You Got To Me

Kia Joorabchian has outlined shopping plans for this week's Goffs Breeze-Up Sale, where he says the focus will be on securing colts that Freemason Lodge-based trainer Kevin Philippart de Foy can point towards Royal Ascot.  The Amo Racing boss was a high-profile absentee from the Tattersalls Craven Breeze-Up Sale last week. Instead, he elected to make the trip to Ocala for the OBS breeze-up sale.  His no-show at Tattersalls, where he spent over £3 million on seven horses last year, was keenly felt by a market that returned to 2024...

Following Saturday's confirmation stage, Godolphin's 1,000 Guineas heroine Desert Flower (Night Of Thunder) is one of nine possible runners in Friday's Betfred Oaks at Epsom. Unbeaten in five career starts, culminating with a comfortable defeat of Flight and Simmering in the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket, Desert Flower is the sponsor's 7/4 favourite to complete a Classic double at Epsom, a feat last achieved by the Aidan O'Brien-trained Love five years ago. O'Brien is responsible for three of the remaining nine contenders in Giselle (Frankel), the wide-margin winner of the Listed...

Spend a morning on the gallops with Ralph Beckett and you could end up with more than just the natural shot in the arm that comes with observing racehorses at close quarters in the English springtime. Barns full of bluebloods. Well, that's a given now, particularly on the back of a pretty spectacular 2024. Sunshine is not always a given, but on this fine morning it has been turned to full beam, lighting up the rolling turf which envelopes this haven on the edge of Salisbury Plain. Bluestocking, last year's...

The Tattersalls December Sale is played out, akin to panto season, over two weeks, matinees and evening performances, incorporating almost every facet of the bloodstock sales business, from foals to yearlings, horses in training, broodmares, and sometimes the odd stallion or two. The Sceptre Sessions are only in their third year but they are already embedded as an integral part of the annual finale at Park Paddocks. And there is little doubt that the theatrical highlights come on the Monday and Tuesday of the second week, as dusk settles in...

As poster boys and girls go, the Group 1-winning three-year-olds Economics (GB) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}) and You Got To Me (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}) aren't too bad at all. It's a truism that plenty of top-flight winners in Europe are owned by their breeders, but it also the case that all breeders have to sell some of their young stock, and plenty of hard graft at the foal sales can unearth a good one.  The Classic winner You Got To Me returns to the December Mares Sale next week in...

The best is yet to come from You Got To Me (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}), according to her trainer Ralph Beckett, who drew parallels between the Irish Oaks heroine and his brilliant Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe winner Bluestocking (GB) (Camelot {GB}) ahead of the December Mares Sale at Tattersalls, which takes place from December 2 to 5.  You Got To Me, who will go through the ring on Tuesday, December 3, is one of the star attractions at the upcoming Sceptre Sessions and Beckett admitted that he is quietly hopeful...

It's the Leger Lowdown, our final run-through of Classic contenders for the season and one in which the late Galileo (Ire) has three chances to notch his 101st Group/Grade 1 winner so soon after Content (Ire) brought up his century in the Yorkshire Oaks. He is the sire of the first three favourites in the betting at the time of writing, and paternal grandsire of the next two.  It was the St Leger which provided Galileo with his first British Classic winner, Sixties Icon (GB), and we should have guessed...

Seventy years ago, Queen Elizabeth II won the fourth running of the race named in honour of her parents, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, at her own racecourse, Ascot. Aureole was a hugely appropriate winner, having been bred by King George VI in 1950, two years prior to the monarch's death. The horse's victory was widely welcomed, not least because he had been beaten a year earlier by his conqueror in the Derby, Pinza.  The 'King George' provides ones of the key pivot points in the season,...

By Adam Houghton and Brian Sheerin A royal runner in this fillies' Classic at a meeting which her late breeder, Queen Elizabeth II, rarely missed, is just one highlight of an intriguing Oaks field. The runners range from the top-priced, seven-figure filly at Tattersalls October Book 1 to a €27,000 Goffs Autumn yearling purchase, with four smart homebreds in play as well. CAUGHT U LOOKING (Ire) Harzand (Ire)--Wild Mix (GB), by Mastercraftsman (Ire) Bred by Peter Kelly, she was sold by The Castlebridge Consignment for €27,000 to Peter Nolan and...

Mark Tompkins retired from the Newmarket training ranks in 2019 with his highest-profile winner having been the 1993 St Leger winner Bob's Return (Ire) (Bob Back). The final black-type victory of his career came with Brushing (GB), a homebred daughter of Medicean (GB), who landed the Listed Galtres S. at York as well as the Cumberland Plate.  Tompkins is now hopeful that by Friday afternoon he can add Classic-winning breeder to his list of achievements as Brushing's daughter, the Lingfield Oaks Trial winner You Got To Me (GB) (Nathaniel {Ire}),...