The 5-day Glorious Goodwood festival kicks off tomorrow and it’s set to be action packed with plenty of top-class racing.
The feature race of day 1 is the 15:05 Goodwood Cup, which is a Group 1, 2m race for horses aged 3 years and above. Illinois (5/4) is the strong favourite, followed by Scandinavia (3/1) and French Master (5/1). Sweet William (10/1) and Dubai Future (33/1) were well beaten by Illinois in the Ascot Gold Cup last month.
Illinois has posted over 800 on our THM Score in his last 4 runs, with his personal best of 847 coming at Doncaster when 2nd behind Jan Brueghel in the St Leger last year. These scores have been achieved over a mixture of trips, ranging from 1m5f to 2m4f.
The top score posted last time out is 825 by Scandinavia when he destroyed the field in the Group 3 Bahrain Trophy at Newmarket earlier in the month. He’s the only 3-year-old in the field and will be carrying a stone less than all his rivals tomorrow. His scores have been improving run on run and as the youngster of the field could be open to further improvement. Ryan Moore has chosen to take the saddle of Illinois though, which usually speaks volumes.
French Master is yet to break the 800 barrier, but his scores have been improving of late. Sweet William has posted scores in the 800’s in the past but has struggled to find this kind of form in his last couple of races and is now aged 6.
At a bigger price, Military Academy (18/1) has posted over 800 in his last 3 runs, 2 of which were on the AW but his most recent score of 801 was achieved when coming 2nd at the Goodwood track last month.
The 2m trip tomorrow poses questions for some of the field with only Illinois and Sweet William having won over a similar distance before. Scandinavia, French Master and Military Academy are unraced over the distance and will all be up in trip. Illinois and Scandinavia are unraced at the Goodwood track. French Master is 1 from 1 at Goodwood, Sweet William 1 from 2 and outsider Trueshan also has a win to his name there.
Finally, a look at some recent trainer form. Our Visualiser tool which is available on all our racecards allows us to view a trainer 14-day win% chart for each race. Every trainer has a line on the chart and each point on each line represents the win% of the previous 14 days. John & Thady Gosden, who train French Master, are striking at 38% in the last 14 days so are coming in hot to the festival. The next best is Aidan O’Brien who is striking at just under 24%. His two chances are Illinois and Scandinavia.