2nd-Aug-2014

I am happy to take on the top two in the market here at the prices. Venus De Milo is a high-class filly, but she is surely better over a mile and a half than she is over 10 furlongs. She could even be even better over further than a mile and a half. Her class may see her through today, but it might all happen a little quickly for her over the trip with the chance that they will not go a great pace, and I am happy to be against her at 3/1.

Narniyn is an interesting French challenger, but she had her limitations exposed in the Grand Prix de Saint-Cloud last time, and she looks like a big filly who may not be at home on Goodwood’s undulations on fast ground. All her form is on easy ground.

I am backing Sultanina against the two of them. John Gosden’s filly only started racing this season as a four-year-old. She won her maiden at Salisbury, then battled on well to beat her stable companion Freedom’s Light in a Group 3 race at Haydock, and that filly added ballast to the form by coming out and beating the useful Waila next time in a listed race at Pontefract.

She was beaten by another stable companion Pomology on her most recent run, in the Group 2 Lancashire Oaks, but she did well that day to finish second. She chased a fast pace that We’ll Go Walking set, and she was left in front when the leader wilted. In the end, she was picked up easily enough by her stable companion, but Pomology is a talented filly who was suited by how the race was run, and Sultanina did keep on well enough to retain second place, two and a half lengths in front of last year’s Oaks winner Talent.

She has plenty to find on the book, she is rated 7lb inferior to Venus De Milo and Narniyn, but she has raced just three times, and she has lots of scope for progression. The drop to 10 furlongs could help, she has plenty of pace, and the fact that they have watered the track extensively overnight is good news. Any rain on top of that between now and race time would be a bonus.

John Gosden has won the last two renewals of this race so, in the absence of The Fugue, it is significant that Sultanina is the choice of William Buick, and that she is the stable’s selected in this Group 1 race given the depth of talent that Gosden has among his middle distance fillies at present.

SULTANINA WON (SP 11/2)