Get Timeform's verdict on the King George

Goodwood Cup: Simon Walker with Timeform reaction

By Simon Walker

Horse Racing

Wed July 30, 2025 · 5M ago

Simon Walker reacts to Scandinavia's victory in the Goodwood Cup and pays tribute to Trueshan.

We don’t send children down the pit these days. And we certainly don’t send them up chimneys. In some cases, we don’t even let them play outside any more, especially if there’s rain forecast or the temperature is over 20 degrees centigrade.

Things have changed a fair bit in horse racing, too. It’s fair to say there would be an outcry if we still ran three-year-olds on the Flat over the distance of the King George. Which is what used to happen when the Goodwood Cup was first run in the early-1800s. In fact, when this spotty oik watched his first Goodwood Cup in Timeform House in 1987 the John Dunlop-trained three-year-old Sergeyevich fended off the out-and-out sluggard El Conquistador over the thick end of twenty-one furlongs.

Since 1991, the distance of the race has been trimmed to a mere two miles and runners from the Classic generation have been few and far between, making up just 5% of the 210 runners in the last 20 years. In that time there had been just one three-year-old winner (Stradivarius in 2017), whilst in 12 of those renewals there have been precisely zero three-year-old representatives.

That’s why it was really good to see Scandinavia in the line-up this year and, whilst mildly frustrating to see him deny the Timeform top-rated Illinois late in the day, it was heartening to be reminded of days gone by when horses used to be campaigned a darned sight more adventurously than they are now.

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Admittedly, there aren’t many yards these days that have the ammunition in the staying division, Coolmore’s grip on it still fairly strong despite the retirement of Kyprios, and Trawlerman pretty much the only horse that stands in their way of mopping up the Cup races with their various high-class middle-distance stayers.

What does the 2025 Goodwood Cup represent in terms of form? Well, there’s no reason to believe that Illinois didn’t run his race, or that Sweet William wasn’t far from his best in third, whilst Sunway in fourth probably ran as well as he has tackling 2m for the first time, remembering he was around a length closer to Illinois in the St Leger last back-end.

All that means that Scandinavia now has a Timeform rating of 121, which has him a long way ahead of the quartet that beat him in the Queen’s Vase but no doubt whatsoever that Scandinavia has been a different model for cheekpieces and/or the longer trip on his last two starts.

There was a sad postscript to the race with the news that Trueshan couldn’t be saved after sustaining a serious injury approaching the straight, especially given connections spent so much of his career avoiding firmish ground with him.

He hadn’t been quite the force of old in recent years, but he was still a terrific servant for so many seasons and his name will crop up for a long time to come when the question of great weight-carrying performances in handicaps is posed, his defiance of 10-8 (equating to a BHA mark of 120) in the 2022 Northumberland Plate not easily forgotten.

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