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Tactical delivers winner for the Queen in the July Stakes; Hollie Doyle rides first Group Two winner

Tactical hit the front with 100 yards to run and beat Yazaman a length and a quarter - PA
Tactical hit the front with 100 yards to run and beat Yazaman a length and a quarter - PA

The Queen is not known for her precocious two-year-olds but Tactical, her Windsor Castle winner at Royal Ascot, continued his climb towards to the top of the juvenile ladder when he won the Tattersalls July Stakes with some authority at Newmarket’s July meeting on Thursday.

The homebred colt, stepping up to six furlongs and encountering soft ground for the first time, has a lovely way of switching off in the early part of the race which will, ultimately, help him get a mile, perhaps in the 2,000 Guineas, next season.

On Thursday he hit the front with 100 yards to run and beat Yazaman a length and a quarter with Escape Route and Qaader, the favourite, third and fourth.

“I was really pleased with him stepping up a furlong on slower ground,” said winning trainer Andrew Balding. “It confirms the Windsor Castle was a decent race. I’m thrilled for everyone, particularly the owner. Time will tell but he could end up one of the top two-year-olds this year. We have to look Group One now and he might go to France for the Morny.

“He’s very relaxed which is such a help. He’s a fast horse but he doesn’t try to be fast the whole time. His pedigree suggests a mile shouldn’t be a problem next year.”

The Queen’s racing adviser, John Warren, said: “I think form-wise that was the same as the Windsor Castle but the way he did it looked even better again. I think we might just have a very exciting horse on our hands. Although it looks like he will stay seven furlongs, at the moment we will keep to what he has been good at.”

Without wishing to get too far ahead of myself it is, perhaps, worth remembering that the first of the Queen’s three Ascot juvenile winners was Pall Mall who went on to win the 2,000 Guineas in 1958.

Hollie Doyle, who has been carrying all before her this season and broke her own Royal Ascot duck last month, rode her first Group Two winner when Dame Malliot won the concluding Princess of Wales’s Tattersalls Stakes.

However the most impressive winner of the day at Newmarket was Al Suhail, a disappointment first time out in the Guineas. The Godolphin colt ran away with the Bahrian International Sir Henry Cecil Stakes by six lengths from Mystery Power.

“It just didn’t go right for him in the Guineas,” said his jockey William Buick. “He travelled there so strongly today I got there a furlong sooner than I wanted. In a way he has backed up his homework.”

Qaader, apart, it was a good day for Mark Johnston at York, ironically a track where the trainer usually finds it harder to win than either Royal Ascot or Glorious Goodwood.  In the space of 35 minutes – I doubt anyone else will ever be able to claim that – he and Franny Norton completed the Musidora- Dante double with Rose of Kildare and Thunderous, respectively.

Thunderous wore down the red-hot 8-11 favourite Highest Ground late on to win by a neck. “It’s amazing considering where he’s come from,” explained Harry Herbert of Highclere Thoroughbreds.

“He had a hairline fracture after winning at Newbury last year which stopped him for the season and he had another set-back this spring which took him out of training, then Covid, then the delayed start. He had barely galloped when he went to Newmarket and it is fantastic to know he can win a Dante knowing there is so much more to come.

“He grinds it out. We saw that last year. He just does enough. He’ll get a mile and a half so we’ll probably look at the Grand Prix de Paris.”