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1 Mar 2018

Champions Series Dark Horses for 2018: Veracious

Veracious routs her rivals at Newmarket in the autumn. Picture: Racingfotos.com

Horse: VERACIOUS

Form: 31 Trainer: Sir Michael Stoute

There will be few better bred three-year-old fillies in training this year than Veracious.

Her sire, Frankel, who won nine QIPCO British Champions Series races, needs no introduction but many might have forgotten the exploits of her dam, Infallible, who was retired from racing a decade ago.

A big, powerful filly owned by Cheveley Park and trained by John Gosden, Infallible finished fourth in the 1000 Guineas before going on to be second in the Coronation Stakes and third in the Falmouth Stakes.

As a broodmare, she has already produced Mutakayyef, dual winner of Ascot’s Group 2 Summer Mile and placed in the 2016 Juddmonte Stakes plus 2017 Queen Anne Stakes.

Veracious is bred to scale the heights, then, and looked like she might be capable of getting to the top when zipping to a four-length win in a 7f maiden at Newmarket in mid-October.

The form of that 12-runner contest is not easy to gauge and the time was nothing special but the way Veracious quickly put distance between herself and her rivals, off an ordinary gallop, was striking.

Owned by Cheveley Park, like Infallible, it would be no surprise if she was to reappear in the Nell Gwynn Stakes – a race her dam won in taking style – before possibly contesting the QIPCO 1000 Guineas at Newmarket on May 6, for which bet365 quote her at 25-1.

Sir Michael Stoute, her trainer, has saddled the 1000 Guineas twice before; the last time in 2003 with Russian Rhythm who, incidentally, also carried the red and white silks of Cheveley Park.