Qatar Goodwood Festival review: Baaeed posts best Timeform performance
A look at the five best performances at this week's Qatar Goodwood Festival on Timeform ratings, a rising star topping the charts.
BAAEED (Timeform rating 125p)
For once, the top miling performance of the meeting didn’t come in the Sussex Stakes. Instead, that honour belonged to Baaeed who took his unbeaten record to four races with another impressive victory in the Group 3 Thoroughbred Stakes.
William Haggas’ campaigning of the Shadwell colt has been a masterclass in a progressing a horse through the grades and for each of his wins in a maiden, novice, listed and now Group 3, Baaeed has looked a cut above the opposition. That was the case again here as he looked a Group 1 performer with the way he made short work of his rivals who were smart three-year-olds themselves.
Travelling strongly held up, the result looked in little doubt when Baaeed began to make smooth headway on the outside of the field to lead over a furlong out and he duly quickened away to pull six and a half lengths clear of El Drama who’d been beaten the same distance behind St Mark’s Basilica when last of four in the Eclipse. Baaeed has the Group 2 option of the Celebration Mile back at Goodwood at the end of August but he’s earned his place in a Group 1 contest when the time comes.
SUESA 125
Most of the focus before the King George Qatar Stakes was on Battaash’s bid to win the race for the fifth year running but he and the rest of the field were swept aside by the three-year-old French filly Suesa who looked a top-notch sprinter herself in beating her rivals so comprehensively.
That said, her winning margin over second favourite Dragon Symbol of three lengths flatters her slightly as she was seen to maximum advantage in being covered up, whereas the leaders went too fast into what was a strong headwind.
Even so, Suesa ran a clear career-best to take her record to five wins from six starts. She’d impressed sufficiently in her two Group 3 wins at Chantilly in the spring to be sent off favourite for the Commonwealth Cup but didn’t deliver at Ascot after travelling well for a long way in a forward position.
That clearly wasn’t her true form, however, and she was a revelation with William Buick adopting a more patient approach here, producing her to lead a furlong out. She holds an entry in the Nunthorpe, and it would be good to see her confirm her Goodwood effort at York.
TRUESHAN 124
With the meeting getting under way on soft ground, that was unwelcome for the Gosden team, who made a late decision to withdraw Stradivarius from the Goodwood Cup which he’d won for the last four years. On the other hand, the going was ideal for the mud-loving Trueshan who’d beaten Stradivarius out of sight under similar conditions in last season’s Long Distance Cup at Ascot.
With the Gold Cup winner Subjectivist sidelined through injury and the third from that race, Spanish Mission, another absentee because of the ground, Trueshan was the one to beat and made the most of a good opportunity, his task an easier one than his fine effort under a big weight in the Northumberland Plate.
With the field coming over to the stand side in the straight, Trueshan led on the bridle two furlongs out and was well on top at the finish in beating outsider Away He Goes by three and three-quarter lengths. That didn’t quite match Trueshan’s Long Distance Cup effort (worth 126), but it was one of the best performances of the meeting nonetheless and a first Group 1 for his trainer Alan King. The Prix du Cadran at the Arc meeting should be right up his street.
ALCOHOL FREE 122
No three-year-old filly had won the Sussex Stakes since Marling in 1991, while four-year-old Soviet Song had been the last female to win it in 2004 so Alcohol Free’s beating of the 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace winner Poetic Flare was a significant one.
It was also a career-best for Alcohol Free who was landing her third Group 1 and it was a good result all round for the classic generation with the trio of three-year-olds in the field taking the first three places in the absence of top older miler Palace Pier.
The return to softer ground, which she’d also had when winning the Coronation Stakes at Ascot, was probably the key to Alcohol Free’s performance, though the return to less aggressive tactics will have helped too as her speed was an asset in a race that wasn’t run at an out-and-out gallop.
In contrast, the run of the race and the track didn’t suit favourite Poetic Flare who was a length and three quarters back in second with Snow Lantern the same distance away in third. Alcohol Free had made the running when only third to Snow Lantern in the Falmouth Stakes, a race which also threw up the Nassau winner Lady Bowthorpe (now rated 120) who’d been fourth at Newmarket.
KINROSS 122
The Lennox Stakes was another race on the first day of the meeting severely impacted by a spate of ground-related withdrawals with six non-runners reducing the field to eight.
It was a steadily-run race too, resulting in the field finishing in a heap, and the bare form can’t be rated that highly, though winner Kinross has been rated value for a bit more than his neck win over Jersey Stakes winner Creative Force after having to wait for a gap before quickening to lead inside the last hundred yards.
That confirms Kinross as a very smart seven-furlong performer and right back at the top of his game in taking his record to two out of two since being gelded.
His win in the John of Gaunt Stakes at Haydock had come in a strongly-run race, but he coped well with the emphasis more on finishing speed here, more so than the runner-up and that one’s stable-companion Space Blues, the 2020 winner, who finished a close but never-nearer fourth. Kinross holds entries in all the big seven-furlong contests coming up, as well as the Sprint Cup at Haydock.
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