Galileo Gold bigger and stronger for Sussex Stakes

Galileo Gold is set to next run in the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood. Photo taken ©Racingfotos.com

Classic winning trainer Hugo Palmer is relishing the prospect of landing further Group One success with stable star Galileo Gold.

The young Newmarket-based trainer has already landed two QIPCO British Champions Series races this term with the talented three-year-old, but thinks there is still plenty yet to come from the chestnut colt.

Speaking at the Qatar Goodwood Festival launch, Palmer said, “He (Galileo Gold) has come out great and we’re really happy with him. As we keep saying, he’s getting bigger and stronger with everything that we do with him which is great”.

The QIPCO 2000 Guineas winner is currently a 15-8 favourite for the Qatar Sussex Stakes and Palmer feels that a positive ride will see his charge produce a strong run,  “I think that’s where he has performed to his best, but we don’t know exactly how a race is going to pan out so I’ll ultimately leave that call to Frankie. I would have thought that would be Plan A but, then again, he wasn’t prominent in the Vintage Stakes last year which he won.”

When quizzed about longer term aims for his star colt the trainer said an outing on QIPCO British Champions Day would be the favoured final target of the domestic season, “I would love to see him in the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes at Ascot, definitely. It’s a hugely valuable race and an enormously prestigious race, so that’s the obvious place for him to go. The Breeders Cup is three weeks away this year which is an extra week so it gives him the option to do both.”

Meanwhile Palmer’s other long-term hopes for QIPCO British Champions Day revolve around two potential candidates for the QIPCO British Champions Fillies and Mares Stakes, “If either We Are Ninety or Architecture were to win the Irish or Yorkshire Oaks then the Fillies & Mares race would have to very much come in to play for them.”

The difficulty is that despite Architecture being placed in Group Ones, she’s only a Maiden winner, so if she doesn’t win either of the Oaks then we’ll have to make her a Stakes winner at some point. They would be the main two.”