Ante-Post Focus

Published 02/07 

YABHER appears to be improving at a rate of knots and the John Smith’s Cup might be the last chance to catch him in handicap company before he likely steps up in grade.

William Haggas may well have laid the four-year-old out for a race the yard has won three times in the last 15 years and a Group 2 entry, at the time of writing, in next Thursday’s Princess Of Wales’s Stakes at Newmarket is indicative of how highly he rates him.

I’m expecting him to duck that engagement in favour of the York handicap, in which he can run off a still potentially favourable mark of 104 based on his classy pedigree (half-brother Al Mubhir rated 110 at his peak, dam Muffri’Ha 109) from a family the trainer knows inside out.

The Duke Of Edinburgh at Royal Ascot would have been an obvious next step for Yabher after his seasonal debut demolition job at Goodwood in early May, given he won a strong renewal of the 1m4f Old Rowley Cup at HQ last autumn (runner-up Dark Wine Sea has rocketed 25lb in the ratings for two impressive wins since, while third-placed Daiquiri Bay is up 11lb after also landing both subsequent starts, most recently the Copper Horse at the Royal meeting).

Significantly though he appears to have been kept back for this extended 1m2f contest, whilst Haggas still won the DOE with Opportunity, beating royal runner Warrant Holder, the current favourite here.

In short, the selection has effectively not looked back since being gelded just over a year ago - his form figures reading 21011, the outlier blowout at Glorious Goodwood easy to put a line through as, in the words of owner’s racing manager Philip Robinson, he ‘nearly fell over’ - and that Group entry suggests he’s not reached his limit yet.