Lee looking to trouble Irish hotpots on Al Qareem in Boodles Yorkshire Cup

Clifford Lee has high hopes Karl Burke’s tough stayer Al Qareem can trouble the Irish-trained market leaders in Friday’s Group 2 Boodles Yorkshire Cup, in which a competitive field of seven launches the long-distance division of this year’s QIPCO British Champions Series.

Lee has taken his career to another level in the last couple of years and this promises to be a particularly big week for him. Al Qareem’s recent Newbury second to the redoubtable Hamish, who has also been declared again but has not raced on ground quicker than good to soft for nearly five years, marks him down as very much a live chance, and he has similar prospects in two more Group 2s at the meeting – on his former Lowther Stakes winner Swingalong in Wednesday’s Group Duke of York Stakes and on the progressive Betfred Derby outsider Caviar Heights in Thursday’s Dante Stakes.

He’s a lovely horse and very consistent as well

A relentless galloper and a hardened battler, Al Qareem is much improved since winning a handicap at the Dante meeting two years ago on his only previous appearance at York, and he has already provided Lee with a Group 3 success in Ascot’s Cumberland Lodge Stakes, where he rallied in determined fashion to reel back Israr after looking beaten.

Lee, who enjoyed a career-best 83 wins in 2023 and is currently on course for a maiden century, is a big fan of the five-year-old and said: “He’s a lovely horse and very consistent as well. All he does is gallop and since Ascot last October he’s only been beaten by Hamish, who as we all know is pretty much unbeatable when he gets his conditions.

“We are hoping Al Qareem will strip fitter for that run, and the extra two furlongs of the Yorkshire Cup are in his favour too. There are a couple ahead of him on the official ratings, but he’s so consistent that he looks sure to go well.”

It’s been nearly ten years since Lee rode his first winner, and with only one winner again in 2015 he was hardly an overnight success. He is now 28, but since moving north to join Burke’s ever progressive team he has gone from strength to strength and he now has nine Group-race wins on his CV.

He said: “Every year since I’ve lost my claim has been better than the one before, and in the last two years there have been quite a few Group-race wins. I’m Karl’s first jockey, and although Danny Tudhope is retained to ride the Clipper horses I get to ride most of the others. The quality is getting better all the time.”

Irish bidding for a first Yorkshire Cup

There has never been an Irish-trained winner of the Yorkshire Cup, but that could all change when Aidan O’Brien fields favourite Tower Of London and Willie Mullins will be represented by the top-class dual purpose horse Vauban.

Tower Of London has never stopped improving and since finishing fourth to his stable-mate Continuous in the St Leger he has picked up two huge pots abroad, winning the hugely valuable Longines Red Sea Turf Handicap at Riyadh in late February, when last year’s Yorkshire Cup winner Giavellotto was a close third, and following up in the Group 2 Dubai Gold Cup, when Marco Botti’s five-year-old was a little further back.

The former Triumph Hurdle winner and Champion Hurdle fourth Vauban has been given plenty of time to recover from his trip to Australia for the Melbourne Cup, where he arrived with huge expectations but could finish only fourteenth. What went wrong that day remains something of a mystery, but his earlier runaway win in Royal Ascot’s Copper Horse Handicap and a Group 3 win at Naas suggest he is just as good on the Flat as he was over hurdles.

Giavellotto is significantly better off at the weights with Tower Of London here and bids to follow in the footsteps of celebrated stayers Ardross and Stradivarius as just the third back-to-back winner of the race. Botti does not underestimate the strength of the opposition and has one eye on the weather, but he reports Giavellotto in good form.

Tower of London looks the main danger, but he now has to give us weight

He said: “This has been his target since Dubai and we are very happy with his condition. A mile and six is the perfect trip for him and he has run two of his best races at York, but we are hoping the ground won’t change much as we wouldn’t want to run on soft ground.

“Tower Of London looks the main danger, and we’d been hoping he would be taking a different route, but he now has to give us weight whereas we’ve been giving him weight, so hopefully we can reverse the form.”

Last year’s Queen’s Vase winner Gregory, representing the Gosden stable which enjoyed three recent wins all told here with Stradivarius, bids to give James Doyle a first Group-race win of his new association with Wathnan Racing, while Naqeeb, trained like his brilliant half-brother Baaeed by William Haggas, bids to resume his upward curve after being gelded at the end of last year. Both are open to improvement as four-year-olds