Some Group One races confirm an obvious champion, but others are just chapters in a story that continues to unfold. The Prince of Wales’s Stakes here on Wednesday fell straight into the second category as Free Eagle, who beat The Grey Gatsby by a short-head, has just five races behind him and a wealth of possibilities in the months to come, yet it is still impossible to be sure whether he was the best horse on the day, or The Grey Gatsby was the most unfortunate.
Just nine runners went to post after California Chrome, last year’s Kentucky Derby winner, was ruled out with an injury earlier in the week, and both Kevin Ryan, the trainer of The Grey Gatsby, and John Gosden, who saddled the third home in Western Hymn, suggested afterwards that his absence robbed the contest of vital pace. Without California Chrome, the gallop looked stop-start at best, and while Pat Smullen had Free Eagle ideally positioned to get first run on his field, Jamie Spencer, on The Grey Gatsby, was forced to wait for several strides while Western Hymn held him in. Once clear, Spencer and The Grey Gatsby charged after Free Eagle and were ahead a stride past the line, but Free Eagle was still a short-head in front when it mattered.
It was not so much a case of Spencer getting anything wrong as Smullen doing everything right in the context of the race as a whole. Free Eagle was also racing for the first time since October having reached the track just twice in each of his first two seasons, and Dermot Weld, his trainer, had good reason to be pleased with his careful preparation of the four-year-old.
“He got a brilliant ride from Pat,” Weld said, “he’s a very good horse and when you’ve a brilliant horse like him, it makes the training easy. But he has had a lot of problems. He had a heavy head cold a couple of weeks ago and I thought today was going to be in doubt, but we got him right on the day that matters. He was just underdone, you can’t force fitness.”
The victory allowed Weld to complete the unusual feat of saddling a Grade One winner at Cheltenham in March and a Group One winner at Royal Ascot in the same year. He will now aim Free Eagle towards the Irish Champion Stakes and the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, two races that he has yet to win in a 43-year training career.
“I’ll probably give him a break now because I rushed him a little bit for today,” Weld said. “It would be wrong to say I’d run him in the Eclipse or the King George, the worst thing now would be to run him back in two weeks and expect him to do the same again. We’ll give him a chance and train him for the Irish Champion or the Juddmonte International and then the Arc de Triomphe.”
Ryan refused to dwell on what might have been. “I’m not disappointed and you probably think I should be,” Ryan said, “but I’ve got the horse back to his best and I’m looking forward to the big races ahead.
“He’s in the Eclipse, the King George and the Juddmonte, but it’s unfortunate that we don’t have a pacemaker for him. Over the first two furlongs, I thought they were going a good gallop, but then they half pulled up, and my horse was locked up. Jamie would have liked to get out a lot earlier, but you can’t barge your way out and that’s the rub of the green in racing.”
Frankie Dettori was forced to wait until the final race on the second day to get off the mark for the meeting, but he enjoyed the moment as Osaila’s late run snatched victory in the Sandringham Handicap and moved Dettori to a half-century of -winners at the Royal meeting.
Dettori is not even halfway towards Lester Piggott’s remarkable total of 116 Royal Ascot winners, recorded in an era when the meeting was staged over four days rather than five. His delight was still obvious, however, amplified perhaps by the fact that Always Smile, beaten by a nose in a desperate finish, was carrying the blue colours of his former employer, Godolphin.
“I was quite happy this morning and then everything went wrong,” Dettori said. “Euro Charline wouldn’t go in the stalls in the Duke of Cambridge Stakes and I thought it was going to be one of those days. I knew this filly had a great chance and she won brilliantly, so I’ve got it off my back.
“Al Shaqab [Racing, the owner of -Osaila] saved my career, so it means a lot. Fifty, what a big number.”
Harry Herbert, the racing manager for Al Shaqab, said that Dettori, who won his second Derby at Epsom aboard Golden Horn less than a fortnight ago, is “riding at the top of his game” this season.
“He’s looks great, he’s hard as nails, he’s having the year of all years,” Herbert said. “It just shows that when your confidence is with you in any sport, then things will happen.”
Ryan Moore, who had a treble on the opening day of the meeting, added two more winners as Acapulco stormed home in the Queen Mary Stakes and Gm Hopkins edged out Temptress in the Royal Hunt Cup.
Acapulco is the latest precocious juvenile to emerge from Wesley Ward’s stable in America, and like the same trainer’s Jealous Again in 2009, she dominated her field in the Queen Mary, an event for two-year-olds.
Acapulco’s physical superiority was such that before the race, she looked like an army fitness instructor amongst a platoon of raw recruits. Even Ward seemed to forget afterwards that it had been a sprint for juveniles. “I think she’s got a big, big future on the turf,” Ward said. “Certainly this is what she wants and she’s a beautiful, gorgeous filly. If you look at her, she looks like she’s four, not three.”
