🏇 Glorious Goodwood: The Full Report

How’s it going?

Welcome to August (almost).

Once again we’re here to steer you in the right direction ahead of Saturday’s racing, and on last weekend’s performance we’d give ourselves a solid 7/10.

We don’t always get everything right – the draw at Chester last weekend went completely tits up – but it’s nice when our research finds some gems.

Saffie Osborne was the only jockey we mentioned in our Ascot cheat sheets, and she rode a treble. At the same time, The Purist gave us another heavily backed Saturday TV winner with Stratusnine - available at 7/1 and 6/1 in your inbox on Friday night, before obliging at 10/3.

The advice to go against the grain by following stalls 1 to 5 at Newcastle’s straight track also fared well as five winners smashed it from the following stalls:

Stall 1 won at 50/1
Stall 2 won at 11/1
Stall 3 won at 22/1
Stall 5 won at 10/3
Stall 5 won at 14/1

We also noted the horses that ran well behind those Newcastle winners from a high stall against the bias – stay tuned 😉

👉 The final day of Glorious Goodwood takes place on Saturday – the headline act is the Stewards’ Cup (3.35), a 28-runner sprint.   

👉 ITV show five races from Goodwood, plus one apiece from Newmarket and Thirsk.  

👉 The first three days at Goodwood saw 14 winning favourites.  

👉 Unbeaten 2,000 Guineas winner Bow Echo took his record to six straight wins in Wednesday’s Group 1 Sussex Stakes.  

👉 Galway’s penultimate day of its seven-day festival takes place on Saturday.

👉 Rising young Irish jockey Daniel King won both the Galway Plate and Galway Hurdle in midweek.

👉 Hamilton’s Saturday evening fixture takes place on ground with some ‘soft’ in it, which isn’t a misprint – anyone watching the Commonwealth Games will know that Scotland have experienced this stuff called rain.

Here goes…

🔢 Fancied three to four-year-olds from the first four in the betting won the last 10 runnings of Newmarket’s Chalice Stakes (1.33).

🔢 Trainer Daniel Kubler had a midweek Goodwood winner, making it 5 wins & 4 placed from 19 runners in July - almost half of his entire 2026 winner’s tally of 11-75.

🔢 Draw biases usually favour the low or high section of stalls, but Thirsk’s 3.47 with 16 runners over 7f could aid those from the centre. In such conditions during recent years, the winner came from stall: 9 (14 ran), 10 of 14, 11 of 15, 6 of 15, 5 of 14, 8 of 15, 10 of 15, 6 of 15, 9 of 16. In other words, focus on stalls 5 to 11. 

🔢 In Galway’s feature handicap hurdle (3.12) - look for 5-7yos officially rated 122-137 with a top-three effort during their last three runs. If you want to go one step further, those with only 2-4 handicap hurdle runs were favoured.

🔢 Galway’s final big betting heat of the week is Sunday’s Ahoonora Handicap (4.00), which favoured runners that appeared at Galway earlier in the week. Of the last 25 winners, 15 had raced during the previous 5 days.

Featuring the latest big-race roll of honour alongside ten-year trends analysis, our ‘Super Trends’ reveal the key stats for all the big races.

Use these trends to make your own selections, or, if you’re short on time and can’t access a formbook, check our shortlist of selections below each race.

🏅 Valedictory
🏅 Align The Stars
🏅 Bahadur

🏅 Sondad
🏅 Tuco Salamanca
🏅 Realign

Our guru did it again last weekend with another well-backed beauty …

… here’s who The Purist is backing on Saturday…

Goodwood 3.35 Realign

A red-hot Stewards’ Cup with some familiar names that rewarded us the last two weeks in Sondad (hoping he loses here and goes for the Ayr Gold Cup) and Stratusnine (taking on better rivals), both carrying penalties for those wins. Tuco Salamanca is another who could bag a big sprint this season – but at around 18/1 to 20/1, Realign can’t go unbacked. 

William Haggas, who has won this race twice before, has his runners in good shape – as always it seems – and could do so again with this improver who has yet to hit his ceiling. A lot will come down to how Tom Marquand switches him off early, as he travels very powerfully (can burn too much energy early on), but if he gets him cover and travelling well, expect him to strike late on the fast ground that suits.

Newmarket 3.58 Sixpack

Not much explanation needed for this improver who won three times on turf this season before hating the all-weather at Southwell last time. The yard remains in top form, and a return to Newmarket where he won in June could do the trick.

4.55 Thirsk Great

Rated around 77 this time last year but changed yards and took advantage of a lower mark of 62 with Jonathan England riding at Carlisle earlier this month. Things didn’t drop right back in trip at Beverley when the door was closed on him, but the return to 6f here with England back in the saddle on a wider track should help.

Valedictory runs in Saturday’s 1.50 at Goodwood, and his joint-trainer John Gosden told the Sporting Life in midweek…

“He is up a few pounds again, but going back over this trip at Goodwood should suit him well. We probably ran him a little bit below his distance at the start of the year, but we have gradually stepped him up, and it has worked out for him so far. Hopefully he is still improving. He would need a pretty good penalty to get in the Ebor, so we will see how he runs at Goodwood.”

This week we have three that all ran at Ascot’s big meeting last weekend …

Bolo Neighs (4yo)

Was third over 6f at Ascot in a race that has worked out well before catching the eye on a return visit last weekend over an inadequate 5f. Having won over 6f at Ascot in May, he’s worth looking out for if running over that course and distance again this season.

Gallant (4yo)

A winner off a mark of 84 last summer before finding things more difficult, he’s gradually come back down the weights and served notice the last three times he could be close to winning again. He was carried a touch wide at Ascot and raced away from the main action but still managed third for which he dropped a generous 1lb to a rating of 78. 

Saytarr (4yo)

Has improved to win four races on the all-weather this year, taking his record on that surface to 6-9 - compared to 0-11 on turf. He ran better than his final position of 11th at Ascot when given plenty to do from behind, shaping as though still in form. He’s one to keep aside when stepping back onto an artificial surface.

📌 Haydock returns next Friday after their hole debacle. Let’s hope they’ve filled it in time for Pete Tong’s Ibiza Classics in the evening - otherwise ‘it could all go Pete Tong’.

► ITV (free): Goodwood: 1.50, 2.25, 3.00, 3.35, 4.10; Newmarket: 1.33; Thirsk: 2.08.

Next weekend is the Shergar Cup at Ascot when teams of jockeys from around the world take each other on.

Until then…

..keep ‘em peeled 👀

The Paddock Report Team.

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