Excelebration: a high point during an uninspiring start to the Flat season

  PICTURE: Patrick McCann (racingpost.com/photos)  

Classic trials offer little Guineas guidance

WORLD CLASS: an analysis of the international scene according to Racing Post Ratings

IT WAS supposed to be a week of coffee and croissants in Europe, with the stars of the Flat season ready to wake up and look ahead, but breakfast was kicked into the long grass.

After a fairly low key series of Classic trials at Newmarket and Newbury, and defeat for Twice Over in the Earl of Sefton, it was left to Excelebration to salvage something from the bigkick off to the Flat campaign.

Frankly, if he had managed to lose the Big Bad Bob Gladness Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday, it would have been the most uninspiring start to the season imaginable.

But he did as he should have and won easily, at odds of 2-7, and now we can look forward with the knowledge that at least one star has come through the winter with a leg in each corner.

Hardly the heartiest breakfast ever, but something to keep us going for a couple of weeks until the Guineas.

This delayed start to the season appears to be the new way of doing things. In the last decade most winners of the 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas skipped the trials all together, with both Classics being recently won by horses arriving on the back of nothing more than a juvenile maiden success (Golan and Ghanaati).

That is the route Top Offer bids to take after missing his intended prep in the Greenham because of the soft ground. Most Improved and Fencing were also diverted from last week's trials after small setbacks.

It looked an open 2,000 Guineas before last week, with last year's crop of two-year-olds all failing to rate higher than 120, and there was little additional guidance for punters in the trials.

Because there were no strong positives last week Camelot strengthened his position as favourite, but Aidan O'Brien is playing the late late game with him and no-one knows whether he'll turn up - let alone be suited to a strongly run mile.

The 2,000 Guineas is a guessing game; an impossible balance of factors unknown. Not really a betting medium, but definitely a race to watch as it will set out the pecking order for the entire sophomore division.

One horse who established himself firmly in that pecking order last season was Excelebration. He was number two.

Black Caviar has her Hay List and Frankel has his Excelebration. They are the unfortunate souls who, through their own talent, virtue and repeated success, can do nothing for themselves yet continue to enhance the esteem of their nemeses.

Hay List is capable of his own magic and so is Excelebration, but each has proved well below another. They are the giants onto whose shoulders rest the mighty.

The taller they grow, the higherthey push the greats above them, but still they remain number two.

Hay List carried a mammoth weight to success in the Newmarket Handicap, Excelebration won a German Guineas by seven-lengths and a Hungerford by six. But all that does is spell out how truly superior Black Caviar and Frankel are.

Excelebration won three and lost three last year. His wins were impressive, his defeats were to Frankel. Without Frankel he would have been a star, but without Excelebration what would Frankel have been?

He'd have won the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes by seven and a half lengths from Immortal Verse and Dubawi Gold and he'd have won the Greenham by ten.

On the face of it he might have been considered 'more great', but it always helps to have the reaffirming substance that a might-have-been like Excelebration gives to the form, sitting like a VIP bouncer between Himself and The Rest.

Excelebration fills in the position of a normal champion, safely ahead of the rest, safely behind all-timer Frankel.

The number two had an easy return to action on the weekend, always travelling well off the steady pace before being shaken up a furlong out, where he quickly pulled clear. He was eased in the final half furlong and posted an RPR of 119+.

The time wasn't great and the third, his pacemaker, puts a real question mark over the form, but he did it nicely and this effort will set him up for another crack at Frankel in the Lockinge.

Frankel's recent interrupted preparation means that he is not a certain starter in the Lockinge, but if he does turn up fit and well, his performance against yardstick Excelebration will be interesting.

The margin between the two last year was consistent at four lengths. It was that distance in the Greenham in April and the QEII in October.

If it's four lengths or more this time we should be set for another Frankelicious year.

The performance of the week came in America on Sunday  when last year's leading dirt performer set out his stall to retain that crown by landing the BenAli Stakes on the Polytrack at Keeneland by ten and a half lengths in a track record time.

Wise Dan won on turf, dirt and synthetics last year and finished the season as RPR dirt champion with a mark of 128 for his Clark Handicap success - a level that he matched on Sunday.

More Joyous posted the best performance on the turf last week, matching her peak RPR of 124 with success in the Doncaster Mile. It was her seventh Grade 1 success and her sixteenth at graded level.

Connections may see it as a disservice to call her the Australian Goldikova, but it is intended as a complement. She's best at 7f-1m, she consistent, she can beat the boys, she keeps banging out G1 wins and is at the top of her division.

Royal Ascot have already been intouch to get her over for the Queen Anne Stakes. That offer was rejected, but Saturday's win also earned her a fees-paid berth to the Breeders' Cup Mile if connections do fancy their chances overseas.

Witha 3lb mares' allowance she would go there with a real chance and could pick up where Goldi left off. Her style of racing may not be ideally suited to Ascot but the Mile should play to her strengths.

She's currently a five-year-old but her owner does not have retirement on the radar so there should be plenty more Group 1s to come, wherever they be.

TOP OF THE CLASS: Wise Dan 128+ Charles Lopresti (US) (Ben Ali Stakes, Keeneland, 1m1f, April 22)

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