Glorious moment for Barry Hills at Goodwood
Barry Hills joined Richard Hannon on a landmark of training 50 winners at the Glorious Goodwood meeting when Redwood won Group Three Coutts Glorious Stakes.
Patience has been the hallmark of both the trainer’s approach to getting this one-time Derby contender back to his form as a four-year-old and also Michael Hills in the race itself. The jockey opted to have Redwood towards the back of the field in which those on the sharpest edge of the pace paid for it in the closing stages.
Sri Putra, who was dropping down in class having finished second to Twice Over in the Eclipse Stakes at Sandown last time out, led into the final furlong but his 3lb penalty for a previous Group-race win proved just too much as Hills brought Redwood with a late run to win by one-and-a-half lengths, with Traffic Guard in third.
Duncan, the heavily-backed market leader after his second place to Harbinger at Royal Ascot, was a major disappointment. He was slightly hampered in the home straight but dropped away too tamely for that to be enough of an excuse.
Redwood had looked a promising colt early last season, but was off the track for almost a year after he ran down the field in the Dante Stakes at York. And he had been slow to return to his best form this season, although there had been signs when he finished second to Sans Frontieres in the Princess of Wales’s Stakes at Newmarket’s July meeting. “He ran a very good race at Newmarket, travelled a lot sweeter today and when he travels he’s got a very good turn of foot. He’s growing up and he’s improving for racing,” the jockey said.
“He won the Feilden Stakes and then he ran in the Dante and then he had a problem. So he had a long time off and it’s took us a while to get him back to his proper form. I think his best season’s to come.”
Hannon was already making inroads into his second half-century and Libranno made it six winners for the meeting so far in the Group Two Tanqueray Richmond Stakes.
A 3lb penalty, for his victory in the Group Two July Stakes, was supposed to have a balancing effect for the other five runners but there was nothing they could do. Richard Hughes gad looked uneasy on the colt before entering the stalls but led soon after the start and needed to make very little effort as he beat The Paddyman by one-and-a-quarter lengths. “I was a little bit worried down at the start,” Hughes said. “He was very tight when I was on him and I took my feet out of the irons, to keep him as relaxed as I could.
“He jumped extremely fast and I was just trying to lean against him – and it wasn’t working – so I let him go to the front. He pricked his ears and for the last two furlongs he was gawping at everything. I think he kills his horses off halfway through the race and then he kinds of grinds it out in the finish.”
The Hannon stranglehold of the juvenile races grinds on with Royal Exchange winning the RSA Nursery.
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