Key events
Fast and furious from the off as First Folio set a strong pace from stall two on the far side. Rousing Encore took over well over a furlong out and stayed on well to hold off Dark Thirty, while Two Tribes came from a long way off the pace to take fourth, having failed to get the sort of tow into the race that runners on the far side enjoyed.
YORK 2.42 RESULT: Rousing Encore takes the acclaim
1. ROUSING ENCORE 22-1, 2. Dark Thirty 7-1, 3. Korker 14-1, 4. Two Tribes 5-1 fav.
Off and running in the 2.42 at York …
The runners are at the post for the six-furlong sprint handicap, the latest betting is:
5-1 Two Tribes
7-1 Holkham Bay
9-1 Commanche Falls, We Never Stop & Dark Thirty
10-1 Bergerac
11-1 bar
Punters’ Cheltenham losses a boost for Levy
If you had a tough time of it betting-wise at the Cheltenham festival in March, you may – or may not – be reassured to hear that it was not just you. The Levy Board, which collects a slice of betting firms’ gross profits to return it to the sport in prize money, investment grants and so on, reported this morning that the Levy yield for the year to 31 March 2025 is expected to be a new record of around £108m, up £3m from last year.
The estimate after 10 months of the year was a yield of around £100m, and the extra, unanticipated £8m is due in large part to a thumpingly good Cheltenham for the layers.
“February and March 2025, the last two months of the Levy year, saw bookmakers’ gross profit – the basis of the Levy calculation – significantly above recent norms,” the Board reported this morning, “race results at the Cheltenham Festival in March being a material factor.”
It’s interesting that nine of the 28 races at Cheltenham this year were won by a favourite or joint-favourite, the same number as in 2024 and 2023, and yet the bookies’ margins were significantly improved. So it is at least possible that the starting prices of the winning favourites – which these days are generated away from the course – were shorter (ie. more bookie-friendly) than might have been the case in previous years.
YORK 2.42, CHURCHILL TYRES HANDICAP, 6F
The booking of Ryan Moore to ride Richard Spencer’s Two Tribes should ensure that he sets off as the favourite at around 5-1, but this is a wide-open race and he is drawn in stall 15 (of 16) in a contest where the stalls are on the far side and the draw could well play a significant role. Bergerac (stall five, 13-2), twice a winner over track and trip, is back down to his last winning mark, while Holkham Bay (in 12, 7-1) and Commanche Falls (in four, 8-1), who also has a course-and-distance win to go with his two victories in the Stewards’ Cup at Goodwood back in the day, is 5lb his mark when finishing sixth in last season’s Ayr Gold Cup. CHANGE SINGS, meanwhile, is a drifter today, out to 16-1 from around 10-1 overnight, but he has showed decent form twice already this season and could well outrun his odds from stall 16.
After a photo-finish, Karl Burke’s Almosh’her is confirmed as the opening winner of York’s new season. It was a close-run thing in the end, as after Clifford Lee sent Almosh’her to the front over a furlong out, Stressfree laid down a strong challenge all the way to the line. The winner kept on well, though, eventually getting home by a head.
2.10 YORK RESULT: Almosh’her first winner of 2025 at York
1. ALMOSH’HER 15-2, 2. Stressfree, 3. Plage De Havre 11-2.
Off and running in the 2.10 at York ..
YORK 2.10, HANDICAP, 1M 3F 188YD
The runners are going to the start for the opening race of the season here at York, and while it is a competitive handicap on paper, William Haggas’s The Reverend, in the colours of Brighton & Hove Albion owner Tony Bloom, is a strong favourite at around 5-2. He is making his seasonal debut here but was a fair fourth in a similar event over track and trip last October and is currently trading at around 5-2. The lightly-raced Almosher (6-1) has two wins from three starts so far, Plage De Havre (also 6-1) has been prolific on the all-weather over the winter but needs to bounce back from a sub-par run last time but STRESSFREE, at 9-2, is the only runner attracting support against the favourite and could be the value bet having run a race full of promise at Epsom last time.
Royal runner is the latest first for Mullins
An interesting story that few would have seen coming arrived via the Irish Field this morning, when it was revealed that the King and Queen, no less, have joined the roster of owners at Willie Mullins’s record-breaking yard in Ireland.
Reaching High, a four-year-old gelding who was trained until the end of last season by the now-retired Sir Michael Stoute, has been switched to the Mullins stable in Closutton, County Carlow, and declared to run in a 12-furlong handicap at Leopardstown on Friday evening, with Jody Townend, the youngest sister of Mullins’s stable jockey, Paul, booked to ride.
The late Queen Elizabeth II, who bred Reaching High from her favourite racemare, the Ascot Gold Cup-winning Estimate, had a handful of runners in Ireland over the course of her 70 years as a racehorse owner. These included the high-class Carlton House, 5-4 favourite when beaten into fourth in the Irish Derby in 2011, but all of her runners were stabled with British yards.
Reaching High will be the first horse to carry the famous royal colours from an Irish yard, and from some angles, this could perhaps be seen as a bit of a kick in the teeth for the British training fraternity, not least at a somewhat sensitive point in turf history when, for the first time, the champion trainers on the Flat (Aidan O’Brien) and over jumps (Mullins) are both based in Ireland.
Mullins told the Irish Field that “we [Mullins and his wife, Jackie] were introduced to King Charles and Queen Camilla at Royal Ascot last year. The next thing we got a phone call asking if we would take a horse for them. I said I would be delighted and Reaching High arrived here shortly afterwards.”
Reaching High has been schooled over hurdles but will make his debut for the stable on the Flat and Mullins is already looking towards a possible run in the Ascot Stakes at Royal Ascot next month.
“His pedigree is all stamina,” Mullins said, “so those kind of races could suit him.”
Musidora Stakes the feature event on York’s opening day
Good afternoon from the Knavesmire on the first day of the 2025 season at York racecourse, when the Musidora Stakes (3.45) – the last of the traditional trials for next month’s Oaks at Epsom – is the feature race on the card.
Three of the six fillies – Smoken, Whirl and Go Go Boots – have an entry in the Classic, and all have something to recommend them. Whirl looks to extend Aidan O’Brien’s remarkable run of form in Epsom Classic trials over the last 10 days, Smoken was unbeaten in two starts as a juvenile including a very warm Listed event in November, and Go Go Boots is from the John & Thady Gosden stable, which has won this race eight times already.
All three are currently priced up at around 33-1 for the Oaks, but a striking success this afternoon would inevitably prompt a sharp cut in their Classic odds. Secret Satire, a shock Musidora winner 12 months ago, did not get the trip at Epsom but the previous three winners of this trial included two Oaks winners – Soul Sister and Snowfall – and an Epsom runner-up, Emily Upjohn, who was denied by a nose after no luck in running.
So it is a race to take seriously as a pointer toward Epsom and elsewhere, and so too is the Duke Of York Stakes at 3.13. Three of the last four winners – Starman, Millstream and Highfield Princess – went on to win Group Ones later the same season, and four of today’s runners had high-class form as three-year-olds in 2024 with the promise of better still to come in their four-year-old campaigns.
Three typically competitive handicaps complete the ITV Racing coverage from York, the official going is good to firm, good in places, and the action is underway at 2.10 with the Jorvik Handicap, something of an early trial for the Ebor – Europe’s richest handicap on the Flat – back here at the August meeting.
Preamble
Tony Paley
Greg is at York and will be with you shortly for today’s live blog on the opening day of this year’s Dante meeting. Tomorrow features the Dante Stakes itself, usually a very key Derby trial and this morning we had the Jockey Club announcement that next month’s Epsom Classic on 7 June will be run in honour of the late Aga Khan IV.
A prolific breeder and owner, the famous racehorse owner came from a line of great racing enthusiasts and was successful in the Derby on five occasions, witnessing Shergar win the race by a record 10 lengths in 1981, followed by victories for Shahrastani (1986), Kahyasi (1988), Sinndar (2000) and Harzand (2016).
The Aga Khan’s daughter, Princess Zahra, said: “My family and I are incredibly grateful to Epsom and the Jockey Clubfor running the race in honour of my father.
“The Derby is an iconic event that he deeply loved and winning it for the first time with Shergar brought him immense pride and joy. It gave him the sense that the work his father and grandfather had accomplished with the breeding operation was being carried forward.
“He eventually matched the record of my great-grandfather when Harzand secured his fifth Derby victory – a wonderful achievement.”
