Newmarket trainer Ed Walker is convinced that last week’s brilliant Novae Bloodstock Insurance Craven Stakes hero, Stormy Antarctic, has improved further as he prepares for Saturday’s week Group 1 2016 2000 Guineas at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile Racecourse.
Run over a straight mile, this £500,000 event is the first of 35 races in the 2016 QIPCO British Champion Series. It had 25 remaining entries following yesterday’s (Tuesday) scratching stage, including the odds-on favourite, Air Force Blue, who will be bidding to give his Irish trainer, Aidan O’Brien, a record eighth win in the race.
Air Force Blue was mighty impressive when beating Massaat by a comfortable three and a quarter lengths in Europe’s top two-year-old race, the Dubai Dewhurst Stakes, over seven furlongs of the Rowley Mile last October – his third straight Group 1 triumph.
But, much more recently, Stormy Antarctic was equally eye-catching when pulling three and a half lengths clear of Foundation in the Group 3 Novae Bloodstock Insurance Craven Stakes over the full QIPCO 2000 Guineas course and distance last Thursday, 14th April.
Other leading Newmarket-trained QIPCO 2000 Guineas candidates are the easy Group 2 Champagne Stakes winner, Emotionless, trained by Charlie Appleby, and Peter Chapple-Hyam’s Marcel, successful in last season’s Group 1 Racing Post Trophy.
The hopes of Yorkshire, meanwhile, mainly rest with Mark Johnston’s Buratino – the only horse to have beaten Air Force Blue, in the Group 2 Coventry Stakes at Royal Ascot last June.
“Stormy Antarctic looks fantastic and has tightened up for last week’s run in the Novae Bloodstock Insurance Craven Stakes, ” said Ed Walker, trainer of Stormy Antarctic
“He has come out of it extremely well - I couldn’t have asked for the race to have worked out better.”
“On form he was entitled to win it as he had a higher official rating that Foundation, but I would be lying if I said that I thought that he would win it like that, coming from so far back when nothing had come from off the pace all day. It was a hell of a performance.”
“A lot of people are saying that he is a mudlark but I disagree. Much of his form has come on soft ground but that’s just been the way that it’s turned out, we haven’t gone looking for it – he moves like a fast ground horse and is by an American stallion.”
“He was a bit keen in the Craven, but that’s not the first time that he’s been keen and George [Baker, his jockey] says that it looks worse than it is - he’s just throwing his head around a bit and is not really fighting him.”
“I just put it down to freshness and I’m not at all worried about it. With a more honest pace – and they always go a good pace in the Guineas – he will settle better, just like he did when he was second in a Group 1 in France.”
“He’s exuberant, he’s just a very happy and playful horse. I took him up to the races on the first day of the Craven Meeting just for a walk around, expecting that he might be a bit fresh and silly, and he behaved beautifully.”
“The public seem to have the QIPCO 2000 Guineas down as a one horse race, expecting Aidan’s horse [Air Force Blue] to win it - which takes the pressure off a bit - but we certainly don’t see it that way. It’s unbelievably exciting and I’m just praying that everything goes smoothly between now and race day.”
