Silent Love lands Listed Chalice Stakes for Appleby and Loughnane at Newmarket

The three-year-old made her racecourse debut at the start of May, finishing third, before filling the same position behind stablemate Spirited Style (who runs in the German Oaks on Sunday) later the same month.

Switched to the all-weather in June, Silent Love duly landed the odds at Kempton to break her duck at the first time of asking prompting connections to step her up a furlong in trip as well as in class for this 12 furlong contest.

Jane Temple got first run on the field but Silent Love, ridden by Billy Loughnane, made rapid inroads against the stands' side rail and breezed past her rival to win a shade cosily.

The winning distances were half-a-length and four and a half lengths.

Winning trainer Charlie Appleby told Racing TV: "It is testing but he [Loughnane] said if it was a proper soft ground mile and a half I'd have won by a couple of lengths. He was quietly impressed with the way she saw it out.

"We thought we'd just test ourselves here a little bit. We've got a race in mind at Deauville for her towards the end of the month, a Group 3, so hopefully that will give her a nice progression onto that now. Coming up here we felt we'd given a nice break; one thing I'd say is that after Haydock we knew she'd appreciate this cut in the ground, and she saw it out well."

Loughnane has now ridden 11 winners from just 18 rides for Appleby and the trainer joked about how the partnership came about.

"It's down to my children that he got the first ride," he revealed.

"When he was just getting going on the all-weather he got the nickname Billy The Kid and they said 'can Billy The Kid have a ride?' So we stuck Billy The Kid up and he won on his first mount so it goes from there.

"He's a young rider with a lot of talent and is only going one way. Delighted to be able to put him on the horses that we've got that he can jump on, he's not the easiest jockey to get hold of nowadays, obviously he's got a great stable behind him with George Boughey but when he's available we're happy to put him on."

Loughnane gave value to those words when completing a double on the card courtesy of Beylerbeyi (9/4), trained by Ian Williams.

More from Sporting Life

• Free bets
• Racecards
• Fast results
• Full results and free video replays
• Horse racing news
• Horse racing tips
• Horse racing features
• Download our free iOS and Android app
• Football and other sports tips
• Podcasts and video content

Safer gambling

We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.

If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline / GamCare on 0808 8020 133.

Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org and gamblingtherapy.org.