Johnston Still Monitoring Elarqam

Mark Johnston and his team are still none the wiser over the lackluster performance of Elarqam (GB) (Frankel {GB}), the well beaten favourite in Saturday's G1 Irish 2000 Guineas. Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum's colt finished sixth behind Romanised (Ire) (Holy Roman Emperor {Ire}) but it was the manner in which he was beaten rather than his ultimate finishing position that has Johnston scratching his head for an explanation.

“He was scoped post-race and scoped this morning [Monday] and there was a little bit of mucus there, but not enough for us to feel it could explain the running because he seemed all at sea during the race and quite distressed afterwards,” Johnston said.

Unlike at Newmarket in the G1 QIPCO 2000 Guineas when he traveled powerfully for much of the race, Elarqam was one of the first off the bridle on Saturday and his trainer is keen to get to the root of the issue.

“I know he's a horse with not a lot of form, but if he'd finished third or fourth we could have said maybe that's his running,” he said. “But in relation to the horse he beat in the Guineas [third placed Gustav Klimt] and the whole manner of his run he was clearly in trouble at halfway. We can put a line through it but we've got to try to investigate why it happened.”