Qatar Nassau Stakes: guide to Thursday’s feature

A high-class field of five will go to post for Thursday’s feature over 1m2f at Glorious Goodwood, with Aidan O’Brien bidding for a sixth win in the race with Oaks runner-up and Pretty Polly winner Whirl and French Oaks second Bedtime Story. 

All of O’Briens five previous winners in this race were three-year-olds and his winners have arrived in clusters too.

Peeping Fawn and Halfway To Heaven returned victorious in 2007 and 2008 respectively, whilst Minding and Winter landed the prize in 2016 and 2017. Having won last year’s race with Opera Singer, the omens look positive for another Ballydoyle success.

It is unlikely to be a straightforward task, however, with Andrew Balding’s wide-margin Middleton winner and Pricnes of Wales’s Stakes third See The Fire also lining up, as well as Coronation Stakes heroine Cercene and last year’s Duke of Cambridge Stakes winner Running Lion.

The draw can often be a factor at Goodwood, but this race has been won by the filly drawn widest or second-widest in each of the past four runnings and seven out of the past ten.

Here is a more detailed overview of the contenders.

The outsider of the field, John and Thady Gosden’s five-year-old mare is something of an enigma. She has failed to beat a rival in four of her past nine starts, yet, has won at Royal Ascot, finished second in the Prix de l‘Opera and ran well in the Duke of Cambridge again this year when making the running and looking like a possible winner at one stage before weakening late on, finishing two and a half lengths behind winner Crimson Advocate.

It is hard to make a case for her winning this race; she is yet to win at the top-level and faded tamely when trailing last of the eight runners in the Falmouth Satkes when last seen. However, she is a pace angle here alongside Whirl and could get an easy time of things in front.

The main danger to Whirl, only just behind her in the betting at the time of writing, the daughter of Sea The Stars is having another fantastic year, winning the Middleton Stakes by 12 lengths before being sent off a 7-2 chance for the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, where she finished third.

She finished second in this last year, running on strongly at the finish (she covered the last three furlongs over a second quicker than the winner) but went down by a neck to Opera Singer.

Her dam Arabian Queen was third in the race behind Legatissimo in 2015 before winning the Juddmonte International at 50-1 18 days later. 

See The Fire will probably need another career best to win this if Whirl gives her running, who is in receipt of 9lb weight-for-age allowance, but we know this four-year-old handles the track and is a solid contender. 

Another superbly bred filly, by Frankel out of dual Nunthorpe winner Mecca’s Angel, she looks the second string for Ballydoyle but is a serious contender. 

She won her first four starts last season, including a memorable nine and a half-length victory in the Chesham Stakes, but has failed to score since landing the Debutante Stakes at The Curragh last August.

However, she had excuses when not beaten far in the Moyglare and her run last time was a career best effort, finishing second on her first start over further than a mile in the French Oaks (extended mile and a quarter), a length behind Gezora.

She has only once encountered ground quicker than good, which was when she won so impressively at Royal Ascot.

A daughter of surely one of the best value sires around in Australia (yes, his fee really is €10,000, although surely not for much longer), Cercene produced a career best performance to land the Coronation Stakes over Zarigana when last seen.

The French challenger was long odds-on in running having got past Cercene, but Gary Carroll’s mount rallied and ultimately won by half a length. Whether that was because Graffard’s filly did not want to go past, or Cercene was just very game, is up for debate, but It was perhaps a bit of both.

Prior to her win in Berkshire, Cercene had finished third in the Irish 1000 Guineas, which at the time was another career best performance. She is clearly improving and shapes as if she will stay further, but that is not certain, with plenty of speed in her pedigree too.

The one they all have to beat, the form of her Pretty Polly Stakes win last month looks even stronger now given how well runner-up Kalpana ran in the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes on Saturday.

Taking out her seasonal reappearance, where she finished sixth over a mile, it is probably fair to say she has improved with each and every run. This will be her ninth career start and we know she is a strong stayer at the trip having got within a neck of Classic glory in the Oaks.

She is also ground versatile and is likely to be ridden forward in a contest that is relatively weak on pace, and during the Pretty Polly, she clocked a top speed of over 40mph for the first time since winning at Doncaster last September.

With four of the five runners arriving here in the form of their lives, this is a top contest. I make WHIRL the most likely winner to continue Aidan O’Brien’s fine record in the race with three-year-olds, but See The Fire can give the selection plenty to think about.

1 WHIRL. 2 SEE THE FIRE. 3 BEDTIME STORY. 4 CERCENE. 5 RUNNING LION.