Watch & Learn: Timefigure analysis on City Of Troy Superlative Stakes win from Graeme North

With a hefty 18 Group races in Britain, Ireland and France last week following a relatively barren two when there were just nine and seven respectively, there’s plenty to get stuck into so I’ll dive straight into the July meeting at Newmarket.

One of the things that bugs punters as well as racing professionals alike – witness a tweet from trainer Gemma Tutty last week that bemoaned the lack of daily racing going updates from tracks in the midst of a volatile period of weather so making race planning very difficult with information often days out of date - is exactly that lack of or belated communication from racecourse officials about conditions as well as details of watering, and for such a prestigious meeting as the July meeting it should be said that the 20mm of irrigation the racecourse put on ahead of racing on Thursday wasn’t communicated as well as it could have been with the last 8mm put on not made public until late in the piece.

The opening Group 3 Bahrain Trophy produced a close finish in the third slowest time since the race was reduced in distance from nearly fifteen furlongs in 2006 to the thirteen it is currently and a 49 timefigure for the winner Castle Way is testament to the dawdle the race was run at for a long way. Anyone wanting a proper idea of the state of the ground - good to firm as it turned out - had to wait until the following July Stakes which went to Jasour.

Whether or not the change in tactics on him was deliberate – and it may have been seeing as he was trying six furlongs for the first time – a position off the pace in a well-run race down the centre of the track was no bad thing but despite running four sub 11 second furlongs according to Course Track his time wasn’t flashy when compared to Quinault over the same distance half an hour later and he’ll have to improve a bit more to win something like the Gimcrack.

Despite the smallest field for the race since Soapy Danger beat three rivals in 2006, the still-improving Israr ran the fastest time in the Princess Of Wales’s Stakes this century, returning a 116 timefigure after Global Storm set an unsustainably strong pace that ended up burning out stablemate and former Derby winner Adayar after he’d taken over the baton with the winner covering the last furlong in a pedestrian 14.35 seconds.

The game might be up for Adayar, at least on the track, but good things surely lie ahead for Nostrum who looked potentially top class when running the second fastest time for the Sir Henry Cecil Stakes since the race was inaugurated in 2013. The only winner on the day other then Jasour to dip under 11 seconds for the penultimate furlong before running the last furlong fastest of all, Nostrum’s 112 timefigure can be upgraded to 118 or thereabouts once those finishing splits are incorporated and ten furlongs promise to suit him even better.

Following rain throughout the morning, Friday’s meeting started on ground Timeform called good and ended heading towards soft after rain continued throughout the card. The feature event of the day, the Group 1 Tattersalls Falmouth Stakes saw Nashwa roar back to form dropped to a mile for the first time since scoring at Haydock on her three-year-old reappearance last year.

She might have had the advantage of a pitch towards the stand rail as the advantage moved away from the centre, but a five-length winning distance is still the largest this race this century and a 116 timefigure is the joint-second highest in the race in the same time frame, 4lb behind Alice Springs who clocked 120 in 2016 and ended up winning another two Group 1s later in the season at a mile.

Her breakthrough at the trip adds an interesting dynamic to the top mile races later this season, though it seems she will step back up in trip next for the Nassau where she will likely bump into Via Sistina again, for whom the Falmouth surely came too quickly after her win at the Curragh.

With the defection of Soprano, the juvenile feature, the Duchess Of Cambridge Stakes, attracted the smallest field since Arabian Queen beat four rivals in 2014. An 86 timefigure reflects the fact the runners didn’t really get racing until two furlongs out but an 18lb upgrade takes Persian Dreamer's overall timerating to a more respectable 104 and with plenty of stamina in her pedigree you’d imagine she might be even better over further.

Whether that will be the case I’m not sure as her TPD striding data at Ascot when she was fourth in the Albany showed she has a much shorter stride and quicker turnover than the 2022 Albany winner Mawj, so whether she turns out to be as effective at longer trips as her predecessor remains to be seen. It could be that softish ground is important to her as well.

Ground conditions were slightly quicker for Saturday’s card which had the Pertemps Network July Cup as its highlight. Won by the slightly characterful Shaquille who made a horlicks of the start again, a 117 timefigure in a well-run race is pretty much in the middle of winning ones this century but doesn’t tell anything like the whole story.

Timeform could only get manual sectionals for the July Cup and then with great difficulty on a day camerawork made other races impossible to clock, but those published by Course Track show that despite a slow first furlong, the second slowest in the race, Shaquille ran the second and third furlongs easily fastest of all as he took a fierce grip yet despite that exuberance still ran the second-fastest fourth furlong as well as the joint-second fastest fifth and sixth furlongs.

All that translates into a performance a fair bit better relative to the second and third than the reported margins suggest on the back of a 91% final furlong finishing speed and putting all this together I’d upgrade his performance by around 8lb, taking his overall time rating to 125.

If Shaquille had observers shaking their heads in disbelief, no doubt bet365 Superlative Stakes winner City Of Troy did too, and while he received a very favourable mention in this column a couple of weeks ago after winning a Curragh maiden this effort was on another level completely.

Wide-margin winners in the Superlative haven’t always gone on to hit the heights that might have been expected – five-length 2002 winner Surbiton ended up handicapping in Dubai while 2014 winner Estidhkaar ended up well beaten in the 2000 Guineas – but a 117 timefigure is outstanding by historical standards for a two-year-old over seven furlongs so early in the year and this century has only once been bettered at the trip by a youngster in July and then that wasn’t achieved until the end of the month when Pinatubo ran away with the 2019 Vintage Stakes in a 124 timefigure.

A couple of the better recent Superlative winners Native Trail and Quorto ended up taking in the National Stakes and that’s the likely route for City Of Troy I would imagine before the Dewhurst and the 2000 Guineas and Derby. If you wanted to be very picky, you could point to slightly sideward head carriage in the penultimate furlong but a race later this season between him and Beauvatier, the French two-year-old colt I mentioned last week, would be something to savour!

The best French three-year-olds might be better than the best of the British three-year-olds, if not the pick of the Irish, and mention of Beauvatier brings me around to Ramatuelle who reinforced the view their two-year-olds are stacking up in similar fashion after she won the Prix Robert-Papin by four lengths.

That’s the largest winning margin this century, though interestingly the second and third largest have also come at Chantilly since the race was moved there in 2020. I’d be wary of thinking this was a step forward in what was a weak field with runner-up His Majesty below his best racing much wider and carrying his head awkwardly and while she’s very useful she also looks a slight filly so it will be interesting to see how she progresses, certainly in comparison to City Of Troy who, remarkably, is also by her sire Justify.

Two days previously, Soul Sister was attempting to become the first filly to win the Grand Prix de Paris since 1994. One of the frustrations about punting this great game is that you can call a good horse early but not be on when the horse delivers and after backing Feed The Flame to win a tidy sum in the Prix du Jockey Club as mentioned in this column a few weeks back I didn’t have a penny on last Friday when he won one of France’s most famous races by a length from Irish Derby runner-up Adelaide River.

Feed The Flame’s win was not dissimilar to Onesto’s last year in that he was a few lengths adrift as the field approached the false straight before passing all of his rivals, but whereas Onesto got to the front entering the final 200m Feed The Flame didn’t get on top until close home. Unlike Onesto, whose unplaced effort in the Jockey Club can be put down to a very wide draw, Feed The Flame probably needed the run at Chantilly to ‘wise him up’ probably having learnt little winning his first two races on the bridle.

Unfortunately, there were no sectionals returned for the Grand Prix, but video analysis shows he got to the 800m marker in almost exactly the same time as Onesto only to run the remaining section against a deeper field pretty much a second faster. He’s almost certainly nowhere near as far behind his compatriot Ace Impact as the result of the Jockey Club suggests and quotes of 14/1 for the Arc aren’t unappealing.

The news last week that official sectionals from Ireland have been delayed yet again was not entirely unexpected following their non-appearance following some recent high-profile fixtures and for the time being it’s going to be a case yet again of relying on manual spadework to derive figures to help inform race analysis where pictures allow.

Camerawork was good enough at Leopardstown last Thursday to allow Timeform to return some figures and though there were no fancy upgrades the winning timefigure for the opening two-year-old maiden was a healthy 89 and looks to me a race to follow.

Four of the first five, including the winner Bellezza, hold an entry in the Group 1 Moyglare Stud Stakes later in the season with interestingly the only one among that quintet who doesn’t being the increasingly disappointing Navassa Island who, regular readers might remember, was one of those youngsters who looked interesting ahead of Royal Ascot having recorded a timefigure of 95 or higher.

Early days it might be, but the 240,000 guineas paid for her at the Craven Breeze Ups where she was the eleventh-highest priced lot increasingly looks like money poorly spent. I’ll be analysing racecourse performance and progression from high-selling and fast breezing two-year-olds at some point later in the year.

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