AN end-of-season feel to some of the results last week was not confined just to races involving two-year-olds.
Mustashry is high-class on his day, but his win in the Group 2 Challenge Stakes at Newmarket on Friday came in a remarkably slow time – just 0.1s, or less than a length, faster than the younger Rose Of Kildare managed 35 minutes earlier – and with probably only Limato running close to his best behind him. Mustashry gets a mere 95 timefigure but had a 123 when winning the Lockinge earlier in the campaign.
A couple of three-year-old fillies won Group 3s at Newmarket, Fanny Logan gaining her fifth win of the season in the Group 3 Darley Pride Stakes on Friday (107 sectional rating) and Feliciana De Vega gaining her first of the campaign in the Group 3 Darley Stakes the following day.
The latter had managed only two runs previously this year and fulfilled her two-year-old promise with a really emphatic defeat of some decent males, worth 116 in terms of sectionals. Feliciana De Vega might have been a Guineas winner, or similar, had she got going sooner, and she can continue to make up for lost time in 2020.
Good handicap wins went the way of Coolagh Forest, Hamish and Gulliver (all 110) at York, and Trueshan (108) and Stratum (112) at Newmarket, the last-named a long-priced winner for Willie Mullins over Anthony Mullins’s Party Playboy (90) in the Emirates Cesarewitch Handicap.
Willie Mullins landed a Cesarewitch double the following day in the Irish equivalent at the Curragh, where Royal Illusion (99) came clear of her rivals to win by eight and a half lengths.
That Curragh card also featured listed wins for Tango (107) in the Legacy Stakes by six lengths, Fancy Blue (very slow overall time and just 22 timefigure) in the Staffordstown Stud Stakes and Make A Challenge in the Waterford Testimonial Stakes.
The last-named ran another 113 timefigure in beating the useful Downforce by four and a half lengths (more than three lengths further than Speak In Colours had managed at the same course and distance the time before). There is every reason to think that Make A Challenge can run to something in the 118 to 120 range in this sort of form and make a serious impact in the Group 1 Champions Sprint Stakes at Ascot today.
It is also worth calling out a promising debut winner on the all-weather at Wolverhampton on Saturday evening - Emissary, who ran an 89 timefigure but some notably sharp late splits (11.60s and 11.52s for the last two furlongs) and can be rated 100 as a result.
A half-brother by Kingman to the Derby winner Workforce, from the family of the St Leger winner Brian Boru, Emissary looks a useful prospect for the months ahead.