The Flat season goes up a gear at Newmarket this week and Hugo Palmer guides us through his three-year-olds and older horses.
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Older horses
It’s very sporting of the owners to have kept ARCHITECTURE in training as a five-year-old and I’m delighted that they have. She had a good, but frustrating, three-year-old season, and was kept in training at four to win a Stakes race. She picked up an injury in the Spring so didn’t get chance to run until the back end of the season and she was probably over the top by then. She seems to have done really well from four to five, she’s grown a bit and filled out and doesn’t seem to have lost any enthusiasm for her work on a daily basis. She’ll likely start in the Daisy Warwick at Goodwood and having run well at Epsom and The Curragh, Goodwood should hold no fears for her. She likes to get her toe in a bit so we’ll be avoiding ground that is much quicker than good.
UNFORGETABLE FILLY was wonderful for us last year having won twice and been second in the Nell Gwyn. I think she was off colour the day she ran in the 1000 Guineas. She ran respectably but she didn’t run as well as she did the day she won the German equivalent. She’s due to start back at Lingfield on their big meeting on 12th May in Chartwell Stakes and the Duke of Cambridge at Royal Ascot will be her main early season target.
HUMBERT was impressive the other day having missed a large part of last year. He’s had a good winter on the All-Weather winning three races and has only been out of the top two once. We learnt that the ground can’t be too soft for him and we could have done with a lead that day. We had a target on our back for the winner who went a couple of lengths clear before Humbert chopped him down to a neck at the finish.
TO BE WILD is still on the treatment table but is starting back now, but I don’t think we’ll see him until late summer. He’s been gelded and with cut in the ground he could develop into a really nice stayer. He’s rated 107 and when he gets his conditions, he’ll be a lot of fun. He could be an Ebor horse if things go right, or maybe even the Long Distance Cup at Ascot on British Champions Day.
MAZYOUN was a lovely two-year-old and better at three so hopefully he’ll be better this year. At the moment he needs to win again to get into the mile handicaps like the Royal Hunt Cup or the mile handicap at the Glorious Goodwood meeting and I wouldn’t think he’d quite stay the Cambridgeshire trip but you never know, he won over a mile last year and we didn’t think he’d get that so those will all be options for him but he’s a Saturday handicapper to keep onside.
Good Friday was GIFTED MASTER’s early season target and now we’ll take in races from here. He has an entry in Hong Kong and if he were to be invited out there we’d be quite keen get him out there. Six furlongs around a bend on turf out there would be very exciting. But there are also races like the Abernant Stakes and the Duke of York - and he’ll probably be entered in both the King’s Stand Stakes and the Diamond Jubilee at Royal Ascot. I’m keen to think about dropping him back to 5f, despite being a Group 3 winner over a mile. Since we’ve put the blinkers on him he has shown such extraordinary speed and his early fractions in the Godolphin Mile on dirt over a mile on World Cup night were really remarkable and that marked him up as a sprinter with potential to improve. Whether he can go all the way I have my reservations, but there are Pattern race sprints to be won with him all through the year and he’s an admirably tough and consistent horse who wears his heart on his sleeve.
Three-year-olds
It’s a very exciting time of year, seeing how all the two-year-olds have progressed over the winter. We had a lot of two-year-olds last year and they were a different type to the ones I’ve had before. They were perhaps better-bred and rather more backward. The upshot of it is that none of them won a Stakes race last year and we had plenty of two-year-old winners but they tended to win their Maidens and particularly in the second half of the season.
ARBALET was the highest achieving of them with a rating of 101 after finishing third in the Solario Stakes at Sandown. That day he just appeared to gallop and there’s still a little question mark over which trip we might start him over. He is by Dark Angel and out of Miss Beatrix, so both parents won Group 1s at two, but he’s a big horse who stands over a lot of ground and he looks like a middle distance horse, not a sprinter. He moves like a middle distance horse and if he can get 10f - Dark Angel’s dam was by Machiavellian so it might not be impossible - then I think he could be very exciting, but he’ll probably be starting off over a mile and he’s a Saturday horse to be looking forward to.
CORROSIVE ran well on debut at York and dotted up in a novice at Kempton and he’s done particularly well. He was a breeze up horse but he’s got a very good clean head on him and is very clear-minded. He’s just exciting us a little bit in the mornings at the moment and as with so many of these horses the next 6-8 weeks will define their careers and the season. Where he goes, I don’t quite know. We could start in the Greenham and he has a 2000 Guineas entry and he looks the part. That might come a bit quick for him but he could be a Jersey horse by Royal Ascot.
CURIOSITY lost his form last year. He was great to start with and it was a great relief when we drew stumps with him pretty early and sent him away for a break. He wasn’t a very big horse last year but it was great to see him return so much bigger. I think he lost his form because he was growing and had gone a bit weak on us. He’s a decent ground horse who will probably start in a handicap at either the Craven or Greenham meeting over 7f or a mile. If he keeps going the right way then he’s already an Ascot winner and he could very easily be a Brittania horse.
DELSHEER was very weak last year and did well to win his Maiden. He’s strengthened up a great deal and I think he’ll probably stay a mile-and-a-quarter. Whether he will quite get to be Pattern horse, I don’t know, but he’s the kind of horse who if he were a filly would almost certainly get black type. But knowing the way the prize money system works here, the money is there for the handicaps and he could be a Britannia horse or could get a little further.
The same sort of comments apply to DUKHAN, although we have left him in the Derby but he was in at the early stage. He picked up an injury on his second start and we hadn’t done a vast amount with him by his third start so he did particularly well to win that day. He’s an exuberant horse and I think the further he stays the better. If he’s just a miler then he might just be a handicapper, but if he gets a mile and half then he does have a turn of foot and some speed and could be a Stakes horse.
FAJJAJ has big boots to fill as he stands in Galileo Gold’s box and they’ve got very similar heads too. He’s a much bigger horse, though, and he has a Guineas entry although he’s beginning to look to me like he might get a bit further. There’s a lot of Guineas blood in his family being by Dawn Approach and out of a sister to Kingman. We may well start him in the Feilden Stakes over 9f and see which way that takes us. He’s not in it, but he could conceivably be a French Derby horse if he went the right way.
MOMENTARILY was very much in the top handful of fillies last year. She only ran the once and finished third to Wild Illusion and the second has come out and bolted up since so the form stands up. She’s really developed and changed over the Winter and I’m very, very happy with the way she is. She’s a lovely looking filly and I think her Maiden should be well within her grasp and then we’ll be looking for black type with her.
MYSTIC MEG also got a Group 1 entry last year but it didn’t quite go well for her. She went over the top after her first run when she finished a good second. She has bags of speed and is from a very good miler family. She is a granddaughter of Sleepy Time and her dam’s brother is Haffal of William Haggas who is a 7f Group 3 winner so she’s from quite a fast family and [her sire] Camelot won the Guineas and was a Group One winning two-year-old. I thought last year she might be a mile-and-a-half horse but she’s probably more of a miler and she’s definitely a filly to look forward to.
Being a High Chapparal colt, you dream that TENEDOS might stay a mile-and-a-half and if he does then I think he’ll be smart. He’s showed me plenty in his early work last year but it went off and we felt we had to run him or put him away, so we ran him and he hosed up and it was great to see. It’s fuelled dreams for the owner and us that he might progress. Having raced just the once, he most likely would start in a novice somewhere and could potentially go from there to a Derby Trial and we can find out where we are with him.
THE REVENANT has done particularly well over the winter and is well entered. The 2000 Guineas might be a bridge too far for him, but he’s not slow by any means. If he’s top class I think it might be over a little bit further than a mile. That said, we’ll see how his work goes. He’s really grown and developed and it was no surprise at all that he won well first time. He was terribly unlucky at Epsom second time out and got stopped three times on his run and if he’d only been stopped twice he’d still have won. Being out of a mile-and-a-half Group Three winner and being by Dubawi - and having a good name - we hope he can also be critically acclaimed at some stage.
WHITE MOCHA was probably the second highest achieving of ours at two. He’s not bred to be so as he’s from a staying German family and although being by Lope De Vega you think they would get better with age, he has filled his frame over winter and is in great heart at the moment. Looking at his pedigree you’d have to think he will stay and that his achievements at two were a bonus. He won at Newbury and some great horses have won that race in the past and it would be lovely if he could do that too.
SILVER QUARTZ is a Frankel colt who was second on debut when everything went wrong for him. They went no gallop and he got no cover and was a bit green. He got outpointed in the run-in at Newmarket to finish second to a horse trained by Peter Chapple-Hyam who I believe is well regarded, so I hope that stands up. He looks like his Maiden should be a formality and then we’ll see from there.
MORNING SKYE won on debut and the way this novice system works, if we can win our first two starts we can get a handicap mark. I think he’ll get 1m½, although we’ll stick to 10f for now and he could easily be a George V handicap horse come Royal Ascot and who knows come the end of the year?
STRANGE SOCIETY has done well particularly well physically. He was a Maiden winner last year and gutsed it out and I think he could develop into a Britannia horse. He needs to have a third run in a novice race and it’s tough for them if they’ve won their Maiden at two and haven’t had three runs as the handicapper now has to have a third look at them. I hope he can continue to progress and he looks like he has done physically.