In 2010, Snow Fairy won four Group 1 races in four countries on two continents. How much she can accomplish this year will be better known on Saturday when Snow Fairy makes her 4-year-old debut in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes for fillies and mares at the Curragh in Ireland.
Society’s Rock, second in the race last year, scored an upset in the Group 1 Golden Jubilee on Saturday, the final day of the 2011 Royal Ascot meeting, but it was Group 2 Hardwicke Stakes winner Await the Dawn whom American racing fans may want to follow.
The French invader Immortal Verse rallied from last in a field of 12 to win the first Group 1 race of her career in Friday’s Coronation Stakes at Royal Ascot, the meeting’s premier race for 3-year-old fillies.
Delegator is the best-known horse and possible favorite for the Group 1 Golden Jubilee on Saturday at Royal Ascot, but his credentials for the five-furlong dash hardly are impeccable.
The question was whether Fame and Glory, the most talented horse in the Ascot Gold Cup, could stay the race’s demanding 2 1/2-mile distance. The answer was a resounding yes, as Fame and Glory captured the Group 1 Gold Cup by three lengths
A trip to the Breeders’ Cup Mile at Churchill now considered a strong option for Canford Cliffs, who won the Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes on Tuesday and ranks as Europe’s top miler.
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.
