Perfect by name and by nature? Guineas decision on hold for Richard Fahey star

Saturday: Greenham Stakes, Newbury

Richard Fahey was hesitant to say Perfect Power was the best horse he has ever trained, but the three-year-old is increasingly making his own case for that title after impressing with a taking win in the Greenham.

Christophe Soumillon had a flight home to catch at 5pm, so the jockey needed everything to go very smoothly. And even though Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum’s colt was keen to post, he couldn’t have made things much more easy for his jockey on the way back, picking up powerfully to score by a length and a half from Lusail.

Angel Bleu, Perfect Power’s fellow Group 1 winner and market rival for much of this week before a good deal of support for the successful 6-4 favourite on the day, was third.

"It would be unfair on some of my other horses to say he's the best, but he's a dual Group 1 winner," Fahey said of last year's Morny and Middle Park winner. "He’s a fast horse and he has improved a lot.

3.00 Newbury: Greenham Stakes full result and replay

"I was very confident he would get seven [furlongs], Christophe said he’d stay seven last year. When a horse has so much speed like he has, it is always a worry on your mind but today was great and everything worked well.

"Christophe was delighted he jumped out the gates, because he was a little bit slow before and at no stage did he think he was going to get beat, which was good. It was a decent race today, I thought it was quite a deep Greenham."

Richard Fahey: 'what would we have to lose by running in the Guineas?'Credit: Edward Whitaker

The next question for connections is the extra furlong of the Guineas. This is a bona fide trial for the Newmarket Classic, for which Perfect Power is a 14-1 shot with Willam Hill but as short as 7-1 with Unibet.

"Whether he will stay a mile, I’m not sure," said Fahey. "I’m not being awkward but I’m not making any decisions today about the Guineas. We will sit down and have a think about it."

Sprinting is an alternative route for Perfect Power, but so is the Poule d'Essai des Poulains, the French 2,000 Guineas, on May 15.

Former top jockey Bruce Raymond, the owner's racing manager, said: "I think he’ll stay. I know he [the owner] would prefer to go to the English Guineas – he didn’t say, 'Let’s go to France!' – but we haven’t decided.

"He wouldn’t want it too firm, though, and that would be a deciding factor in the Guineas. If you went back to sprinting, you’d definitely have to sharpen him up."

Perfect Power was a dual Group 1-winnng juvenile last termCredit: Alan Crowhurst (Getty Images)

Before getting back to the airport, Soumillon said: "I hope he will be a Guineas horse, but I have seen a very nice horse winning at Newmarket a few days ago [Native Trail].

"I don’t know. It depends on how the horse will come after his run. Today, he did nearly everything perfectly and the hardest way to ride him was going down to the start. He was a bit tricky again in the first three or four hundred metres as he was trying to pull a bit, but the rest of the race he was nearly perfect."

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