IT’S the weekend for the first batch of the defining races of the juvenile scene, with the Middle Park and the Cheveley Park winners guaranteed to be in the European top ratings.

Looking back at last year’s 20 top-rated two-year-olds, perhaps surprisingly, only six of the 20 have gone on to win a Group 1 this season.

True Love and Wise Approach were the winners of the Group 1s this day last year and True Love went on to win the 1000 Guineas. But she was surpassed by the exploits of another winner last year - the Royal Lodge winner, Bow Echo.

Two years ago, Charlie Appleby’s Shadow Of Light won the Middle Park and went on to add the Dewhurst and top the juvenile rankings. Looking back to that season, 2025 had six Charlie Appleby-trained juveniles in the top 41 with a rating of 110 or higher, with Aidan O’Brien supplying 12. In 2024, it was 15 Aidan O’Brien two-year-olds to only four from the Appleby yard in the top 40.

Absent from today’s three group races is the John Gosden yard, who had three horses ranked in the top 40 last season, but none in the 2024 crop, and Ombudsman apart, its not been the best of seasons.

The three top fillies in the Cheveley Park, Libertango, Senorita Bonita, Sun Goddess, along with Musical Times look of high quality.

The colts so far are perhaps of a lower level with O’Brien having only the fourth betting choice in the Middle Park, while Appleby is represented by Quest For Stars ahead of First Law in the Royal Lodge and Inner City Blues in the Middle Park.

With some nice-looking maiden winners in the Appleby yard over the last weeks, added to some queries over the Ballydoyle consistency if a virus is still present through the yard - Giant Sequoia and Alpha were disappointing at the Curragh - this week’s contests will tell us much, with more open competition than recent years.

A horse you could put your faith in

IF you are a lover of great sports writing, down the years, some of the US writers invariably have provided lines to shelve away in the mind forever. Surely AI can never match that originality.

Though I’m afraid I’ve forgotten who did write the phrase in the late 60s “by 1969 I had learned to tell the time, and you could set your clock by Damascus” on the story of the great American champion of the late 1960s, it remains a favourite quote.

The phrase came to mind mid-week, after the news of the death of Hurricane Fly. In tribute to the brilliant hurdler, you could also quote Paul Mellon’s lines on his memorial to Mill Reef: “Though small, I gave my all. I gave my heart.” And it’s no disrespect to the great Derby winner to say that being small in stature was much more of a disadvantage over obstacles.

But, looking back over the photos of his career and famous victories, the one thing that you could “set your clock by” was that, in a battle to the last hurdle, Hurricane Fly would not let you down and, in an era where a great champion hurdler has forgotten how to jump, the little horse never let his rider or supporters down in producing a fast and accurate jump in that final flight battle.

Indeed, it was a characteristic of his last Grade 1 win at Leopardstown, where he flew the hurdle and Jezki made a mistake. The Racing Post also resurrected Alastair Down’s account of the 2013 Champion Hurdle, where he became only the second horse to regain the title: “This is a champion who will answer any call, if he is in the form to do so.”

Ruby Walsh’s tribute echoed the same opinions: “I only rode one hurdler and one chaser that you could ride at the jumps like they weren’t there, simply because the horse knew more than you.”

He was a proper star of the jumping scene in our lifetimes.

THERE’S nothing like looking up the pedigree of a horse you well remember from past years to put in context where you are in life and the passing of the time. That the said horse was by Mill Reef was telling in itself and the Racing Post’s search results “No race record for this horse” reminded me of how long Sheikh Ahmed Al Maktoum’s colours have been part of the sport.

The horse in question was the attractive colt Wassl, winner of the Irish 2000 Guineas in 1983 under Tony Murray for John Dunlop.

It quickly reminds you how long the colours have been familiar on the tracks here and in Britian, with a personal favourite horse of earlier times, the brilliant Mtoto, whose turn of foot and defeat of the Derby winner Reference Point would be on my list of favourite races from the 90s.