The right combination
of factors

TWO years ago, after the Australian sprint sensation Miss Andretti blasted to victory in the King's Stand Stakes, I spoke atlength to her vet, Dr John Walker, about what made the Australian sprinters so good. He told me their prowess essentially comes down to three things.

"Genetics plays a huge part, training the next biggest, then environmental factors," he said.

The Australians have developed a terrific system, and the British and Irish sprinters are at their mercy. But just when we were starting to get used to them, along comes something to shake up the iconic British summer gala still further.

It is the jaunty Wesley Ward, with his confident crew and his two-year-olds who flick the speedometer from zero to sixty in the blink of an eye, and then keep going. There was little in their form and less in their breeding to suggest that Strike The Tiger and Jealous Again would be able to win two of Royal Ascot's first three juvenile races, but they did, in no uncertain terms.

It was a fantastic feat. It is exciting to think it might encourage more American trainers to come to Royal Ascot. But does it really suggest that any US-bred and -trained two-year-old can beat the best of the rest at this stage of the game?
Ward's achievement is truly astonishing.

The Australians were proven Group 1 performers. Ward's charges have been more lightly tried, as you would expect. To top it off, they've raced only on dirt or Polytrack. So we would have no way of predicting their success this week.

Ward has developed a system, and it is working. But it is not your typical American system for training thoroughbreds. He has long focused on speed, since his days (as a former colleague of his put it to me) as a "go-go-go jockey". He selects, from sales and from his own breeding programme, the speediest and most precocious individuals and then trains them to run fast and early, like quarter horses.

Training quarter horses is basically about one thing: breaking from the stalls. Ward's runners have clearly learned to break hard and fast - Jealous Again simply left the Queen Mary field for dead at the break.

So my guess is that training is the number one factor here. Environment would be an important one too, as American horses train at the racetrack; that likely gives two-year-olds an edge in psychological maturity.

Genetics, I'd hazard, is not the difference between Ward's runners and the rest. Sure, these Americans were bred for speed; but the Queen Mary runner-up is by Oasis Dream out of a two-year-old winner from the family of First Trump, while the third is by top Australian sprinter Exceed And Excel, victor of the very Group 1 Newmarket Handicap landed by his Royal Ascot-winning compatriots.

Finally, there is the element of luck. Even Ward might not pull it off again - so many things can go wrong in any race. His successful formula might be, then, three parts training, two parts environment, one part genetics, and to top it off, the spirit of Jealous Again's third dam: Spin To Win, by Right Combination.