Coral-Eclipse Stakes: Value may lie out West in Sandown feature

The clear favourite for the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at 5/4 as things stand is The Gurkha who only made his debut in April and has since won the Poule d’Essai des Poulains at Deauville by five and a half lengths and finished runner-up in the St James's Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot. The Gurkha is clearly a colt with plenty of ability and he may well win the Eclipse comfortably, but there’s still a sense that he’s more about potential than achievement at this stage, or certainly that his cramped odds are. The Gurkha was given a fair bit to do by Ryan Moore in the St James’s Palace, with the rider perhaps anticipating a stronger pace than transpired, but he was still beaten a length and a quarter by Galileo Gold, who was admittedly better positioned but still didn’t need to improve on the form of his win in what had looked just an average 2000 Guineas to get back to winning ways.

The only horse in the line-up to have won a Group 1 over this mile-and-a-quarter trip is My Dream Boat who showed a great attitude to win the Prince of Wales’s Stakes on soft ground at Royal Ascot last time. My Dream Boat was slightly fortunate to find a race at Grade 1 level, with the way the Prince of Wales’s unfolded suiting him too, his racing away from runner-up Found (as much by accident as design) probably helping as well, but it was still his first high-class performance on the Timeform scale. Clearly, My Dream Boat needs to be considered here, though there’s just that the feeling that his current odds of 3/1 sum up his chance well.

Time Test is the biggest danger to The Gurkha on the form of his return win the Brigadier Gerard Stakes over this C&D in May, when he gave Western Hymn 5 lb and a neck beating, but there’s still a chance he won’t run with the forecast rather bleak. There’s a wide-held belief that Time Test won’t be able to run to his best on rain-softened ground, and that may prove to be the case, but the evidence so far is rather sparse; yes, he ran below form on good to soft ground in the Juddmonte International last year, but so did a number of horses in a funny race, and he did win his maiden on a similar surface, beating a number of horses now rated 100 and above by Timeform.

Time Test’s connections have supplanted Countermeasure into this race (at a cost of £30,000) to acts as pacemaker, so they clearly want to run Time Test, having missed both the Tattersalls Gold Cup and Prince of Wales’s Stakes already this year with him because of underfoot conditions.  

Another supplementary entry is Godolphin’s Hawkbill who won the Tercentenary Stakes at Royal Ascot. He’s clearly progressive, having landed his last three starts in 2015 and also a listed race on his reappearance in April, but he’ll need to step forward again to muscle in on some of these, including fellow three-year-old The Gurkha. Hawkbill has a slightly ungainly way of going about things—he carries his head awkwardly—but it plainly doesn't hold him back.

Another horse with his own way of doing things is Western Hymn, but he too is very consistent, having finished placed on his last six outings, including when second to Time Test in the Brigadier Gerard and third to My Dream Boat in the Prince of Wales’s on his last two. He obviously has a bit to find with a couple of these, but he won’t be troubled by rain and his form figures at Sandown read `111322’, so he does make some appeal at odds of 10/1+.  

The rest all look massively up against it, including Deauville whose Dante second hasn’t worked out and who ran dismally without an obvious excuse in the Derby.

In conclusion, this is a hard race to get carried away from a betting point of view. There’s a case for thinking Time Test will go off at a bigger price than he perhaps should with apparent concerns over the ground—odds of around 5/1 on the day would make appeal provided the going wasn’t very soft. The Gurkha’s price has as much to do with his profile and connections than it does his bare form, while My Dream Boat is likeable but there’s not much juice in his price now at 3/1. The best bet as things stand could be Western Hymn each-way at double-figure odds. The downside with backing Western Hymn is that he may only be playing for second or third place, but there’s always the option of the place only market on the Betfair exchange.

Recommendation:

Back Western Hymn at 10/1+ each-way in the Coral-Eclipse Stakes at Sandown on Saturday