Ben Linfoot looks into the claims of John & Thady Gosden’s Gavriel, the 9/2 favourite for the bet365 Cambridgeshire at Newmarket on Saturday.
Gavriel catches bookies attention
What about this Cambridgeshire favourite, then?
Gavriel, trained by John & Thady Gosden, and by Frankel out of the Group 1-winning Thistle Bird, had hardly been sighted until finishing second in novice company at Kempton on August 5, in what was his third career start and first for 343 days.
Shaping promisingly considering his lay-off, he had to wait for a gap briefly before being headed by Najidi Storm late on, a horse who has subsequently gone down as the shortest-price loser in Britain ever after getting beat at odds off 1/33 in a three-runner novice at Goodwood.
Built into that prohibitive price was the form boost Gavriel had provided just three days earlier, when winning on handicap debut at Ascot on September 5, where he overcame a pace bias over 10 furlongs to comfortably defy his opening mark of 95.
That came in the week the Cambridgeshire weights were released, meaning he runs under a 4lb penalty on Saturday, but he is only 2lb well in with his new official mark of 101 revealed in the days after his Ascot success.
His Cambridgeshire odds ranged from 6/1 to 10/1 in the hours after his Ascot victory, but since then there has been a steady trickle of support and he’s now a best of 9/2 and generally 4/1 for the big-field cavalry charge.
Gosden record heavily factored in
“I think they’re looking a little bit at the history of the race,” Gosden senior said on Tuesday when assessing the Gavriel gamble, which he himself described as “getting a bit carried away.”
It’s only natural for a trainer to urge caution on such a short-priced runner in such a competitive handicap, but the reason we are here, as he alluded to, is the record of Gosden with this type of horse in this race.
After all he is the most successful trainer in Cambridgeshire history with five wins and it’s a race that comes at a time of year that suits his patient regime.
Indeed, Gosden has run 17 three-year-olds in the Cambridgeshire since 1997 and seven of those were sent off at single-figure prices, two of the seven winning, while Taqleed (6th, 2010), Nationalism (28th, 2010), Questioning (14th, 2011), Roi De France (19th, 2024) and Fifth Column (12th, 2025) were all beaten.
Of his five Cambridgeshire winners four have been three-years-old, like Gavriel, with Halling getting the ball rolling in 1994 before Pipedreamer (2007), Wissahickon (2018) and Lord North (2019) joined the party.
His other winner was the four-year-old Tazeez in 2008 and unsurprisingly he was the most experienced of Gosden’s Cambridgeshire-winning quintet, having had eight career runs before landing the big handicap, six of those coming as a four-year-old.
All of Halling, Pipedreamer, Wissahickon and Lord North were more experienced than Gavriel in their three-year-old campaigns, as well, though.
Halling and Pipedreamer both had five runs as three-year-olds prior to their Cambridgeshire wins having been unraced at two, while Wissahickon had six career runs (four at three) and Lord North had four career runs (three at three, including at Listed level).
In terms of profile, Lord North would be the closest to Gavriel. Both had four runs prior to the Cambridgeshire and both prepped in Ascot handicaps.
The difference is Lord North had an extra run at three prior to his Cambridgeshire win and the very lightly-raced horses, in their Cambridgeshire campaigns, do not have a very good record in this prestigious handicap.
Inexperience in the Cambridgeshire
Gavriel has had just the two runs since the last Cambridgeshire was run and in the last 15 years a total of 29 horses have run in the race with either zero, one or two runs under their belts in the preceding 12 months to their Cambridgeshire efforts.
All 29 got beaten.
They include Cornrow (2014, 6/1 13th) and Linguistic (2017, 10/1, 18th) for Gosden, and well-fancied horses like Very Talented (2018, 9/1, 19th), Sinjaari (2020, 7/1, 24th) and Real Gain (2025, 5/1, 16th), who all went into the Cambridgeshire with just the two or fewer runs in the last year to their names.
Most of the vanquished 29 were older horses coming back from injuries or setbacks or after avoiding the summer, and a lot of them were big prices, but I do think it helps to highlight how difficult a race the Cambridgeshire is to win off the back of a light campaign.
With the huge field, the prolonged preliminaries, the longer loading process, the hustle and bustle of the race and configurations of the track like the Dip to consider, it’s not really a surprise that well-conditioned horses in the groove continually win this race, as opposed to the ones who have barely made the racetrack.
What’s the verdict?
Gavriel has to be respected given a mark of 99 could underestimate him considering his pedigree and so few runs to go on.
There has to be a chance he wins this by a couple of lengths or more before going on to bigger things and that brings the 9/2 into sharp focus as that’s not a bad price if you think he’s going to turn into a Group-class performer.
Personally, though, I would rather take one or two against him each-way rather than putting all my eggs in Gavriel’s Cambridgeshire basket.
I would’ve wanted him to win his Ascot race even more impressively than he did, by five lengths or more, if I was going to be getting involved at 9/2, while it was a bit disconcerting to see Najidi Storm beaten at 1/33 in the aftermath of his Kempton reappearance, too.
And the inexperience factor is on my mind at the odds involved. Just two runs in the last year is not a lot to go on considering what is in front of him in the Cambridgeshire and it’s that, rather than the potential for fast ground (he went perfectly well on Good to Firm at Ascot) that puts me off him this weekend.
Whichever way you play it, it’s great to see a Gosden-trained three-year-old at the top of the Cambridgeshire market again.
One way or the other, he’s going to be a key horse for punters and bookmakers alike come 15:45 on Saturday.
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