Swiss Cross Takes on His Brother In Prep For Stewards Cup

This weekend over in the states Junior Alvarado and James Graham will be working Pachattack, Akhmatova, Beauchamp Viceroy and Maristar. The weather over the other side of the pond at the moment is very hot indeed, so hot in fact that at Woodbine the other day they had to call off the races due to the heat. Thankfully it hasn’t got to that extreme in Chicago although it would be fair to say that Andrew would prefer the climate slightly cooler!

Andrew has the horses out at the first available opportunity in the mornings so they can do their workouts before the heat really sets in. They all look fantastic in their coats and Andrew and I are very happy with them all.

This morning we took Beauchamp Xerxes, Behlul and Zain Point over to the Albahatri gallop to work.

Beauchamp Xerxes led the young horses under Kieran O’Neil and I was very pleased with how all 3 went. Zain Point showed an excellent turn of foot whilst the further Behlul went, the better he was going. Beauchamp Xerxes is the master of this particular gallop so it was no surprise to see him going extremely well. We have a race in mind for both of these two year olds next weekend on the AWT and Beauchamp Xerxes could possibly head to Goodwood next week.

Little Black Book is heading out the back gate to the July course this afternoon to run in 0-90 1m handicap. He has had a small amount of time off since his last run and has freshened up well. He done a very nice piece of work on the Limekilns on Tuesday and I am very pleased with him physically. Sean Levey is on board and will be claiming a valuable 3lbs off his back. I think he will put in a good performance and will appreciate being dropped back to a mile. 

Swiss Cross will be running against his elder brother Swiss Franc in the 5f class 2 handicap at Ascot tomorrow.  He been training particularly well over the last few weeks and we don’t see the 5f trip being an issue as he showed such speed when he won at Epsom. The rest of the family seem to go well on the easier ground although ideally we would prefer it a little bit quicker. Hopefully it does not get any softer than its official Good to Soft description. Neil Callan is on board, a jockey who knows the horse well. He will then more than likely head to the Stewards Cup at Goodwood next week and by then he will have a recent run under his belt and be in perfect shape for the race.