Commanche Falls looks set to join elite sprint club
You have to go back to Coastal Bluff in 1996 and, before that, Lochsong in 1992 to find the last two horses to win both the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood and the Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup in the same season.
They were both Group One performers on their way up through the ranks, but the Michael Dods-trained Commanche Falls, successful at Goodwood last month, can join the illustrious pair by landing Ayr’s most prestigious Flat race and, along with the Wokingham and Stewards’ Cup, one of the season’s most coveted sprint handicaps.
The four-year-old is a halfbrother to Dods’s smart sprinter Dakota Gold, but that is where the similarities end: Dakota Gold likes to make the running and needs soft ground. Commanche Falls likes to come late and, although he does not require soft ground, it can help slow down those he is aiming at.
They will go pretty fast today and
one imagines there will be horses up with the pace slowing down in the last furlong whatever the ground.
“He’s in good form,” said Dods yesterday. “A drop of rain wouldn’t go amiss just to take the sting out of the speed horses and stop them getting away.
“My other, Pendleton, is also in good form, but he definitely needs
rain. Commanche Falls comes alive on the racecourse. He has improved with every outing and deserves his chance. It might have been better to be drawn more towards the middle, but we are in stall two and the favourite, Great Ambassador, is in one.”
Apart from the favourite, others of note are Tim Easterby’s Sunday
Sovereign, stepping up to six furlongs – he was not stopping over 5½ at Chester – and Popmaster, who will travel up in the same lorry from Lambourn as Ed Walker’s other runner, Great Ambassador.
At Newbury, the form is with Dhabab in the Dubai Duty Free Mill Reef Stakes. He was beaten a length and a half last time by National Stakes winner Native Trail but has not run for a while and a bit of juice in the ground will help the Ed Bethell-trained Fearby, who is capable of giving the first-season trainer his first Group success.
Yesterday at Newbury, Martyn Meade, who is rarely without a smart performer, won the 41st running of the Haynes, Hanson and Clark Stakes with Zechariah, who made some well-regarded colts look pretty ordinary. The Nathaniel colt looks to have a bright future.