3 minute read
Timeform recap the 2018 Lightning Stakes won by Redkirk Warrior for jockey Regan Bayliss and training team David and Ben Hayes and Tom Dabernig.
Redkirk Warrior was good enough to pick Redzel off despite Redzel having had the race on his terms, and seemingly well within his keeping inside the last 400m.
As is (disappointingly) becoming commonplace on the Flemington straight course, the early going was fairly gentle and the race became a test of late speed. A test that Redkirk Warrior passed with flying colours, earning himself a rating of 123p in the process.
A 'p' is fairly rare on a seven-year-old but that closing burst was more than just a visual. The jet packs were blazing late and the closing splits indicate that he should be capable of better form in a more evenly run contest.
Redkirk Warrior's last 400m can be marked up a bit more than 2.5 lengths which would see his overall time rating of 106 a very healthy 117. Redzel is also there to be marked up by around a length. 10.69 and 10.95 home showing that he too was full of running.
How must jockey Kerrin McEvoy have felt getting picked off despite going that well?! Little did he know when he shot for home that Regan Bayliss and Redkirk Warrior had placed a cross-hair in the middle of his back...
A strict read of the sectionals will say that Bayliss left Redkirk Warrior with too much to do late and spent too little energy in the first half of the race. That is true if the name of the game was to get from Point A to Point B as quickly as possible. But the name of the game is to get from Point A to Point B quicker than the other horses in the race. To that end, Bayliss and Redkirk Warrior's spectacular late arrival has to be seen as a great success. It's a game of fine margins but it's ultimately a results game and this one went the way of Bayliss and Redkirk Warrior.
Finishing speeds from halfway show the 2018 Lightning Stakes was run to a similar pattern to the best Lightning Stakes of them all, Black Caviar's 2012 masterpiece where she returned her career high Timeform rating of 136. A rating the equal of any produced by a mare in the long history of Timeform.
Similar pattern, and a similar sectional mark up, but worth noting that in the case of Black Caviar we were marking up a time around five lengths quicker than the one produced by Redkirk Warrior.
Black Caviar went on to win at Royal Ascot that year (a very different spectacle to her Lightning win but spectacular all the same) and became the fifth Lightning winner to do so, following Choisir, Takeover Target, Miss Andretti and Scenic Blast.
Redkirk Warrior looks likely to attempt to become the sixth in what will be something of a homecoming for a horse that began his career, over 2030m no less, at Yarmouth in 2014.
The 'dominance' of Australian sprinters is probably overplayed a bit but Australian-trained horses do have a good record at Royal Ascot - Australia's four King's Stand wins have come against a market expectation of ~2 wins.
However, in his attempt to keep this good record going Redkirk Warrior looks like running head first into the best local defence in modern times.
In Battaash (rated 136) and Harry Angel (132) the Brits have a sprinting one-two punch for the ages. Something akin to Australia's Black Caviar/Hay List combo of five years ago.
Battash's wins in the King George at Goodwood and the Abbaye at Chantilly on Arc Day were remarkably good, both returning ratings of 136 which puts him a good few lengths ahead of the Lightning. (Before we get emails, Black Caviar would be rated ahead of him once her mares allowance is accounted for. Relax.)
For many patriotic punters that the Brits boast such a sprinting force seems unfathomable, but what's really amazing is that the pair are by the same sire, Dark Angel, and were raised in the same year on the same patch of grass at a family-run stud in Ireland. Incredible!
It seems likely that these high-octane British bros will tackle one Royal Ascot feature apiece. Battaash looms over the King's Stand and Harry Angel is likely to head to the Diamond Jubilee.
So, whichever way he goes, the bar is going to be set nice and high for Redkirk Warrior. But it's worth noting that both British speedsters do have chinks in their armour. They are hot heads. Perhaps something they picked up racing each other around the paddocks of Ireland as kids. Battaash is capable of a pre-race melt and Harry can fire right up mid-race. Royal Ascot can be exposing on both counts.
Those won't be issues for an older gelding like Redkirk Warrior and so he should take his chance. A rating of 123 isn't where Black Caviar (went across rated 136), Scenic Blast (127), Miss Andretti (126), Takeover Target (125) and Choisir (126) were when they set sail to conquer the old country he does have the right races on the C.V. And of course he has that all-important 'p'.
