Thursday 13th July 2023… Newmarket Racecourse
Thursday sees the start of the July meeting at Newmarket and our team have looked through the pattern races on the card and found 3 selections to start the July Cup festival.
1:50 Bahrain Trophy Stakes (G3)
The Newmarket July meeting gets underway with the Bahrain Trophy, which is often seen as a trial for the St Leger in September. The race has the likes of Youmzain, Masked Marvel and Yibir on its roster of winners and this year’s race does look to be a strong renewal. After finishing second to Gregory at Royal Ascot, Saint George sets a high standard. He is top of the official ratings in this race and can be considered slightly unlucky to have finished second at Ascot as he had to switch to find racing room. The doubts over him are whether he can travel in a small field like this and if it became a tactical affair, he may be vulnerable to a horse with a sharper turn-of-foot in the sprint to the line. The stiff finish on the July course should help several of these, but none more so than Tower of London.
Aiden O’Brien has just 2 wins in this race on his CV, Moon Dragon in 1999 and Housesofparliament in 2014, but this looks to be a good opportunity for his son of Galileo, who is a half-brother to the Leger winner Capri. He travelled extremely strongly when winning the Ulster Derby at Down Royal last month and looks very capable of taking this step up into pattern company. He won by 4-lengths that day in a time below the course standard and hit the line very strongly to suggest there is more to come. That form looks stronger than the Listed race won by Castle Way back in May and he should be less inconvenienced than most if the race is not truly run. We expect him to win this and win well, which should put him on course for the final classic of the English season at Doncaster in 8-weeks’ time.
2:25 Kingdom of Bahrain July Stakes (G2)
Mountain Bear is an interesting runner in this race for Aiden O’Brien, but he doesn’t look like he is at the top of the pecking order at Ballydoyle and so this race should really go to Malc. Richard Fahey’s charge won easily on debut at Carlisle in May and built on that effort when 2nd in the Norfolk Stakes at Royal Ascot. Although he was favoured by racing on the far side (6 of the first 7 raced on the far side), he still produced a superb time figure when just a length behind Valiant Force and looks sure to continue to progress. His Sire won on debut over this course and distance and there is no reason to think that he won’t handle the track given the way he powered up the hill at Carlisle in May. He is 7lbs clear on the Top speed ratings and with more to come he should get the better of this field.
3:35 Princess of Wales’s Stakes (G2)
This race looks to revolve around the 2021 Derby winner Adayar. He has missed a lot of time due to injury, but he still sets the standard on his 3-year-old form and the return to 12-furlongs looks likely to help him. He hasn’t run over this distance since finishing 4th in the Arc in 2021 and whilst it is understandable that his connections have been trying to turn him into a 10-furlong horse to improve his stallion prospects, he has been shown to be vulnerable at that distance despite running some good races.
Global Storm may well act as a pacemaker for Adayar to try and ensure that this race is truly run despite the small field, but it isn’t guaranteed to be a real stamina test and so we are keen to take on Adayar with Israr. As a son of Taghrooda, he probably hasn’t hit the heights that his pedigree suggested he might, but he has only finished out of the frame on 1 of his 10 career starts and he has shown plenty of speed, which makes him interesting here. He is officially 10lbs inferior to Adayar on these terms, but the top speed figures would suggest they are much closer, and you need to go back over 2-years to find the last time Adayar ran a figure above 100 in those records. If Jim Crowley can get him into a decent position behind Global Storm, he may well be able to get first run on Adayar and if he does, Israr should have too much speed with any rain falling a big plus.
