Fallen Angel

There can have been no ignoring the explosive entrance of the Emir of Qatar's Wathnan Racing to the European racing scene in particular over the last 18 months. The 2023 Royal Ascot winners Courage Mon Ami (GB) (Frankel {GB}) and Gregory (GB) (Golden Horn {GB}) gave advance warning as to what was to unfold in the ensuing period, with their victories respectively in the G1 Gold Cup and G2 Queen's Vase coming on their first starts in the Wathnan silks after being bought privately from their owner-breeders, Anthony Oppenheimer and...

Too Darn Hot (GB) will not shuttle to Darley Australia for the 2024 season, the outfit confirmed on Monday morning.  Already a Classic-producing sire, thanks to the exploits of 1,000 Guineas heroine Fallen Angel and German 1,000 Guineas scorer Darnation, Too Darn Hot is enjoying a memorable year. He has also sired Group 1 winner Broadsiding in Australia and is the leading first-season sire Down Under.  A statement posted on Darley in Australia on X read,  "#TooDarnHot will not shuttle to Darley Australia's Kelvinside base for the 2024 season." It...

Karl Burke says that he is confident Irish 1,000 Guineas heroine Fallen Angel (GB) (Too Darn Hot {GB}) will prove a tough nut to crack when she bids to follow up in the Coronation S. at Royal Ascot. Fallen Angel will face a stern test at Royal Ascot, with Roger Varian's 1,000 Guineas winner Elmalka (GB) (Kingman {GB}) and Aidan O'Brien's Opera Singer (Justify) both in opposition. Burke told Sky Sports Racing, "She's in great form, came back from Ireland in good order, she did a nice piece of work...

If you are a racing tragic, and I'd like to think that most TDN readers fall into this celebrated bracket, it is impossible to have a day off at the moment. Trials, Classics, they come thick and fast in these heady weeks of spring. We've waited winterlong, starved of any meaningful action, and now it's hard not to feel a little queasy at the veritable feast of racing which is set before us, course after course after course. There's barely even room for the Cartmel Sticky Toffee Pudding Maiden Hurdle. ...

Were you at the Rowley Mile on October 17, 2014? Those autumn meetings are always special, and that particular Group 1 race day saw Belardo (Ire) beat Kodi Bear (Ire) in the Dubai Dewhurst S. some 35 minutes after what now looks to have been a rather special running of the Dubai Fillies' Mile.  If you were there that day you can reflect on the fact that you saw the dams of this weekend's favourites for the Qipco 2,000 Guineas and Qipco 1,000 Guineas finish first and second in the...

A person whose job it is to promote horse racing was, rather disappointingly, being sniffy about the Craven meeting on social media last week. I understand that some people don't like racing at the Rowley Mile and, yes, last Tuesday in particular was a little challenging on the weather front. But if you're a Flat racing person, and particularly one who is being paid to tell other people that they should come racing, then you really should appreciate all that is wonderful about these weeks of Classic trials across Europe....

NEWMARKET, UK -- The action on the Rowley Mile on Wednesday wasn't restricted to the seven scheduled races on the card, with a host of potential Classic runners taking part in racecourse gallops just before the first race of the day. The headline act was the Karl Burke-trained Fallen Angel (GB) (Too Darn Hot {GB}), who is currently co-favourite for the Qipco 1,000 Guineas on May 5. She was put through her paces by Danny Tudhope. "I was very happy with her and Danny was delighted," said Burke of Steve...

The entries for the first two Classics of the season have been released, with 49 horses entered in each of the Qipco 2,000 Guineas and Qipco 1,000 Guineas. The colts will line up at Newmarket on Saturday, May 4 when it is likely that much of the attention will focus on the unbeaten City Of Troy (Justify), who at this stage is the ante-post favourite for the 2,000 Guineas. Trained by Aidan O'Brien, he has left Ireland for two of his three starts to win the G2 Superlative S. at...

Al Shira'aa boss Kieran Lalor has admitted that it will be hard to top last season's achievements in winning the G1 Prix Saint-Alary with Jannah Rose (Ire) but nominated the Willie McCreery-trained Group 2 scorer Vespertilio (Fr) (Night Of Thunder {Ire}) as being the operation's best chance of delivering big-race riches in 2024.  Meanwhile, the decision has been made to retire the powerful owner-breeder's flagship performer Jannah Rose, with a visit to superstar stallion Dubawi (Ire) pencilled in for the four-year-old this spring. Lalor explained how retiring the Group 1-winning...

It is fair to say that Steve Parkin has reimagined the man-with-a-van concept.  He was that once, until he turned the van that he drove himself into a fleet of lorries, and his business extended from warehouses and distribution to supporting some of Britain's biggest retailers in meeting their increasing online demands. Clipper Logistics has become a well-known name beyond the business pages, particularly among those who follow horse racing. Thirty years after the company was founded, Parkin sold Clipper to GXO Logistics in May 2022.  "How does a little...

The Devil's Dyke stretches in pretty much a straight line for more than seven miles through parts of Cambridgeshire and Suffolk. The best part, according to this scribbler anyway, is the section roughly a mile and half long which cleaves Newmarket's July Course from the Rowley Mile, with a break in the dyke allowing the two courses to join briefly just beyond the ten-furlong mark on the latter. A Dutch author, Iman Jacob Wilkens, once claimed that Cambridge's Gog Magog Hills was the true location of the City of Troy,...