Key events
So the state of play in the Oaks betting after the last of the recognised trials is:
3-1 Desert Flower
10-1 Whirl & Minnie Hauk
11-1 Falakeyah
12-1 Giselle
16-1 Dreamy & Ballet Slippers
18-1 Elwateen
20-1 bar
Desert Flower is unbeaten after five starts having taken the 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket earlier this month, with Elwateen back in fourth.
Falakeyah landed the Pretty Polly Stakes at Newmarket the same afternoon:
Minnie Hauk was impressive in the Cheshire Oaks last week:
Giselle beat three rivals in the Lingfield Oaks Trial:
And now Whirl has powered clear in the Musidora:
Ryan Moore, Whirl’s jockey, also had a few words for reporters on the way back to the weighing room.
She was very comfortable today and I thought she was impressive. She’s very straightforward, she was always travelling nicely, wasn’t doing a whole lot in front but kept responding. I thought it was a nice performance.
That was a massive step up on her reappearance from Whirl, and if there was an Oaks winner in today’s field, she was surely it. And yet she is, of course, just one among a whole host of Classic trial winners from the Aidan O’Brien yard over the last couple of weeks, and Michael Tabor, from the Coolmore syndicate that owns Whirl, seemed quite downbeat about her Epsom chance afterwards.
“I don’t think anyone expected that, but Aidan seems to be able to do that, as we know,” Tabor said. “I don’t really think that Whirl is an Oaks filly, I think she’d get a mile-and-a-half but a mile-and-a-quarter, something like the Prix de Diane [French Oaks] I think would be more suitable, but I haven’t discussed it [with the other syndicate members], that’s just my thinking.”
Whirl put serious daylight between herself and the runner-up, she’s cut to 14-1 (from 33-1) with Paddy Power.
YORK 3.45 RESULT: Whirl’s Musidora leaves rivals in a spin
1. WHIRL 7-2, 2. Serenity Prayer 100-30. 6 ran.
Tattycoram and Go Go Boots fast away .. Whirl sits third, Smoken fourth …
Tattycoram leads them on the turn for home … Whirl takes closer order … now Whirl goes for home some way out … Go Go Boots in pursuit … Whirl staying on well … she’s going clear … it’s yet another Epsom Classic trial winner for Aidan O’Brien as Whirl turns it into a procession …
Off and running in the Musidora Stakes …
Latest betting for the Musidora Stakes:
9-4 Smoken
3-1 Whirl
9-2 Miss Tonnerre
5-1 Serenity Prayer
10-1 Go Go Boots
20-1 Tattycoram
There is actually not a great deal of video form to be sourced for the runners in the Musidora, as their best days are very much in front of them. They all looked fit and relaxed in the paddock, where Tattycoram, the apparent second-string behind Smoken for Ralph Beckett, took my eye at least.
The six runners have just cantered down to the furlong pole and then turned to head back around the far bend to the one-and-a-quarter mile start.
They will be in the paddock very shortly for the Musidora Stakes, including Whirl, sixth home on her seasonal debut in the Park Express Stakes at the Curragh:
Kevin Ryan, the trainer of Inisherin, was suggesting in the winner’s enclosure just now that his horse was only 80pc ready for today’s race, so that should put him spot on for the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes over six furlongs at Royal Ascot next month.
Inisherin has a snap quote of 8-1 (from 10-1) from Paddy Power, while Betfair reports that £483 was traded on Flora Of Bermuda at a low of 1-50 in-running.
Here’s the closing stages of that race from the Racing TV Twitter/X feed:
3.13 YORK RESULT: Inisherin edges Duke Of York Stakes
1. INISHERIN 11-8 FAV, 2. Flora Of Bermuda 14-1, 3. Night Raider 4-1.
Night Raider away well … Elite Status mid-division with Inisherin, Rage Of Bamby well there too … Night Raider kicks on two out, he might have them in trouble … Now Inisherin arrives with a challenge, followed by Flora Of Bermuda … they duel to the line … Inisherin’s got there…
Loading now underway … Night Raider is freshly re-plated …
and they are off in the Duke Of York Stakes …
More money for Inisherin, he’s an 11-8 chance while Elite Status is out to 3-1. Flora is friendless at 14-1.
Night Raider has spread a plate – ie. lost a shoe – and is being replated at the start, so there will be a slight delay.
A favourite has now emerged for the Duke Of York in Inisherin, at 2-1, while Elite Status is a 5-2 shot. Night Raider is 4-1 to notch his first success on turf, while my personal pick, FLORA OF BERMUDA, is out to 11-1. That suggests she may need the race today, but she has been overlooked in the market a few times already and then outrun her odds significantly, including over this course and distance last summer.
YORK 3.13 1895 DUKE OF YORK STAKES, GROUP TWO, 6F
The other big contenders for today’s Group Two, according to the betting at least, are Night Raider, whose four wins to date, all on the all-weather, include the Golden Rose Stakes at Newcastle in November ….
And Flora Of Bermuda, beaten only narrowly in the Champions Sprint at Ascot in October.
YORK 3.13 1895 DUKE OF YORK STAKES, GROUP TWO, 6F
The first of the day’s Group races and a contest that has been won by several previous and subsequent Group One winners in recent years. Four four-year-olds making their seasonal debuts after strong showings at three dominate the betting: Inisherin, Elite Status, Night Raider and Flora Of Bermuda. The betting market cannot separate Inisherin – last season’s Group One Commonwealth Cup winner – and Elite Status, the Group Three Hackwood Stakes winner, at present, although Inisherin is in the first colours of their owner, Sheikh Mohammed Obaid al Maktoum.
This is Inisherin’s win at Royal Ascot last summer:
And here’s Elite Status landing the Hackwood Stakes:
Fast and furious from the off as First Folio set a strong pace from stall two on the far side. Rousing Encore took over well over a furlong out and stayed on well to hold off Dark Thirty, while Two Tribes came from a long way off the pace to take fourth, having failed to get the sort of tow into the race that runners on the far side enjoyed.
YORK 2.42 RESULT: Rousing Encore takes the acclaim
1. ROUSING ENCORE 22-1, 2. Dark Thirty 7-1, 3. Korker 14-1, 4. Two Tribes 5-1 fav.
Off and running in the 2.42 at York …
The runners are at the post for the six-furlong sprint handicap, the latest betting is:
5-1 Two Tribes
7-1 Holkham Bay
9-1 Commanche Falls, We Never Stop & Dark Thirty
10-1 Bergerac
11-1 bar
Punters’ Cheltenham losses a boost for Levy
If you had a tough time of it betting-wise at the Cheltenham festival in March, you may – or may not – be reassured to hear that it was not just you. The Levy Board, which collects a slice of betting firms’ gross profits to return it to the sport in prize money, investment grants and so on, reported this morning that the Levy yield for the year to 31 March 2025 is expected to be a new record of around £108m, up £3m from last year.
The estimate after 10 months of the year was a yield of around £100m, and the extra, unanticipated £8m is due in large part to a thumpingly good Cheltenham for the layers.
“February and March 2025, the last two months of the Levy year, saw bookmakers’ gross profit – the basis of the Levy calculation – significantly above recent norms,” the Board reported this morning, “race results at the Cheltenham Festival in March being a material factor.”
It’s interesting that nine of the 28 races at Cheltenham this year were won by a favourite or joint-favourite, the same number as in 2024 and 2023, and yet the bookies’ margins were significantly improved. So it is at least possible that the starting prices of the winning favourites – which these days are generated away from the course – were shorter (ie. more bookie-friendly) than might have been the case in previous years.
YORK 2.42, CHURCHILL TYRES HANDICAP, 6F
The booking of Ryan Moore to ride Richard Spencer’s Two Tribes should ensure that he sets off as the favourite at around 5-1, but this is a wide-open race and he is drawn in stall 15 (of 16) in a contest where the stalls are on the far side and the draw could well play a significant role. Bergerac (stall five, 13-2), twice a winner over track and trip, is back down to his last winning mark, while Holkham Bay (in 12, 7-1) and Commanche Falls (in four, 8-1), who also has a course-and-distance win to go with his two victories in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood back in the day, is 5lb his mark when finishing sixth in last season’s Ayr Gold Cup. CHANGE SINGS, meanwhile, is a drifter today, out to 16-1 from around 10-1 overnight, but he has showed decent form twice already this season and could well outrun his odds from stall 16.
After a photo-finish, Karl Burke’s Almosh’her is confirmed as the opening winner of York’s new season. It was a close-run thing in the end, as after Clifford Lee sent Almosh’her to the front over a furlong out, Stressfree laid down a strong challenge all the way to the line. The winner kept on well, though, eventually getting home by a head.
2.10 YORK RESULT: Almosh’her first winner of 2025 at York
1. ALMOSH’HER 15-2, 2. Stressfree, 3. Plage De Havre 11-2.
Off and running in the 2.10 at York ..
YORK 2.10, HANDICAP, 1M 3F 188YD
The runners are going to the start for the opening race of the season here at York, and while it is a competitive handicap on paper, William Haggas’s The Reverend, in the colours of Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom, is a strong favourite at around 5-2. He is making his seasonal debut here but was a fair fourth in a similar event over track and trip last October and is currently trading at around 5-2. The lightly-raced Almosher (6-1) has two wins from three starts so far, Plage De Havre (also 6-1) has been prolific on the all-weather over the winter but needs to bounce back from a sub-par run last time but STRESSFREE, at 9-2, is the only runner attracting support against the favourite and could be the value bet having run a race full of promise at Epsom last time.
Royal runner is the latest first for Mullins
An interesting story that few would have seen coming arrived via the Irish Field this morning, when it was revealed that the King and Queen, no less, have joined the roster of owners at Willie Mullins’s record-breaking yard in Ireland.
Reaching High, a four-year-old gelding who was trained until the end of last season by the now-retired Sir Michael Stoute, has been switched to the Mullins stable in Closutton, County Carlow, and declared to run in a 12-furlong handicap at Leopardstown on Friday evening, with Jody Townend, the youngest sister of Mullins’s stable jockey, Paul, booked to ride.
The late Queen Elizabeth II, who bred Reaching High from her favourite racemare, the Ascot Gold Cup-winning Estimate, had a handful of runners in Ireland over the course of her 70 years as a racehorse owner. These included the high-class Carlton House, 5-4 favourite when beaten into fourth in the Irish Derby in 2011, but all of her runners were stabled with British yards.
Reaching High will be the first horse to carry the famous royal colours from an Irish yard, and from some angles, this could perhaps be seen as a bit of a kick in the teeth for the British training fraternity, not least at a somewhat sensitive point in turf history when, for the first time, the champion trainers on the Flat (Aidan O’Brien) and over jumps (Mullins) are both based in Ireland.
Mullins told the Irish Field that “we [Mullins and his wife, Jackie] were introduced to King Charles and Queen Camilla at Royal Ascot last year. The next thing we got a phone call asking if we would take a horse for them. I said I would be delighted and Reaching High arrived here shortly afterwards.”
Reaching High has been schooled over hurdles but will make his debut for the stable on the Flat and Mullins is already looking towards a possible run in the Ascot Stakes at Royal Ascot next month.
“His pedigree is all stamina,” Mullins said, “so those kind of races could suit him.”
Musidora Stakes the feature event on York’s opening day
Good afternoon from the Knavesmire on the first day of the 2025 season at York racecourse, when the Musidora Stakes (3.45) – the last of the traditional trials for next month’s Oaks at Epsom – is the feature race on the card.
Three of the six fillies – Smoken, Whirl and Go Go Boots – have an entry in the Classic, and all have something to recommend them. Whirl looks to extend Aidan O’Brien’s remarkable run of form in Epsom Classic trials over the last 10 days, Smoken was unbeaten in two starts as a juvenile including a very warm Listed event in November, and Go Go Boots is from the John & Thady Gosden stable, which has won this race eight times already.
All three are currently priced up at around 33-1 for the Oaks, but a striking success this afternoon would inevitably prompt a sharp cut in their Classic odds. Secret Satire, a shock Musidora winner 12 months ago, did not get the trip at Epsom but the previous three winners of this trial included two Oaks winners – Soul Sister and Snowfall – and an Epsom runner-up, Emily Upjohn, who was denied by a nose after no luck in running.
So it is a race to take seriously as a pointer toward Epsom and elsewhere, and so too is the Duke Of York Stakes at 3.13. Three of the last four winners – Starman, Millstream and Highfield Princess – went on to win Group Ones later the same season, and four of today’s runners had high-class form as three-year-olds in 2024 with the promise of better still to come in their four-year-old campaigns.
Three typically competitive handicaps complete the ITV Racing coverage from York, the official going is good to firm, good in places, and the action is underway at 2.10 with the Jorvik Handicap, something of an early trial for the Ebor – Europe’s richest handicap on the Flat – back here at the August meeting.
Preamble
Tony Paley
Greg is at York and will be with you shortly for today’s live blog on the opening day of this year’s Dante meeting. Tomorrow features the Dante Stakes itself, usually a very key Derby trial and this morning we had the Jockey Club announcement that next month’s Epsom Classic on 7 June will be run in honour of the late Aga Khan IV.
A prolific breeder and owner, the famous racehorse owner came from a line of great racing enthusiasts and was successful in the Derby on five occasions, witnessing Shergar win the race by a record 10 lengths in 1981, followed by victories for Shahrastani (1986), Kahyasi (1988), Sinndar (2000) and Harzand (2016).
The Aga Khan’s daughter, Princess Zahra, said: “My family and I are incredibly grateful to Epsom and the Jockey Clubfor running the race in honour of my father.
“The Derby is an iconic event that he deeply loved and winning it for the first time with Shergar brought him immense pride and joy. It gave him the sense that the work his father and grandfather had accomplished with the breeding operation was being carried forward.
“He eventually matched the record of my great-grandfather when Harzand secured his fifth Derby victory – a wonderful achievement.”
