A clear favourite for next year’s 1,000 Guineas emerged on the first afternoon of Future Champions Weekend on Friday before a race for the Dewhurst Stakes on Saturday’s card that should determine the winter favourite for the 2,000 Guineas in the spring. Aidan O’Brien’s Minding, described as “truly exceptional” afterwards by her jockey, Ryan Moore, powered clear to win the Group One Fillies’ Mile by four and a half lengths in a fast time and her stablemate Air Force Blue is now favourite to win his head-to-head with Emotionless in Saturday’s feature race.
The Dewhurst market had seemed to settle on Emotionless, who runs for Sheikh Mohammed’s Godolphin operation, as a narrow favourite before Minding’s comprehensive success and there are no obvious reasons in the form book why the outcome of a race for fillies’ 24 hours earlier should have had much effect on the prices. O’Brien’s Ballydoyle stable has now sent out two juvenile Group One winners in six days, however, and punters sense sufficient impetus in his string to make it three in seven.
Minding could not have done much more to impress, as she cruised to the two-furlong pole in mid-division and then cleared away from the chasing pack, who were led home by Nathra and Hawksmoor. One bookmaker briefly offered 5-1 for next year’s 1,000 Guineas afterwards but it was gone in minutes and 9-2 is now the best price on general offer. Ballydoyle, the O’Brien-trained filly thought so promising that they named her after the stable, is next in the list at 6-1 and it is 9-1 bar two.
Minding beat Ballydoyle, who was sent off favourite at 5-4, by three-quarters of a length in the Group One Moyglare Stud Stakes last month and both fillies are now finished for the season.
“She travels and quickens and has always shown she’s a very high-class filly,” O’Brien said. “We knew it was very possible [she could beat Ballydoyle last time]. She had a break before she went to the Debutante [in August]. That was her first run back and we knew she’d handle an ease in the ground better than Ballydoyle. One filly [Ballydoyle] handles good ground very well and the other filly handles an ease very well. They’re both very high-class fillies.”
The Godolphin operation, so often the major rivals to O’Brien’s stable for the last two decades, produced a possible Guineas filly of their own when First Victory, at 9-2, made almost all the running to win the Group Three Oh So Sharp Stakes.
“She needs to improve physically over the winter but hopefully she will be ready for the Guineas,” Saeed bin Suroor, the winner’s trainer, said. “She could go to Dubai [during the winter].
“She is similar to [recent maiden winner] Dubai Fashion, another good filly we have, and I like them both a lot.”
O’Brien’s Air Force Blue is the proven Group One performer in the Dewhurst, with two victories at the highest level to his name already. Emotionless, meanwhile, who will be saddled by Godolphin’s other principal trainer, Charlie Appleby, has yet to win beyond Group Two level but his success in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster last time was so smooth that the betting is 18-1 bar the front two in a seven-runner field.
It will be one of the most anticipated head-to-heads between runners from Ballydoyle and Godolphin, two of European racing’s superpowers, for several seasons, with the winner all but certain to be 2015’s champion juvenile colt.
“It’s two really good horses and that’s what’s so exciting about it,” John Ferguson, Sheikh Mohammed’s bloodstock adviser, said here. “At the end of the day nobody invests more in this game than Sheikh Mohammed and John Magnier, so it’s only fit and right that they have the two princes, one of which will hopefully become king.
“The way I see it is that the Coolmore horse is a really experienced, quality two-year-old and our fellow is just learning the game. If we get it done tomorrow, fantastic, but we’re looking forward to next year. He [Emotionless] was mighty impressive in the Champagne but the other one has been beating Group One horses.”
The 20-1 chance Sanus Per Aquam, whose trainer, Jim Bolger, has won five of the last nine runnings of the Dewhurst, is an interesting outsider after his victory in a Group Three over course and distance last time but, like Ferguson, most spectators will hope to see a duel on the Rowley Mile.
“What do we all want? We want to see them at the two-furlong marker bang upsides each other and both going well,” Ferguson said.
“Sometimes in races like this one of them doesn’t perform but it’s so much fun when you see them both lining up there on the bridle.”
Another Godolphin runner, John Gosden’s Irish Derby winner Jack Hobbs, went eight lengths clear of his stablemate Dick Doughtywylie in a gallop before racing and is on course to run in the Champion Stakes at Ascot next weekend. Gosden also confirmed that Golden Horn, the Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner, is being aimed towards the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Keeneland this month. “There’s no reason not to run, put it like that,” Gosden said.
Golden Horn could yet be joined in Kentucky by Postponed, the King George VI & Queen Elizabeth Stakes winner, who recently joined Roger Varian as part of a 35-strong team removed from Luca Cumani’s stable by Sheikh Mohammed Obaid al-Maktoum, their owner.
“He’s settled in well and hasn’t missed a beat since he joined me,” Varian said on Friday. “The Breeders’ Cup is a possibility, so we’ll see how we go over the next couple of weeks.”
