Boodles Raindance Dee Stakes Stats Guide

By Paul Jones

A Listed contest over an extended 1m2f, the Dee Stakes isn’t as productive a Classic guide as the Chester Vase but it can prove itself to be a Derby pointer as we saw with Oath (1999) and Kris Kin (2003) winning both races and Cliffs Of Moher was second in the Derby nine years ago after winning this prize. The 2020 winner Circus Maximus didn’t stay in the Derby but did become a top-class miler, winning multiple Group 1 races at that distance.

Cliffs Of Moher and Circus Maximus were both trained by Aidan O’Brien, who has a phenomenal record across all three Classic trials at this meeting including this contest, which he has won on nine occasions following Mount Kilimanjaro’s success last year, with the most notable being Magician who then went on to win the Irish 2000 Guineas and Breeders’ Cup Turf.

In fact, the O’Brien-Moore combination has won seven of the last eight editions, with only the Roger Varian-trained El Drama breaking the sequence in 2021.

O’Brien has five entries this season headed by Constitution River, who won a Group 2 at the Curragh on his final start as a two-year-old, and Flushing Meadows, who failed to land a blow when last seen in the Group 3 2000 Guineas trial at Leopardstown in mid-April. They could face opposition in the shape of Morshdi, who has already won a Derby trial this season for William Haggas when taking the Feilden Stakes at Newmarket.

Being frank though, since Pentire (missed the Derby but went on to win a King George) won in 1995, outside of the aforementioned horses, it’s difficult to even recall most other winners without use of a good database.

El Drama was a surprise 12/1 winner but 21 of the last 65 winners started at no bigger than 8/1, nine of which started favourite, while 15 of those 25 winners finished first or second last time out, nine of which were seasonal debutants despite being at a numerical disadvantage.