Musical Times is a short price to remain unbeaten this Friday

Musical Times a class apart in the Fillies' Mile?

Horse Racing

Mon October 05, 2026 · 4h ago

Matt Brocklebank takes a wander down memory lane ahead of Musical Times's bid for Fillies' Mile glory this Friday.

Certain racing idioms tend to stick better than others and more often than not one can clearly recall how and why these phrases – whether based in a modicum of truth or otherwise – became lodged in the punting conscience in the first place.

Aytach Sadik’s little legend Green Go taught me all about the classic ‘horses for courses’ during my formative days going to Cartmel, having won a handful of times at our local track between 2003 and 2006, while not much after that the mighty Denman was flying in the face of the rather more fanciful ‘weight stops trains!’ by successfully conceding upwards of a stone all round to win his second Hennessy Gold Cup at Newbury in 2009.

It was 2009 that I also learnt a couple of harsh lessons in the Flat racing world.

The first was very much a self-inflicted problem as it only dawned on me that I’d surreptitiously been gifted the name of the 1000 Guineas winner during a brief, and reasonably well-oiled, encounter with Charlie Hills at the previous December’s HWPA Awards ceremony the precise moment his Ghanaati skipped clear under Richard Hills to win the Newmarket Classic at 20/1.

The mere thought of it still brings an eye-watering level of shame some 17 years on, but that was the very same race after which it was widely considered that Rainbow View ‘hadn’t trained on’, having gone into it looking little short of a 'racing certainty'.

Not training on remains something of a fictitious maxim for many but has sprung to mind again on a few occasions this season, I must admit, not least after giving last year’s Gimcrack winner Lifeplan one last chance in Saturday’s Rous Stakes at Ascot. Less said.

Has he not trained on? Have all the others caught up with him? Perhaps he wasn’t all that good in the first place.

In the case of George Strawbridge’s Rainbow View, trained by John Gosden, there was no questioning her talent as a two-year-old. The daughter of Dynaformer had progressed with each and every visit to the track, backing up her July Course maiden win in the Group 3 Sweet Solera at Newmarket before justifying cramped odds in the Group 2 May Hill at Doncaster and putting the cherry on top with an authoritative victory in the Group 1 Fillies’ Mile - still run at Ascot at that point.

Rainbow View was a wonderful winner of the Fillies' Mile

But the winter hiatus wasn’t kind to her and from eight subsequent starts under the Gosden banner before being shipped to the States at the end of her Classic campaign, she won just one more race.

There were excuses offered up along the way, of course, the quick ground in the Guineas, 12-furlong trip in the Oaks, plus a couple of very stiff tasks against older stars of the time such as Goldikova and Midday – which certainly don’t look like disgraceful efforts with the benefit of hindsight.

There’s no cast-iron argument for Rainbow View ‘not training on’ – she went on to win the Group 1 Matron Stakes at Leopardstown before enjoying some success at a lower level for the late Jonathan Sheppard in America – but here was a horse that everyone had hailed a future champion in the autumn, suddenly looking a little out of her depth at big school.

Whisper it quietly but it could be argued that Timeform had seen that coming, analysis of her Newmarket triumph including the prophetic: “physically, she's not the type to progress markedly from 2 to 3 yrs, while the Oaks trip would be a concern for all she's by Dynaformer and settles well, but she's Guineas-winning standard if able to maintain her form…"

So as the latest May Hill winner Musical Times was cut to 1/2 favouritism for this Friday’s bet365 Fillies’ Mile (14:57), I couldn’t help but draw the odd comparison having revisited the write-up of her recent Doncaster triumph.

“…looked right out of the top drawer; having settled mid-field in the centre group, she made smooth headway 3f out, using her turn of foot to get to the front under 2f out and soon storming clear to record the largest winning distance in the May Hill this century, relishing the step up to 1m; what she lacks in substance is clearly made up for in talent and she'll head to the Fillies' Mile as the one to beat…”

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Timeform's ‘lacking substance’ can refer to a horse being lightly built, weak or lacking a certain frame, which may or may not set some of the Rainbow View alarm bells ringing for next year, but right now Musical Times is clearly a two-year-old to be celebrated and when it comes to precocious fillies in particular, you never quite know when you're potentially staring at one last hurrah.

There are 12 confirmed at the forfeit stage but with Sun Goddess enjoying a rare Group 1 occasion on the sidelines, Musical Times is out on her own from a ratings perspective and the market is screaming ‘one-horse race’.

Now, where have I heard that before?

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