Smart Call returns at York
COMEBACK: LAST YEAR’S MET WINNER WILL MAKE FIRST UK APPEARANCE IN THE MIDDLETON STAKES
Cracksman to have Derby test in Dante Stakes.
The UK Flat season is barely a month old, but already it has become patently obvious that the remarkable Galileo will run away with the leading sire award for the ninth time in 10 years and that only John Gosden can prevent Aidan O’Brien (1-8 with bookmakers) from taking a sixth trainer’s crown.
One could easily see Coolmore being mob-handed once again in the Derby, but, apart from their awesome 2000 Guineas winner Churchill, none of their recent trial winners – and there have been plenty - produced the ‘wow’ factor and I very much doubt whether they will be tempted to take their champion out of his comfortzone by testing his stamina over 2400m at Epsom.
Gosden, who is strong in the fillies department this year, denied O’Brien and “the lads” in both the Cheshire Oaks and Lingfield Oaks Trial last week as well as derailing the Ballydoyle juggernaut in the Ormonde Stakes on the Roodee with Western Hymn.
We look for the final pieces in the classic jigsaw at York this week, and Gosden has chosen the Knavesmire to put Cracksman, his best three-year-old colt, to the test in tomorrow’s Group 2 Dante Stakes.
Firstly, however, there is South African interest in the main supporting race, the Group 2 Middleton Stakes, which features the long-awaited first UK appearance of Smart Call, one of the top race mares in South Africa and now in the hands of Sir Michael Stoute.
Smart Call, who won last year’s Met, lodged in Newmarket last autumn with a view to prepping in the Sun Chariot en route to the Breeders Cup, but a training setback scuppered those plans so this will be the mare’s first run for 16 months.
Whatever Smart Call does in this race she will improve next time, but this year’s renewal has attracted a Group 1 field, with Stoute’s Breeders Cup Filly & Mare Turf heroine, Queen’s Trust, and Gosden’s star older filly, So Mi Dar, both in the field.
Neither of the big two will be finely tuned first time out, but SO MI DAR, who was second-favourite behind Minding for the Oaks until getting injured last summer and was later unlucky not to win the Prix de l’Opera at Chantilly on Arc Day, receives 1.5kg from Queen’s Trust which could just tilt the scales in her favour.
Looking ahead for clues to the Investec Derby, O’Brien has been cleaning up in the trials, celebrating a 1-2-3 in both the Derrinstown at Leopardstown and the Chester Vase, while his Dee Stakes winner Cliffs Of Moher, though only workmanlike, is now second-favourite for Epsom on 3 June and seemingly superior to Venice Beach.
However, having backed CRACKSMAN at 16-1 for the Derby before he overcame traffic problems to win the Blue Riband Trial over the course last month, I am sitting pretty and suggest you take the 7-1 still available before he goes to York.
Cracksman only just got up to beat Permian at Epsom, but the runner-up, who bolted up at Newmarket’s Guineas meeting, got first run, having denied Frankie Dettori an escape route from a pocket early in the straight, so I feel that with a clear run he would have won convincingly.
Gosden tells me that Cracksman “learned plenty from that race” and that “he’ll improve for stepping up in trip”, so if he does deliver in style at York his odds will tumble again, especially should news follow that Churchill opts out of Epsom.
The Dante is traditionally the best of the Derby trials, and Gosden has won the last two runnings, including with Epsom hero Golden Horn, but Cracksman will certainly need to win - if we are to be in business at Epsom.
There has been a massive recent ante-post plunge on Stoute’s Crystal Ocean, but it was only three weeks ago that he broke his maiden and with Godolphin’s four runners having question marks against them, the main threat could be Joseph O’Brien’s Rekindling, who won the Group 3 Ballysax Stakes like a decent horse.
John Gosden’s stable are carrying all before them and Enable looked a potential Oaks winner when capturing the Cheshire equivalent last week.
Enable is owned by Khalid Abdullah, who also has Shutter Speed with Gosden and earmarked for today’s Group 3 Musidora Stakes at York, and the pair met at Newbury last month when Shutter Speed came out on top.
But Gosden suspects this 2100m could be the top end of Shutter Speed’s stamina and that the stronger stayer is Enable, who might therefore be the better prospect for Epsom.
However, those plans could be revised if SHUTTER SPEED emulates So Mi Dar, last year’s winner of this race, though the filly is so far superior to four rivals who are no more than promising that we are unlikely to learn too much.
Trainer William Haggas brought back silver and bronze medals from his week-end trip to Deauville for the French 2000 and 1000 Guineas, with Sea of Grace thwarted by Gallic outsider Precieuse in the fillies classic and Rivet battling on for a brave third behind Jean-Claude Rouget’s Brametot in the colts’ equivalent.
Brametot was a welcome winner for Rouget, who had 47 of his horses badly affected – two died – by an Equine Herpes Virus this spring, and this talented colt will take on Rivet again in the Prix du Jockey-Club over an extra 500m at Chantilly next month.
Another Chantilly possible, this time for the Prix de Diane, is Godolphin’s Sobetsu, who, having been jarred up on the fast ground in the Fillies Mile at Newmarket, relished easier conditions when bouncing back to form to win the Group 1 Prix Saint-Alary.
It is 28 years since Dermot Weld became the first and still only European trainer to win an American Triple Crown race, with Go And Go in the Belmont, and those memories were revived on Sunday when John Velazques steered the Weld-trained Zhukova to success in the Grade 1 Man O’War Stakes.
Weld has won races all over the world, but a Breeders Cup celebration is the missing link on his CV. However, in Zhukova the veteran Irish wizard looks to have a major player for this year’s Filly & Mare Turf.