In 2024, I fell hopelessly in love.
It happened at Newmarket’s July Course and it didn’t matter that she had four legs and two big orange ears. I was all hers.
I’m not one for a ‘cliff horse’ – once bitten, twice shy – but I would have followed Desert Flower over the edge and down the ravine with little hesitation.
Two years later, I’m leant against the wall behind the pre-parade at the Rowley Mile, feeling a distinct sense of déjà vu. A Charlie Appleby-trained chestnut filly, walking with an easy grace and comfortable confidence, attempting to add a Fillies’ Mile to a May Hill Stakes victory.
Musical Times has been a work-in-progress. I was mildly interested at the July Course, intrigued at Yarmouth and taken at Doncaster. Plenty of romance novels have been written with the slow burn trope and I think, after that Fillies Mile performance, I might be falling.
Unlike her tangerine predecessor, Musical Times was forced to work for it and there’s something very appealing about a girl who isn’t afraid to get her elbows out. Stranded behind a wall of horses going into the Dip, she dived for a diminishing gap and refused to give a yard, barging to the front with force of personality and speed of step.
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“As soon as you needed to cross over to the rail from that draw, you were going to be vulnerable,” says Charlie, who had suffered nervy moments during the first two furlongs. “I could see what Will [Buick] was trying to do, there was a pacemaker on the rail and they are only to come back into your lap. Full credit to William and the filly, they’ve found the gaps and she toughed it out when she needed to.
“She was seeing the Dip for the first time and it’s nice if they get the chance to see it properly. But there was no chance of her seeing it. Once she was able to get the run, she was always going to attack the hill well and she gallops out strongly.
“She deserves to be favourite or second-favourite for the Guineas. The fillies’ division has been strong this year, but they all look like sprinters.”
Two orange fillies, two years apart. The narrative comparable is too good to miss and the RaceIQ statistics help along the way, with both girls achieving average stride lengths of 7.57m during the race. Just in case you were wondering: that’s the height of an average giraffe, the length of a stretch limousine or the width of three cars parked next to each other.
“They are different,” says Charlie, thinking back. “Desert Flower was a bigger, scopier filly. I’m not saying that Musical Times is just a ‘now’ filly, but she’s a neat filly.
“We were always hoping that Desert Flower would stretch out to a longer distance. It didn’t work out, unfortunately, the soft ground upset her at Epsom [in the Oaks]. So the physicality is different.
“But at home, both Musical Times and Desert Flower are very similar. They’re push-button and straightforward, just lovely fillies to deal with.
“I think Musical Times is a mile filly, simply because of her pure natural pace. In fairness to her, she saw the race out well and I don’t see why we couldn’t look at further.”
There’s nothing like a good autumn romance to keep you going through the cold, winter months – and all that bloody jumps racing.
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