No Half Measures leaves trainer Richard Hughes in tears after July Cup success at 66-1

The July Cup, sprinting’s midsummer championship race, came up with a boil-over to match the soaring temperatures as No Half Measures, at 66-1, gave the former champion jockey Richard Hughes a first Group One success as a trainer to add to the dozens he won in the saddle.

Notable Speech, last year’s 2,000 Guineas winner, set off as a warm favourite despite racing at a sprint trip for the first time, but he could not find an extra gear in the closing stages after Neil Callan on No Half Measures hit the front a furlong out. The four-year-old filly stayed on strongly to the line to beat Big Mojo (12-1) and Run To Freedom (40-1), a tricast that paid out at nearly 28,000-1.

No Half Measures is the biggest-priced winner in the July Cup’s 149-year history, and left her trainer in tears in the winners’ enclosure. “It’s brilliant,” Hughes said. “Disappointments when you’re training are very hard and the highs don’t meet the lows. We fancied the filly yesterday, Mood Queen [in the Duchess of Cambridge Stakes] and she finished last, which was excruciating, and the highs aren’t even high enough.

“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.

“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 [than riding], but more rewarding for sure.”

The pecking order among Charlie Appleby’s two-year-olds seems clear after Saba Desert quickened a length and a quarter clear of Italy, the odds-on favourite, in the Group Two Superlative Stakes. Saba Desert, the mount of William Buick, Appleby’s stable jockey, went off at 6-1 while Wild Desert, the trainer’s other runner in the race, was a 7-2 shot, but Buick’s judgment outperformed the market and Saba Desert will now be aimed towards Future Champions Day in October.

Saba Desert races clear to win the Superlative Stakes. Photograph: Nigel French for The Jockey Club/PA

“We’ve liked him from the get-go and it’s a work-back from the [Group One] Dewhurst now,” Appleby said. “Whether we decide to go down the [Group One] National Stakes route or the [Group Two] Champagne [at Doncaster in September], we’ll see, but he’ll get a bit of a break now. There’s plenty about this horse, he’s a true Dubawi and he’ll only get better.”

Earlier, More Thunder got up in the final half-stride of the Bunbury Cup under an outstanding ride on the hot favourite by Tom Marquand, who switched from a wide draw to sit last in the early stages and then deliver his challenge up the stands’ rail, edging out last year’s winner, Aalto, by a nose.

More Thunder had run a similar race over a furlong less when he was similarly well-backed for the Wokingham Handicap at Royal Ascot last time, the key difference being that he had failed by a head to reach the frontrunning Get It. Three strides from the line it seemed he was about to come up agonisingly short again but Marquand conjured up a final effort from More Thunder that got him over the line with a couple of millimetres to spare.

More Thunder moved to William Haggas’s stable over the winter after the retirement of Sir Michael Stoute and his new trainer, who considered a run in the July Cup, hopes to saddle the four-year-old for a race at Group One level later in the season.

“We considered it [the July Cup] strongly, but we also wanted to go up to seven furlongs at some stage and this was an opportunity to do so,” Haggas said. “He could run in another handicap, but I think he deserves a shot at a good race now.”