The Qatar Goodwood Festival comes to a close, and it finishes with one of the hardest and best puzzles of the season, the Coral Stewards' Cup. We have a horse from our own tracker taking its chance in it, and we think it is going to go very close indeed. There is also a trainer we have been flagging all week as someone who targets these pots better than almost anyone, and both of those threads come together later on the card.
As always on the final day, the first race is free for everybody. Here is how we see it, race by race.
1:50 Highclere Castle Gin Summer Handicap: two we want, and both step up in trip
The 1:50 is a mile and six furlong handicap, and we have two.
The first is Hopewell Rock (Ryan Moore), who was one of our selections last time and disappointed us slightly, finishing only sixth in the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes at Royal Ascot over a mile and a half. He runs off the same mark of 101 here.
The reason we are back on him is the strength of the form behind that. At Newmarket in May he was third behind Daiquiri Bay and Gamrai, and that pair have since come out at Royal Ascot and finished first and second again in the Copper Horse. That is a proper piece of form franking.
Yes, he let it down a little by only finishing sixth at Ascot. But look at what beat him: two very strong stayers, and both of the front two that day have since gone up in trip to a mile and six. Hopewell Rock was the one finishing nearest at the end of his race, which to us says he wanted the extra distance too. He may well have reversed that Royal Ascot form had he gone for the longer race rather than sticking at a mile and a half. He gets his mile and six now, and if that Newmarket third is as strong as it looks, he runs a big race. The Ryan Moore booking is a real positive on top.
The second is Small Fry (Oisin Murphy), who was arguably an eyecatcher at Royal Ascot himself when sixth over two and a half miles, never given the most positive of rides and simply never close enough to land a blow.
He has some really nice form in the book, and the interesting part is that two of his best efforts on the Flat came over a mile and a half, when he won at Epsom and at Chester. So dropping back in trip from two and a half miles to this mile and six should suit him well. He also has a decent second over this trip, beaten only half a length by Berkshire Sundance, who is now rated in the mid-nineties, which makes his own mark of 92 look workable.
All we would ask is that he is ridden a shade more positively than he was at Ascot. We are confident Hopewell Rock runs a big race, and it would be thoroughly annoying to be right about the race and miss the winner because we only took the one.