Collier Hill, trained by Alan Swinbank, prevailed by half a length, and will now head for the Melbourne Cup. The Australian showpiece is the likely target, too, for Vinnie Roe, who finished second last year and came to yesterday’s fray off a minor physical setback. “The hold-up we had last week may well have cost him the race,” said his trainer, Dermot Weld.Today at the Curragh, another Guineas favourite puts a reputation on the line. A massive roar went up to acclaim the local hero as he and Pat Smullen hit the front in the straight, but in the final furlong he started to run out of puff as two British raiders, Collier Hill and The Whistling Teal, proved narrowly too good. “The right people doing the right things.” Expensive, by Royal Applause, has the Rockfel Stakes at her local track pencilled in.The seven-year-old Vinnie Roe went down with the utmost honour in the Group One race he has made his own. And despite the focus on her victim yesterday, she deserves credit for her performance under Eddie Ahern.The Newmarket operation of her trainer, Chris Wall, is tiny compared with Channon’s, but no less effective with the right ammunition “We have such a solid team,” he said.
And although Expensive, who cost 40,000 guineas last year, may have been named with feeling, she must now count as a bargain. Perhaps it would have been better if she’d had something to race with, but she lives to fight another day, and I’m glad we ran her.”The Newbury race’s massive purse is designed to encourage the purchase of fillies at the yearling sales, which begin in earnest at Newmarket next month. But in the closing strides she lost concentration alone in front, drifted left-handed and was mugged close home by Expensive, who finished tight against the stands-side rail.Flashy Wings lost not only the £142,000 first prize but also her position at the head of next year’s 1,000 Guineas market (ironically, she has been supplanted by her former stablemate Silca’s Sister, headhunted last month by Godolphin), but Channon was typically phlegmatic “No excuses,” he said “She got beat and that’s that. At the Curragh, Vinnie Roe could finish only third as he tried for five Irish St Legers in a row. And at Ayr, David Nicholls failed to train a fifth winner of the course’s eponymous Gold Cup in six years. Flashy Wings, the 4-9 favourite for the valuable Watership Down Stud Sales Race, went down by just a neck to the 14-1 shot Expensive.
Her trainer, Mick Channon, in search of a run on fast ground as well as a monster prize, had taken something of a chance in throwing the daughter of Zafonic into such a big-field scramble off top-weight, and it so nearly came off.
The Queen Mary and Lowther Stakes winner’s class took her to the front as soon as Ted Durcan asked inside the final two furlongs, and she cruised two lengths clear of her 22 rivals down the centre of the track. At Newbury, the star juvenile filly Flashy Wings, unbeaten in her four previous outings, suffered a shock defeat. And she suggested that nuclear power would inevitably grow much more important, despite worries about military proliferation.. It was a case of the high-fives that weren’t yesterday in England, Ireland and Scotland.
The Clinton Global Initiative expects to raise hundreds of millions of dollars for sustainable development projects worldwide and to help fight Aids.Ms Rice warned during the panel discussion that as countries like China and others in Asia face pressures to continue to grow their economies at breakneck speed, it would be impossible for Europe and America to demand that they ration their fuel consumption. “A sitting politician can’t answer that question, of course,” Mr Clinton explained in conversation with the IoS. “But I think it is a good thing because, believe me, this is going to concentrate minds all around the world. It is quite clear that we are too dependent on hydrocarbons.”The three-day meeting – attendees ranged from heads of state to Barbra Streisand and Rupert Murdoch – was only the latest manifestation of Mr Clinton’s quest to maintain influence on world affairs, even five years after leaving office. The rhetorical inquiry drew a broad smile from Mr Blair, who looked ready to blurt agreement.
His new presidential library in Little Rock, Arkansas, has enough solar panels to provide one-third of its power needs.
The environment was a key area of discussion at the former president’s three-day forum on world affairs, held at a Manhattan hotel and dubbed the “Clinton Global Initiative”. He also raised the issue of oil prices during the meeting’s opening session on Thursday, during which he and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, engaged in a panel discussion about the world’s immediate challenges.Teasing his guests on stage, who also included the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, and King Abdullah of Jordan, Mr Clinton said he knew he could not ask the question directly, but perhaps they were not unhappy that oil prices had risen so sharply The price of crude oil has doubled in two years. Bill Clinton revealed new “greener-than-thou” environmentalist credentials last week, privately suggesting to heads of government and industry leaders at his world forum in New York that they should celebrate the recent spike in oil prices as the best opportunity to begin weaning their nations from fossil-fuel dependency. Such is his interest in alternative energy, Mr Clinton told The Independent on Sunday, that he intends asking local government officials in Westchester, New York, where he lives with his wife Hillary, to investigate supplementing the local grid with solar-generated power. Adrian Hamilton’s books include ‘The Biggest Business’ and ‘The North Sea Impact’.
