We have now had the Newmarket Guineas meeting and the Derby and Oaks trial at Lingfield. We had surprising winners of both the 1000 and 2000 Guineas if going of the betting, we also had outsiders winning both trails at Lingfield over the weekend. We have had a very unpredictable start to this years flat turf season.
We will start with 1000 Guineas which took place on Sunday the 5th of may at Newmarket in front of 15,000 racegoers. Elmalka ran out the winner of the 1000 Guineas, with the top 5 covered by only 1 length. She stole the race on the line for Roger Varian and jockey Silvestre De Sousa first classic success. The well backed Ramatuelle ran a superb race for 3rd and Ylang Ylang for Aiden O'Brien was back in 5th also came with a late challenge but couldn't quite get a top 3 finish.
The eyecatcher of the race has to be Tamfana trained by David Menuisier and ridden on the day by Jamie Spencer, this filly ran a cracker after getting her challenge stopped by traffic 2 or 3 times. Backers of the horse might be disappointed by the ride of Spencer but he did get super unlucky but that's the risk u take when hoping for the spaces to appear in an ultra competitive big field Group 1, definitely a filly to keep an eye on!
The 2000 Guineas for the first time ever was won by a colt that has never had a run on turf, Notable Speech had 3 run's at Kempton on the all weather, the colt won all 3 of those starts showing off his wicked turn of foot which left him 16/1 for the 2000 Guineas. His all weather running style of coming off the pace and blitzing them in the final furlongs was carried over here, he ran held up in rear, made smooth headway 3 furlongs out to then lead 1 furlong out to go on and win the 2000 Guineas for Charlie Appleby, William Buick and owners Godolphin.
The big talking point coming into this years race was City Of Troy, many media outlets and pundits where talking this horse up to be as good as Frankel he would've had to go and win this race comfortably. The O'Brien yard where confident saying that he looked to improve from 2 to 3 and he put on more muscle. In the parade ring before the race u could see he was much smaller then most other runners posing the question had he trained on from 2 to 3. Unfortunately the colt had a bad performance and finished 9th 16 lengths of the winner. One bad performance can be excused but 2 is poor performance so we will see him next in the Epsom Derby on June 1st.
The weekend just gone at Lingfield we seen both Oaks and Derby trials. Many racegoers and media outlets put it down as the weekends trials for some time. The Oaks trial for the fillies' was contested between 7 runners headed by Danielle (odds 2/1) who was coming of an impressive win last time at Wetherby. Danielle was trying fast ground for the first time and ran a solid race to finish 3rd 1 length of the winner. The trial was won by You Got To Me trained by Ralph Beckett and ridden by Hector Crouch. The filly stumbled out the gate, led the race throughout and got pressured late on but found more to see off the late charging Rubies Are Red by half a length. Its most likely all 7 runners will be declared for the Oaks at Epsom.
This years William Hill Lingfield Derby Trial favourite was Illinois at 6/4 ridden by Ryan Moore and trained by Aidan O'Brien. The colt subsequently came 2nd to Ambiente Friendly who went of at 8/1, the race ended very spread out with the top 3 being spread by 7 lengths. Ryan Moore after the race went on to say Illinois hung right handed throughout and in fairness did look like the colt ran awkwardly during most of the race. After Ambiente Friendly's success here the colt is now quoted at 8/1 from 100/1 for the Betfred Derby at Epsom on June 1st. Personally I think its an overreaction of a poor race, no doubt he will turn out to be a smart horse but a Derby winner I'm not too sure only time will tell.
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