SHOEMARK LOOKING TO INSPIRAL FOR BREAKTHROUGH BIG WIN IN £1M PRINCE OF WALES’S STAKES

Kieren Shoemark is still awaiting the first Group 1 win for the Gosden stable which would help cement his new position there, but Breeders’ Cup winner Inspiral could be the one to fill that gap when she returns to the distance of her Santa Anita win against nine rivals in Wednesday’s £1m Prince of Wales’s Stakes.

Last year’s Betfred Derby winner Auguste Rodin will be favourite here, and understandably so, having gone on from Epsom to win the Irish Derby, the Irish Champion Stakes and the Breeders’ Cup Turf, where he was a very good winner from top-class rivals from the United States and Japan. Stable-mate Hans Andersen is a possible pacemaker for him, and if he is on his game he will be hard to beat. 

However, he has run deplorably on three big occasions, and jockey Ryan Moore confirmed to the stewards at Meydan in March that the horse “had a record of either winning or running extremely poorly”. He was underwhelming too when beaten three lengths by old rival White Birch, a notable absentee from this race at the 48-hour declaration stage, in the Tattersalls Gold Cup at the Curragh last month. 

Aidan O’Brien said last week that “the better the ground, the better he will like it”, so conditions should suit him perfectly, but his in-and-out record is a worry.

Inspiral looked to have a good chance of providing Shoemark with that breakthrough top level win in Newbury’s Al Shaqab Lockinge Stakes, but the Gosden team had yet to hit top form and she evidently needed the run. She was a six-time Group 1 winner for Frankie Dettori, notably when running away with the Coronation Stakes here two years ago and most recently when getting up close home in last year’s Filly And Mare Breeders’ Cup Turf, so we know how good she is. 

Shoemark is certain we can forgive the Newbury effort and said: “It’s very exciting to be riding Inspiral in the Prince Of Wales’s. She could have run in the Queen Anne, but she obviously stayed the ten furlongs when she won at Santa Anita and she’s in great order. I’m aware it’s more of a test at the trip at Ascot, but she’s relaxing well in her work and it’s well worth a go.

“She needed the run at Newbury and we knew that going into the race. She’s rarely been ready at that time of the year – she’s always been one for Royal Ascot and beyond – but we thought she was in good order and that it was worth taking the chance.

“I suppose we slightly underestimated how much she needed it there, but she’s come on plenty for it. I’ve done a couple of pieces of work on her and she’s pleased me.”

The Gosden team also saddle a past winner of the Prince Of Wales’s in Lord North, who beat Addeybb handsomely here in 2020 and also has a remarkable three wins in the Dubai Turf on his CV. 

Lord North is now eight and would be much the oldest winner of the race since it returned to the programme in 1968. However William Buick, who rode him for the first time when he was third to Charyn in the bet365 Mile, is not without hope.

Buick said: “John and Thady are really happy with him and he ran really well at Sandown in the mile race, where the trip was on the short side for him and he was going to come on for the race. It’s another deep race, but he’s a past winner of it and I’m looking forward to getting back on him.

The French challenge is numerically far more formidable than the Irish. Last year’s dual Classic winner Blue Rose Cen, now with Maurizio Guarnieri and set to be ridden for the first time by Christophe Soumillon, is joined by her stable-mate Snobbish as well as QIPCO Champion Stakes third Horizon Dore, who finished a couple of lengths ahead of her at Longchamp on her return, and Zarakem, who beat Horizon Dore in an earlier race at Longchamp.

Zarakem is among the outsiders, but Jerome Reynier, who had his first Royal Ascot runner in this race in 2018 when Royal Julius was sixth of seven behind Poet’s Word, believes the four-year-old can give a decent account of himself.

He said: “He’s done nothing wrong and won five in a row last year as a three-year-old. His reappearance in the Prix d’Harcourt was really good (beat Horizon Dore) and we supplemented him afterwards for the Prix Ganay, but the pace was quite slow and everything went wrong there. 

“We’ll ride him here as we did in the Harcourt, waiting at the back, and you never know what can happen. He’s a very nice horse, and now is the time to take a shot.”

The field is completed by the Owen Burrows-trained and Shadwell-owned five-year-old Alflaila, a Group 2 winner at York on his even later reappearance last year but not seen in public since his fifth to Auguste Rodin in the Irish Champion Stakes, and Karl Burke’s Royal Rhyme, a big improver last year but only fifth here behind King Of Steel in October when thrown in at the deep end for the first time. 

Alflaila has come in under the radar somewhat, but he has not been unbacked and his trainer has an uncanny knack with these classy older middle-distance types. Royal Rhyme won a Group 3 at Sandown last month, but it was a weak one, run on very different ground.