Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 15 September 2025

I’m not alone in having felt the last few days have passed through in a bit of a whirl.

We had 31 thoroughbred races over the four days of Doncaster and then a clutch of Pattern races over the weekend in Ireland. The fourth day at Doncaster was particularly challenging, with no fewer than 110 runners including some very tricky handicaps.

Then we had the threat of heavy rain on Saturday, although it did not affect the going at the Curragh as much as expected. It did, though, lead to a late change after the fifth race at Doncaster on Sunday.

Trying to look back objectively, there wasn’t one performance that stood out. I concede that with the passing of the years it takes something special to set the spine tingling, but there was no single performance that struck me at the time as being particularly noteworthy.

That seems to have been the case all season. We’ve read how muddled the top sprinting division is and it seems to me that the colts’ middle-distance Classic generation is not dissimilar.

Lambourn is Aidan O’Brien’s sixth dual-Derby winner, but he has subsequently performed far worse than his other five. Of these, Camelot only won a Group 3 as a four-year-old but was, of course, desperately unfortunate not to land the Triple Crown when just failing to catch Encke, who the following spring tested positive for stanozolol.

Lambourn was expected to step up from his listless run at York in the St Leger but although it wasn’t a bad effort in fourth it fell short of the level you would hope to see from a dual-Derby winner

Puerto Rico went into the Group 2 Champagne Stakes a five-race maiden, albeit a classy one, and his experience stood him in good stead in the closing stages.

As some of you are aware I have grown quite fond of Tim Easterby’s diminutive Argentine Tango this season, so I was sad to see her get taken out of the race when still in contention in the Flying Childers Stakes. There is nothing of her but she can still feature at this level in the closing weeks of the season.

In the Moyglare Stud Stakes at the Curragh on Sunday the clever money came in for Precise, the longest priced of Aidan O’Brien’s three in the early betting, and not for the first time it proved well informed.

The same thing happened with the aforementioned Lambourn at Epsom. On that occasion he went from 20/1 the night before to a starting price of 13/2.

Bye for now

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