Ben Linfoot watches Elarqam and Cracksman gallop
Ben Linfoot went to the first day of the Craven Meeting with the headline action coming before racing as two sons of the mighty Frankel galloped on the Rowley Mile.
By Frankel, out of Attraction, Elarqam has been turning heads for a good while.
With breeding like that, by a Guineas winner (by the greatest Guineas winner) out of a Guineas winner, his first big target was always written in the bloodlines. Before that target, his destiny could only go off course, but, it hasn’t. Not so far.
He was two from two as a juvenile, and he’s two from two for his career. But many a Guineas hero has turned up on that first Saturday in May without a run under their belt as a three-year-old.
It has been a tried and tested method, one executed by Mark Johnston himself, Elarqam’s trainer, not only in the 2000 Guineas with Mister Baileys in 1994, but with Attraction, Elarqam’s dam, in the 1000 Guineas a decade later.
So why a racecourse gallop instead of a trial? Well, because he knows.
"There only is one real trial that could’ve been considered, it’s worth about £35,000 and we’ve everything to lose, nothing to gain," Johnston told sportinglife.com. "Nothing whatsoever to gain, something could go wrong with the horse, he then misses the Guineas and, no.
"We don’t need to prove how good he is, we don’t need to find out in the Craven, we'll find out in the Guineas. He's won his Group Three, a trial was never even considered.
"Cardsharp will run in the Greenham, he might've run in the Craven, he's a horse that still has to prove that he's good enough to go to the Guineas.
"This horse doesn’t have to prove he's good enough.
"His mother had two racecourse gallops before she won the Guineas."
This gallop was about adding to his experience, then. Getting him into the horsebox, getting him out onto the grass (for the first time this year), getting him to have a look around. It wasn't racing experience, but it's another little touch that will help him on the big day.
"We were never here to learn anything about how good he is, we were just here to give him an outing," Johnston said. "In comparison to most Guineas runners he's very lightly-raced.
"I would actually have liked to give him two outings to the racecourse but we planned one at Pontefract and the meeting was off, so all the experience we can give him of travelling and being away overnight and all those things are good for him.
"He’s done everything that's been asked of him. The only question now is 'is he streetwise enough?'"
We'll find that out on May 5. But, for now, his trainer seems extremely happy with the progress of his colt that has racing royalty running through his veins.
🏇 ELARQAM
— Sporting Life (@SportingLife) April 17, 2018
How impressed were you with this well-bred colt after he tuned up for the 2000 Guineas at HQ today? pic.twitter.com/qCfV2s8IKy
Cracksman v Enable to look forward to, twice?
Elarqam wasn’t the only racecourse galloper at Newmarket on Tuesday with the brilliant Qipco Champion Stakes hero Cracksman, another son of Frankel, the best son of Frankel yet, also strutting his stuff on the Rowley Mile pre-racing.
John Gosden and Frankie Dettori seemed happy with the four-year-old, his trainer likening him to a 24-year-old in human terms, as opposed to the gangly 14-year-old on show in the early part of last season.
He wouldn't be drawn on mapping out a plan for his star colt, "if you do that things have a funny habit of not working out that way", he said, but he did dangle the tantalising possibility of Cracksman taking on stablemate Enable not once, but twice, in the months ahead.
"We’ll see how it evolves for the year but hopefully we'll start in a lovely Group One like the Ganay and take it from there," Gosden said.
"Enable’s in good form, very good form. I can see the logical races they could meet would be the King George and the Arc, I think that's fairly logical. That's the two places they could meet up.
"I think she could go for the Tattersalls at the Curragh or, more likely, the Coronation Cup."
Gosden, though, insists that he will be guided by his star duo, depending on their general well-being throughout the year.
"They’re both very assertive horses," Gosden said. "They’re like pro fighters, you watch the horse and listen to them, they tell you what they want."
Hopefully they tell him they want to race each other at Ascot and ParisLongchamp. A dust up between these two highly-talented stablemates is a real appetite whetter as the Flat season finally mooches towards something like full swing.
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