Glorious Goodwood is more than living up to its name this week; the sumptuous weather coupled with high quality horse racing has been lighting up the Sussex racecourse. There's been a cauldron of action to enjoy throughout the opening few days of the festival: some top class performances, electrifying speed figures, a dramatic stewards' inquiry and other hard luck stories for which notorious Goodwood is oh so famous. There's plenty more to come before Saturday evening too.
Kyprios stole the show on Tuesday in the Al Shaqab Goodwood Cup, blitzing his rivals in the scorching heat and establishing himself head and shoulders above all competition in the staying division. Despite the Aidan O'Brien superstar slipping on the home bend, he still smashed the 2-mile course record and in the process posted an Average Speed figure of 57.50km/h. For context, the opening handicap on the same day over the much shorter distance of 1m2f was won with an Average Speed figure of just 56.77km/h. Kyprios is a beast - let's move on.
Fortunes turned slightly sour for O'Brien on Wednesday. Henry Longfellow (11/10) was a short price favourite to land the Qatar Sussex Stakes but could only manage a 4th place finish in a decimated field of 5 runners. It was the 2000 Guineas winner, Notable Speech (3/1), who put his Royal Ascot flop behind him to land the spoils. William Buick was as cool as ever, darting to the inside when the cutaway opened up and the race was over in a flash. Notable Speech clocked a personal best Average Speed figure of 60.37km/h in the process. Take nothing away from the winner but perhaps the leaders did a bit too much too soon.
There's been a whole host of eyecatchers so far this week, none less so than Power Of Destiny in the EBF Fillies' Handicap. After being keen in the early stages, Oisin Murphy's mount was continuously denied a clear passage in the final two furlongs. After finally getting a gap, the filly flew home and was only beaten by a diminishing head margin at the line. Over on our social media pages, THM highlighted that Power Of Destiny had conditions in her favour, with data-driven insight and racecard demo clearly showing why a big run should be expected on her handicap debut.
The ground continues to dry at Goodwood so we advise ground performance analysis on our racecards to be a priority; this includes considering the ground conditions within the Average Speed Analysis (ASA) tool information. Given the high temperatures, don't neglect the Atmospheric performance stats in your study, which are also available on our racecards. The feature race on Friday is the King George Qatar Stakes (15:35) where Big Evs, who has a course win to his name, is currently the 3/1 favourite. Big Evs, Asfoora (7/2) and Believing (6/1) all ran well on Good To Firm ground at Royal Ascot when they finished within 2 lengths of each other. It's a wide open affair.