Apex King
The Craven meeting arrives at an exciting time of the year for Trainers and it will lead to some starting to dream of Classic glory whilst others will have to lower their expectations. Bubbles will be burst and reputations will emerge, many notebooks will be filled and some heads will be scratched. There was cut in the ground at this meeting last year and Newbury was under water which meant the Greenham had to be run on the all-weather at Chelmsford! It is very different this time around with the track irrigated during the middle of last week to try and achieve decent ground. The expected weekend rain on the whole failed to materialise and I would expect safe fast ground on the opening day of the Craven meeting. Newbury are going to water too and I would expect the ground there to be on the fast side of good.
Jive Factor ran on Easter Sunday and finished a respectable fourth. He was in contention entering the final two furlongs but just stayed on at one pace.
We run two horses on the opening day of the Craven meeting. Titan runs in the Wood Ditton and he is a lovely big stamp of the horse who I hope can get his head in front in time. There looks to be a lot of well-bred types as always in the race and I would expect our horse to improve for his first day at school. The favourite has been well touted and being a son of Frankel means that he will attract a lot of interest whilst Godolphin have two blue bloods that feature towards the top of the market. It will be an informative race for the future.
Apex King runs in the Fielden and I hope he will run a good race. He won a Listed race for us last season at Ascot and we put him away after his fourth at Sandown in the Solario. He would not have won that day but he had a horrible passage through the race and he would have been a lot closer to Salouen but for that. Salouen has since improved to be placed in Group 1 company and is the horse we all have to beat but Apex King has strengthened over the Winter and has been pleasing me recently at home. Law And Order has a penalty for his recent Listed win but he is an improving horse and Al Hamdany comes from a stable that are in good form and has placed in Listed company. Montataire has one stand out piece of form at Salisbury and if he could reproduce that he would have small claims whilst Khalidi has been backed like he is better than what we have seen so far. Max Zorin has to step up on what he has shown so far and is the lowest rated horse in the field off of a mark of 90. We will learn where we should be aiming Apex King after today and although we realise he has to improve to trouble the favourite, we will be disappointed if he does not run a race full of promise.