Though Royal Ascot doesn’t exactly bisect the British turf season, it is undoubtedly its biggest turning point.
Pre- and post-Royal Ascot are the two distinct shades of the season, as it’s at Ascot that pecking orders are established, dominances hardened or dashed, and the biggest chance for late-starters to make a Group 1 statement. We saw each of those on more than one occasion through Royal Ascot 2015 last week.
As there’s so much to get through when it comes to significant performances at Royal Ascot, a chronological approach would soon become too messy. Instead, we’ll break it down into divisions, with those subject to the most seismic changes and best performances covered first.
Middle-distancesPerformance of the week came in the Tercentenary Stakes, a statement so surprising that we owe you a full breakdown of Time Test’s new rating of 130p.
In short, it’s a combination of race standardisation and a hefty sectional upgrade. In terms of the latter, Time Test finished faster than anything on day three (besides the muddling Gold Cup) and did so without needing to be put under great pressure, either. As far as race standards go, he should have been around 5 lb lower, but that would have meant taking the view that the rest of the Tercentenary field were way below average. We decided that wasn’t the case, and rated runner-up Peacock 116, 2 lb below the figure an average winner of the race could expect. That’s to say that Peacock would have finished a little over a length behind an average winner.
We make no secrets of the fact we’ve taken a doubly positive view of Time Test’s rating, though we reckon it’s justified. Here, we believe, is the horse with more chance than any of being able to take down Golden Horn later in the season.
The older horses certainly didn’t do their own claims of matching up to the Derby winner any favours in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes on Wednesday. In only narrowly holding off the well-established The Grey Gatsby (128), winner Free Eagle didn’t have to improve and is now on 129. He may do a bit better with that first run of the season behind him, but we didn’t see enough to warrant retaining his ‘p’ and as such we imagine he’s more likely to be Golden Horn’s foil than his equal.
Free Eagle’s jockey Pat Smullen was canny on Wednesday, but inspired on Saturday in guiding Snow Sky to the Hardwicke. Sectionals underline the praise heaped on Smullen afterwards- the first four all ran the final three furlongs in remarkably similar times- and accordingly we tread cautiously with his mount. Snow Sky is now rated 126. Take mares’ allowances into account and it’s 20 years since such a low rating has won the King George.
Milers
Gleneagles (129) put up his best performance yet in the St James’s Palace, running out a convincing winner by a clear margin over Latharnach (119). We’d still advise caution over Aidan O’Brien’s assertion that Gleneagles is his best-ever miler, though he is now in the conversation: it must be remembered that Rock of Gibraltar, Hawk Wing, Rip Van Winkle and the like all needed to face older horses before they could break the 130 barrier. We now have few doubts that Gleneagles has it in him to join them.
A meeting between Gleneagles and Solow, pencilled in for the Sussex Stakes in less than six weeks’ time, is now racing’s hot ticket. With none of his major rivals firing, Solow didn’t have to improve in winning the Queen Anne on Tuesday, though it shores up previous form and his rating of 130 tells you how close a call a match-up with Gleneagles would be. Note that, at those ratings, Gleneagles would be a narrow top-rated due to differing weight-for-age scales between Timeform and the BHA.
Though it never came up in post-race reactions, any of the three fillies that fought out the finish to the Coronation Stakes on Friday would provide an interesting sub-plot to Solow and Gleneagles’ meeting. We’ve actually taken a fairly low view of the bare form of the race, keeping Ervedya on 121 and putting Found and Lucida both on 119, though we wouldn’t be surprised if they were to improve faced with a bigger challenge. That would be particularly true in the case of Ervedya, who has the feel of one who might just keep improving.
Two-year-olds
At the top end at least, the two-year-old season only really starts in earnest at Royal Ascot. We could spend an article talking about the juvenile races alone, so we’ll keep it as brief as possible.
Acapulco was the star two-year-old of the week, winning the Queen Mary in the manner of a horse that’s arrived both willing and able to take on top sprinters. She’s rated 116p and, when her various allowances are factored in, would be among the top-rated should she go for the Nunthorpe. Most precocious two-year-olds aren’t taken down that bold route, though with such a game trainer (Wesley Ward) and owners (Coolmore) here’s hoping Acapulco might prove an exception.
That a filly put up the best juvenile performance of the week speaks highly of her more than it denigrates the other winners, who were largely around standard. The winners of the Coventry (Buratino, 114) Windsor Castle (Washington DC, 106p) and Albany (Illuminate, 109p) were all very close to five-year standards. The Norfolk (Waterloo Bridge, 103) and Chesham (Suits You, 106p) varied a little more, 3 lb below and above the standard respectively. Ballydoyle, the well-touted runner-up to Suits You, is on 101p.
Sprinters
There’s a new star sprinter in Britain, and he races in the colours of Sheikh Hamdan. Say that before the meeting began and it might have been assumed you were talking about Muthmir, but it was in fact Muhaarar who proved a revelation in Friday’s Commonwealth Cup. Beating Limato (121), who is already established as very smart himself, by nearly four lengths is a performance that more than matches up to the Commonwealth Cup’s Group 1 status and we expect Muhaarar, now rated 128p, to be right up with the best of the older sprinters.
That performance was, in fact, the best by a sprinter across the whole week. The more established Group 1 dashes both provided winners that flirt with the ‘shock’ category. Goldream (121) returned at 20/1 in the King’s Stand, albeit without having to improve to edge out veteran Medicean Man, with Muthmir (120p) a further neck back in third. In Saturday’s Diamond Jubilee, Undrafted (126) beat the well-fancied Brazen Beau (127). The winner was covered up just about throughout, while the runner-up was isolated for much of the race and, while it’s difficult to say how much difference that made, it’s more likely than not to have covered the half-length that ultimately separated them.
Stayers
The stayers are normally the poor relations at Royal Ascot, even more so in a year that provided a substandard, messy Gold Cup. The upshot is that the staying question, normally answered here and reinforced at Goodwood, Doncaster and beyond, remains open.
Trip To Paris definitely deserves to be in the discussion, progressive as he’s been (beaten from a BHA mark of 88 less than three months ago) and evidently having both abundant stamina and a change of pace, meaning he covers most angles. Whether, at four, he’s about to start a period of dominance in the staying division requires more evidence. For a start, it’s felt that runner-up Kingfisher (121) shaped better on the day, suffering in the pack while the path cleared in front of Trip To Paris and only just failing to catch him. Forgotten Rules, another relative newcomer to the division, finished third but remains ahead of both Trip To Paris and Kingfisher on 123 courtesy of his reappearance win.
