Eclipse Preview

You Can Call Me Al - Al Kazeem can make it 3 straight Group 1s in the Eclipse

Last year’s Coral-Eclipse was won in battling style by John Gosden’s Nathaniel on his first start of the campaign. This year’s renewal won’t feature any returning stars but will however pretty much be a re-run of the Prince of Wales’s Stakes from Royal Ascot two weeks ago.

In that respect there’s not overly much more you can say about the leading protagonists from the Royal meeting’s Wednesday feature that wasn’t said then, because if Al Kazeem turns up in the same form he’s been in so far this season, as he did in the Prince of Wales’s, he’ll be extremely hard to get the better of; at a track he’s already recorded a victory at this season when landing the Gordon Richards Stakes.

The presence of Mars does add a little more intrigue to proceedings with him representing the classic generation and having run well all season pitched in at the highest level, and with a favourable weight for age allowance here over what could potentially be his optimum trip he could be set to maybe spring a little bit of an upset.

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.