James Willoughby: Flat Season 3-Year-Old Fillies’ Preview

By James Willoughby 
At least in the first part of the 2015 season, the best races for 3-year-old fillies in Europe will be missing one top notcher but likely to be featuring another. This could be a Classic case of lost and Found. 

Cursory Glance (Distorted Humor), one of the best juveniles of 2014 in Europe, was absented from the G1 Qipco 1000 Guineas picture–though thankfully not for all the season–when it was announced in January that she had sustained a fetlock injury during exercise. This leaves the Aidan O’Brien-trained Found (Ire) (Galileo {Ire}), whom 
Cursory Glance has defeated–looking the most talented runner in the first British Classic for fillies May 3. 
Though the Guineas Festival at Newmarket falls on the same weekend as the Kentucky Derby and Oaks, it comes around sooner in the form cycle of the leading 3-year-olds here. Not for European horses are a series of well-spaced trials from which they can accumulate seasoning and conditioning at an appropriate tempo, as in the U.S. No, Guineas horses get the chance of one trial race, which many trainers now even eschew, fearing the sacrifice of sharpness on the altar of preparation established by painful precedent in their profession. 

When we pick up the story of the leading 2-year-old fillies of 2014 after the winter break, Found’s demolition of the Group 1 Prix Marcel Boussac field at Longchamp last October (video) is likely the chapter most packed with Classic clues. The daughter of Galileo and Red Evie (Ire) (Intikhab)–another Group 1 winner–quickened like a mustang to win France’s top race for juvenile fillies, leaving the impression that her contemporaries of all nationalities would struggle to beat her again. After all, she is a great physical specimen who looks likely to be much stronger as a 3-year-old. 

Cursory Glance had actually beaten Found in Ireland’s equivalent contest, the G1 Moyglare Stud S. in September (video). This proved to be a key race, for splitting the pair in second was Lucida (Ire), who came back to win the G2 Shadwell Rockfel S. at Newmarket. The daughter of Shamardal’s subsequent defeat in the G1 Dubai Fillies’ Mile (video) at the same course was possibly down to the soft turf, but serves to introduce us to another leading lady of 2015, the winnerTogether Forever (Ire). 

Together Forever–also trained by O’Brien and also by Galileo–earned success at the highest level that day by staying on strongly, as befits a daughter of a mare by the long-winded 1987 Breeders Cup Turf winner Theatrical. In truth, she’s more of a base-liner than the serve-and-volley merchant Found, and we should look to her for success in the Group 1 Investec Oaks in June over a mile and a half, rather than over the Guineas mile. Still, Together Forever is a good one alright, and had finished less than a length behind Found, when both were still greenhorns, in an August maiden at The Curragh that worked out like gangbusters. You have to feel for the connections of the third-placed Back On Top (Ire) (Lope De Vega {Ire}), for running into one O’Brien-trained Group 1 winner is almost par for the course in Irish 2-year-olds races, but running into two begins to look like seriously bad luck. 

While O’Brien is primarily charged with stocking the Coolmore stallion ranks, he is no stranger to the winner’s circle after Classic races for fillies; the Ballydoyle training genius has won nine major European Guineas and eight major European Oaks. He seems to have a particularly strong hand with the distaffers this time; such is the talent of Found and Together Forever that they are likely more than a sideshow to the boys. 

To be ruthlessly quantitative, however, neither of the pair count as the fastest of their contemporaries by the measure of the clock. That’s because 2014 saw the running of one of the swiftest races for juvenile fillies in recent years. The G2 Lowther S. at York in August (video)–in which our heroine Cursory Glance again played a leading role–produced a staggering Timeform Computer Timefigure (our equivalent of Beyer Speed Figures though on a 10-14 point higher scale and including credit for immaturity and weight carried) of 121. This was not just a race that measured fast, but actually appeared likely to do so at first blush also. The Lowther is run over six furlongs on a speed-favoring York strip that has hosted some of the best time performances in British racing history. Timeform make allowance for the conditions, however, as do all compilers of figures that purport to express the merit of different performances against the clock relatively and objectively. So the figure earned by a speedball called Tiggy Wiggy (Ire) (Kodiac {GB}) is genuine. Indeed, the Richard Hannon-trained filly was arguably the fastest 2-year-old of either sex to look through a bridle last year, but she’s one for whom the Classic distances are likely to prove too far. 

At York, Tiggy Wiggy broke sharply and looked as if she would have given Lindsey Vonn a race at halfway. Cursory Glance–suffering her sole defeat in four outings–could not go with her, not surprising considering she is out of a mare by the great Sadler’s Wells. But the super-talented runner-up kept on well and got to within a length and a half as Tiggy Wiggy stopped the clock in a terrific 1:08.90. Considering that European times are recorded from a standing start, that is truly scorching the earth and, as we have seen, stands up to the closest scrutiny even when the speed of conditions is factored in. 

Noting both the outstanding time, and the fact that Tiggy Wiggy went on to win the G1 Connolly’s Red Mills Cheveley Park S. (video) from the Lowther-third Anthem Alexander (Ire) (Starspangledbanner {Aus})–a seriously talented filly in her own right–the concept that 2014 was a special year for juvenile fillies in Europe is easy to formulate. Cursory Glance–lost to the Classics but hopefully only until Royal Ascot in June, according to trainer Roger Varian–serves as a link between the form over sprint distances and longer trips, and the O’Brien Galileo pair of Found and Together Forever are elevated by their association with her.