Wathnan well-stocked with Royal Ascot juvenile prospects

Powerful owners set to have strong hand in the top two-year-old contests.

James Doyle could have some tricky decisions to make when it comes to choosing his Royal Ascot mounts in the juvenile races, given the strength in depth of the Wathnan Racing crop.

In recent weeks, five two-year-olds have won first time out in the blue, gold and red silks and while none were cheap, all were very impressive.

Archie Watson’s Aesterius won over five furlongs at Bath, while stablemate Electrolyte struck over six at Ayr on Monday.

Richard Fahey is responsible for both Columnist and Catalyse, who prevailed over six furlongs at Chester and Hamilton respectively, and Karl Burke’s Leovanni is a leading fancy for the Queen Mary following her Nottingham triumph.

“I think what we’ve got to do is get a bit closer to it, we all know horses, they can start coughing or anything can happen, so we’ll just get closer to the time,” said Wathnan’s racing manager Richard Brown.

“I think they are all pretty different. The horse that won at Bath (Aesterius) is a big horse who will come on quite a lot for it.

“Richard Fahey’s Starspangledbanner (Catalyse) impressed me, as he moved like a very good horse.

“Columnist really impressed me too, because he went a very hard pace and then quickened again, which is hard to do, and James Doyle was very impressed with Archie’s horse (Electrolyte).”

Brown went on: “The gameplan was to buy a group of two-year-olds and hopefully out of that group a couple might get to Ascot. We’re on track with that, which is great because it’s not easy to do.

“We’ll get closer to the time and if everything is still okay, we’ll take our chance in hopefully some Ascot races.

“We have a couple more entered this week and they could throw their hat into the ring, too. I bought Ardad as a breezer and he won six days before winning the Windsor Castle.

“We’re with some of the best two-year-old trainers in the country, they know what they are doing but there’s absolutely zero pressure on them to get them to Ascot, they’ll only go if they are absolutely 100 per cent.”

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