The turf | 6 August 2011

Qatar at Goodwood

Goodwood works. No course in Britain looks prettier on a summer’s day. No course in Britain feeds the media better. Trainers agree that no one looks after 300-year-old turf better than Goodwood’s Clerk of the Course Seamus Buckley. And Goodwood always has an eye to tasteful innovation — the first course to have broadcast commentary back in the 1950s this year staged a celebrity ladies’ race which took racing on to the front pages when it was won by toothsome top model Edie Campbell.

Spending the full week on the Sussex Downs this year presenting CNN’s welcome new international Winning Post programme gave me the chance to see Frankel at his incomparable best. After watching him destroy the opposition in the Sussex Stakes, most of us felt as though someone had slipped rocket fuel into our Pimms. But there were treats every day: the reminders from Frankie Dettori that when it comes to the top meetings he still has the gift of perfect timing, the talented mare Midday streaking away from her field to win her third consecutive Nassau Stakes, the confirmation of Kieren Fallon’s judgment when Hoof It shouldered the welter burden of ten stone to an easy victory in the Stewards Cup, just as he had insisted Mick Easterby’s charge would do.