Connections of Gleneagles will have to be feeling braver than they were at Goodwood last month if the dual Guineas winner is to take his chance at York on Wednesday, the course having taken rather more rain than was forecast. The going there was already on the soft side on Tuesday night ahead of Wednesday’s Juddmonte International, in which Gleneagles has been declared to take on the unbeaten Derby winner, Golden Horn, in the most keenly anticipated race of this Flat season.
“It’s been a wet day,” York’s clerk of the course, William Derby, said on Tuesday night. “We’ve had more rain than we were expecting, a total of 8mm so far, a sort of drizzly, dank day all day. It’s still spitting or drizzling outside my window at the moment. It’s been steady rain since five o’clock this morning.”
Derby took comfort in a forecast for dry weather with sunny intervals for Wednesday, the first of the four-day Ebor meeting. But he admitted it was “frustrating” to see so much unforecast rain, which turned the going “good, good-to-soft in places” after it began the day as mostly “good to firm”.
That is precisely what most racing fans did not want to hear, since Gleneagles is now firmly associated in the public mind with a need for fast ground. The brilliant miler, not seen since Royal Ascot, was ruled out of last month’s Sussex Stakes at Goodwood because there had been a lot of rain and his trainer, Aidan O’Brien, insisted the ground would not have been suitable, even though it dried out to “good” by the time of the race.
Gleneagles’ intended jockey, Joseph O’Brien, when asked about the prospects on Tuesday night, said: “I would be very surprised if he ran on ground that was officially ‘slow’. We have always been clear on that but he’s still an intended runner at the moment.”
But Gleneagles won a Classic on good to yielding in the spring and Anthony Oppenheimer, the owner of Golden Horn, is by no means convinced that some give underfoot would count against him. Speaking from his London office on Tuesday night, Oppenheimer said: “The rain won’t make any difference. Gleneagles is by Galileo and he always used to like it [rain-softened ground].
“I shall be very disappointed if Gleneagles doesn’t run because it makes it so much more exciting. There are three runners [including Time Test] that have not been beaten this year and at least two of them will be beaten on Wednesday.
“And there’s The Grey Gatsby, who is 3lb better off than when we beat him. All in all, it could be a marvellous race. We seem to come out on top of the ratings and we’re odds-on, but odds-on shots don’t always win.”
Gleneagles, available at a top price of 9-2 with conventional bookmakers, was on the slide out to 5-1 on Betfair’s exchange Tuesday night. Bets on the horse in that market will be voided if he becomes a non-runner, so the drift indicates a lack of confidence in his winning chance should he line up. Gleneagles is stepping up in distance by two furlongs for Wednesday’s race and punters appear to doubt his stamina can last on rain-softened ground.
There was a boost of sorts for the Golden Horn camp when Jazzi Top, a stablemate of his at John Gosden’s Newmarket yard, won a Group Two contest at Deauville yesterday. The filly had been denied a clear run in both the Oaks and the Nassau but got a dream run up the far rail under Frankie Dettori this time.
“She has been working well,” the jockey was quoted as saying to the Racing Post. “On that performance, I think she would be very competitive in a Group One.”
