YOU don’t be long changing strides once the Cheltenham Festival is complete and April is on the horizon. Hand in hand with all the Cheltenham reviews came the first unveiling of the new crop of potential Ballydoyle classic stars.

An lo and behold, after starts were the topic of debate over last week, we are going to have to have eyes peeled for the start of the 2000 Guineas. This time from stalls and over a straight mile.

Albert Einstein was placed front and centre of the Ballydoyle team on this week’s media morning. Absent since a Curragh six-furlong win last May, his stable companions didn’t exactly let the side down afterwards last year with Gstaad, Charles Darwin, Puerto Rico and Pierre Bonnard all putting up fine performances. But it was Albert who got the full-on hype.

Some of the Aidan O’Brien comments this week were, “I don’t think we’ve ever had a horse as quick” and he went on to say, “speed-wise, I don’t think we’ve had a horse like him mentally. I don’t know whether he’ll stay or not.

“He does things without thinking, he does everything like a real unbelievable quick sprinter. We’re never going to wake him up, going to have him asleep, never going to ask him anything, going to do all his work on the bridle, in behind horses.”

“The problem is, the minute the gates open, he is rapid. It’s a natural instinct. He has very quick twitch muscles and he just lands running and travelling. Ideally, you wouldn’t like to see him making the running because you can’t make the running in a Guineas doing that. You’d like to see him going to sleep in the first half and don’t worry about where he is.”

Guineas favourite

For all that it is an exciting prospect, I’m not sure that is really what you want to hear about your 2000 Guineas favourite. And one that hasn’t raced since May last year.

The O’Brien record in the first classic hasn’t been hectic in recent years compared to in the other classics.

It’s not too long ago that the start was given as the reason for the eclipse of City Of Troy who trailed home ninth of the 11 starters in the opening classic but went on to prove he was a top-notch colt.

Brien had suggested his star colt got upset in the stalls and said then: “Maybe I left him too fresh, because he went into the stalls and reared up and when he hit the ground they let him go straight away.

“Usually what would happen when they’d rear up like that, their heart rate would rise, but they’d usually get a second when they let them go back before they set off. But he went in, got upset and then ‘bang’, out straight away.”

Fine line

So we are threading a fine line for the first classic, running against a horse’s natural instinct, on the first time he has been on a racecourse in almost a year.

Plus there’s the breeding doubts – Wootton Bassett had a great year in 2025, but his graded winners ranged from Topgear and Maranoa Charlie over seven furlongs to the Group 1 10-furlong winners Whirl and Camille Pissarro and up to the Irish Leger winner Al Riffa.

A first foal, Albert Einstein’s War Front-sired dam won over five on debut and only ran as a juvenile.

He was well backed this week and is now a best priced 4/1, to double those odds for Bow Echo and 10s for the Dewhurst winner Gewan, with Gstaad around 10s also.

I think there is more strength in depth in the English yards this season following from last year’s Newmarket trials and the Guineas is a tough ask.

We probably never believed a horse could do what Frankel did in the Guineas but it’s going to be some effort if Albert Einstein can explode home.

Maybe Albert Einstein is going to be an outstanding colt but there are too many question marks for my liking.

Grade 1 winning Festival ladies - Bryony Frost and Rachael Blackmore \ Healy

ONE element of the Festival that seems to have gone largely unnoticed was the low participation of female riders. Both the lowest since 2014, 12 years back, and also no winners.

Back in 2014, we still had Nina Carberry in action and Katie Walsh won the bumper in 2018. The Foxhunter winner was female ridden four years in a row between 2015 and 2018 and Bryony Frost won the first Grade 1 in 2019. Bridget Andrews also won two renewals of the County Hurdle between 2018 and 2023.

Olive Nicholls and Gina Andrews had rides in the Kim Muir last week while they made up a total of eight female riders in the Champion Hunter Chase.

This year, Olive Nicholls, Jody Townend, Fern O’Brien and Anna McGuinness (conditional) were the only females in the non-amateur races with McGuinness’s unlucky third in the Martin Pipe the only placing. In all, a total of 11 female riders participated in seven races, eight in the hunter chase.

There was so much talk that Rachael Blackmore had paved the path to blast open the doors for female riders but, as many suspected, it’s more likely she was just a unique talent and there’s still a massive void to fill for anything like a decent representation. That glass ceiling might just be slipping back in place!