The maiden which took place at Ascot last Friday has a history of being contested by fillies considered good enough for the Queen Mary at the Royal meeting.
Rizeena won both races in 2013, while Clive Cox’s Shades of Blue finished a close third in the Queen Mary in 2018 after making a winning debut in the same maiden.
Cox also won this year’s race with GET AHEAD (Timeform rating 82p) who won convincingly in the end after initially showing her inexperience when first asked for her effort. Always prominent, Get Ahead picked up really well to lead inside the final furlong and had a length and a half to spare at the line over El Hadeeyah who was the only filly in the field who had already run, having finished third on her debut at Newmarket.
A theme common to many of the Cox stable’s smart two-year-olds of recent seasons has been that they haven’t cost huge sums – Supremacy, Tis Marvellous, Golden Horde and Harry Angel all fetched between £44,000 and £65,000 as yearlings – though Get Ahead, a daughter of Showcasing, was bought for considerably more at Tattersalls last October.
Her 200,000 guineas price tag was largely down to her full brother Alkumait winning the Mill Reef Stakes just weeks beforehand, while the dam’s three-year-old filly Praised (by Pivotal) got off the mark over six furlongs at Redcar at around the same time.
All four of Get Ahead’s older siblings are winners, in fact, and they include The Broghie Man (by Cityscape) who won a listed sprint at Navan at three. Their dam, Suelita, won four times over sprint trips in Italy, including as a two-year-old.
Suelita’s half-brother Outer Space, still winning last year at the age of nine, was useful earlier in his career, finishing second in the Cornwallis Stakes, while another good two-year-old in the family is Suelita’s granddaughter Living In The Past who won the Lowther Stakes in 2019.
Further back in the family there’s more stamina, with Godolphin’s very smart stayer Opinion Poll (rated 122), winner of the Goodwood Cup and twice runner-up in the Gold Cup, the pick of the horses on Get Ahead’s page in the sales catalogue.
Opinion Poll was out of a half-sister to top-class miler Markofdistinction whose biggest wins came at Ascot in the Queen Anne Stakes and Queen Elizabeth II Stakes.
