Faced with a field of 13 two-year-olds in the British Stallion Studs EBF Maiden Fillies Stakes at Goodwood last Saturday a friend and I agreed the best thing for our Placepot was to go with experience. Just three of the fillies had run before and sure enough two of those three, Jakarta and Royal Equerry, came home first and second, separated by just three-quarters of a length, with the previously unraced Jewel of London the same margin away in third. Expect all three to be winning races this season. Abdulla Al Mansoori paid 250,000 guineas for Jewel of London, whose trainer Richard Hannon was in Ireland watching his Rosallion and Haatem finish first and second in the Irish 2000 Guineas. Royal Equerry, owned by the King and Queen, is trained by the seemingly unstoppable Ralph Beckett and it is one of racing’s givens that Jakarta’s trainer Paul Cole, now training with son Oliver, knows exactly how to handle a talented two-year-old. But what interested me too about Jakarta, who withstood challenges from either side after leading all the way, was that his pilot was Benoit de la Sayette.
‘She’s a really game filly,’ said her rider, who had displayed cool judgment on his very first ride for the Cole yard. ‘Every time anything came upsides she just wanted to go on.’ Oliver told me that his father plans for the filly to go to Royal Ascot for the Albany Stakes. For Jakarta’s winning rider, still only 21, a different kind of test is under way. Experience counts for jockeys too.
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