HORSE RACING FIXTURES AND RESULTS

Goodwood Preview: The Jewels on The Downs

Goodwood is growing in not only prize money but also significance, especially the top-end races, which all have layers of intrigue in one way or another, and Jamie Lynch picks out his five gems for the big week.

That mildly musty smell in the house upon returning from a holiday isn’t unfamiliar or even new. In actual fact, it’s what your home always smells like, but your nose is so accustomed to it that your brain decides not to register it, until the leave of absence. The brain is so complex, and so busy, that it decides for you what’s important and what’s not. Try saying a word – any word – thirty times in quick succession: the distortion by the end is much the same system as the nose-blindness, in that the brain just can’t be bothered with it after a while, thus the word loses all structure and significance, in a practice known as semantic satiation. Say something enough times, and it becomes meaningless.

And so to the Duel on The Downs at Goodwood, which more and more feels like recycled wrapping paper, once lustrous when the gifts within were indeed luxurious, like Frankel v Canford Cliffs, but now tatty around the edges and reprocessed for any occasion. Ribchester is a top-class racehorse and Churchill could still become one, but there are thirty such scenarios in a year, Flat and National Hunt, and the 2017 Sussex Stakes is a duel, for sure, but it’s not the duel. It’s not even top of the list for races at the festival, as we take a longer-range look at what’s likely to put the ‘Glorious’ into Glorious Goodwood this year:

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