Live Your Dream

Live Your Dream did remarkably well to keep on as well as he did to finish third in the Duke of Edinburgh Handicap on Friday. This was a race that was run at a fast pace, and Live Your Dream was up with that pace from flagfall. Sharply away from his outside draw, Saeed bin Suroor’s horse moved up to share the lead with his stable companion Global Heat after they had gone two furlongs. He moved into the lead on his own as they raced down the side of the track, and he kicked into a clear lead as they rounded the home turn. The closers were always going to come at him in the home straight, given how fast the early pace had been, and they duly did, but the Godolphin horse kept on well after he had been passed to take third place, just two lengths behind the winner Okita Soushi.

This was a race in which it was an advantage to be held up. Ten of the first 11 home came from mid-division or worse early on. Live Your Dream was the only prominent racer to get in among them, and he finished third, having led or dispute from flagfall. His stable companion who shared the early lead with him faded to finish last.

Live Your Dream is six now, but this was just his 10th race, and it was just his second run back since he finished down the field in the 2021 Cesarewitch. His first run back, at Haydock two weeks earlier, was a really good run too, when he stayed on well to take second place behind Cumulonimbus, who made all. The handicapper raised him by just 2lb for this run to a mark of 104, and that was fair. He will be of interest again in a good handicap off that mark. He holds an entry in a one-mile-six-furlong heritage handicap at Newmarket’s July meeting, and he will be of interest if he lines up in that. The distance of that race should suit him even better than the 12 furlongs at Ascot, and he goes well at Newmarket, he won that race two years ago.

Ascot, 23rd June 2023