Paddington’s remarkable season continued with the three-year-old’s seventh straight victory in the Sussex Stakes, the one-mile highlight of the five-day Glorious Goodwood meeting.
Bad weather beset the summer showpiece, with testing conditions underfoot all week long – to the extent that Saturday’s final card was abandoned with three races left.
Soft ground blunted any likelihood of brilliance, however, and in reality the Aidan O’Brien-trained three-year-old did not need to improve to land his fourth G1 of the season by a length and a half from French challenger Facteur Cheval. A TRC Computer Race Rating of 121 was the lowest figure of his four-race G1 spree.
However, that bare result doesn’t tell the full story, because there was much to admire as Paddington justified odds-on favouritism in convincing style, seeing off an early assault from market rival Inspiral before easily holding the runner-up.
Remember, barely four months ago the son of Siyouni was starting off his season winning a Naas handicap before his extraordinary ascent to world prominence. He is now the highest-ranked European horse on Thoroughbred Racing Commentary’s Global Rankings, standing at #3 (from #7, +66pt).
What is more, Paddington’s exploits earned a rave review from world #1 jockey Ryan Moore. “It is a hard thing to say but he gives you the feel that he might be as good a horse as I have ridden,” said Moore.
“He is exceptional – and he has handled everything that we have put in front of him, whether it’s a mile, 10 [furlongs], good ground, soft.
“He is a straightforward horse who thrives on his racing. Someone asked me yesterday if he would go on this ground and I said: ‘He would go on snow!’”
‘A very special horse’
O’Brien was in no mood to disagree. “Paddington is a very special horse,” he said, before making a favourable comparison with Ballydoyle’s original ‘Iron Horse’, the estimable Giant’s Causeway.
“Paddington is much quicker than the Giant was,” said O’Brien. “He’s tactically quick but he can quicken as well. The Giant was tactically quick and was dour after that. This horse can really turn it on when you have to, on all types of ground. He is unique.”
Next up comes a return to a mile and a quarter in the Juddmonte International at York’s Ebor meeting later this month.
Another notable mover from Goodwood is the wonderful sprint mare Highfield Princess (#23 from #57, +139pt), who returned to winning form with a comfortable effort in the G2 King George Qatar Stakes.
Although she hadn’t won since September last year, the six-year-old never runs a bad race, having been close up in two G1 events at Royal Ascot. A credit to her Yorkshire-based trainer John Quinn, she comes to her peak in the second half of the season and must surely have every chance of repeating last year’s Nunthorpe Stakes.
On a dismal weekend at Saratoga, a startling 6¼-length Whitney victory for White Abarrio (#47 from #372, +320pt) catapulted the grey into the top 50. The four-year-old was recording his second G1 win, having claimed last year’s Florida Derby for former trainer Saffie Joseph before this latest runaway success for Rick Dutrow.
Odds-on Whitney favourite Cody’s Wish (#6 from #3, -29pt) forfeits both his top five position and his winning streak after finishing a well-beaten third; all thoughts of a potential Breeders’ Cup Classic bid will now be shelved in favour of a repeat attempt at the Dirt Mile.
Among trainers, Charlie Appleby’s decline continues as the former world #1’s relatively fallow summer sees him drop another place to #3 (from #2, -5pt), swapping positions with Chad Brown (#2 from #3, +40pt). Appleby was still topping the charts only three weeks ago before being overhauled by Aidan O’Brien.
With recent G1 successes on the board via Hukum and Al Husn, the Shadwell team’s retained European jockey Jim Crowley (#10 from #12, +24pt) movers into the top ten.
• Unlike traditional methods of racehorse rankings, TRC Global Rankings are a measure of an individual’s level of achievement over a rolling three-year period, providing a principled hierarchy of the leading horses, jockeys, trainers, owners and sires using statistical learning techniques. Racehorse rankings can be compared to similar exercises in other sports, like the golf’s world rankings or the ATP rankings in tennis.
They are formulated from the last three years of races we consider Group or Graded class all over the world and update automatically each week according to the quality of a horse’s performances and their recency, taking into account how races work out.
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