In February, John Gosden was the 9-4 second-favourite to win the trainers’ championship, but next year it may be difficult to find a price at all. Gosden had two more valuable winners here on Saturday, including Shalaa, the odds-on favourite in the Group One Middle Park Stakes, to suggest that his dominance will continue seamlessly from one season to the next.
No trainer has ever won £5m in prize money in a British Flat season, but Gosden is on course to be the first, having added £80,000 to his total with Shalaa’s success, and £44,000 when Foundation – now among the early favourites for next year’s Derby – took the Group Two Royal Lodge Stakes earlier on the card. It is a question of when and not if Gosden will reach £4.7m and break the record for a single campaign. In addition to the domestic action he could also field two of the favourites for next Sunday’s Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, one of the few major European events he has yet to win.
Both of his winners here on Saturday have any number of Group One options, though Shalaa – described as “the fastest two-year-old I’ve ever sat on” by Frankie Dettori, his jockey – has probably finished for the season. Foundation will probably line up for the Racing Post Trophy at Doncaster, the final Group One of the British season.
Shalaa is quoted by most bookmakers for next year’s 2,000 Guineas, but Gosden believes speed will remain his most potent weapon and the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot is a more likely target in the first part of 2016.
“He’s incredibly fast and we’re lucky to have him, and he’s got a good mind on him too,” Gosden said. “He has so much speed and he’s that build that he reminds me of [former champion sprinter] Oasis Dream. He was not just champion two-year-old but champion sprinter at three and he is that mould for me at the moment, a pure, fast two-year-old and a fast three-year-old as well.
“Foundation might be a Guineas, mile-and-a-quarter horse. He’s still learning, Frankie said he gave him as much education as he could, because he didn’t learn a lot [in his previous starts] at Haydock a couple of time.
“He’s come between horses, picked up well and handled the Dip well, which isn’t easy for a big, gangly two-year-old.”
Gosden insists that he does not count prize money and just enjoys the ride, though a first victory in the Arc with either Golden Horn or Jack Hobbs, the winners of the Derby and Irish Derby respectively, would put the seal on an extraordinary year.
“We’ve had a great season abroad [too], we won two big races in Ireland and we won the Diane [French Oaks] and the Morny in France,” Gosden said. “I’m enjoying that more than anything, when you’ve got good horses, you’ve got to enjoy them, because they don’t come around too often.
“I’m not going to think about the Arc until Monday. Decision morning is Thursday, that’s when we commit [to running either horse or both]. I’ll drive myself mad if I keep watching the weather forecast.”
Lumiere took the card’s other Group One event, the Cheveley Park Stakes, under a finely judged front-running ride by William Buick and is now a 14-1 chance for the 1,000 Guineas.
“I hadn’t been as nervous about a race for a long time,” Mark Johnston, the winning trainer, said, “because she’s the best horse I’ve had for a long time. I thought she was probably the best horse in the race, but I wasn’t sure if she had the experience or was in the condition for it.”
The result was of a reversal of the form of last month’s Lowther Stakes, in which Besharah, the runner-up here, was more than two lengths in front of Lumiere, and Johnston’s horse may find more improvement at three.
“She likes to race that way, and they didn’t come to me until late,” Buick said, “so I managed to hold a little bit up my sleeve. We always thought a lot of her and the way she looks as well. She’s a filly for next year.”
Bronze Angel, the winner of the Cambridgeshire Handicap in 2012 and 2014, had a chance to become the first horse to win the race three times but was barely sighted as he came home in 21st place behind the victor, Richard Fahey’s Third Time Lucky.
