GB: Newmarket trainer Tom Clover is to saddle his first Classic runner after announcing that Lingfield Oaks Trial winner Rogue Millennium will be supplemented for the Cazoo Oaks.
The unbeaten filly’s owner, the 200-member Rogues Gallery syndicate, have agreed to pay the £30,000 supplementary entry fee to run at Epsom on Friday June 3.
Rogue Millennium, bought unraced for 35,000gns in December last year, followed up a winning debut at Wetherby in April 13 by landing the Lingfield trial over 1m3½f by a head under Jack Mitchell.
“Rogue Millennium is a lovely filly that deserves her chance to be in the Oaks and it is now very much the plan to go to Epsom,” said Clover. “We discussed it several times and both the owners and I are keen to go there.”
Clover, 36, started training in his own right at the end of 2016 and he and wife Jackie are now based at historic Kremlin House – former base of his late father-in-law Michael Jarvis, who won the 2005 Oaks with Eswarah. That filly, like Rogue Millennium, was bred by the late Hamdan Al-Maktoum’s Shadwell operation.
“For any young trainer to have a horse like her bred by Sheikh Hamdan going for the Oaks is very special,” said Clover. “He was a well-respected and hugely popular man. Sheikh Hamdan is part of the sport’s heritage and he had so many successes with my late father-in-law Michael Jarvis, including winning the Oaks with Eswarah.
“I don’t believe we are going there simply to have a runner but because we have a chance. I hope she can make both us and the Rogues Gallery team proud.”
Despite Rogue Millennium not setting the world alight on the gallops ahead of her debut at Wetherby last month, Clover remained confident she would prove a hit once reaching the race track. “She is not the flashiest work horse but she really does find for you, he said. “She is a gorgeous-looking filly with plenty of strength and depth.
“It was lovely for her to go win the way she did at Wetherby and on the way home we thought that the Lingfield race would be perfect for her.
“Stepping straight up to a mile and a half felt right,” he went on. “For her to be caught wide at Lingfield, and be as far back and come through as she did, was a case of her really learning on the job which was exciting to see.
“It was a great performance and wonderful for all the members of The Rogues Gallery that are involved in her. Hopefully she learnt plenty and that there is still more to come.”
• Visit the Tom Clover Racing website and the Jockey Club's Epsom Ladies Day page
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