Believing

Last year's 2,000 Guineas winner Notable Speech heads a list of 16 contenders for Saturday's G1 Al Basti Equiworld, Dubai July Cup at Newmarket, after being supplemented on Monday at a cost of £36,000. Trained by Charlie Appleby, Notable Speech has raced exclusively over a mile in his 10 career starts to date, with last year's G1 Sussex Stakes at Goodwood featuring among his other significant victories. Last seen finishing fourth in the G1 Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot, the son of Dubawi now faces a two-furlong drop in...

With the exception of Ballydoyle's hot prospect 2-year-old Albert Einstein, there are no key figures missing from Royal Ascot's opening card on Tuesday and the scene is set for the first of the week's moments of truth. With the St James's Palace featuring the winners of the 2,000 Guineas, Irish 2,000 Guineas and "French 2,000 Guineas" and the Queen Anne boasting all the elite milers of Europe and a bit extra, the standard has been met again in the year which celebrates the 200th anniversary of the Royal Procession. From...

There can be no bad time for a sale company to produce a Group 1 winner but, star graduate Believing (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}) bagging a much-deserved breakthrough success at the highest level in the Al Quoz Sprint at Meydan last week provided Tattersalls with something extra to shout about on the eve of the much-anticipated Craven Breeze-Up Sale.  The George Boughey-trained speedster became the fifth Group 1 scorer to emerge from the Craven in the past three years alone, joining genuine top-notchers like 1,000 Guineas winner Cachet (Ire) (Aclaim {Ire}),...

A little trip down Street Cry memory lane last week prompted a call to Dan Pride in Kentucky and one of the best lines anyone in the bloodstock community has ever offered up during an interview. In discussing the initial market hesitation around Street Cry's European lineage and not-quite-movie-star looks, Pride opined that it was a good early lesson that, in the stallion market in particular, horses can often makes fools of man. "It taught me that nobody knows nothing," he said. They are words to live by. When it...

You don't always get what you deserve in life. Just take a look at Believing (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}) for example. George Boughey's razor-sharp sprinter had gone agonisingly close to breaking her duck at the highest level three times last season and those closest to her must have been thinking if her turn would ever come. Beaten but unbowed, Believing showed the world what she is capable of in the G1 Al Quoz Sprint, going some way in justifying Coolmore's 3 million gns investment at last year's Tattersalls December Mares Sale....

The Tattersalls December Sale is played out, akin to panto season, over two weeks, matinees and evening performances, incorporating almost every facet of the bloodstock sales business, from foals to yearlings, horses in training, broodmares, and sometimes the odd stallion or two. The Sceptre Sessions are only in their third year but they are already embedded as an integral part of the annual finale at Park Paddocks. And there is little doubt that the theatrical highlights come on the Monday and Tuesday of the second week, as dusk settles in...

Seventy years ago, Queen Elizabeth II won the fourth running of the race named in honour of her parents, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, at her own racecourse, Ascot. Aureole was a hugely appropriate winner, having been bred by King George VI in 1950, two years prior to the monarch's death. The horse's victory was widely welcomed, not least because he had been beaten a year earlier by his conqueror in the Derby, Pinza.  The 'King George' provides ones of the key pivot points in the season,...

HONG KONG, CHINA -- According to the Hong Kong Observatory, the city's weather forecast agency, about 230 millilitres of rain had fallen between the first of the year and Apr. 25. Of that amount, fully 200 mls have been recorded since the first of this month and the vast majority of that has occurred this week, as rain--at times heavy enough to completely obscure the top of the Sha Tin straight course--thunder and lightning have been just this side of relentless. The considerable precipitation has the connections of Hong Kong's...

Believing (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}) and Mill Stream (Ire) (Gleneagles {Ire}) have been supplemented at a cost of £20,000 to take on Shaquille (GB) (Charm Spirit {Ire}) in the Betfair Sprint Cup at Haydock on Saturday. A total of 23 speedsters are in contention for the six-furlong Group One, with the Julie Camacho-trained Shaquille very much the star attraction as he looks to add to his previous top-level wins this summer in the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot and the July Cup at Newmarket. The George Boughey-trained Believing and Jane Chapple-Hyam's...

NEWMARKET, UK--George Boughey is aiming to build on his two winners at Royal Ascot last year by taking a team of around 20 to next week's meeting, led by the G2 Coventry S. favourite Asadna (Ire) (Mehmas {Ire}). Sheikh Abdullah Almalek Alsabah's colt, who earned a TDN Rising Star with his 12-length win at Ripon on his sole start, will be ridden by William Buick, who partnered him in a gallop on Tuesday morning. Buick will also ride Soprano (Ire) (Starspangledbanner {Aus}) in the G3 Albany S.  "The two-year-olds will...