Queen Of The Pride could be the latest rising star to win the Yorkshire Oaks – for three-year-old and up fillies and mares – with its distinguished history tracing back to 1849.
The Group 1 over the 2371m of York’s big galloping Knavesmire track is the highlight of day two (Thursday 22 August) of this spectacular August meeting. It has eight declared runners with Queen Of The Pride’s trainer John Gosden (now in partnership with his son Thady) looking to win it for a fifth time.
Both Queen Of The Pride’s parents were Group 1 winners and, considering the huge improvement she has made since stepping up to similar distances as this, it is surely just a matter of time before she also grabs that accolade. And very possibly on this first venture into the most elite company, especially considering the way she quickened past rivals to win last month’s G2 Lancashire Oaks at Haydock.
If team Gosden don’t win it with the Oisin Murphy-ridden four-year-old first-time York starter they could bag the winners’ prize with the five-year-old mare Emily Upjohn, a racehorse with a very different profile.
Not only has she won her only start at York – the G3 Musidora Stakes back in 2022 – but she is dual Group 1 winner latterly with a thrilling last-to-first victory in Epsom’s Coronation Cup in June 2023. However, in sharp contrast to upwardly mobile Queen Of The Pride, Emily Upjohn is struggling to re-discover her former splendour.
Thursday’s rider Kieran Shoemark was blamed in some quarters for keeping her too far back over the shorter trip of this month’s G1 Nassau Stakes at Goodwood but the Gosden’s did not join in on that criticism accepting instead that the real Emily Upjohn just didn’t turn up that day.
Neither Shoemark nor Murphy have won a Yorkshire Oaks but Murphy is clearly a huge fan of Queen Of The Pride and her Thursday chances. “She was slow to come to hand but the patience of the Gosdens’ is really paying off now and York should be ideal.” Thady Gosden added: “She is still learning but has done absolutely nothing wrong so far.”
Serious rivals to this Newmarket-trained pair include You Got To Me (Hector Crouch) and Content (Ryan Moore), first and second in last month’s G1 Irish Oaks over 2400m at the Curragh, with facts and figures suggesting that both fillies are now peaking. Moreover, their respective supporters will enjoy the statistic that three-year-olds have won the Yorkshire Oaks in eight of the last ten years; five of those handled by Content’s trainer Aidan O’Brien.
A less obvious candidate perhaps, but an interesting one surely, is William Buick’s mount Mistral Star. She is a former handicapper but the manner in which she accelerated past rivals in the Listed Aphrodite Fillies’ Stakes over this trip and on fast ground at Newmarket last month strongly suggests that this improver deserves her place in this historic event.
