Tony McFadden highlights five key Timeform ratings changes following York’s Ebor Festival.
City of Troy earned a Timeform rating of 130p (from 127p) for his top-class performance in the Juddmonte International Stakes at York on Wednesday and is now the highest-rated horse in training.
White Birch and Kyprios had set the benchmark in Europe on 128, but City of Troy raised the bar with a brilliant length defeat of Calandagan who was three and a half lengths clear of Ghostwriter in third.
City of Troy’s performance in the Eclipse was probably better than it had looked at the time as Al Riffa has since won the Grosser Preis von Berlin with ease, while Ghostwriter and See The Fire have also enhanced their reputation. But, even so, City of Troy raised his game on better ground at York, looking every bit the top-class colt he’d promised to be during his champion juvenile campaign.
He still has the ‘p’ attached to his rating to denote that he has more to offer and is capable of getting closer to Hawk Wing, whose rating of 136 remains the highest ever achieved by a horse trained by Aidan O’Brien. His next opportunity to raise that figure will be in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, a race his connections have long desired to win.
The Lion In Winter had created an excellent impression when winning a Curragh maiden last month, earning the Timeform Large P to mark himself out as one likely to make significant improvement, and he duly took a big step forward to register a decisive length-and-three-quarter victory in the Acomb Stakes, earning the highest Timeform rating achieved by a two-year-old colt so far this season (Whistlejacket, 112p, briefly held that distinction).
The Acomb has been won by a couple of classic winners in recent years, with Phoenix of Spain and Chaldean featuring on the roll of honour, but The Lion In Winter earned the highest Timeform performance rating in the race since Hemingway achieved the same figure in 2000.
The Lion In Winter, who provided Aidan O’Brien with his first Acomb winner since Hemingway, has plenty of stamina in his pedigree being by Sea The Stars out of a mile-and-a-half winner, so it is highly encouraging for his classic prospects that he showed enough pace to beat a couple of promising rivals in Wimbledon Hawkeye and Ruling Court.
Impressive Chesham Stakes winner Bedtime Story, a stablemate of The Lion In Winter and Whistlejacket, remains the highest-rated juvenile this season with a figure of 116p and didn’t have to run near that level to extend her unbeaten record to four in the Debutante Stakes at the Curragh on Saturday. She wasn’t fully extended to pick up a pair that had secured first run and won by a cosy half-length.
Content (118 from 110)
Content showed improved form to reverse Irish Oaks form with You Got To Me and win the Yorkshire Oaks, in the process providing her sire Galileo with his hundredth individual Group/Grade 1 winner.
Content was keener than ideal on just her second start at a mile and a half, but she still found plenty to edge her way into the lead a furlong out and she then dug deep to prevail by three-quarters of a length.
She earned the same performance rating as last year’s Yorkshire Oaks winner Warm Heart, and has achieved a similar level of form as stablemate Opera Singer (118p) and See The Fire (118) at the head of this year’s middle-distance three-year-old fillies’ division.
There could still be more to come from Content if settling better in a strongly run race.
The Sky Bet Ebor was not as strong as is often the case; indeed, the bottom weight had a BHA mark of 86 while just five years earlier a mark of 104 was insufficient to get a run.
Still, the £500,000 handicap was won by one of the least exposed runners in Magical Zoe (115 from 105) who proved herself a smart mare on the Flat as well as over hurdles with a decisive two-and-three-quarter-length success.
She now has the Melbourne Cup on her agenda but showed enough on Saturday to suggest she can prove competitive in pattern company in Britain and Ireland next season.
For context, Vauban, who is also bound for Melbourne, earned a Timeform performance rating of 119 for his narrow victory in the Group 2 Lonsdale Cup. Magical Zoe would have very little to find to reach that level once factoring in her 3 lb mares’ allowance.
Henri Matisse extended his unbeaten record to three with a dominant victory in the Group 2 Futurity Stakes at the Curragh on Saturday, giving trainer Aidan O’Brien his tenth winner of the race since 2013.
Henri Matisse won by only a length but he scored with more in hand than the margins would imply as he was set to go clear when jinking left inside the final furlong, showing that he still has something to learn after three starts.
He looks like an excellent prospect, one who should make his mark at the top level, and only stablemate The Lion In Winter has a higher rating among the two-year-old colts (Whistlejacket is also rated 112p).
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