NEWMARKET, ENGLAND // Godolphin are set to flex their muscles next week when the Dubai-based operation could be represented by over 50 runners at Royal Ascot.
Horses based in England, Ireland, France, the United States and Australia will collect under the Royal Blue standard to produce the largest team Godolphin have ever fielded at the five-day meeting that starts on Tuesday. In over 200 years of this most famous of meetings, it could well be the biggest team ever assembled by one owner.
As an illustration of their intent, Irish raiders Devonshire and Lucida were among five Godolphin fillies left in at the confirmation stage for Wednesday’s Duke Of Cambridge Stakes.
Other Godolphin horses who could run in the Group 2 contest over the straight mile include Saeed bin Suroor’s Very Special, who was a dual winner at Meydan in the winter, and Always Smile, who won the Hambleton Stakes at York last month for the long-serving trainer.
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But leading that group of fillies is Usherette, Andre Fabre’s Dahlia Stakes winner who will travel over from Chantilly.
There is more. Tryster, who displayed a searing turn of foot in Dubai during the World Cup Carnival, was also among the nine confirmations headed by Japanese challenger A Shin Hikari for the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, the feature race on the second day.
When you pitch in Meydan regular Jungle Cat, who lines up in Tuesday’s King Stand Stakes and Ribchester, who John Ferguson believes is Godolphin’s best chance in the Jersey Stakes on the following day and Holler, John O’Shea’s sprinter who is to try to become the third Australian winner of the Diamond Jubilee Stakes next Saturday, Godolphin’s team is not only numerically strong but they have chances abound.
“Godolphin is a team based in Dubai and has always been the brainchild of Sheikh Mohammed [bin Rashid] and he loves the big picture,” chief executive Ferguson said of the UAE Vice President and Ruler of Dubai after watching Holler work on the Limekilns turf gallop.
“He was the first man to start travelling horses around the world in the way Godolphin did when it started and it is great to de doing the same thing now. Royal Ascot is an international race meeting and it needs international horses.”
Much as Godolphin did during the Carnival with Kiaran McLaughlin’s horses, they are turning outward the sights of their American operation. Drafted is an apt name for Eoin Harty’s colt, who is set to become the first US-based juvenile to run in the Royal Blue silks at Ascot when he most likely runs in Tuesday’s Windsor Castle Stakes, although Thursday’s Norfolk Stakes is also an option.
Drafted preceded Holler on the gallops Thursday and William Buick was happy with the leg-stretch over 1,200 metres. With path-finding US-based trainer Wesley Ward also set to field a huge team next week, this will be a vintage meeting for the Americans, who also will be represented in the Duke Of Cambridge by Miss Temple City, trained by Dubai World Cup winner Graham Motion.
“Wesley has done so well with bringing horses over and it just shows that it is possible,” Ferguson added. “So when Eoin rang us and told us that he had a two year old to do the job naturally Sheikh Mohammed wanted to be part of it.”
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