Frankie Dettori tends to hog the media limelight when it comes to the Epsom Classics, but in Friday's Cazoo Oaks he will face stiff competition in that department from Hollie Doyle when the pair partner stablemates Emily Upjohn and Nashwa respectively.
A field of 11 are due to assemble for the Oaks, which forms part of the QIPCO British Champions Series, and the unbeaten Emily Upjohn has been clear favorite since impressing in last month's Musidora Stakes at York.
Dettori won a sixth Oaks by a record 16 lengths on Snowfall 12 months ago, and Emily Upjohn has been compared favorably by joint trainer John Gosden with the stable's 2014 Oaks winner Taghrooda. However, Nashwa has been equally impressive in scoring at Haydock and Newbury and offers 25-year-old Doyle a major opportunity of becoming the first woman rider to win a British Classic.
While Rachael Blackmore has been regularly breaking new ground for women at the highest level over jumps, Doyle broke her own record for the number of winners by a woman in a calendar year last year. Like Blackmore, she rides every day on equal terms with the men, including here against husband Tom Marquand, who rides Tranquil Lady, but the significance of a first Classic win for a female rider, should it happen on Nashwa, is certainly not lost on her.
She said: “It would be incredible. It would be a dream come true for me personally, and it would hopefully inspire other women to come into the sport. I really appreciate how important that is, but because I compete with men on level terms on a day-to-day basis it's only when I pop my head out of my little racing bubble that I appreciate that what I'm doing is quite unique. I'm so engaged within my industry that I feel like one of the lads almost – as bad as it sounds.
“Like Rachael Blackmore winning the Grand National, winning a British Classic is something I dream of doing over the next 10 years or so. If I could do it on Friday it would be great. It will be another step in my career, and obviously I think about it quite a lot and try to envisage it happening. I'm always looking to progress in my career and it would be another box ticked, but until it happens you can't believe it will, really.”
Doyle is retained by Nashwa's owner-breeder Imad Alsagar, who owned the 2007 Derby winner Authorized in partnership with his cousin Saleh Al Homaizi, and she has been sweet on the Frankel filly since last year's debut, even though she finished only third that day.
She said: “I thought she was a bit special at Newmarket, so I wasn't that surprised with what she did at Haydock. The ground was quick and being out of a Pivotal mare I was a bit concerned, but thankfully the Frankel in her shone through and she was fine on it. Once I got cover she dropped the bridle completely, and when I pushed the button she was away. She was electric and hit the line really hard.
“We stepped her up to ten furlongs at Newbury on good ground, which I thought would probably suit her a bit better, and though I was drawn bad I thought if I dropped her out she'd win anyway if she was as good as I thought she was. She settled beautifully and was very responsive. Whereas at Haydock she took a while to get into top gear, the response was instant this time. We made up a lot of ground in a short space of time, and I could have waited another furlong.”
She added: “I think she holds a few more of the sire's genes than the mare's, which isn't a bad thing. She has speed and class and gears, like Frankel, but she relaxes and she should stay. You don't know until they try it if they will handle Epsom, but she's a great mover and she hasn't given me any feeling that she won't. She's a dream ride, with a lovely mind and a great attitude. She has everything you want in a racehorse.”
Marquand gained bragging rights over his wife by winning a first Classic in the 2020 St Leger on Galileo Chrome for Joseph O'Brien, and it's with O'Brien he teams up again on live each-way chance Tranquil Lady, who won a Naas Group 3 last time.
Asked about on-course rivalry between the pair, Doyle shrugged it off and said: “Tom having already had a Classic winner makes no difference as I don't compare myself to him really. We are in very different situations and we aren't usually competing for the same rides.
“Tom might be my husband but it's very competitive and we don't give each other an inch. We are so used to it that it's not really a thing any more.”
Gosden, who now trains in partnership with his son Thady, has won three of the last eight runnings of the Oaks, but his record is comfortably eclipsed by Aidan O'Brien, who will be bidding for a tenth win when Tuesday, placed in both the 1000 Guineas and its Irish equivalent, is joined by Concert Hall, The Algarve and Thoughts Of Love in a four-pronged attack.
Tuesday is a sister to the seven-time Group 1 winner Minding, on whom Ryan Moore took the 2016 Oaks, while Concert Hall, a short-head winner of a Navan Listed race before finishing a place behind her stable-mate in the Irish 1000 Guineas, has a close family connection to another of the stable's Oaks winners as a daughter of 2012 heroine Was.
Thoughts Of Love follows the Cheshire Oaks route taken by Light Shift (2007) and Enable (2017) and had her form there franked by runner-up Above The Curve in Sunday's Prix Saint-Alary.
Godolphin, last successful with Kazzia 20 years ago, will be represented by the Charlie Appleby-trained Pretty Polly Stakes winner With The Moonlight, on whom William Buick is bidding for a first win in the race. Ouija Board, Talent and Taghrooda all did the Pretty Polly-Oaks double, and Buick likes her chance.
He said: “With The Moonlight worked very well before the Pretty Polly and took a step forward there. It's a race with a bit of history as an Oaks trial and she couldn't have done any more that day, so I think she's a filly on the up.
“She's a big, slow maturing filly who did well to win twice last year, and I'm looking forward to riding her. It will be a mile and a half for the first time, but she galloped out really well at Newmarket. Every race she's run in she's hit the line good, so she feels like she'll stay.”
Ralph Beckett, who won the Oaks in 2008 with 33-1 chance Look Here and in 2013 with 20-1 chance Talent, who led a stable one-two, saddles another outsider with a squeak in Moon De Vega, who got no run on the home turn when fourth in the Cheshire Oaks.
He said: “Besides getting no luck there, we were kind of out of form at the time, and it's only in the last week or so that things have turned around, so I'm hoping that will shine through on Friday. She's taken a long time to learn her job, but her make and shape suggest that she'll handle the track, which is a big plus.
“The form book suggests that she has to improve a hell of a lot, but even a casual observer could see that she's a lot better than the bare form at Chester, so I'm hopeful she'll run a race.”
Rogue Millennium, bought unraced for 35,000 guineas last autumn when the Shadwell Stud cut back its interests, has been supplemented at a cost of £30,000 and will be a first Classic runner for Newmarket trainer Tom Clover, whose late father-in-law Michael Jarvis won with Eswarah in 2005.
The mount of Jack Mitchell, whose childhood home was adjacent to Epsom's mile-and-a-half start, she advertised her claims by following a debut win in a Wetherby novice by getting up in the last strides of the Lingfield Oaks Trial.
The field is completed by Newmarket Listed winner Kawida, owned and bred by Kirsten Rausing.
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