The Qatar Goodwood Festival runs from Tuesday 28 July to Saturday 1 August, five days of it, and it is one of the genuine highlights of the Flat season. There is a Group 1 on each of the first four days and one of the most competitive handicaps in the calendar to round it off. Before it arrives, we have gone back through last year's renewals of all five, because the way these races were won tells you a good deal about how to approach them.
Tuesday 28 July: the Goodwood Cup
The Al Shaqab Goodwood Cup is the two mile Group 1 that opens the week's top-level action, and last year it went the way of Ballydoyle, who saddled the first two home. Scandinavia won it at 4/1, seeing off his stablemate Illinois, who had been sent off the 7/4 favourite, with Sweet William third for John and Thady Gosden. Eight ran.
Wednesday 29 July: the Sussex Stakes
The Qatar Sussex Stakes, the mile Group 1, produced what was comfortably the result of the week, and one of the great modern Group 1 shocks. Qirat, trained by Ralph Beckett, won it at 150/1. Rosallion and Henri Matisse, both 11/2, filled the places behind him in a seven runner field.
Thursday 30 July: the Nassau Stakes
The Qatar Nassau Stakes is the Group 1 for fillies and mares over 1m1f, and it is the one race of the five where the market got it right last year. Whirl was sent off the 6/5 favourite for Aidan O'Brien and duly obliged, beating Cercene at 11/1 with See The Fire third. Only five lined up.
Friday 31 July: the King George Stakes
A word of clarification on this one, because the name causes confusion every summer. Goodwood's King George Qatar Stakes is a Group 2 sprint over five furlongs. It is not the King George at Ascot over a mile and a half. Different race entirely.
Last year it went to Jm Jungle at 14/1 for John and Sean Quinn, from She's Quality at 9/1, with the 10/3 favourite Time For Sandals only third in a field of twelve. Another one where the market was left behind.
Saturday 1 August: the Stewards' Cup
And so to the Coral Stewards' Cup, the six furlong Heritage Handicap that closes the festival and one of the hardest puzzles of the year. Twenty seven of them went to post last year. Two Tribes won it at 11/2 for Richard Spencer, from Strike Red at 9/1 and Jakajaro at 16/1, and Spencer also had the fourth home in Run Boy Run at 10/1. Landing first and fourth in a twenty seven runner cavalry charge is a serious piece of training.
What last year actually tells us
Look at the five together and a theme jumps out. In four of the five, the favourite was beaten, and in three of them the winner returned 11/2 or bigger, including a 150/1 shot in a Group 1. The only one that went to plan for the market was the Nassau, a five runner race where there was very little to beat.
That is Goodwood. The track is idiosyncratic, the fields in the handicaps are enormous, the draw and the pace matter enormously in the sprints, and the result is a meeting where taking a short price on trust is rarely the way to play it. We would far rather be looking for the horse the market has underestimated than following the money, and last year's results are a fairly emphatic argument for that approach.
The trainer we would be watching: Richard Spencer
Go back to that Stewards' Cup result and look at it again. Two Tribes won it and Run Boy Run was fourth, and both are trained by Richard Spencer. Landing first and fourth in a twenty seven runner handicap is not luck, and what he has done in the last week or two suggests it is very much a pattern.
On Saturday at Newbury he won the Weatherbys Super Sprint, the 3:37, with Zigazig Ah at 17/2, and he had the fourth home as well in Etienne. First and fourth again, in another big-field, valuable prize.
Then go back to 10 July at Newmarket, where Twilight Calls won the Debenhams Handicap at 8/1. The horse he beat into second, Rapper's Delight at 11/2, is also his. That is a one-two, and it means his two runners filled the first two places in a competitive handicap. He also had Ice Cube winning at Epsom in midweek.
Put it together and the picture is of a yard in good heart that is deliberately aiming multiple horses at competitive, well-endowed races and repeatedly filling more than one place in the frame. That is precisely the profile you want to be with going into a week like Goodwood, where the handicaps are enormous and one runner in a field of twenty odd is a thin way to play. We will be paying close attention to whatever he declares.
And the yard going the other way
The contrast could hardly be sharper. Aidan O'Brien won two of these four Group 1s last year, the Goodwood Cup with a one-two and the Nassau with the favourite. He arrives at this year's festival in the middle of the coldest spell we can remember from the yard, one winner from twenty three runners across the weekend, as we wrote about this weekend. Whether Ballydoyle can turn that around in the ten days before Goodwood is one of the more interesting questions of the week, and on the evidence of the Curragh we would want to see something first.
We will be covering the festival day by day, and anything we want to follow out of it goes straight into our tracker.