All eyes were on Aidan O’Brien during last year’s Flat season, as Ireland’s champion trainer chased and then passed Bobby Frankel’s record of 25 Group One wins in a season. So it was easy to miss the royal blue colours of the Godolphin operation enjoying their best campaign in years, with 18 Group Ones of their own around the globe, and Charlie Appleby seemed very confident in Dubai on Wednesday that the upward curve will continue.
“Aidan O’Brien is the one that everyone’s trying to latch on to,” Appleby, who saddled four Group One winners on three continents last season, said. “But for ourselves, we’re very happy with the way that last year went. We built throughout the season and as we were going into this season, it was the biggest team of highly rated two-year-olds we’ve had for a long time.
“They’ve wintered well and I feel we’ve got strength in depth throughout the whole team, in the older horses and the three-year-olds and also the two-year-olds we’re starting to get to grips with over the coming weeks and months. I’m confident we’re going to be very competitive this season.”
The early part of Godolphin’s 2017 campaign was marked by internal bloodletting, as John Ferguson, the operation’s chief executive, was forced to quit after a rift with Saeed bin-Suroor, who also trains a big string in Newmarket, went public. This year the changes in personnel have happened already, with Joe Osborne, who took over from Ferguson, returning to his previous role with Godolphin in Ireland after barely six months in the job.
Whether or not Osborne’s return to Ireland was linked to John Gosden’s increasing significance in the Godolphin operation is anyone’s guess. But it was Gosden who did the bidding when Sheikh Mohammed ended his long boycott of yearlings by stallions standing at John Magnier’s Coolmore stud at the major sales in the autumn, and Gosden who will train Gloam, a juvenile filly by Galileo out of the Breeders’ Cup winner Dank, who cost £4.2m at the Tattersalls sale in October.
Their close neighbour’s increasing influence at Godolphin will surely increase pressure on Appleby and Suroor to get results, above all in the major classics in England, France and Ireland over the next two-and-a-half months.
Wild Illusion, who gave Appleby his second consecutive success in the Group One Prix Marcel Boussac in October, is pencilled in for the 1,000 Guineas in either England or France but the keenest hopes in the stable must be for Ghaiyyath, who was an impressive winner of the Autumn Stakes at Ascot in October and is quoted at 25-1 to give Godolphin’s colours a long-awaited first success in the Derby in June.
Both classic contenders spent the winter in Dubai and will return to Newmarket early next week. “The further Ghaiyyath goes, the further the improvement you’ll see,” Appleby said. “Whether we head straight to the 2,000 Guineas [at Newmarket] or whether we go down the Dante route [at York in mid-May], we’ll make that decision [once the horses are back in Newmarket]. They will ship out of here on Monday and Tuesday and when they get back, we’ll start to get to grips with them.”
The form of Ghaiyyath’s win at Ascot will be tested at Newcastle on Friday when Purser (3.55), who finished nearly four-and-a-half lengths behind Appleby’s colt, lines up for the Listed Burradon Stakes. Gosden’s colt should prove up to the task, while on the All-Weather Finals day card at Lingfield, Goring (4.10) and Victory Bond (4.40) both go to post with big chances at current odds.
Lingfield 1.30 Master Speaker 2.00 Funny Kid 2.30 Summer Icon 3.05 Kachy 3.40 Corinthia Knight 4.10 Goring (nap) 4.40 Victory Bond (nb)
Newcastle 1.40 Oriental Lilly 2.10 Cowboy Soldier 2.45 Welliesinthewater 3.20 Shabeeb 3.55 Purser 4.25 Hard Forest 4.55 Rude Awakening
Bath 1.50 Dan’s Dream 2.20 Izzer 2.55 Baghdad 3.30 Quench Dolly 4.00 Tony Curtis 4.35 Medburn Cutler 5.05 Delagate This Lord
