Day one of the Qatar Goodwood Festival is under way, and it started in the best possible way for us. Here is how the card unfolded, race by race, with the results in full and the horses we are taking out of it.
Our day one preview is still up if you want to see exactly what we said beforehand. As always, we will be straight about the ones that did not work as well as the ones that did.
1:50 Chesterfield Cup: Al Aali does it in good style
The perfect start. Al Aali (George Scott, William Buick) won the Chesterfield Cup at 11/2, and he was our Top Rated, our selection, and the race we gave away free to everybody.
Having watched it back a couple of times, he was clearly the best horse in the race. He won without any real issues. All he needed was the gap, William Buick waited for it, and once it came he ran down Noble Horizon without much fuss. Credit where it is due, Silvestre De Sousa gave Noble Horizon a really good ride from the front and kicked at exactly the right moment, but Buick always had his measure and was always going to get to him.
The one to take out of the race, if you did not watch it, is Diego El Queso (G M Lyons, Colin Keane), who went off third favourite and finished sixth. He was away quite slowly, got held up at the back from a wide draw, and then never really found a gap. Buick was able to get after things on our horse a long way before Colin Keane could get going on him, and even when Colin Keane did get going he did not get a clear run, quickly running into the back of another horse, before absolutely finishing like a rocket. He would definitely have been in the frame with any sort of luck. It is an obvious one, but he has to go into the tracker.