IT’S a cracking Middle Park Stakes today. Earthlight and Mums Tipple and Siskin have been pencilled in for a while. You just hoped all week that they would all get there and, thankfully, they have. But now add Monarch Of Egypt and Threat and Lope Y Fernandez and Golden Horde, and it’s an even better race than it looked like it was likely to be earlier in the week.

The last two winners of the Middle Park Stakes, Ten Sovereigns and
U S Navy Flag, both won the July Cup the following season as three-year-olds, as did previous winners Dream Ahead and Oasis Dream. That said, Middle Park winners can succeed at the highest level stepped up in trip, as Johannesburg proved when he followed up by winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile in 2001. Also, Ad Valorem won the Queen Anne Stakes as a four-year-old in 2006, two years after he had won the Middle Park.