Newmarket Thursday

THOSE looking to the Middle Park Stakes for a colt who can put it up to the exceptional Pinatubo may well have had an eye on the less exalted Tattersalls Stakes on Thursday, and they would not have been disappointed.

Aidan O’Brien’s progressive Wichita (Ryan Moore) threw down his own gauntlet with a deeply impressive seven-length victory over Persuasion (Charlie Hills/James Doyle) with Ropey Guest (George Margarson/Tom Queally) a length and a bit back in third.

The runner-up didn’t give his running when favourite for the Group 3 Acomb Stakes at York in which Ropey Guest was third. Runner-up at York was Harpocrates, and while that Coolmore colt is useful, Wichita looks in a different class, and while this race is often short of a superstar, it has thrown up subsequent Dewhurst winners Wind And Wuthering, Grand Lodge and Milk It Mick in the past four decades, and that race could well be the next target for Wichita, where he would be on a collision course with Pinatubo.

Taking on the best two-year-old of the past 25 years is clearly no simple task, but Wichita looked a horse to improve markedly when a keeping-on second to Molatham in the Flying Scotsman Stakes at Doncaster less than a fortnight before this impressive win, and he certainly lived up to that promise.

This effort would catapult him to a high position in what us dinosaurs still think of as the Free Handicap, and his physique and demeanour promise more progress as the autumn progresses.

Collateral formlines are often dubious with juveniles, but it should certainly be noted that Monoski, beaten 11½ lengths into fourth behind Pinatubo in the National Stakes, filled the same spot here, with the winner 10¾ lengths ahead of him, which suggests that the gap between the pair is not huge.

Tying the other formlines together would throw some doubt on whether Monoski ran to the same figure at Newmarket, or perhaps more pertinently, whether he was flattered by his relative proximity at the Curragh.

Those questions, touching all available wood, will be answered in one month’s time.

ROGER Charlton’s Withhold (Jason Watson) has had a hiccup or two along the way, bursting quite badly in the Geelong Cup last year, and with absences dotting his career, but he is a stayer of real merit when all is well with him, and he bounced back from a rare blip in the Ebor to gain his first win in listed class here, slamming Austrian School (Mark Johnston/Joe Fanning) by six lengths. Tony Bloom’s former Cesarewitch and Northumberland Plate winner is slated to face Stradivarius in the British Champions Long Distance Cup at Ascot next, and while he has it to do on official ratings, it would be folly to dismiss him as a handicapper against group horses there.

AS well as those successes featured in the big-race reviews, there were another half-dozen Irish-trained winners on British soil in the past week. At Ayr last Saturday, Shamad (Peter Fahey/Sean Davis) followed up his York win by a short-head in the closing race of the Western Meeting, gamely holding on in a three-way photo. He has now won four of his last five starts, and has been extremely well placed by connections.

Andrew Hughes had a double at Hamilton last Sunday courtesy of Twentysixthstreet and Set In Stone, both ridden by Rowan Scott for Jimmy Long’s Thistle Bloodstock operation.

Gordon Elliott had a flat winner at Hamilton on Monday when House Call won under Sean Davis in Division 2 of the Alex Fergusson Memorial Handicap, and had his obligatory Perth winner when Holy Motivation won the concluding handicap hurdle on Wednesday. Richard Johnson was aboard that winner, and was also in the plate when Road To Dubai landed the odds in the two mile novice hurdle on Thursday.