Merchant (Ire)

Highclere Thoroughbred Racing's autumn dreams stayed alive against suitably dramatic Sussex skies on Thursday with the progressive Merchant (Teofilo) fighting his way through the G3 HKJC World Pool Gordon Stakes. Held up by Tom Marquand after the day's first flag start, the 6-5 favourite had to work to get by Wimbledon Hawkeye (Kameko) but may have had the most aptitude of the pair late on to prevail by a nose, with a gap of seven lengths back to the solid yardstick Windlord (Dubawi) in third. "It was tough and the...

New year but the same old brief for Winter Watch, with the horses who officially turned three on January 1 set to continue under our supervision in the hope that the all-weather programme might yet throw up another Classic contender or two. Remember, Notable Speech (GB) (Dubawi {Ire}) didn't make his racecourse debut until January 27 last year. We've seen plenty of interesting action since the last column before Christmas, and some interesting action we didn't see quite so much of because of the fog. All of it is going...