The horse racing week ahead

The least said about Arc weekend the better as far as I am concerned, I had a bit of a disaster at the big meeting with all six fancies getting beat. The horse racing world moves on quickly and that is what I am doing.

All roads lead to Newmarket this week with Dubai Future Champions Festival taking place Friday and Saturday on the Rowley Mile and Tattersalls hosting the October Yearling Sale Book 1 Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. The great and the good of the horse racing world will be in town.

The Group One Bet365 Fillies' Mile is the race of the day on Friday with the Charlie Appleby trained impressive May Hill winner Desert Flower the ante-post favourite at around 7-4. Aidan O'Brien is responsible for seven of the eleven remaining entries with Dreamy perhaps his best chance. It will be fascinating to see what he ultimately runs and how many Ballydoyle runners Desert Flower has to take on. Ralph Beckett has Tabiti still in the race at this stage whilst Adrian Murray has California Dreamer entered and Sir Michael Stoute the Cheveley Park Stud owned Anna Swan. 

Day two of the Future Champions Festival on Saturday sees the colts take centre stage with one of the biggest, if not perhaps the biggest, juvenile Group One the Dewhurst Stakes the feature race. Eight remain in the reckoning at the time of writing including The Lion In Winter and Ancient Truth both likely to put their unbeaten records on the line. Aidan O’Brien has five of the colts left in here in his care and Charlie Appleby has two, Hugo Palmer with Seagulls Eleven is the only other trainer with an interest. 

It's not that surprising but 'the lads' from Ballydoyle and Godolphin have a plethora of entries across Dubai Future Champions Festival and almost a stranglehold on the two big two-year-old races.  

One of the star attractions at Tattersalls for the October Yearling Sale will be the Kirsten Rausing, Staffordstown Stud bred full-sister to 2022 Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe heroine Alpinista, that will be Lot 72 at Tattersalls Book 1. Talking of the family to Racing Post Bloodstock this week Rausing said “She’s a lovely filly and hard to fault in any way. I would say this filly is a bit taller than Alpinista and is, if anything, a better physical specimen than Alpinista. She has the same presence, lovely walk and extremely nice temperament as her sister.” A couple of Sea The Stars yearlings get the sale underway on Tuesday and one that might get more than a few hands raised when entering the ring is Lot 9 a Too Darn Hot colt out of multiple G.1 winner The Fugue consigned by Watership Down Stud. We can expect to see some big sums of money changing hands over the three-days.

There's plenty going on at HQ over the coming days and I will be keeping an eye on proceedings as Tattersalls as well as getting involved in the racing come Friday and Saturday. No bets for me on Monday or Tuesday but do check back for all the updates in a busy week in the horse racing world. 

Be lucky