2000 Guineas ante-post tip: Appleby can land the opening Classic again

The opening Classics of the 2026 Flat season are fast approaching and both races look wide open. The recent trials at Newmarket and Newbury have left more questions than answers, and both the Betfred 2000 and 1000 Guineas could see big fields, with plenty of outsiders surely keen to take their chance. The opening colts’ Classic looks particularly competitive.

Aidan O’Brien saddled four of the final five winners of the 2000 Guineas in the 2010s, including the last three, but has not saddled the winner since Magna Grecia landed the spoils in 2019. It is Charlie Appleby who has taken over as the race’s pre-eminent trainer this decade, having won three out of the past four editions, including the last twice.

He is likely to be represented by at least two runners this year, possibly three, but the clear form pick looks to be DISTANT STORM, who can still be backed at 6-1.

We first got to see this hugely talented son of Night Of Thunder on a racecourse last summer where he ran out the narrow winner of a red-hot maiden at Newmarket’s July Festival. The form could not have worked out any better - of the eleven runners to have finished behind him, ten of them have subsequently won, and these include recent Craven winner Oxagon, who finished five and a half lengths behind in fifth.

Distant Storm was then beaten by Champion Juvenile Gewan in the Acomb at York, but his race was over soon after the start. He pulled too hard, failed to settle, and never looked like mounting a challenge. He did well to finish third.

However, he bounced back the following month to win the Tattersalls Stakes on the Rowley Mile, scoring by an emphatic four and three-quarter lengths. He screamed a Guineas horse that day, quickening up smartly from the rear and handling the galloping track and dip with ease.

He was sent off just 9-4 for the Dewhurst over the same course and distance and found just Gewan and Gstaad too strong, but settled well and did little wrong, defeating recent trial winners Oxagon and Alparslan, plus Greenham runner-up Zavateri. His Group One experience on this course could be a big positive in 12 days’ time.

He looks likely to appreciate this extra furlong and will be well suited by the likely fast ground. His pedigree screams Guineas too. By vintage 2000 Guineas hero and supreme sire Night Of Thunder, he is out of Date With Destiny, the only foal sired by the late George Washington, who won the opening Classic in 2005.

The same sire’s Bow Echo unsurprisingly heads the market having gone three from three as a two-year-old, but this colt’s level of form is just as strong, if not better, and he looks the one to side with at the current prices.

2000 Guineas: back DISTANT STORM at 6-1 with William Hill.