The brilliant turf miler Goldikova will be heavily favored to win her second Group 1 race of 2011, and the 14th such race of her career, in Sunday’s Prix Rothschild at Deauville, France.
The winner of the last three runnings of the Breeders’ Cup Mile – twice at Santa Anita, once at Churchill Downs – Goldikova will be after her fourth consecutive win in the Prix Rothschild, a one-mile race for fillies and mares which has drawn a field of eight. The race has a purse of approximately $429,000.
Midday can become the first filly or mare to win three runnings of the Group 1 Nassau Stakes at Goodwood Racecourse in England on Saturday, but a win would be a slight surprise.
Midday, 5, is expected to be the second or third choice in the betting behind the upstart 3-year-old Misty for Me, trained by Aidan O’Brien, and the 4-year-old filly Snow Fairy. Midday and Misty for Me met for the first time in the Group 1 Pretty Polly Stakes at The Curragh in Ireland on June 25, which Misty for Me won by six lengths.
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Believe the hype. Three-year-old superstar Frankel proved he has substance to match his reputation, decisively defeating top miler Canford Cliffs in the Group 1 Sussex Stakes on Wednesday at Goodwood in England.
Unbeaten 3-year-old sensation Frankel has humbled rivals in his age set, but Wednesday, Frankel faces the strongest foe he has yet met, 4-year-old Canford Cliffs, in a highly anticipated renewal of the Group 1 Sussex Stakes at the Glorious Goodwood meeting in England.
Only two others were entered, and while both Rajsaman and Rio de la Plata are nice horses, the one-mile Sussex widely is viewed as a match race between Frankel and Canford Cliffs. The English bet-taker Coral, in fact, will refund losing wagers on Frankel and Canford Cliffs should neither win.
The five-day Glorious Goodwood meeting begins on Tuesday in southern England, and the first-ever match-up between the undefeated 3-year-old Frankel and the red-hot 4-year-old Canford Cliffs in Wednesday’s Group 1 Sussex Stakes figures to be the highlight of the week.
Both Frankel and Canford Cliffs won Group 1 races at Royal Ascot on June 14. Canford Cliffs beat two-time Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Goldikova in the Queen Anne Stakes an hour before Frankel extended his unbeaten streak to seven races in the St. James’s Palace Stakes for 3-year-olds.
Nathaniel captured his first Group 1 race and stamped himself as an elite 3-year-old by beating older horses in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Saturday at Ascot.
The race, however, was marred by the breakdown of Godolphin’s Rewilding, who had won the Sheema Classic and Prince of Wales’s Stakes in his two starts this year. Rewilding had been held up in last much of the trip and went bad as soon as jockey Frankie Dettori swung out for his stretch run. Dettori walked into a waiting ambulance. Rewilding badly broke a cannon bone and had to be euthanized.
Scalo, winner of a Group 1 in Germany last September, will be favored to win another race at that level in Sunday's Group 1 Grosser Preis Von Berlin at Hoppegarten Racecourse in Germany.
Trained by Andreas Wohler, Scalo was second in the Group 1 Gran Premio di Milano in Italy on June 12. In Sunday's race, worth approximately $221,000, Scalo, a 4-year-old colt by Lando, will be ridden by French jockey Maxime Guyon, who was aboard the colt for a win in the Group 2 Prix Guillaume d'Ornaro at Deauville, France, last year.
There are just five entrants in Saturday’s Group 1 King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot in England, but the race is a dandy, with two champions, Workforce and St. Nicholas Abbey, opposed by Rewilding and the dangerous 3-year-old Nathaniel. The fifth horse is Debussy, who won the 2010 Arlington Million but has shown little so far in 2011.
BREEDERS' CUP CHALLENGE: Racing schedule, replays, and past winners »
Blue Bunting rallied from fifth in the final quarter-mile to win Sunday’s Group 1 Irish Oaks at the Curragh, her second major trophy of the year.
Blue Bunting won the English 1000 Guineas in May. In between, she finished fourth in the English Oaks, just missing third after jockey Frankie Dettori did not ride her to the wire. He was given a 10-day suspension for the incident.
Dettori made no such mistakes in deep stretch of the Irish Oaks.
Wonder of Wonders, the runner-up in the English Oaks last month, will be an odds-on favorite against a strong field in Sunday’s Group 1 Irish Oaks at the Curragh.
One of three runners in the race trained by Aidan O’Brien, Wonder of Wonders will be after her first group stakes win in the Irish Oaks, which is run over 1 1/2 miles on turf and is worth approximately $600,000.
O’Brien also starts the outsiders Amazing Beauty and Gemstone.
