Lockinge Stakes 2013 Preview

What Is It Good For? - Declaration Of War is taken to land the Lockinge

Last year’s Lockinge was won by the brilliant Frankel as the first port of call in a season for the ages. The chance of us seeing a horse put up a performance of that sort of standard twelve months on is slim to none, but the 2013 renewal of the JLT Lockinge Stakes still looks an intriguing race.

Given that Frankel has already been mentioned only a paragraph in, it seems right that we would start with a horse that twice chased home Sir Henry Cecil’s wonder-colt last season.

Godolphin’s Farhh enjoyed a great season in 2012 in spite of only landing the Thirsk Hunt Cup. He was a runaway winner of that race but then developed a serious case of seconditis as the season wore on.

He was unlucky at Royal Ascot getting no run in the Prince of Wales’s eventually finishing third behind So You Think and Carlton House and then it was seconds all the way.

He narrowly went down to Nathaniel in the Eclipse, then dropped back to a mile to chase Frankel home in the Sussex, it was back up to 1m2f to again play for places behind Frankel in the Juddmonte before he was again narrowly beaten in France by Moonlight Cloud over a mile.

Every single one of the aforementioned efforts since the Hunt Cup were at Group 1 level and you’d be hard pressed to find a more consistent horse in training. Many people think he can finally land the big one on Saturday and he is one of the more versatile horses out there, but I have my reservations.