Focus On The Flat: Classic thoughts and a 2025 horse to follow
It’s just 46 days until the start of the flat season and for someone like me who bleeds flat racing, it’s a date marked in my calendar earlier than most racing fans.
The Lincoln Handicap wouldn’t be my favourite race or card of the year, but it’s where the excitement starts to build ahead of another six months of punting fun (and inevitable heartache) for yours truly.
Alienating half of my audience by using this column to tell everyone how much better flat is than jumps is probably the wrong way to go. But I’m a completely different animal from the end of March onwards.
The Classics, the speed, the weather, the breeding, Group 1s. And you are never more than a few weeks away from the next big meeting; Newmarket Guineas in early May, the Derby and Oaks a month later, Royal Ascot in mid June, Goodwood at the end of July is glorious, York Ebor in the August heat, the St Leger and Irish Champions Weekend on the same day in September and an early autumn crescendo in Paris on the first Sunday in October.
None of this novice hurdle winner in October being talked up for a Cheltenham Festival target in five months. That is quite literally like getting a price on Guineas day for a horse to win the QEII Stakes in October – unthinkable in the flat game.
Friendly reminder
News broke last week that last year’s Derby runner up, Ambiente Friendly, has been transferred from the ever-amenable James Fanshawe to up-and-coming dual purpose trainer James Owen.
It doesn’t land as much of a surprise, really. The Gredley Family pay the bills and can do as they wish.
Ambiente Friendly ran really well in The Derby from a long way off the pace but went backwards from there on. The Gredley’s backed themselves into a corner with their Derby jockey change from Callum Shepherd to Rab Havlin – a pointless switch, in my opinion, that they then had to stick with at The Curragh for the Irish equivalent.
Needless to say, it didn’t go well in The Irish Derby with Havlin going from zero to 100 in a matter of two or three strides and I thought the horse simply didn’t want to pass eventual winner Los Angeles when push came to shove a furlong out.
The Hardwicke at Royal Ascot in June is his starting point, but I can’t see Ambiente Friendly winning a Group 1 as an older horse.
Light on for Guineas
Without doubt my favourite ante post race is the 2,000 Guineas and I have already written at length some early thoughts for the first Classic of the British season.
Since my first column, Charlie Appleby has stated his European two-year-old champion Shadow Of Light is likely to go straight to the Guineas.
The trainer is confident he’ll stay a mile but I’m not so sure myself.
I guess we’ll find out who knows more about horses in early May – myself or two-time British champions trainer Charlie Appleby...
One to follow
I'll leave you this week with my horse to follow in 2025 – Giselle.
A somewhat disjointed juvenile campaign for her including a midsummer injury layoff, before bursting back onto the scene in an October Curragh maiden that got the Twitter racing fans' tongues wagging.
A “learning” type ride then followed in a Group 3 back at the same track three weeks later, which leaves all sorts of options open to her at this stage – including the Guineas and Oaks on both sides of the Irish sea.
Quite simply, I’ll be following Giselle wherever she goes.