The final day of the Qatar Goodwood Festival is done, and it finished with three winners for the ratings and two that got away on a passage rather than on merit. Here is how the whole card unfolded, race by race, with the results in full and the horses we are taking out of it.
Our day five preview is up if you want to see what we said beforehand, and it started about as well as it could have.
1:50 Summer Handicap: our two run first and second
We put up two horses in the 1:50, and they finished first and second. Hopewell Rock (Ryan Moore) won it at 5/1, with Small Fry (Oisin Murphy) second at 6/1, and the 11/4 favourite back in third.
We would mark the winner up further still. He came from a long way back, and being held up is the one thing that has emphatically not been working at this meeting all week. To win from there tells you plenty.
This was also the run we were hoping to see at Royal Ascot and did not get, and it is worth being clear about how highly we now rate him: even if he had won at Ascot, we would still have been on him here. We think he is that far ahead of his mark, and he was winning off 101. If connections can get him into another handicap, we will be very interested indeed, and the Ebor looks the race for him.
It helps the form that he beat the right horse. Small Fry, our other selection, did not get the cleanest of runs but had enough time to get out, and he tried to run Hopewell Rock down without ever quite being good enough. Aeronautic, who placed in this race last year, was third having also been short of room, though our honest view is the front two beat him on merit regardless.
We think this race works out well and that all three of them win races from here. Hopewell Rock at the Ebor, Small Fry stepping back up in trip slightly, and Aeronautic when he drops back in distance.