To judge by British bookmakers’ prices after final declarations were released Thursday for the 2000 Guineas on Saturday at Newmarket, nobody knows anything about the first Classic race of the European flat season.
Bow Echo and Gstaad headed the market, tepid co-favorites at 7-2. Distant Storm, purportedly Godolphin’s leading hope, was offered at 9-2, while King’s Trail, the Godolphin “B” team, could be had at 8-1.
Little wonder confusion reigns.
Leading Guineas hope Gewan, winner of the Group 1 Dewhurst at the end of his 2-year-old season, broke down during a workout April 9 and, tragically, was euthanized.
Aidan O’Brien last year termed Albert Einstein the fastest colt he’d ever trained, while, to be fair, warning that the horse might not stay one mile. He either doesn’t stay or just isn’t very good: Two starts this year, two defeats, and Albert Einstein did not figure among the 15 entrants in the Guineas, run over a straight mile on a course rated “good” as of Thursday and likely to remain so through the race card.
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There’s more: Sometime late this winter, Albert Einstein and Gstaad accidentally were scratched from the Guineas. Computer error, the story went. Gstaad apparently will participate after being supplemented for about $40,000 and after O’Brien earlier this week suggested he could make his season’s debut not at Newmarket but at Longchamp in the Poule d’Essai des Poulains, the French 2000 Guineas. That spot, evidently, now belongs to the other colt O’Brien had contemplated for Newmarket, Puerto Rico.
Consider, also, that none of the three market leaders has raced this year. That’s become the norm, the big-name trainers eschewing traditional Guineas preps, bringing their horses straight to the race after a winter break. Since European training takes place away from racecourses at private training centers, the betting public for the most part must rely on owners, trainers, and racing managers to deliver reports – scarcely more than flying blind.
The American racing audience knows Gstaad, since his most recent start yielded a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Turf. Gstaad won by three-quarters of a length as much the best horse. He broke from post 14, a very challenging gate, had to make multiple moves while losing precious ground on the far turn, and still produced a furious kick from the three-sixteenths pole to the wire.
A two-turn mile on the tight Del Mar track bears little resemblance to the straight-course Guineas, contested over undulating turf that famously descends into The Dip before horses meet rising ground to the finish. Gstaad’s fine with that, too: While he lost his three Group 1 starts in Europe, he finished second in all of them, doing good stuff, and Gewan beat him by just three-quarters of a length in the Dewhurst.
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Bow Echo comes from a totally different milieu as a much different type of horse. Gstaad and Distant Storm look like flashy sprinter-milers, while Bow Echo, a larger-framed, less brilliant colt, debuted at one mile and goes like a horse who will appreciate more distance. He easily captured his debut at Newbury, beat a capable colt named Publish in the listed Ascendant Stakes at Haydock Park, and finished his season at Newmarket not in the seven-furlong Dewhurst but in the one-mile Royal Lodge.
Bow Echo has made no mistakes in racing and has showed hallmarks of a potentially elite 3-year-old. He ought to race competitively for trainer George Boughey and jockey Billy Loughnane.
Distant Storm, with William Buick riding for Charlie Appleby, did make mistakes at age 2, specifically as the 11-10 favorite in his second start, the Group 3 Acomb, where he pulled mightily for the first furlong and consequently finished a somewhat flat third. He raced much more professionally thumping soft competition a month later in the Tattersalls Stakes, but he could not quicken with Gstaad and Gewan when third in the Dewhurst.
The best-supported colt with a race this year didn’t even run in a Guineas prep. King’s Trail, another Godolphin colt trained by Appleby, debuted Dec. 21 over the flat, turning, all-weather track at Kempton Park. He won impressively and came back March 28 with another eye-catching Kempton score. King’s Trail, by Sea The Stars, has substance, travels sweetly, and has shown the ability to quicken like a good horse.
Oxagon won the Craven, the best-known Guineas prep, leading start to finish while racing for the first time in cheek pieces. Alparsian also made all the running landing the Greenham Stakes, though fourth-place Needle Match might be the one to take out of that Guineas prep.
The market will move before the Guineas goes at 10:35 a.m. Eastern. Maybe by then somebody will know something.
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