Romantic Warrior has jumped from #4 to #2 after success in Sunday’s Hong Kong Gold Cup.
After a mammoth weekend in world racing, the top ten of two classifications have experienced major changes.
Romantic Warrior, who grabbed another Group 1 on Sunday with success in the Hong Kong Gold Cup, skipped two places to go from #4 to #2 in the Horses table, knocking Forever Young to #3 and Calandagan to #4.
Also in that table, Rebel’s Romance has moved up one to #6, Autumn Glow has gone up two to #7, Jantar Mantar has gone up two to reach #10 and Observer has made huge gains to go from #55 to #9 after landing Saturday’s Australian Guineas at Flemington
After a weekend in which his son Knightsbridge won the Gulfstream Park Mile, Nyquist (who also went from #4 to #2 in the Dirt Sires rankings) has moved up two to #6 in the Overall Sires table, where Not This Time heads up one to #7 and Lope De Vega enters the top ten after sitting at #11 last week.
Other classifications have also seen movement, with Too Darn Hot entering the Turf Sires top ten at #9 (from #13). The same table saw Galileo go up one to #5.
A good weekend for Wathnan Racing has seen it jump from #7 to #6 in the Owners table, where Spendthrift go from #9 to #8 and Romantic Warrior’s owner Peter Lau Pak Fai enters the top ten at #10 from #15.
In the Trainers top ten, Ciaron Maher goes from #9 to #8, Todd Pletcher from #12 to #10 and Bill Mott is now just one place from the top ten, pushed from #13 to #11 after a good weekend at several tracks.
Meanwhile in the Jockeys table, Irad Ortiz moves to #6 from #7, helped by riding Wathnan’s Commandment to victory in Gulfstream’s Fountain of Youth Stakes.
This was a thoroughly excellent weekend of racing all round the globe and there are all sorts of talking points.
The best performance on TRC Computer Race Ratings was from Romantic Warrior in the Hong Kong Gold Cup, the second leg of their Triple Crown.
He’s a veteran eight-year-old who’s routinely brilliant and he now moves up to sit behind his compatriot Ka Ying Rising.
Somebody said this week that two all-time greats are running around at the same time. I wouldn’t disagree with that, and it’s great that the two Hong Kong stars are now #1 and #2.
Readers should remember that our rankings promote recency for good reason: it’s more predictive of future performance… and we want some dynamism.
The fact that Romantic Warrior is above European stars isn’t because it’s a direct comparison with them, but it does reflect his continued excellence and he won comfortably again on Sunday.
To Australia
Two of our poster horses bolstered their CVs in Australia over the weekend.
The filly Autumn Glow won the Very Elleegant Stakes at Randwick, maintaining her unbeaten record and making it ten out of ten. She continues to look a match for any colt.
The Very Elleegant also featured a most promising reappearance from Sir Delius, who was a star for the Gai Waterhouse & Adrian Bott stables last year before physical problems.
He returns at #41 and is capable of rising significantly from that perch if all remains well.
Observer, another of our favourite horses, took a bigger leap from #55 to #9 following his rarely achieved double at Flemington, when he added the Australian Guineas to the earlier Victoria Derby.
The thing about this horse is he’s mighty difficult to assess. He travels strongly and looks like a really top horse for about two thirds of the race, but he has a marked tendency to idle in front, and this can reduce his winning margins considerably.
I wonder whether it’s going to catch him out in the end and he’ll get nailed by something coming over the top.
Last weekend, it was his usual sort of performance. He went round the inside, hit the front and he wasn’t really doing a lot inside the closing stages, allowing the placed horses to close down on him.
Nevertheless, it was a pretty solid performance, and I think it’s his third performance we’ve rated at 118, which is good going for a young horse.
Staying in Australia, Tempted, who was second to Ka Ying Rising in last year’s Everest, added the Surround Stakes to her CV, underlining her quality. She rises from #77 to #38.
On to America
There’s a lot to go on here and we may have seen an older horse star on dirt in the shape of Knightsbridge.
The Bill Mott-trained, Godolphin-owned miler has now won three Grade 3s at Gulfstream by a combined 21 lengths and his victory in the Gulfstream Park Mile at the weekend was his most impressive yet.
It was a sight to behold as he was eased down but still won by 11 and a half lengths.
This was his third straight race rating of 119 and he might race even higher if anything can actually push him. The one problem with him is that he’s a lightly raced five-year-old and hasn’t yet done it outside a Grade 3, so we hope he’ll stand up to stronger competition as he goes up in class, perhaps to something up in New York (maybe the Met Mile).
Either way, he has a tonne of talent, looks a classy type physically and Bill Mott’s horses have been thriving this winter.
Another really talented older horse is Magnitude, trained by Steve Asmussen, who won the Razorback Handicap readily at Oaklawn. He travelled well throughout, I thought, and didn’t look likely to lose at any point.
He’s a notch down from the top horses in the division, but I imagine Asmussen will place him to win more races as there are plenty of opportunities for a horse like him.
He’s #33 from #64, so he’s really rising.
Down in the three-year-old division, there were two prominent Grade 2 Classic trials with two very solid performances. Two similar winners in some ways, and two horses with our rating of 116, which seems to be just about what all Classic trials are yielding in the States.
It looks a solid collection of horses and when we get to the final round of trials, one of them may well step forward and prove themselves a star.
At Oaklawn, we had the Grade 2 Rebel Stakes, which was a fantastic watch.
Class President got the better of our old friend Silent Tactic (the one who has to be ridden like a turf horse, dropped right out at the back).
Whereas we praised Cristian Torres for his ride on Silent Tactic in the Southwest Stakes, with the benefit of hindsight he probably should’ve won this staying inside, because he chose to take Silent Tactic, who doesn’t want to see a lot of daylight and doesn’t do that much in front, right around the outside on the crown of the bend.
Torres, who’s usually so reliable around Oaklawn, on this occasion probably realised he exposed Silent Tactic to a duel with Class President, who just got the better of him in a desperate finish.
Class President enters the Global Rankings at #95 and Silent Tactic is now #195.
Those two horses, though, aren’t as prominent in our rankings as Commandment, who won the Fountain of Youth Stakes at Gulfstream. I’m not surprised by that at all, because I think Commandment is a really good horse.
He’s owned by Wathnan Racing and is very well bred. We’ll get onto his sire in a minute, but his dam was a Grade 1 winner at two who looked a stayer but never got the chance to go on at three.
Had she done so, she could’ve been a top horse.
Commandment is strange in that he’s a stayer with a short stride, because of which he sometimes lacks a bit of tactical speed.
He gives the impression that he may well have a glass ceiling, but that could be misleading when we see him over nine furlongs and possibly further.
He’ll be heading next to the Florida Derby.
He’s by our #1 sire Into Mischief and I did a little bit of research, because I wondered just why Into Mischief has headed Frankel in our rankings.
It’s because the two sires have different trajectories.
If we take the years 2023-25 (the completed seasons of world racing), Into Mischief’s Group and Graded Stakes totals went from 13 to 19, to 26 last year, with a 19 per cent strike rate.
By contrast, Frankel went from 37 in 2023 to 26 in 2024 and 22 last year, which he gained at only a 12 per cent strike rate.
Whilst an individual season isn’t the whole story by any means when it comes to a stallion’s potency, it’s the different trajectories of these sires that explain their relevant positions at #1 and #2.
This, you might say, is a little academic because one is predominantly a dirt sire and the other predominantly a turf sire, but that’s the reason Into Mischief’s recent statistics are better than Frankel’s.
Readers should bear in mind that we tend to rate individual dirt wins higher than individual turf wins due to availability (there aren’t as many of them around the world).
Crisfords cruising
Simon and Ed Crisford need a mention as we’re counting the Jumeirah 2,000 Guineas as a Grade 3 rather than a Listed.
Going by races that count towards our rankings, Simon and Ed Crisford had a treble in Dubai and they’re up to #25 (from #38) in the Trainers classifications, having also won the Singspiel Stakes and the Al Maktoum Classic over dirt on Super Saturday.
Meydaan, who won the Al Maktoum Classic, is now going to go on to the Dubai World Cup, where you’d think he’d be good enough as he’s thriving on dirt. He goes from #935 to #210.
We’ve seen recently that the standard of that race can vary a little bit… let’s put that diplomatically! A talented turf horse like him with a strong finishing profile could well do some damage.
Best wishes to everyone stuck out there in Dubai. It must have been an awful situation, and the Crisfords’ victories were tinged with the situation going on around them.
But it was a very good week, and the Kentucky Derby trials are hotting up nicely.
The global racing year has certainly got off to a good start. Australia has some superstars, which is always good to see, and the US continues to go from strength to strength as it recovers from its downturn about a decade ago.
Lord Allen has resigned as Chair of the BHA – what now for British racing?
Rishi Persad gave an update from Dubai, where many racing professionals have been stranded
Kristen Manning spoke to the leadership of studs affected by January’s bushfires in Victoria
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