though for his team, it's what happens on the turf this week that matters, even while plenty of others have one eye on the European football championships. 

He continued, “With the two-year-olds, if you are finishing second and third in the Coventry, it means you've got a nice horse to go forward with, so we took great positives from that. But of course any sport is about winning and, though we were delighted with yesterday, this [win] will make the rest of the week a lot more enjoyable, I can tell you.

“It's an extraordinary opportunity to have been given, to build this team of horses and to work with these people, and you want to deliver for them. They back us, and they back our judgement, and the whole team in Qatar has been hugely supportive.”

The joy was perhaps extended by the fact that it was Brown's good friend, the former trainer George Peckham, who could bask in some reflected glory having prepared Leovanni for the Goffs UK Breeze-up Sale after being talked into buying her as a yearling from her breeder Kilmoney Cottage Stud.

“Considering we only do two or three each year, to have a filly like her is special. It's incredible,” said Peckham, watching the celebrations with his wife Emma.

“I wasn't massively involved in the buying bit but there were a couple of guys who pointed her out to us and we were lucky to get her on the Saturday morning of Book 3 for 20 grand.

“Diego Lima rode her at home all the time and did a great job with her. She made my life really easy – the whole way through she was really professional. It's a big team effort.”

Peckham added, “Richard and Sophie [Brown] are great friends of ours. We stayed with them last night and on the way here this morning we were just praying that she would be the one to break the duck this week.”

Brown was full of praise for Peckham, whose main business is now pre-training. He said,”George did a brilliant job with her. For the breeze-up horses to come here you can't miss a day and they've got to behave. She's such a sweet character. She walked around here and never raised a hair, and James [Doyle] said she was so straightforward and just travelled the whole way. It's a very special moment.”

Leovanni, trained by Karl Burke, further enhanced the Royal Ascot record of the 'Donny' breezers by becoming the tenth from the sale to win at this meeting in the last nine years.

Brown added, “We thought at the time that she was probably the best filly in the sale and it might turn out that she was.”

With such notable investment taking place, both at the public sales and through a number of private purchases in recent weeks, it is easy to draw comparisons between Wathnan Racing's entry to European racing and the early days of the involvement of the Maktoum brothers of Dubai. Sheikh Mohammed, in particular, has become one of the biggest owner-breeders in the world. With a Group 2-winning filly now among the Wathnan string, surely the logical next step for the owner is to become a breeder?

“I'm going to play the forward defensive stroke to that,” Brown replied with a grin. “Honestly, I don't know. Eventually those conversations will have to come because she's now a valuable breeding prospect, but hopefully we can enjoy her and run her for the next couple of seasons.”

He continued, “Whether it's Wathnan or anybody, it's our job to try to get people to come and participate in this amazing sport. I've been coming here for over 20 years and you see the royal procession and you look around you, and it's absolutely a world-class sporting event. For any new player to come into our sport is tremendous, and for somebody to show the scale of ambition that Wathnan has shown so far – and I don't know what's going to happen in the future — but it's great for them to have winners at this stage. This is a really important moment.”

To gild the lily on a momentous day on the track for the Qatari royal family, Sheikh Tamim's younger brother, Sheikh Joaan, who, through his Al Shaqab operation, has become a familiar name in European racing over the last decade, also celebrated a winner at Ascot. It may have been one of the lesser races, but Doha (GB), winner of the Kensington Palace Stakes, is a daughter of two of the greatest horses of the modern era in Sea The Stars and Treve. Pedigrees don't come much more regal than that.