Upgraded City of York Stakes one of the main targets for Audience

Audience will be aimed at the newly-upgraded City of York Stakes in August, having failed to keep pace with some of the best sprinters around at Meydan on World Cup night.

Connections of last year’s Lockinge winner felt it was worth having another try over six furlongs in the Al Quoz sprint, subsequently won by George Boughey’s Believing.

He will now step back up in trip, but a defence of his Lockinge title at Newbury is not certain and he may be given more time to get over his Dubai journey.

“Unfortunately he couldn’t keep up with the pace and it just confirmed that he’s more of a seven-furlong to an easy mile type of horse going forward,” said Chris Richardson, managing director of owners Cheveley Park Stud.

“Which I suppose we knew, but when you get a nice invitation – you don’t quite know how they are going to perform, but I think we’ve learned something and Robert Havlin was struggling to pull him up which gives us confidence going forward.

“I suppose the City of York has to be his main target and then we’ll work back from there. After that we need to consider if he goes to Del Mar (Breeders’ Cup), but he’s been kept in training to have a crack at a few high-value races.

“It was worth running over six in a race like that, it’s the start of a long year and we weren’t disappointed. Hopefully he can build on it.

“I don’t know about the Lockinge, we’ll see how he comes out of it because I know most horses that run in Meydan don’t necessarily bounce back that quickly, so we’ll see. We’ll probably target Ascot and if John and Thady (Gosden) think it’s a possibility, then obviously we’ll look at it.”