After an understandable lull following Royal Ascot, there was some good-quality action Flat last weekend with the highlight being the Coral-Eclipse at Sandown where the increasingly impressive St Mark’s Basilica extended his Group One winning sequence to four with easily his best performance yet.
Historically, the Eclipse has a long reputation as being the first major clash of the generations, but for all the pre-race hype the 2021 renewal for me was a little underwhelming even if it did attract two other Group One winners in the shape of seven-year-old Addeybb and Mishriff, both been rested since their spring wins in Australia and Dubai respectively.
As so often happens in a four-runner race where there is no obvious pacemaker, the race became a tactical one with the field pottering along until three out (both subsequent handicaps over the same trip were run between four and five seconds faster to the same point) with the result that the winning timefigure – 81 – was easily the slowest this century.
Sectional analysis means we nowadays have ways and means of adding value to that base timefigure, however, and Timeform calculated St Mark’s Basilica earned a 44lb upgrade, equating to a sectional rating of 125, though that upgrade would almost certainly have been higher had it been taken closer to the winning line than from the four-furlong as is commonplace at Sandown (neither St Mark’s Balisica’s third-last nor final furlong were appreciably quicker than the best of the other runners, but his penultimate furlong was and then some more).
His three-and-a-half length winning margin equaled that achieved by Golden Horn in 2015 and though it might have been exaggerated slightly by a fitness edge on the day over his two closest pursuers, it’s hard to imagine a scenario where either of those will reverse the form should they meet again.
Despite all the rain around at the weekend, timefigures at Sandown were relatively straightforward to return. The same can’t quite be said about Haydock, where the Lancashire Oaks and the Old Newton Cup were the feature events on a Saturday card run on ground much softer than had been envisaged a few days earlier.
Cazoo Oaks runner-up (albeit a distant one) Mystery Lady was representing the Epsom form in the former but she’s only just about Group Three level in all honesty and couldn’t even manage a top-three finish behind the 2020 Yorkshire Oaks runner-up Alpinista.
This form looks very ordinary for the grade, however, Alpinista needing to run nowhere near her best to score in a lowly 75 timefigure. Not only was her winning time over two seconds slower than the following Old Newton Cup, but Alpinista ran the final three furlongs around three lengths slower as well than the Cup winner Alounak, a one-time Group performer who was one of several horses over the weekend to bounce back from a below-par showing at Royal Ascot.
The 6lb rise in the weights he has received for that, however, will ensure he has to be as good if not better than second in the 2020 Hardwicke Stakes in order to follow up.
Over in Paris at Saint-Cloud, the feature event of an interesting card was the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud, the ‘French Corantion Cup’ for older horses over a mile-and-a-half. The contest has been won by subsequent Arc winners Waldgeist and Treve in recent years, but for the most part it’s usually one of the weaker Group One races on the calendar and in finally winning at the top level, Broome rather proved that point.
Far from being a ‘breakthrough at the top level’ as these things are often painted, however, Broome only had to reproduce the form he’s produced several times already this year to edge out the Aga Khan-owned filly Ebraiya, a winner of three of her last four races and still improving by the looks of this effort.
Not only that, the comprehensive tracking reports available on the France Galop website provided by McLloyd suggests that Broome was a slightly fortunate winner as he was the beneficiary of a controlling front-running ride whereas Ebraiya, the 2020 Arc fourth Gold Trip and last year’s Arc runner-up In Swoop, the trio that followed him home, were all set more to do.
All ran the last 600m faster than Broome, Gold Trip markedly so, while back in sixth and seventh outsiders Ambition and Nagano Gold ran very nearly as fast. Converting those times into ‘lb upgrades’ sees Gold Trip emerges as the best horse by getting on for 3lb, while In Swoop can also have his effort upgraded relative to the winner by 2lb or so.
Gold Trip ran his best race last year in the Arc at a very big price and is shaping up again as though he’ll produce a big effort on the day, though he won’t be 33/1 this time around.
The other Pattern race at Saint-Cloud on Sunday was the Group Two Prix Eugene Adam for three-year-old's over a mile-and-a-quarter. Won by British challengers Headman and Western Hymn in recent years, the race was French only this year and in winning, Pretty Tiger gave another boost to the form of the Prix du Jockey-Club won by St Mark’s Basilica.
Sixth at Chantilly from a good draw, Pretty Tiger’s effort bodes well for the future prospects of Cheshire Academy whose good Jockey-Club run I flagged up here several weeks ago. Just to recount, he had the very worst of the draw that day, out in the ‘parc des voitures’ as the French would say, and turned into the straight in a hopeless position before covering the last 600m three lengths faster than St Mark’s Basilica. He’ll relish a mile-and-a-half and is on my Arc shortlist.
On the back of a profitable Royal Ascot where my daily timefigure preview for Timeform somehow landed on a few winners at decent prices, I’ll be covering the three days of the upcoming Newmarket July meeting using a similar approach, only the previews will be available on Sporting Life instead.
Without pre-empting a selection, as the previews will only be available the day before when the declarations have been studied, one youngster I’m keen on seeing in action again is Native Trail. His Sandown win was achieved in a much slower time than the winner of the other division of the same maiden (La Pulga, who has disappointed since) but the early gallop was far slower and Native trail didn’t get the chance to really open out until the last furlong.
While he ran the penultimate furlong marginally fastest of all, he ran the last furlong easily the quickest and it will be interesting to see if how he fares if he is declared for the Bet365 Superlative Stakes.
Given the unrelenting demands of keeping on top of Flat form in the summer, Irish jumps racing might equally be seen as a nuisance or a niche alternative but, as ever, a betting opportunity is a betting opportunity and Bardenstown Lad, the winner of what was officially a three-mile maiden at Wexford last week, could be one that sneaks under the radar.
As I have mentioned before, identifying races later in the card that are run relatively faster than earlier races over shorter distances is an underused angle in unearthing horses of interest.
Assuming the official distances at Wexford on Friday were reasonably accurate (Timeform have recently started returning timefigures from there so we can assume they aren’t far out) Bardenstown Lad ran a final near two-mile time effectively two-and-a-half seconds quicker than both the opening maiden won by Mr Caplan (and faster still for the last mile after the pace in Mr Caplan’s race had steadied approaching that point) as well as the two-mile hurdle.
The winner of a point-to-point at Lingstown last November and a bumper at Tipperary in March, Bardenstown Lad looks a promising staying novice hurdler with a bit of boot, and he could turn out to have a fruitful summer.
