Equinties - Glorious Goodwood Saturday

Gm Equinauts

Test Cricket, the Lions and Glorious Goodwood.

It’s Saturday.

Let’s dive in.

HEADLINE ROUNDUP

THE SPRINTERS

The current UK sprinting scene is nearly as unpredictable as Daryl Carter’s tweets.

Just look at his profile from last night. Lord above.

Anyway, the UK sprinters. What a lottery. It’s almost like the current crop of Group-level sprinters turn up to each big battle and take turns on who wins.

Just look at some of the recent winners of the Group races this season. AMERICAN AFFAIR, LAZZAT, MGHEERA, RUMSTAR, NO HALF MEASURES, INISHERIN, SYMBOL OF HONOUR, SAJIR, DILIGENT HARRY, BIG MOJO, and RAGE OF BAMBY.

That was just a quick search on wiki about some of the five and six furlong sprints this season. That’s a fair lack of consistency namely owed to the rough hustle and bustle of the nature of the races and the difference ground makes to each horse.

Yesterday, we added another to the list of Group-level sprinters as JM JUNGLE won the Group 2 King George Qatar Stakes.

Immediately it first appeared a shock result but if you look deeper into some back form on good to soft, it all made sense!

Fine, his record ahead of yesterday included an Epsom Dash win and a third in Listed company at York, which admittedly isn’t your usual pointer towards a Group 2 King George Qatar Stakes winner but keep looking and you’ll see some monster weighted performances against the likes of Royal Ascot Group 1 winner AMERICAN AFFAIR (twice!).

The ground helped him. It was soft, good to soft in places, and a number of horses were a bit absent yesterday, notably ASFOORA, and it allowed for him to deservedly get his head in front.

The main point we want to bring to the table is that the current crop of sprinters are very average. They are all taking turns at winning our feature sprint races, and it takes a foreign raider to come over and take control.

Case in point, LAZZAT winning the QEII Jubilee Stakes, and let’s not forget that SANTONO REVE chased him home. If, and this is a big if, we get a nice one coming through the ranks next season - or even at the end of this season - keep a close eye on them. They really could well improve to be one of the main forces in the sprinting scene.

Elsewhere, SEAGULLS ELEVEN returned to the winners’ enclosure for the first time since June 2024. He has batted at the top level for a while and after this success Hugo Palmer has eyes on a big overseas target.

He said: "He's taken us all around the world and I don't think we're done yet. The Golden Eagle in Sydney has already been mentioned and why not? It's a A$10m dollar race. Where can you say that in England?"

Bet of luck to connections!

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