If I get to choose where to spend my last day on earth it will probably be at Glorious Goodwood. Goodwood is Ascot without the added vulgarity, Aintree without the spray tans, a garden party spiced up with some of the most ruthlessly competitive sport you can hope to watch. The Dash at Epsom apart, the five and six furlong races at Goodwood are the fastest you are likely to see horses running anywhere.
It was all about speed, too, when the mighty Kingman prevailed in the mile-long Sussex Stakes duel with Toronado. Champion jockey Richard Hughes had his game plan ready for Kingman’s rider James Doyle. He aimed to kick on first off a slow pace and steal a length or two in the hope that Kingman wouldn’t respond fast enough to catch him. In what became a two-furlong race after a dawdle, Hughes executed the tactics perfectly — only for Kingman to whoosh past him like Lewis Hamilton with his trousers on fire. Said Hughes: ‘I don’t think I have ever gone faster on a horse during a Group 1 race and it was an exceptional performer who beat me.’
This column is in danger of becoming a sort of permanent Gregorian chant celebrating John Gosden’s qualities — surely the man must be doing something wrong — but since I write only fortnightly I must pay tribute to his previous week’s success in winning the King George VI Stakes with Taghrooda, the heroine of our Twelve to Follow and the first filly to take the race in 38 years. John made it a third Group 1 within a week by taking Saturday’s Nassau Stakes with the Normandie Stud’s Sultanina. As he reflected in the winners’ enclosure, ‘It’s the kind of thing you don’t forget when you’re an old guy in your rocking chair.’
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