Precise holds clear edge in English 1000 Guineas
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Precise ended her 2-year-old campaign in the infirmary. Well, not exactly. The upper-respiratory infection that led to her raceday scratch from the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf was not all that serious, but it did cost her the intended final start of an excellent 2-year-old campaign. Precise lost her debut, then reeled off four in a row, the last two Group 1s, first the Moyglare Stud, then the Fillies’ Mile.
If Precise has improved from age 2 to 3, she will almost certainly win the 1000 Guineas on Sunday at Newmarket Racecourse. But the betting market as of Friday seemed slightly uncertain. Bookmakers offered Precise at a general 5-2, a solid favorite in an 18-runner field, but not as short as one might expect given the nature of her two Group 1 successes.
In the Moyglare Stud, Precise’s real coming-out party – she went off at a generous 11-2 – the filly stormed home from several lengths off the pace to win by three-quarters of a length over her Aidan O’Brien-trained stablemate Beautify. Venetian Sun, the Guineas second choice at 9-2 with the bookies, could not touch her, left nearly three lengths behind. Precise ran even better in the Fillies’ Mile, waiting patiently while last of 10 until Christophe Soumillon stoked her up with a little more than a quarter-mile remaining. Running down the same straight, undulating course that awaits her Sunday, Precise came home brilliantly, powering through the uphill finish, 3 1/4 lengths best at the line. She would have been one of the shorter prices on Breeders’ Cup weekend had she made the gate. The great Ryan Moore, out with an injury last fall, has the mount.
Venetian Sun hasn’t started since the Moyglare Stud, which came one race after she handled the fancy colt Gstaad in the Prix Morny, a six-furlong contest that might be closer to Venetian Sun’s ideal trip than this testing mile.
A second O’Brien-trained filly, True Love, faces the same question: She topped out last year in the Group 1 Cheveley Park over six furlongs, then ran below form in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf Sprint. Unlike most of the shorter prices, she comes to the Guineas with a prep race behind her, a Group 3 win over seven furlongs at The Curragh.
Andre Fabre sends the Godolphin filly My Highness from France. My Highness is by the hulking 1 1/2-mile horse Ghaiyyath and will have no trouble getting a mile. She lost her 3-year-old debut, the seven-furlong Prix Impudence, which surely was working as much as anything as a prep for this start. And her presence in the Guineas makes one wonder how much upside Abashiri has, since she’s another Godolphin filly, trained in England by Charlie Appleby. No question, Abashiri caught the eye winning her lone start, which came in November over the all-weather Kempton Park track. But if Precise has come forward this year, no one in this group is beating her.
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