O’Brien colt Churchill holds all the aces as Classic season lifts off
Potential Guineas rivals on show at Craven meeting Thunder Snow set for crack at Kentucky Derby
The 2017 Turf season has been hiccupping along unsure whether it is run on grass or an artificial surface since it unofficially opened at Doncaster at the start of the month but, with Good Friday’s all-weather championships behind us, it finally gets clearance for lift-off on Tuesday at Newmarket’s Craven meeting.
Sir Henry Cecil hardly ever had his first runner before the Craven meeting and he was a good judge. As ever, Aidan O’Brien, the reigning champion trainer, holds most of the keys to this year’s Classics. Churchill, his ninth juvenile Champion in the past 18 years, has been a pretty solid over-winter favourite for the 2,000 Guineas and Derby since he won the Dewhurst Stakes on the Rowley Mile in October.
After being beaten first time out, he won his next five starts, including the Chesham at Royal Ascot. Never overly impressive, he always got the job done with a minimum of fuss and gave the impression he could pull out more if required. That’s the sort of attitude that serves a horse very well but does not necessarily earn them great plaudits.
Though he is rated towards the lower end of O’Brien’s champion twoyear-olds it is, perhaps, worth remembering that the highest rated, Fasliyev, never raced at three, while the only one rated lower, Camelot, only just came up short in the Triple Crown.
Unlike Ballydoyle’s big hope last year, Air Force Blue, who lived up to his name in so much that he blew out on all four starts, Churchill is by Galileo and not War Front so there is plenty of encouragement that he will improve a bit at three. O’Brien has described him as one of the most imposing colts they have had at Ballydoyle and will send him straight to the Guineas. O’Brien’s horses have not exactly hit the road running this season and have appeared to need their first runs but he has a few entered at Newmarket this week and the Guineas is still three weeks away.
Churchill will have to be on his game, though, after the Andre Fabretrained Al Wukair, who carries the colours of last year’s Guineas winner, Galileo Gold, romped through his trial in the Prix Djebel at Maisons-Laffitte this week. He was 10 lengths off the lead at one stage but Gregory Benoist was playing with them and came through to beat National Defense by a length.
O’Brien’s Coventry Stakes winner, Caravaggio, who was not seen out after a minor setback following the Phoenix Stakes in August, could also throw a spanner in Churchill’s works. Given a full season he might have been champion juvenile. The Investec Derby is only seven weeks away and O’Brien has plenty with which to tackle the trials, including Sir John Lavery, Cliffs of Moher, Douglas Macarthur, Exemplar, Capri, Sir Edward Landseer, Utah and Yucatan. On the fillies’ front you will need to get your gardening handbook out with Hydrangea and Rhododendron both expected to do well.
With Golden Horn still fresh in the memory, the combination of trainer John Gosden and owner-breeder Anthony Oppenheimer, the colt’s sire, Frankel, and with Frankie Dettori in Fahey’s title chance Having amassed prize money of £4million in 2015 and £3million in 2016, Richard Fahey is only a couple of decent horses away from having a good chance of becoming the first northern-based trainer to win the trainers’ title since Malton’s Charles Elsey in 1956. His main rivals are the past three winners Richard Hannon, John Gosden and Aidan O’Brien. Ribchester can be a major contributor to Fahey’s coffers in the season’s top mile races.
Gordon riding high The first season out of an apprenticeship is traditionally difficult but Josephine Gordon, last season’s champion, hardly seems to have broken her stride. She rode 87 winners all told in 2016 and is already up to 28 for 2017. She has the backing of a big yard in Hugo Palmer and is now high up on Godolphin’s list of contacts. If she keeps the ride on their recent seven-length Doncaster maiden winner, Benbatl, big-race winners are just round the corner.
Free-spirit Hanagan Paul Hanagan could well be back in the market for champion jockey now that the reigning champion Jim Crowley has taken his job as Sheikh Hamdan’s first jockey. Numerically, Hanagan was hamstrung by the job and it will be the same for Crowley.
Hobbs to dominate Having missed the thick end of last season through injury, it looked like it might have done Jack Hobbs no harm when he won in Dubai. John Gosden’s five-year-old could well wind up the season’s most dominant older horse.
Frankel progeny to fire The bare statistics of Frankel’s first crop in 2016 were that of his 111 foals, 35 ran and of those 16 (45 per cent) were winners. Nearly all his winners were highly rated. What it also means that there are still plenty we have not seen yet. Look out for Cracksman and Swiss Storm in the early Classic trials. the saddle, Cracksman will carry a certain weight of expectation. He won a one-mile maiden at Newmarket smartly last October and could also be in the Derby mix. He worked at Chelmsford on Thursday.
With Wuheida out of the 1,000 Guineas, Godolphin’s focus on the first weekend of May might be on the Kentucky Derby, where Thunder Snow is expected to reappear after his narrow win in the UAE Derby on the dirt on World Cup night.
A Group One winner on Turf in last year’s Criterium International by five lengths – and a Group Two on dirt, he already has claims to be one of the most versatile three-year-olds around. If Sheikh Mohammed ever wonders whether the game is always fun these days this horse should, at least, provide some.
Last year Newmarket yards were laid low in late summer by a bug and, apart from the obvious, there are an awful lot of three-year-olds who did not run or only ran once and could come into the Classic equation under the radar.
As usual it will all conclude at the Breeders’ Cup in California in November, where the mighty Arrogate will be aimed at a second Classic. This year the meeting is run for the first time at the picturesque Del Mar in San Diego, a stone’s throw from the Pacific, where the turf meets the surf. A lot of water has to flow under the bridge before that spectacular photo finish.