Glorious Goodwood, one of the highlights of the Flat racing season, will open on the Sussex Downs on Tuesday with track officials “quietly confident” the Lennox Stakes, the card’s feature event, will take another significant step towards an upgrade to Group One status. “We are in position to guarantee half a million pounds in prize money the day it is upgraded,” Alex Eade, the track’s general manager, said on Monday. “It is a bit frustrating but there is a process and it has to be followed.”
Glorious Goodwood has two Group One events, Wednesday’s Sussex Stakes and the Nassau Stakes on Saturday’s closing card, one less than York’s Ebor meeting in August, which is staged over four days rather than five. It is still in the early stages of a 10-year, multimillion pound sponsorship deal with Qatar, however, and has ambitions to see the Lennox Stakes and Goodwood Cup promoted to Group One status well before the contract expires in 2024.
The traditional route to elevate a race to Group One status is via the end-of-season ratings for the first four home in three successive runnings. If their average rating is 115 or more three years in a row, promotion to the highest level is normally assured.
The Lennox was fractionally below par two seasons ago but well above the required standard in 2015, when Toormore edged out Dutch Connection and the average rating of the first four was 117. Five of the eight runners in Tuesday’s race are already rated between 113 and 115, so the prospects of another renewal that is up to the necessary standard are very good.
Politics, though, may also play a part in the decision-making process. The Prix de la Forêt, at Longchamp on Arc day in early October, is the only all-aged European Group One over seven furlongs, and senior French racing officials may be inclined to delay an upgrade for the Lennox until its case is unanswerable.
“We will have to see what happens and then make our case again [to the European Pattern Race Committee] and wait to see what happens,” Eade said.
“We’ve made our aspirations very clear, and my understanding is that the case has been taken to Europe a couple of times and been blocked by France, who seem loathe to recognise seven furlongs as a specialist distance [distinct from a mile].
“We’re quietly confident about this year’s race [meeting the standard], and then we will go again, and make representations both privately and publicly to try to keep up the pressure.
“There is also a review of the stayers’ programme coming up, and as part of that we’ve made an application for the Goodwood Cup to be a Group One as well. Our intelligence at the moment is that it could be a stronger case at the moment than the Lennox, so it’s whether we throw our weight behind that and try to get it over the line and then refocus our efforts on the Lennox.”
Toormore will line up for the Group One Sussex Stakes at this year’s meeting but Dutch Connection is back for another attempt at the Lennox, this time in the colours of Godolphin, who bought both Charlie Hills’s runner and Home Of The Brave (3.10), his main market rival, earlier in the season.
Both of the stable’s runners seem well suited to this trip, but the Hugo Palmer-trained Home Of The Brave in particular looks like a seven-furlong specialist and rates the selection.
He had the class to lead the 2,000 Guineas field until close to the furlong pole last season, and the speed to run fifth in the six-furlong Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot a few weeks later, and though he has yet to race at Goodwood, it is a track that tends to suits front-runners.
Boynton (2.35) can continue his progress and confirm recent Newmarket form with War Decree in a fascinating Vintage Stakes, while Maljaa (4.20) could make the most of a low stall in a race where Thesme, the obvious favourite, is drawn 17. Balmoral Castle (2.00), who is generally held up, also has an interesting each-way chance at around 20-1 in a race with an abundance of pace.
Thursday’s Galway Hurdle, a highlight at one of Ireland’s showpiece meetings, could have a controversial winner after Tony Martin, the trainer of Pyromaniac, went to Dublin’s high court on Monday and succeeded in a challenge to a 42-day ban imposed on the gelding by stewards at Killarney on 12 July.
Martin won the right to a judicial review of the case at a later date, and pending the outcome, Pyromaniac is free to continue to race.
Martin partially succeeded in an earlier appeal against the Killarney stewards’ decision, which was imposed for using the track as a training ground, after the trainer suggested that mouth ulcers and lesions caused by sharp teeth could have affected his horse’s performance. Pyromaniac’s 42-day suspension was upheld, however, after Martin was instead found to have run the gelding in a condition which could have prevented him producing his best form.
The Galway Hurdle is one of the biggest betting events of the year in Ireland, and Pyromaniac had been removed from most ante-post markets before reappearing as a leading contender at around 10-1 following news of the high court’s decision. Dan Skelton’s Superb Story, the County Hurdle winner at the Cheltenham Festival in March, is the 4-1 favourite.
