Timefigure analysis on Derby favourite Desert Crown, Oaks favourite Emily Upjohn and Baaeed

Regardless of the disputed additional charge for a sachet of tartare sauce, the £100 asked per person by Newmarket for a ‘Fish & Chips Experience’ in its Champions Gallery Restaurant, panoramic views of the Rowley Mile or not, exposed on Twitter last week by Patrick Weaver, seems a touch excessive at a time when racecourses are finding the paying public turning up in decreased numbers, even if the price includes Members badges.

I wrote a couple of weeks ago that Newmarket’s Rowley Mile has never seemed to me to be the most welcoming of venues, and I suspect fewer of the members or attendees there will be as impacted or concerned by rising prices as those who enjoy their racing at Redcar, but even York, which has long had a reputation for providing some of the best value for money around, couldn’t escape the malaise with spectator numbers at last week’s Dante meeting uncomfortably below the level they were at in 2019 when crowds were last allowed at the fixture.

It will be fascinating to see how over the next few months racecourses attempt to win customers back (assuming, of course, they want them back), but if nothing else there could be no quibbling the standard of racing on the Knavesmire which was as high as ever with the track playing host to the rising stars Desert Crown and Emily Upjohn, favourites for the Cazoo Derby and Oaks respectively, as well as established star Stradivarius who carved out a place in history for himself after winning the Yorkshire Cup for the third time.

I suggested last week that Stone Age was vulnerable at the head of the Derby market, and I suspect that the three-and-a-quarter length Dante winner Desert Crown is at least his equal even if his winning time wasn’t a top-notch one. A most-impressive winner of a backend maiden at Nottingham last year that had also been won by the top-class Mishriff a couple of seasons earlier, Desert Crown posted a 109 timefigure upgraded to 116 after Timeform’s sectional upgrades calculated from three furlongs out are added on.

The more detailed furlong-by-furlong sectionals (accurate to +/- 0.2 seconds) returned by Course Track show that Desert Crown was at his most dominant in the final furlong, and though he’s out of a mare by Green Desert, I doubt he’ll fail for lack of stamina at Epsom. Half of all Dante’s run since 2000 have been won by a length or less but wider-margin Dante winners (those having scored by two- and three-quarter lengths and more) include Derby winners Golden Horn and Authorized as well as Irish Derby winner Cape Blanco and the now-deceased Roaring Lion, so Desert Crown is in very good company. El Bodegon, whose wins as a youngster included a defeat of Stone Age in the Criterium de Saint-Cloud, did little for that form looking laboured throughout and looks like he needs much softer ground.

The previous day Emily Upjohn had cemented her place at the head of the Oaks betting with a powerful display in the Tattersalls Musidora, beating recent wide-margin Newbury maiden winner Life Of Dreams by five and a half lengths in a 110 timefigure upgraded to a minimum (bear in mind she was eased down) of 113 after sectionals are incorporated. Emily Upjohn’s winning margin was the largest since Punctilious scored by the same distance in 2004 and her timefigure was the fastest this century behind only The Fugue’s 115 in 2012.

Course Track sectionals indicate that she ran each of the last three furlongs faster than any of her rivals despite her rider easing off and she was value for nearer eight lengths at least. She looks likely to be very well suited by a mile and a half and the maiden she won at Sandown is worth keeping an eye on with Emotion and Time Lock having both come out since and won similar events by wide margins.

Staying horses on the Flat don’t interest me as much as those that race at shorter distances but it’s hard not to have a soft spot for Stradivarius who maintained his unbeaten record in the Yorkshire Cup with a regulation victory over Ormonde runner-up Thunderous.

A winning timefigure of 103 attests to an ordinary pace and is well below the level he is capable of at his best - which isn’t quite the level it was back in 2019 when he last contested this race – but small-field steadily-run affairs like these arguably suit him better these days than larger-field more strongly-run affairs (last win in a double-figure field came in 2019) where his turn of foot is less potent. His win was his eighteenth in total in Group company, more than half of which - remarkably - have been by a length or less.

The fastest timefigure at York last week (119) was posted by Highfield Princess in the 1895 Duke Of York Clipper Logistics Stakes, which is just 2lb shy of the race-leading 121 posted this century in the same race by Lend A Hand and Harry Angel. In doing so, Highfield Princess became only the second of her sex to win the race (from thirty-three entrants) in the same period after Pipalong in 2001. Pipalong scored at the highest level in the Group 1 Sprint Cup at Haydock, but whether Highfield Princess will be able to do the same remains to be seen.

Solely with my timefigure hat on I should be more positive, but the latest Duke Of York was a bizarre race to the eye and given she was drawn lowest of all and seemed to gain momentum from edging left over two furlongs, possibly ending up on the fastest part of the track, then given the amount of improvement she seemed to show I’d be inclined to wait for confirmation. Over the course of the meeting the stand rail looked the slowest part of the track, and with that in mind if I had to pick out one horse to follow from the fixture meeting it would be Catch The Paddy who stayed hard to the rail after a slow start while the much-touted winner Queen Olly was produced wider.

Emily Upjohn might be the Gosden’s prime hope for the Oaks if the betting is to be believed but they have a very able second-string - if indeed she is the second string – in the shape of Nashwa who was no less impressive in winning the Haras De Bouquetot Fillies’ Trial at Newbury than Emily Upjohn was in in the Musidora.

A winning margin of a length and three quarters over a field that lacked an Oaks entry in a 104 timefigure isn’t much to get excited about on the face of things but the manner in which she powered from last to first, eventually running a faster time than the earlier London Gold Cup won by her stable-companion Israr having reached halfway half a dozen lengths slower, marks her out as a very smart prospect. Her 98 timefigure is boosted to a minimum of 109 when upgrades are included and the daughter of Frankel will surely improve further given she still looked inexperienced inside the last furlong.

Her effort has a far more solid look to it with the Oaks in mind than those recorded by Thoughts Of June (timefigure 94, no upgrade) in the Cheshire Oaks or Rogue Millennium (87 timefigure, 3lb upgrade) in the Oaks Trial at Lingfield. Indeed, the best of the fillies who contested those races might well turn out to be Cheshire Oaks runner-up Above The Curve who gave the winner a fair amount of start and only ended up going down by a short head.

Newbury’s highlight the Group 1 Al Shaqab Lockinge Stakes went, as expected, to Baaeed who looked every bit as good if not better than he had during an unbeaten campaign in 2021 when he showed top-class form but (at least domestically) didn’t run a top-class time. Baaeed went some way to righting that wrong in the Lockinge, returning a 116 timefigure that gets boosted to 128 when a 12lb upgrade is incorporated, never looking in any danger of defeat from the moment he loomed up travelling well two furlongs out and proving that by running each of the last two furlongs much faster than any of his opponents.

It’s hard to see what might give him a race in the Queen Anne at Royal Ascot and given the number of relatives of his who stayed at least a mile and a quarter then a first try at the trip in the Juddmonte International ought to see the crowds flocking back to York. Baaeed ended a great week for his sire Sea The Stars who besides Emily Upjohn and Stradivarius was also responsible for Baaeed’s stablemate Gaassee (another proverbial Haggas-trained Group horse in a handicap) as well as the Listed mile-and-a-quarter winner Ottoman Fleet.

The French equivalent of the 2000 Guineas and 1000 Guineas took place over the weekend and went to Modern Games and Mangoustine respectively. The Poulains was the faster run of the two by around four-fifths of a second but was still a messy affair with all the first ten home running the last 600m within half a second of each other according to the France Galop sectionals.

The Pouliches is a race that the French nearly always manage to keep at home and did so again with Mangoustine who stepped up on her recent Prix de la Grotte third to edge out 1000 Guineas winner Cachet whose effort wilted late on with around half the field running the last 600m faster than she did. It didn’t look a vintage race and the form looks muddling to me.

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