The trials for the first two Classics of the season begin in earnest at Newmarket on Wednesday but Andrew Balding, the trainer of last year’s Racing Post Trophy winner Elm Park, said he is confident his colt will require only a racecourse gallop at Newbury on Friday to be fit and ready for the 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket on 2 May.
Elm Park was bred at the Balding family’s Park House Stables by Balding’s mother Emma, and is a son of Phoenix Reach, who raced with distinction for Andrew Balding on three continents before retiring to stud. The latest star of the stable persuaded Ian Balding, the trainer’s father, to reach further back into history for comparisons when he posed for photographers , in terms of his condition if not, as yet, his form.
“He looks the best of all of them,” Ian Balding said, “I can remember Mill Reef [the 1971 Derby winner] as an early three-year-old at this time of the year, he looked just so much better than anything else and this horse is the same.
“Not that that makes him as good but it’s nice to have seen the progress [during the winter], he was a big, unfurnished two-year-old but he’s really filled out into the proper thing now.”
Ian Balding passed the licence at Kingsclere to his son in 2002, and the string has now grown to 160 horses, the maximum the facilities can accommodate. Elm Park is the undoubted standard bearer for the new Flat season, however, having won four times in five starts in his juvenile campaign.
“Last year he was always a tall, good-looking horse but he’s got some width to him now, which hopefully suggests he’s got a bit more strength to him as well,” Andrew Balding said. “He’s got much better muscle development than last year, and you’re still seeing him not quite at race fitness, so he’s going to drop a few more kilos we’d expect between now and the Guineas.
“The other thing, which isn’t true of all my horses, is that he’s very forward in his coat, which is always a help. The rest will start catching up now that we’ve got this better weather, but he hasn’t had a day when he hasn’t gleamed, which is great.”
Faydhan, one of the favourites for the 2,000 Guineas, will begin his Classic season in the Free Handicap at Newmarket on Wednesday afternoon, while several more colts with Guineas entries will line up for the Craven Stakes at the same course .
Balding, though, is happy to go straight to the Guineas before looking towards the Derby at Epsom in early June. “What he achieved as a two-year-old, we always felt was a bit of a bonus,” the trainer said. “To be honest, on looks and pedigree you wouldn’t necessarily have expected him to run four times, let alone win four times. He was a bit of a wild card but that’s always the way with a good horse.
“The Guineas will tell us plenty, he’s got to run well in the Guineas to run in the Derby. He’s got to run a nice race there and as long as they come out of it well there’s plenty of time between the races so you can go and have a gallop around a track.”
Balding, who will also be busy at Windsor racecourse this season as an official ambassador for the track’s popular Monday evening meetings, has not weighed up the possible opposition at Newmarket next month, preferring to concentrate on his own horse. “I haven’t even looked at the opposition to be honest, it’s irrelevant,” he said. We’ve got our target and we’re going there and if he’s good enough, he’s good enough, and if he’s not, he’s not and we learn what we can from the race.
“The only thing we’d look at closer to the time is what the running styles of the opposition are. We’re not going to change our plan unless we have a setback, and if that’s the case, we’re in the Dante [at York] and the other Derby trials.”
Faydhan (3.30) should confirm himself a serious contender for the 2,000 Guineas in the Free Handicap at Newmarket this afternoon, while New Providence could be a value choice in the other main Guineas trial on the card, the Nell Gwyn Stakes for fillies. The Queen’s Peacock is also interesting in the Fielden Stakes, a possible trial for the Derby in June.
