Things clearly haven’t been that straight forward with Wesam given that he was making his racecourse debut on the All-Weather in the September of his 4-year-old season. However, Saeed Bin Suroor’s son of Exceed and Excel made up for lost time with an impressive debut success. Having been supported in the market throughout the day, the 5/4 Favourite made light work of this Novice contest, making good headway from behind the pace to win with something in hand. Initially slightly keen in PJ McDonald’s hands, he quickly settled, helped by the relatively strong early gallop set by his stablemate Hazem. Once asked to close, he was brought to the stands side and responded readily, running the fastest final 2 furlong splits as he recorded the best late speed figures in the field. Although drifting slightly off a true line in the final furlong towards the centre of the course, he had the race won at the furlong pole and despite idling slightly in the last 50 yards, this was an impressive debut performance. A winning time of 1:40.32s was faster than the TPD expected time for the grade and the fact that he beat a couple of more experienced rivals with relative ease bodes well. The Tapeta was certainly riding on the quicker side, a fact confirmed by the fact that the Class 6 handicaps later on the card were also faster than the expected times, but this long striding son of Exceed and Excel still produced a very polished performance on his debut. He is a half-brother to an All-Weather winner (Foxlight) and his Dam is a half-sister to the French 1,000 Guineas winner Flotilla, so there is certainly a pedigree to work with and it’s easy to see why the Godolphin team decided to persist with this 4-year-old.

The horses in behind had fought out the finish at Windsor at the start of the month and whilst Canopus has reversed the form with Livonian, a combination of the 7 lb penalty carried by Ralph Beckett’s charge and the fact that he was too keen in the early stages has probably accounted for that reversal. The pair set a fair standard, but the winner is the horse to be excited about, especially given that he has recorded an average stride length of 24.74 ft, fully 0.68 ft longer than his nearest rival. Both his stride length and average stride frequency reached their race peaks in the 6th furlong when he was asked to close and having won despite pulling himself up in the closing stages, there would appear to be more to come. With this experience under his belt, it’s not impossible to think that he may be heading to Dubai over the winter and whilst there is clearly some caution needed given his profile, this was a very promising if belated start to his career.