Priapos gives Phillip Makin Carlisle Bell success in heat-hit meeting

Priapos put Phillip Makin back in the Carlisle Bell spotlight on Wednesday, winning the £30,000 Stablemate By Agma Carlisle Bell Handicap over 1m and giving the trainer a rare double in the race, after he had also won it in the saddle about a decade ago aboard Edgar Balthazar. The result mattered even more because Carlisle was the only British meeting to survive a day when four other fixtures were abandoned under extreme heat warnings.

The British Horseracing Authority scrapped Kempton Park, Salisbury, Worcester and Ffos Las after the Met Office issued a red extreme heat warning covering parts of the Midlands and southern England and Wales from 9am on Wednesday 24 June to 9pm on Thursday 25 June. Carlisle stayed on the schedule under hot-weather monitoring, and its old straight mile carried the sport’s domestic action while elsewhere the programme was being torn up by the temperature.

That fit the Bell’s setting perfectly. Racing at Carlisle was first recorded in 1599, in the second year of Elizabeth I’s reign, and the Carlisle Bells are described as the oldest sporting trophy in the world still contested. The larger bell bears the inscription, “The sweftes horse thes bel to tak for mi lade Daker sake,” while the smaller is marked “1599 H.B.M.C.” and is believed to refer to Henry Baines, the mayor of Carlisle.

Priapos handled the job in the right way, settling on good to firm ground before seeing off the well-backed favourite Leadenhall, with Altareq third. Sam James delivered the winning ride, and the horse arrived off a course-and-distance victory on 30 May, a run that already hinted that Carlisle’s straight mile would suit him again. Makin had been clear that the horse needed conditions to play to his strengths, saying Priapos “wants a strong gallop” and “a stiff track,” and that he had improved this year.

The Bell has always demanded more than a standard handicap winner, and this one delivered the sort of tension that keeps the race alive. Priapos beat the market pick, Makin joined a very short list of people to win the Bell as both rider and trainer, and Carlisle kept a centuries-old fixture intact on a day when much of British racing simply could not.