By Tom Frary
Juddmonte's juveniles have already gone far in 2024 and another bids to enhance her reputation on Thursday as Tabiti (GB) (Kingman {GB}) tackles the G3 Ire-Incentive, It Pays To Buy Irish Dick Poole Fillies' Stakes at Salisbury. Impressive on debut over seven furlongs at Newmarket last month, the Ralph Beckett-trained half-sister to the G2 Linlithgow Stakes winner Old Flame (GB) (Invincible Spirit {Ire}) drops back in trip having missed the G3 Prestige Stakes when the rain came.
“Obviously Plan A was the Prestige a couple of weeks ago, but there was a lot of rain and the ground went too soft, so we decided to miss that and there's actually very little for her to run in for a while, hence we're dropping down a furlong for this,” Juddmonte's European racing manager Barry Mahon explained. “Ralph did deliberate long and hard before he ran her whether to start her at six, so he felt she had plenty of speed. We had half an eye on the [Sept. 27 G2] Rockfel and there was nowhere else to give her more experience before then, so we thought this would be a fitting place to give her more experience and see whether she'd be up to something like that.”
Of the experienced rivals in the line-up, the G3 Princess Margaret Stakes runner-up Betty Clover (GB) (Time Test {GB}) and Newmarket nursery scorer Magic Mild (GB) (Havana Grey {GB}) set the standard, but not a high one. Isa Salman Al Khalifa's William Haggas-trained Jewelry (Ire) (Wootton Bassett {GB}) and Hambleton Racing's Greydreambeliever (Ire) (Dark Angel {Ire}) from the Karl Burke stable did enough on their respective debuts at Newbury and York to suggest they have the material for a race of his nature.
Not a subscriber? Click here to sign up for the daily PDF or alerts.
