Juddmonte youngsters shine at Sandown and Yarmouth

Owners Juddmonte enjoyed a pleasing afternoon on Wednesday, with a pair of juveniles winning with the promise of plenty more to come – as well as taking the feature race at Sandown.

It was at Sandown the Harry Charlton-trained Cosmic Year was a hugely impressive debut winner in the Sir Michael Stoute – Farewell And Thank You Novice Stakes under Oisin Murphy, earning a 33-1 quote for the 2000 Guineas from Paddy Power.

And in a nice piece of symmetry at Yarmouth, the Stoute-trained Nightwalker confirmed the promise of his debut third in what a turned out to be a hot event when making all the running under Ryan Moore on his birthday in the EBF Future Stayers Maiden Stakes.

As is to be expected, both two-year-olds are from regal Juddmonte bloodlines.

Cosmic Year (5-2) is by Kingman out of Passage Of Time, two Group One winners for Juddmonte, while Nightwalker is a half-brother to the US Grade One winner Whitebeam and from the same family as St Leger winner Logician.

“It’s been a good day at the office,” said Juddmonte’s Barry Mahon.

“In fairness to Harry he flagged up that Cosmic Year looked well above average a while back and Oisin went in to ride him and he was very complimentary too, so we were excited to see him today.

“No matter what they do at home they are never fully extended so it was nice to see that when he was asked for his effort he had a change of gear. He looks an exciting prospect.

“He’s got a real Juddmonte pedigree, he’s related to Time Test and Tempus and Passage Of Time herself was a great racemare. He’s bred to be good and he looks good physically.

“Oisin said he’d be happy if he did run again or if he was put away. I’d probably like to give him another run in a suitable stakes race to give him experience because when you get to the spring next year the Group Ones start coming thick and fast and if you don’t have experience it can be hard.”

At Yarmouth Nightwalker (6-5) held off the well backed Ultrasoul, who had run well in the Convivial maiden at York.

“I think Nightwalker was just very green on his first run and he got stuck on the wing,” continued Mahon.

“Ryan had ridden him work a few times and liked him. I think he’s a promising horse who will get a mile and a quarter next year.

“Hopefully Michael will want to go once more this year, especially as it’s his last – it was nice that we won the race named after him at Sandown.

“Ryan said he wasn’t doing much in front, just going through the motions and he went away again when they came to him.”

At Doncaster last week Juddmonte did suffer a rare reversal with one of their juveniles when Jonquil, who looked so promising on debut at Sandown, ran no race at all in the Flying Scotsman.

“Ryan just felt he was very flat and he was beaten at halfway. He checked out good after so all we’ll put it down to is that he was flat and the race came too soon,” explained Mahon.