Away from Ascot there has been lots of excitement with four further winners and three notable seconds to report this month. At Highclere we are particularly well known for buying later developing middle distance types and these horses usually come into their own at this stage of their three-year-old season. One such horse, who broke his maiden last week at the third time of asking, is Antipodes, a colt by Starspangledbanner. Please see the diary entry to read more. Another three-year-old who really got the hang of things on his third start is Respond, a son of Ghaiyyath trained by Andrew Balding. He had been quite unruly on his second start, pulling his way out of contention through the first half of the race, but he put that right under Rob Hornby at Sandown in a valuable novice on his most recent start. He settled much better in mid-division and had he not been short of room on the rail with a furlong to run, he may have finished even closer. As it happened, he was beaten 3 lengths into second by the favourite Wave Rider. He’s been given an opening mark of 83 and is now likely to wait for the weather to break so he can run on some easier ground.

Our two-year-old fillies have been out in force this month with some success and plenty of promise. The busiest of them has been Nifty. She’s nifty by name and nifty by nature, adding to her maiden win at Chelmsford with a hard-fought win in a valuable Class 2 novice at Salisbury. She was the most experienced in the line up and this played in her favour as others veered off a straight course, while she stayed straight as a die to clinch victory. She will now drop back to 5f for the £250,000 Super Sprint at Newbury on 19th July where she will carry a nice light weight. With prize money all the way down to tenth, it’s a fantastic race to be able to target with a filly who cost just 16,000gns as a yearling.

A filly who got her career started at Newbury recently is Concert, a precocious looking Showcasing filly trained by William Haggas. She rather went under the radar in the betting market, which was probably something to do with her jockey, Mirai Iwata, who was having his first ride in the UK. Please see the diary entry to ready more. One debutant that didn’t go under the radar was Radiance at Yarmouth. The 150,000gns Breeze Up purchase was sent off 5/6F for a 7f fillies’ maiden and duly won in the style of smart filly. Please see the diary entry to ready more.

One of the more emotional victories this month came from Pianoforte, who is a very lightly raced 4yo who’s had his fair share of issues. He finished his 2yo year as an 85-rated maiden and started the 2024 season full of promise with a ¾ length defeat by subsequent Group 1 winner Kind Of Blue. Unfortunately, an injury put paid to the rest of that season, and it was a long road to recovery. He’s a horse with plenty of ability and he showed that by reeling in the long odds-on favourite Flash Harry to win a Bath novice by a short head. It was a very deserving victory for a group of patient owners who haven’t had the easiest run with the horse. He now heads to the July Sales where he should attract plenty of interest.

An older horse with a few more miles on the clock is Spycatcher, now 7 years young! He was turned out quickly for another crack at the Prix de Ris-Orangis (Gr 3), a race he won in 2023. Amazingly the ground was Soft at Deauville and Spycatcher just loves some cut in the ground. He travelled towards the rear of the field under Sam James and managed to weave his way through to challenge the winner Beauvatier inside the final furlong. It was nice to see the old boy bounce back to form after an unusually bad run in the Chipchase (Gr 3) at Newcastle 8 days earlier. He will continue to receive all the right entries and when the ground comes up soft, we will see him unleashed and hopefully he can continue to add to his impressive tally before the season is out.