WITH a bit of luck, we will be raising the bat for our century of winners over the next few days.
Numerically, this is probably the best first half to a season we’ve ever had, and I noticed when I checked the stats the other day we’d had nearly 100 seconds as well!
But if I’m being picky, we are just lacking some proper Group 1 horses at the moment, and at the end of the day every trainer wants to be having runners in the big races every weekend.
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Take the King George on Saturday, it’s a race with an incredible rich history and one I would love to win, but those brilliant middle-distance horses don’t grow on trees.
On the bright side, we have a very promising crop of young horses coming through the ranks, and at this stage in their careers the dream is still alive.
We send a couple of them to Ascot, but more on them in a second.
Because it’s all hands to the pump for Glorious Goodwood next week, one of themost important meetings of the year for our yard.
We had a couple of winners there last season and will be sending a big squad down the A34 over the next seven days, with some of our big guns ready to fire again.
Chief among them is Coltrane in the Goodwood Cup, and he should run his usual solid race, for all Kyprios will be hard to beat.
I’m really looking forward to stepping See The Fire up to ten furlongs in the Nassau Stakes on Thursday, and another I’ve had on my Goodwood radar for a while is Purosangue.
He runs in the Stewards’ Cup on Saturday and, as well as representing good value at 14-1, also has the benefit of being, in my opinion, well-handicapped.
We will just need a bit of luck with the draw as it will be a huge field, as always.
We’ve a big day at Ascot to worry first, with a very exciting filly in the shape of HANDCUFFED (1.50) running for the King and Queen in the Princess Margaret Stakes.
It’s always a privilege having runners for the Royal family and we are keeping everything crossed that we have a nice one on our hands.
She had been showing up well on the gallops earlier this year and we knew she had ability, but we weren’t quite expecting her to win as easily as she did first time out at Newbury.
It’s difficult to get a handle on the strength of her form at this stage, but it’s a similar story for the opposition today and we will find out today if she is up to this level at this stage in her life.
NEW CENTURY (4.15) is another two-year-old we think plenty of and I’ll be gutted if he doesn’t run a big race.
The form of his Doncaster win got a nice boost when the third came out and bolted up during the July Festival at Newmarket.
He has a lot of similarities with his dad, Kameko, in that he is the ultimate professional and very easy to deal with.
I think this is a very nice horse.
As for the big race itself, it’s hard to look beyond Auguste Rodin, even allowing for his up-and-down record.
Aidan seems to have found the key to him and he will be very hard to beat.
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