The Qatar Goodwood Festival may have had a very 2022 (official) moniker, but the action on the track was truly glorious. Ben Linfoot looks back on the highlights of the week.
Tuesday: Kyprios a Cup king on day one
The 2022 Al Shaqab Goodwood Cup. This was the stuff. Ascot Gold Cup winner beats four-time Goodwood Cup winner with last year’s Goodwood Cup winner back in third. Let’s not forget the run of the Coral Marathon winner in fourth, either, who travelled best but had to surrender to three staying giants.
This race has thrown up some great champions over the last two decades. Yeats, Brown Panther, Big Orange, Stradivarius himself. But as a spectacle, as a horse race, as a prizefight, this was the best since Persian Punch gallantly held off the previous year’s winner Jardines Lookout in 2003.
Will there be a day where Kyprios is as popular as Persian Punch? It’s highly unlikely. But here we have a proper champion made straight from the Aidan O’Brien staying-racehorse mould. It wasn’t obvious as he cut his teeth in the game, indeed, in the Zetland Stakes and in the Lingfield Derby Trial he looked more Nick Kyrgios than Kyprios, complete with bad attitude, but now he’s channelling his energy in the most positive of manners.
The step up in trip has seen him blossom into a terrific stayer, full of heart and guts and a will to win. You know he’s going to respond to Ryan Moore and he had to here, to see off a legend of the genre in Stradivarius and the talented Trueshan who wasn’t quite at the top of his game on faster ground than ideal.
Watching these three bang heads again is what we want now. A bit of cut in the ground to play to Trueshan’s strengths would be ideal. We’d really see what the new Kyprios is made of then and the Long Distance Cup at Ascot on Champions Day could deliver all that we wish for.
Yet for all that the Goodwood Cup suggested there’s not a lot between the big three, it would be no surprise if the new champion has all the answers once again, whatever the conditions in the autumn, considering his startling improvement this year.
Wednesday: No need to mention the F-word when you’ve got the B-word
If the Goodwood Cup was the race of the week then Baaeed was the horse of the week, the main man, the star attraction, the poster boy. Not just for the week, either, the season, William Haggas’ unbeaten four-year-old swaggering his way through the campaign like F…, no, I can’t type it and I won’t.
There is no point in comparing Baaeed to F, there was and only ever will be one F, and we were there, watching him, an unbeaten 140-rated monster, the best to ever grace the turf, the exploits of the horses he pummelled telling you all you need to know.
Baaeed is more like his sire, Sea The Stars, than F, anyway, all grace and class, the Roger Federer to Kyprios’ Kyrgios. So straightforward, so relaxed, purring away like a Ferrari against VW Golfs to take Haggas’ ‘like riding a motorbike in the Tour de France’ to a worse place.
But this Ferrari only just does enough, saving his fuel for another day, just like his old man. Rated 128 after five consecutive Group One wins on the spin, it’s now down to what he can do over 10 furlongs to see if he can climb into the 130s – could beating a Mishriff with consummate ease take him there?
Whatever his peak rating come the end of his career, let’s just enjoy the rest of Baaeed while we’ve got him. The 10-furlong thing really is exciting as he could, conceivably, be EVEN BETTER over that trip judging by his breeding and the manner in which he races.
“Will he even come off the bridle in the Juddmonte International?” asked Nick Luck on Racing TV in the aftermath of his Sussex Stakes cruise, in a tone of voice that said ‘nothing will get this beast off the bridle in the Juddmonte International’.
You can see it now, Jim Crowley, motionless, Baaeed tanking all over his rivals on the Knavesmire, warm applause from the packed York grandstands throughout the final quarter mile. It reminds me of something, if only I could put my F-ing finger on it.
Thursday: Ice-cool Hollie gets the best out of Nashwa
After Tuesday’s Irish Derby no-show and Emily Upjohn’s King George horror-show confidence in the Cazoo Oaks was undeniably knocked. Epsom third Nashwa, 4/7 earlier in the week, drifted to 6/5 for the Qatar Nassau Stakes and, despite her crystal-clear form claims, this had all the makings of a banana skin.
Keen in the Oaks when beaten and keen again in the Prix de Diane when winning, she was close-up at Chantilly and with a serious lack of pace on paper in the Nassau it looked highly probable that Hollie Doyle would ride Nashwa prominently again, to ensure that she was going at a pace where she would settle while cutting out any potential hard-luck stories in the process.
Top jockeys have other ideas, though, and Doyle dropped the daughter of Frankel in immediately, riding her cold in stone last, settling her beautifully, anchored at the back, her confidence in her mount evident for all to see, that positive energy channelling through to her horse.
When she glided into open space for a run two furlongs from home it simply looked a case of how far, the answer being one-and-three-quarter lengths, this test of speed, on Good to Firm ground, showcasing her strengths in a way the French Oaks, with a bit of cut in the conditions, couldn’t.
Her next target looks like being the Prix de l’Opera on Arc day, but the Breeders’ Cup Filly & Mare Turf could be her season-defining race, as she’s got all the gear to thrive in Keeneland in November.
“I don’t know how Hollie stays so cool,” her mum, Caroline, said on ITV in the aftermath of the Nassau. “I’d be an absolute wreck.” Mum knows best and Doyle’s calmness in the saddle is one of her greatest strengths, a trait that might be well needed in the white-hot atmosphere of a Breeders’ Cup. Let’s hope the Nash gets a bash at the Stateside prize.
Thursday: London calling for the St Leger
Thursday wasn’t just about Nashwa. Royal Scotsman oozed class in the Richmond Stakes, looking the likely winner from a very early stage, the son of Gleneagles shaping every inch like a contender for top-level juvenile honours later in the season.
But if there was a slap in your face Group One winner-in-waiting performance on show it was that of New London’s, also on the Thursday, in the Group Three John Pearce Racing Gordon Stakes.
How different the Derby might’ve been if Charlie Appleby’s three-year-olds hadn’t fluffed their lines in the trials back in May. New London was a single-figure price for the Derby on the morning of the Chester Vase, the bookies anticipating cutting him to something like 3/1 favourite for Epsom given he was 4/11 to dismiss Changingoftheguard on the Roodee.
In the end he was way below form, seemingly hating the track, but perhaps it was more than that, perhaps he just wasn’t on his A-game, either.
His C-game saw him miss the Derby, but 65 days off did the trick, his easy win in an always-hot bet365 Handicap at Newmarket’s July Festival a pre-cursor to his Gordon Stakes victory and they were pretty similar; backed as if defeat was out of the question, winning by a comfortable margin.
That doesn’t tell the whole story of the Gordon Stakes, it wasn’t quite as easy as at Newmarket, but there was plenty to like about the way this powerful horse put the race to bed in the closing stages, screaming to everyone that he’ll get further on a more galloping track.
Related to St Leger winner Masked Marvel, he’s now the 7/2 favourite for the Doncaster Classic, disposing Westover, who had looked a sitting duck for something, anything, to overtake him at the top of the betting after his King George flop. If those New London Leger odds are wrong, it’s only because they are too big.
Friday: Leeper faith in the Ebor
‘Friday’s child is loving and giving’ so goes the famous nursery rhyme, but while we had some nice stories – Emma Lavelle landing a big Flat prize, German raider Rocchigiani winning for Peter Schiergen, the David O’Meara one-two in the Golden Mile and David Menuisier’s five-timer with Caius Chorister – we didn’t have the fireworks of the first three days.
Top billing went to Khaadem in the Group 2 King George Qatar Stakes, the horse who gave Nature Strip most to do in the King’s Stand, albeit without a jockey, his nervy antics at the starting gates earning him a stalls test now he’s been requested to be last in for three consecutive races.
Once he gets out of them, though, with jockey intact, he’s good, the drop in trip to five furlongs revitalising the son of Dark Angel, to such an extent that he’s as short as 10/1 for the Nunthorpe, with Raasel, the fast-finishing runner-up, a few points bigger at 12s or 14/1, depending on your turf accountant.
Khaadem would be much preferred for the Knavesmire out of the two, as he travelled like a very quick horse in this while Raasel, brilliantly improved by Mick Appleby, got going too late which would be a worry at speedy York. That’s not to say he can’t win a Group One in his current form, the Flying Five at the Curragh looking more his bag.
While Charlie Hills is working his sprinting magic with Khaadem, Ed Dunlop might well have rediscovered the touch that saw him train Red Cadeaux to go so close in the Melbourne Cup (three times), and Trip To Paris to win Chester and Gold Cups in the same season, with another stayer, John Leeper, who looks a huge player in the Sky Bet Ebor.
Hands up, I’ve backed him for York and I’ve backed him again. Yes, he might have his own ideas about the game, but a strongly-run 1m6f is exactly what this horse needs and his never-nearer five-length fifth over a couple of furlongs shorter in the L'Ormarins Queen's Plate Glorious Stakes at Goodwood on Friday was the most perfect trial for the Ebor.
With a couple of good York runs under his belt this season he is being brought to the boil nicely by Dunlop, who has already had his best season, by numerical winners, for five years - with three full months of the campaign to go.
Nabbing a big one would be the cherry on the cake for Dunlop and as heritage handicaps go they don’t get much bigger than the Ebor, a race his late father, John Leeper Dunlop, never won, remarkably, considering his training methods. At 16/1-plus, the equine JL might just be a big price to right that wrong.
Saturday: A tale of two Forces
Coral Stewards’ Cup day and there were rumblings from the sponsors about the poor take-up in the consolation race with only 12 horses turning up for the £50,000 pot – with more than double that running last year when Mr Wagyu won.
If potential opposition were scared off by the presence of thriving three-year-old Lethal Levi, an odds-on chance 9lb well-in at the weights, that decision was misplaced as he ran a shocker, seemingly caught out by the track, his usual forcing tactics unable to be utilised as he was slowly away and always on the backfoot.
While that son of Lethal Force disappointed, another, Commanche Falls, made history in the day’s feature, becoming the first horse since Sky Diver in 1968 to win back-to-back renewals of the Stewards' Cup and only the sixth in history to win it twice.
He was only 2lb higher than when winning last year, but conditions could hardly have been more different given it was a race run on soft ground 12 months ago, and he did it differently, too, hitting the front sooner than last year, ‘too soon’, according to jockey Connor Beasley, who said his mount idled in the closing stages.
After unseating leaving the stalls in the Wokingham at Royal Ascot this will be an extremely pleasing success for his handler Michael Dods, a terrific trainer of sprinters, his work with Commanche Falls’ half-brother, Dakota Gold, a 14-time winner, further evidence of that.
It’s tempting to say the handicapper will have the measure of Commanche Falls after this, but after landing back-to-back Stewards’ Cups anything will seem possible to connections. Gutsy and genuine, with talent to match, an ambitious Stewards’ Cup-Ayr Gold Cup double will be in their sights now.
Why not? Beating 50 horses combined in this annual cavalry charge in the last two years, on one of the quickest six-furlong tracks in the country, would give you the confidence to have a crack. Two Stewards’ Cups. One of the stories of the week.
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