Equinties - imperfect decision

Gm Equinauts

Pens at the ready, today’s racing is one to make a lot of notes from. Ascot features a brilliant 2yo race with a couple of expensive breeze ups lining up and then over at Lingfield we get to enjoy the Derby and Oaks trials which should provide clues to act on moving forward.

It’s Saturday.

Let’s dive in.

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Yesterday, THE FOXES looked pretty good in the Group 2 Huxley Stakes. Oisin Murphy sat in the box seat, the race opened up, and he won with ease as expected.

Now, he is 14/1 for the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, but nothing was confirmed about his next run. He has an entry for that race as well as the Group 1 Coronation Cup and Group 1 Coral-Eclipse, but he is going to be “travelling in the autumn”, according to Alastair Donald, racing adviser to King Power Racing.

With his busy winter in the sun, have a suspicion that yesterdays race was his Derby day yesterday and unless he gets another race in similar conditions, we might struggle to side with him so strongly again.

And impressive as he was yesterday, he would have had to go some way to recreate the performance we saw in the 2024 Huxley Stakes from PASSENGER who oozed class for Sir Michael Stoute last year.

Post-race he was shortened in immediately for every big race he held entries for. He went to the Group 2 York Stakes after 78 days away, where he finished a fine third,

but we haven’t seen him since!

Well, apparently he’s on the way back having undergone surgery in August.

On his future, George Scott, his new trainer following the retirement of Stoute last season, said: “When Passenger arrived we were very much seeing which direction he took us in after his injuries, but he's been training beautifully and I'm very pleased with his trajectory at the moment.

“You can easily see why he has been able to show a really high level of form during parts of his short career and of course it's very much a week-by-week thing with him, but I'm very pleased with his conditioning.

“I guess with a horse like him and his rating, there are very few options and I'll be keeping half an eye on the Wolferton Stakes at Royal Ascot.

“The timing fits and if he does turn up in the Wolferton he would have been away for racecourse gallops, so I'm keeping an eye on the Royal meeting, but everything will have to go right and he will have to jump through every hoop.”

So, it’s the Wolferton Stakes for PASSENGER next if he makes it back in time. Scott will have a bit of pressure to handle a horse of this potential, so let’s hope he can build from where he left off.

More: https://www.thoroughbreddailynews.com/royal-ascot-pencilled-in-for-passengers-return/

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