22nd-Jun-2018

I thought that Alpha Centauri should have been clear favourite for the Coronation Stakes, and it is worth backing her at 5/1.

Winner of her first two races last season as a juvenile, she ran a cracker in the Albany Stakes at the Royal meeting last year to finish second to Different League, beaten just a neck.  She just couldn’t catch the then Matthieu Palussiere-trained filly that day, she was inching closer with every stride as the line was nearing, but the pair of them pulled well clear of their rivals.

Jessica Harrington’s filly was well beaten in the Moyglare Stud Stakes on her next run after Ascot last year, her final run of the season as it turned out, and she was well beaten on her debut this season in the Guineas Trial at Leopardstown, but both of those races were run on soft ground, a surface on which she just can’t operate.

She proved that she has trained on and that she is top class on good or fast ground last time when she won the Irish 1000 Guineas.  She was impressive in winning that day too, coming from the rear and powering to the front in a race in which the second, third and fourth all raced prominently.

Clemmie is a danger, she is a high-class filly, and she should come on appreciably from her run in the Irish Guineas when she finished ninth, almost eight lengths behind Alpha Centauri.  But she was five lengths behind Jessica Harrington’s filly in the Albany Stakes last year, racing on the same side as her.  She probably shouldn’t be a shorter price.

Alpha Centauri is proven at Ascot, she stays a mile well and she should get the fast ground that she relishes.  She should run a big race.

ALPHA CENTAURI WON (ADV 5/1, SP 11/4)