Bill Oppenheim on Defining Moments

Every year we come back and see again: this is the best week of racing in the world. It’s a massive social event, too, with a sea of people who looked like they walked off the set of “My Fair Lady,” but for the professionals that’s a pleasant sideline. It’s really about the racing. Impossibly big fields, and everybody’s trying. There are five days of racing, six races a day. No bad races; some really spectacular, some just insoluble handicaps. It’s the most spectacular racing festival on the planet, the one everybody wants to try and emulate. 
The first two days are more or less the ‘professionals’ days–not as crowded, and three Group 1 races of the highest caliber. On Tuesday, the Queen Anne, for 4-year-olds and up on the straight mile; and the St. James’s Palace S.–essentially the ‘European 2000 Guineas’–the decider–on the ‘round’ (right-handed) mile course. On Wednesday the G1 Prince of Wales’s S. for 4-year-olds and up at 1 1/4 miles. 
It’s unusual for even one, much less all three of these races, to feature even money or odds-on shots. This year all three of them did–two winners, one third. The meet kicks off with the Queen Anne. The odds-on shot here was Sheikh Joann bin Hamad Al Thani’s Al Shaqab Racing’s Toronado (High Chaparral), odds-on in spite of not having run for 300 days. An unbeaten Group 2- winning 2-year-old, Toronado had a big rivalry last year with Dawn Approach (New Approach), having won the G3 Craven S., a key G1 English 2000 Guineas prep, Toronado didn’t give Dawn Approach much of a race at Newmarket, finishing a tame fourth. He came back in last year’s edition of the St James’s Palace and dropped a photo, but finally bested Dawn Approach in Goodwood’s G1 Sussex S. The Hannon team then tried him over 10 furlongs in the G1 Juddmonte International, but nothing went right that day and he trailed in last of six. 
Notwithstanding his ‘bad last’ and 300-day layoff, Toronado was backed as if defeat was out of the question. The main competition figured to be Verrazano, the More Than Ready colt bought by Coolmore last year, when he won the GI Wood Memorial and GI Haskell. Transferred to Ballydoyle instead of retiring to Ashford for 2014, Verrazano had a tune-up in the G1 Lockinge S., in which he finished third to Toronado’s stablemate, Olympic Glory (Choisir). Verrazano made a race of it all right, and ran a bang-up second, but Toronado cruised into the lead and won it like a 4-5 shot should. Verrazano might step back up in trip after this. The first two are both seriously good-looking horses, too, so you can mark down two very hot stallion prospects for 2015. 
Equally as strong–in fact slightly more so, at 8/11–was Prince Khalid Abdullah’s Kingman (Invincible Spirit) in the St James’s Palace S. Kingman had been nabbed at the wire in the G1 English 2000 Guineas by the 40-1 shot Night of Thunder (Dubawi). He came back to romp in the G1 Irish 2000 Guineas, though on soft ground on which he was plainly not inconvenienced. Nonetheless, he too was backed as if defeat was out of the question, and he duly put the race to bed like an 8/11 shot should, swooping in the last furlong to master Night of Thunder, who had made the running. There were only seven runners, but three of the others were Group 1 winners: Outstrip (Exceed and Excel), who finished third, had won the GI Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf last year; War Command (War Front), who had won the G2 Coventry S. at this meeting last year, and the G1 Dewhurst, was fourth; and Toormore (Arakan), who won the G1 National S. and was named champion European 2-year-old of 2013, was only sixth. Those three had also finished unplaced behind the top two in the English 2000 Guineas. 
Trainer John Gosden is the conditioner of Kingman, and he made it a Group 1 double yesterday when Sir Andrew Lloyd-Webber’s The Fugue (Dansili) won the Prince of Wales’s, defeating last year’s G1 Irish 2000 Guineas and GI Breeders’ Cup Turf winner Magician, with last year’s G1 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Treve (Motivator), only third, at really skinny 8/13 odds. It was The Fugue’s fourth Group 1 win, and the second time she has beaten colts at 1 1/4 miles, having done so last year in the G1 Irish Champion S. 
Incidentally, speaking of Sadler’s Wells and Danzig in combination, as we were: The Fugue is by Dansili out of a Sadler’s Wells mare. Magician is by Galileo out of a mare by Mozart and Treve is by Motivator (by Montjeu, by Sadler’s Wells) out of a mare by Anabaa, raising the question for pedigree pundits: what next? 
Then there’s the 2-year-old form. The second race on Tuesday was the G2 Coventry S. (six furlongs), arguably the meet’s most important 2-year-old race. This was won by Al Shabaq’s The Wow Factor, completing a first and second race double to kick off the meet for Prince Joann. It also kicked off another, much more unlikely double. The Wow Factor is from the first and only Northern Hemisphere crop by Starspangledbanner. An Australian-bred by Australian-bred Choisir (by Danehill Dancer), Starspangledbanner was a star sprinter in Australia, then came up north under the Coolmore banner and won the G1 Golden Jubilee (now the Diamond Jubilee) and the G1 July Cup, both top six-furlong sprints, before going to stud at Coolmore. Very unfortunately he came up sub-fertile; this crop only has something like 30 2-year-olds. They returned him to training but no go, and he is now standing at stud in Victoria. You may remember a couple of years ago New Approach burst upon the scene with three 2-year-old black-type winners from his first crop. After yesterday’s G2 Queen Mary S. (2-year-old fillies, five furlongs) won by Noel O’Callaghan’s Anthem Alexander, another by Starspangledbanner, he might be just as big a story as New Approach was. If they can somehow figure out how to get him back on line–or as back on line as possible–big news. And, as these things often seem to do, the meet’s other 2-year-old race on the first two days also fell to a first-season sire: the five-furlong Listed Windsor Castle S. was won impressively by Coolmore’s Hootenanny, a colt from the first crop by Lane’s End’s Quality Road. You wouldn’t have figured him necessarily as a sire of 2-year-old five-furlong black-type winners; but then you wouldn’t have figured on him being trained by the American they fear the most at Ascot, the wizard Wesley Ward. Keep going, Wesley. 
Well, I could go on and on, but those are the highlights. Must go handicap for tomorrow. 
Bill Oppenheim may be contacted at bopp@erb.com (please cc TDN management at suefinley@thoroughbreddailynews.com). Follow him on Twitter at www.twitter.com/billoppenheim.