If the dual festival week just gone taught us anything about the shape of this season’s batch of three-year-olds it was to underline the supremacy of Jessie Harrington’s three-time Group 1 winner Alpha Centauri in the miling division.
On Wednesday at Goodwood the seven-year-old Lightning Spear claimed the Sussex Stakes, leaving a band of much-vaunted three-year-olds in Expert Eye, Gustav Klimt and Without Parole in behind, offering further evidence of this year’s crop of colts not being up to much cop.
The next afternoon across the Irish Sea in Galway Yulong Gold Fairy, well in behind the Harrington horse at the Curragh earlier in the season, swept home late to win a Listed fillies affair over 7f.
Cosy victories in the Irish 1000 Guineas, Coronation Stakes the Falmouth Stakes and the have left the daughter of Mastercraftsmen as the preeminent runner in the division and she’ll head to France in an effort to make it four wins on the spin at the highest level. It’ll be the first time she takes on a mixed field in her career to date.
The Prix Jacques le Marois at Deauville is sponsored by her owners and, if all goings according to plan, she’ll line up there on Sunday in a race worth €1M.
Her opposition that day will include the Freddy Head-trained With You, a wide margin winner of the Prix Rothschild recently, and Eve Johnston-Haughton’s Queen Anne Winner Accidental Agent as well as Irish 2000 Guineas hero Romanised the and Prix d'Ispahan winner Recoletos.
Some British books have made Alpha Centauri an odds-on favourite to land the prize at this stage. The prospect of cut in the ground might not be well-received by her connections though, will the fillie's best form having come on quick ground.
Alan Cooper, racing manager for the Niarchos family who own the filly, told the Racing Post:
"The filly is in good form and all being well she'll run on Sunday.
"Jessie is very happy with her. Let's hope the weather stays favourable. There are showers forecast, but how much rain they'll get we'll have to wait and see.
"It will be her first time taking on colts, but is too early to speculate which horses she'll be up against."
