More Than Real, the winner of the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf at Churchill Downs last fall, faces a formidable task when she makes her 2011 debut in Friday’s Group 1 Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot in England.
Rewilding, winner of the Dubai Sheema Classic but considered only a mid-level player in Wednesday’s Group 1 Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot, ran down the more highly regarded So You Think in the final half-furlong to win by a neck.
Deep lungs and powerful heart will be prized over fleet feet, and favored Fame and Glory still has to prove he can see out the 2 1/2-mile Ascot Gold Cup on Thursday at Royal Ascot.
Frankel stretched his unbeaten streak to seven races with a thrilling win in Tuesday’s Group 1 St. James’s Palace Stakes for 3-year-olds at Royal Ascot in which he led by about five lengths with a quarter-mile remaining and held off a fast closing Zoffany.
Canford Cliffs won his fifth consecutive Group 1 race, and beat three-time Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Goldikova, in Tuesday’s Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, the opening race of the prestigious five-day meeting.
He burst onto the scene in Australia last fall, winning three Group 1 races in six weeks and finishing third in the Melbourne Cup. Then, he conquered Ireland last month, winning two group stakes with ease.
Golden Lilac, the winner of the French 1000 Guineas last month, extended her domination of that country’s 3-year-old filly division with a one-length victory in Sunday’s Group 1 Prix de Diane (French Oaks) at Chantilly on Sunday.
By Tuesday, the American Triple Crown will have wrapped up, and the cream of the 3-year-crop will be on their way to late-summer destinations and an eventual convergence with the older-horse set. But across the pond, all eyes will be trained on an English 3-year-old, the best-known sophomore in the world, Frankel, whose next stop in a so-far undefeated career comes Tuesday in the Group 1 St. James’s Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot.
Canford Cliffs has youth. He is just 4, and with only nine starts, has room still to improve. He has won four races in a row, all Group 1’s, dating back to the 2010 Irish 1000 Guineas, and with an impressive 2011 debut score in the Lockinge Stakes last month, Canford Cliffs solidified his standing as England’s top miler. But on Tuesday at Royal Ascot, in the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes, Canford Cliffs, for the first time, runs headlong into the force of nature called Goldikova.
As appealing as Royal Ascot might be to racing lovers worldwide, the five-day race meeting has nowhere to go but down after Tuesday’s opening.
