Keith Melrose looks back on a weekend of strong racing in Britain, Ireland and France.
As the latest weekend featured the Open Championship, second Ashes Test, the penultimate weekend of the Tour de France and the quarter-finals of the Davis Cup, you could say that racing has chosen a good week for some down time. With Royal Ascot and the July Festival just behind us and the King George, Glorious Goodwood and York to come, it fits our own sport favourably, too.
As such, there’s also a little downtime for this column, though not so much a rest day as a flat stage where we can sit in the bunch. There were a smattering of lower-level black-type races in Britain, most returning figures below the average for the grade. The clear exception came in the listed Steventon Stakes at Newbury.
The Steventon was won by Intilaaq, who came right away with Consort and beat that rival readily by two lengths. Consort had already shown that he can mix it at Group 1 level in the St James’s Palace, so for all the strongly-run nature of the race might be taken as flattery of the first two, their profile and times recorded demand a positive reading. Initilaaq is now rated 123p, Consort 121. We see the winner as a Group 1 performer in the making, while the runner-up would be a worthy Group 2 winner at least.
We wouldn’t day that Strath Burn is an unworthy Group 3 winner, though by the letter of the Timeform law he is certainly a below-average one. He’s been rated 112 for winning the four-runner Hackwood Stakes on the same card. On the upside, he remains unexposed enough to at least leave the door open to improvement.
The Super Sprint is the purported feature on the card at Newbury, though not many years produce a performance like Tiggy Wiggy’s in 2014 and this year was a reversion to the mean. Lathom’s performance, worthy of a rating of 100, is pretty much bang-on average for a winner of the race. The race on the whole was a touch unsatisfactory, the near-side runners not fast enough and the far side going a bit too quick, leaving the centre to dominate. The main derivation from that is Excessable, who led on the far side a furlong out, deserving credit above the result. Rated 97p, he may yet justify his place in strong races.
***
The rest of the weekend’s big ratings news comes from overseas. The Irish Oaks meeting gets a pretty clear run at the headlines and there were a couple of obvious talking points over Covert Love’s success. Neither, in truth, would be her rating, a very-marginally substandard 116p. What does warrant recording for posterity would be her rapid improvement for Hugo Palmer, whose own trajectory seems just as steep, and another top-notch big-race ride from Pat Smullen whose sensitivity to a steady pace has steered him to success on Free Eagle, Snow Sky and now Covert Love in recent weeks.
On the same Curragh card, the Anglesey Stakes proved a touch substandard (winner Final Frontier rated 104p), while the Sapphire Stakes delivered a well-contested Group 2. Winner of that race was Stepper Point (120), who returned to the form that saw him finish second in the King’s Stand and Nunthorpe in 2014. Fellow 120-horses Mecca’s Angel and Moviesta in second and third back up his achievement, with both having reasons on the day for running just a shade below their own best form.
The Curragh’s meeting carried on into the Sunday, when Wedding Vow and Home of The Brave both achieved belated vindication. For Wedding Vow, it was justification for her being so highly-tried in previous starts as she won a Group 2 in good style- though with that said, her rating of 108 still leaves her a bit shy of a return to Group 1s.
In contrast, Home of The Brave was showing that he’s no one-hit wonder in taking the scalp of Gordon Lord Byron in the Group 3 Minstrel Stakes. We’ve taken a cautious view of the form, given the winner was allowed to dominate, revising his rating to 118. That leaves him, like Wedding Vow, with a little to find if he’s returned to Group 1 company. Were you to ask for which is the more likely to make the step, we’d probably nominate Home of The Brave.
***
Also on Sunday, the Prix Eugene Adam took place at Maisons-Laffitte and was won by Dariyan, who earns a rating of 116 that makes a crack at Group 1s worthwhile, given he’s been so progressive and remains so unexposed.
The Eugene Adam wasn’t the main talking point in France during the week, though. It was Bastille Day on Tuesday and that brings the Grand Prix de Paris, won this year by Erupt. The form of the race is probably nothing outstanding in its historical context, though for beating the well-touted Ampere and the consistent Storm The Stars we’ve given Erupt a rating of 120p. That in itself isn’t enough to justify quotes of as low as 10/1 for the Arc, though his unbeaten, progressive profile (beat Dariyan among others in the Prix du Lys the time before) makes a campaign geared around a return to Longchamp in October a realistic aim for Erupt’s connections
