Equinties - Glorious Goodwood day 1

Gm Equinauts

Oh, it’s Glorious.

Let’s dive in.

HEADLINE ROUNDUP

GRADED HORSE, NOT GROUP

Glorious Goodwood starts today. AND THE CROWD WENT WILD.

This meeting is great. Horses like FIELD OF GOLD are back after a small break, juveniles like ZAVATERI have to prove themselves again, and the young guns taken on the experienced like in the Goodwood Cup.

The ground is good all over apparently (accurate going updates are often hard to come by) , and we imagine it’ll stay like this all day. There are a few showers about before racing gets underway, but it’s nothing major (we think), and that should maintain the current conditions.

You know us well by now, and you’ll know we’d love for the rain to come.

We want to roll on to the day, but first, and please don’t turn off when we say this, Willie Mullins is already talking about Graded targets for the 2025-26 Jumps season.

Uh oh.

That’s because DAVY CROCKETT, a CAMELOT half-brother to the Grade 1 winner MYSTICAL POWER, won on hurdles debut at Galway yesterday. Much like his successful brother, the four-year-old son of ANNIE POWER got the job done on his maiden hurdles outing in the same race that MYSTICAL POWER won three years ago. Trainers are creatures of habit, after all.

What separates the two is his ownership. MYSTICAL POWER is JP McManus, Rich Ricci, and John Magnier. DAVY CROCKETT, on the other hand, is just JP and Magnier.

Anyway, DAVY CROCKETT is two from two now, and Mullins has already highlighted a big winter aim.

He said: "I was happy with how efficient he was except for the mistake at the second-last. For a horse having his first run over hurdles and the second run of his career, I was very pleased. We'll just keep going down the novice hurdle route, and hopefully he might make up into a Royal Bond horse.

"He's not big and he's more a hurdle horse than a chasing type. He jumps well and has gears."

Mullins has got him out early as a summer horse, and while this would be seen as a negative to some, the fact he did the same with MYSTICAL POWER shows it doesn’t mean too much in this context.

As for him being a Royal Bond horse, we won’t pass comment. It’s July, ffs. What we will say is that he jumps a lot better at this stage of his career than MYSTICAL POWER did two years ago. He got the penultimate hurdle wrong, but for his first public appearance over obstacles, there are plenty of positives to take.

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