Glorious Goodwood reaches a fabulous climax with a cracking seven-race card highlighted by the Unibet Stewards’ Cup. Five of the races are tricky handicaps, which makes Glorious Goodwood tips all the more valuable – so let’s see if we can dig out some winners to finish the week on a high.
On a day chock-full of fiendishly tricky handicaps, this is the only Group race on the card. And one horse stands head and shoulders above the rest as the most compelling of Glorious Goodwood Day 5 tips here.
WONDERFUL TONIGHT showed she is right at the top of the game with a thoroughly impressive victory in the Hardwicke Stakes at Royal Ascot in June. The way she mastered a top-class field and waltzed away to victory from Aidan O’Brien’s reliable yardstick Broome in the final furlong marked her out as top quality.
Broome has since franked the form with a decent run in the King George at Ascot, while Sir Ron Priestley, seventh in the Hardwicke, was third in the Goodwood Cup this week. There are an extra two furlongs to cover today, but Wonderful Tonight won over this distance on heavy ground on Arc weekend at Longchamp last autumn.
Albaflora, who was back in fifth behind Wonderful Tonight at Ascot, reopposes and may be suited by the step up in trip. Divinely, who has put up some decent displays this season without getting her nose in front, receives more than a stone from the favourite and may be the main danger. She was runner-up to Snowfall in the Irish Oaks last time out and shapes as if this trip will be right up her street.
However, it is hard to see anything getting close to Wonderful Tonight if David Menuisier’s charge can repeat her Ascot form. She is one of the most confident Glorious Goodwood tips of the whole week.
All prices correct at time of publication
Many of the Glorious Goodwood tips for Saturday will focus on the Stewards’ Cup, which is always such a spectacular cavalry charge over this quick six furlongs.
Trends are hard to discern here; the race always shapes like a lottery, but four of the last ten winners went off favourite. Traditionally, runners drawn low were always favoured, but six winners in the last decade were in the higher half of the field.
Ultimately, it could pay simply to side with a younger horse with some cracking recent form in the book – and HURRICANE IVOR fits that bill perfectly. Hurricane Ivor has been running over five furlongs recently, but he excelled over six in France last year. Besides, the downhill nature of the Goodwood straight can bring the extra furlong within reach of horses more used to the minimum trip.
The fact he was at the centre of the photo-finish fiasco at Sandown this month, when he appeared to have won but the race was declared a dead heat, obscured the quality of his display that day. There was no hiding his excellence at Ascot next time out, however, when he lost nothing in a narrow defeat by the smart Significantly.
A host of today’s rivals will also attract their share of Glorious Goodwood Day 5 tips. Fresh ran a stormer when pipped by Rohaan in the Wokingham Stakes at Royal Ascot and is likely to go off favourite here.
Chil Chil has put up some super performances here, though she may be anchored by top weight. And Motagally, whose trainer Charles Hills has sent out two of the last six winners, could also go close at a decent price.
With only one winner from the first three days, the early stages of the meeting were uncharacteristically quiet for Mark Johnston. The Middleham handler has been Glorious Goodwood top trainer on more than a dozen occasions, and he specialises in lining up horses to be at their very best at this prestigious meeting.
HOCHFELD has shaped recently like a horse who might be coming back to his best – and he may be one of the best outsider Glorious Goodwood tips on the final day of the festival.
This will be the hardy seven-year-old’s tenth run of the campaign and he has won only once, at Nottingham in April. But he caught the eye in June with his run in the Northumberland Plate.
Hochfeld put up a gallant front-running display that day at the head of a field that included this week’s Goodwood Cup hero Trueshan, but had no answer to the late burst of the winner Nicholas T. He has run since at Newmarket without distinction, but if he gets his way up front today, he could reward an each-way investment at fancy odds.
However, there is no shortage of rivals who will attract their share of Goodwood racing tips. Nuits St Georges, a course and distance winner a couple of months ago, is likely to go off favourite. And the Sir Michael Stoute pair of My Frankel and Boss Power will have their supporters in what is likely to be a gruelling test of stamina that will not be one for the faint-hearted.
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Everybody wants to select the winner of the 28-runner Unibet Stewards’ Cup, and there are plenty of Glorious Goodwood tips focused on this six-furlong spectacle.
HURRICANE IVOR gets the Timeform verdict in his favour for this race. Its analysis calls Hurricane Ivor “a sprinter on the rise” and says he was probably unlucky to be drawn on the wrong side of the course at Ascot. He ran that day like a horse “strongly suggesting he’s ahead of his mark”. However, there are several other persuasive arguments from experts with alternative Goodwood racing tips in Saturday’s big race.
Gary Nutting, the ante-post specialist of At The Races, believes this contest is perfect for CHIEFOFCHIEFS. Charlie Fellowes’s eight-year-old, a fairly recent convert to sprinting, was a close-up fourth in the Wokingham Stakes at Royal Ascot, just behind FRESH, who is half the price in the Stewards’ Cup.
“Ideally suited by a big field and strongly-run race over six furlongs, and with Jamie Spencer booked again, expect him to finish fast and late – hopefully with perfect timing,” writes Nutting.
Mark Howard at sportinglife.com, meanwhile, talks up the chances of GREAT AMBASSADOR, who missed the cut for the Wokingham by one. The Ed Walker-trained four-year-old will appreciate the drying ground. He hasn’t raced for nearly three months but, says Howard, he goes well after a break and makes plenty of appeal here.
The Daily Telegraph, however, is sweet on the chances of ATALANTA’S BOY, who loves Goodwood and has won on four of his five visits to the track.
His only defeat here was in this race last year, when he reared in the stalls and lost several lengths at the start. The paper also believes the winner of the race 12 months ago, SUMMERGHAND, is “generously priced” for each-way punters at 16/1 – especially given his status as a Group 3 winner this year.
Finding winners on this extremely tricky card is a challenge – but Timeform has identified one of the strongest Glorious Goodwood Day 5 tips in the Group 2 Lillie Langtry Stakes. WONDERFUL TONIGHT is a warm order to win this and Timeform believes the way she won the Hardwicke Stakes so impressively at Royal Ascot means “she’s the one to beat” here.
The last of the Goodwood racing tips from Timeform comes in the final race of the five days, the Signature Apprentice Handicap, and its analysis suggests taking a chance on OVERWRITE, who is six pounds lower than when finishing second in this contest a year ago.
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