Guarnieri pencils in Deauville date for Big Rock

Ashley Iveson
June 24, 2024 3:57 pm

Multiple options as Group One winner tries to regain his sparkle.

Big Rock will likely bid to get his career back on track at Deauville later in the summer after a disappointing run in the Queen Anne Stakes at Royal Ascot.

The four-year-old was a brilliant all-the-way winner of last season’s Queen Elizabeth II Stakes over the same course and distance on Champions Day, but has not managed to recapture that form since leaving Christopher Head to join Maurizio Guarnieri.

After being beaten into sixth place on his stable debut in the Lockinge at Newbury last month, hopes were high that Big Rock would raise his game on his return to the scene of his finest hour.

However, after blazing a trail down the centre of the track, with only compatriot Facteur Cheval for company as the rest of the field raced towards the stands’ rail, he weakened out of contention to finish 10th.

Guarnieri believes the forceful tactics backfired on quick ground and hopes to see him return to an easier surface at Deauville, where he could either contest the Prix Jacques le Marois on August 11 or drop down in class in search of a confidence-boosting success.

“He is OK after the race, but as you know he went on the right and most of the other horses were on the left,” said the trainer.

“I think after five furlongs on a track that was very hard, the race was finished (for him).

“He will probably go to Deauville, I’m not sure if we go in the Group One or in a Group Three.”

The following afternoon Guarnieri saddled four-time Group One-winning filly Blue Rose Cen in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes, but she too was unable to land a telling blow, finishing a well-beaten seventh of 10 behind Auguste Rodin.

The daughter of Churchill also has Deauville on her agenda.

Guarnieri added: “With Blue Rose Cen we tried to win, but with a four-year-old filly in the first part of the year, it is very difficult to beat a big, champion colt like Auguste Rodin.

“We tried to beat a champion, but the champion is the champion and he is a very strong horse.

“For us it is better to run with fillies. She was a champion filly as a two-year-old and a three-year-old, but she never ran against colts and it’s not so easy to go against horses like Auguste Rodin and all the others.

“Normally, she will go to Deauville for Prix Jean Romanet at Deauville on August 18.”