The improving Kevin Prendergast runner is selected to go one better than in his Classic Trial race at Leopardstown

The absence of star names has turned this year’s 2,000 Guineas into a real puzzle for punters but the answer could be Madhmoon (3.35), from the yard of Kevin Prendergast, who last won this colt’s Classic with Nebbiolo in 1977. Fast ground seems likely at Newmarket, despite Friday’s showers, and that will be this colt’s cup of tea, as he looked flashy on a sound surface last year.

He was spinning his wheels on soft ground at Leopardstown last month but still ran well and is expected to be a lot sharper for that, so 8-1 is fine. Of the rest, Ten Sovereigns is quick but a mile might stretch him and Magna Grecia looks more of a threat.

It is almost 200 years since the same trainer had won the 2,000 Guineas three years running, which is one measure of Aidan O’Brien’s achievement in saddling Magna Grecia to give him a 10th winner in this Classic here on Saturday. Another is that O’Brien has now won exactly half of the Classics run in Britain since the start of 2014: 13 out of 26. He has reached a stage where he does not so much break records as extend those he already holds.

Magna Grecia did not set off as the favourite on Saturday. Although as Donnacha O’Brien, his jockey and Aidan’s son pointed out, “he was the favourite when I got on him” when the final field was published on Thursday.

Rails on both sides could be used to guide runners towards the centre of the course and ensure a fair race for the Classic

Nothing does this punter’s head in more than trying to predict where the field will go in the major straight-course races. Will they split into groups and, if so, will any of the groups cross to a rail? Would they gain an advantage? I fancy one on the far side but it looks like there’s more pace on the near side, so do I stick with it and hope the near-side pace collapses, or seek a hold-up runner on the near side that’ll get a better tow into the race?

To some extent, it’s an enjoyable part of racing’s puzzle, but then the stalls clang open and the jockeys do something you didn’t anticipate and your calculations are reduced to ash inside 50 yards. If it’s frustrating for punters, I bet some trainers and owners are feeling the same.

• Clive Cox’s Positive wins Solario Stakes but still 33-1 for Guineas
• Pinatubo was five lengths too good for Positive at Goodwood

The Solario Stakes has subsequent winners of the Derby, Breeders’ Cup Classic and Sussex Stakes on its recent roll of honour but the latest renewal may say more about a colt that was not in the field. Positive showed courage as well as quality to edge past Kameko by a nose with Charlie Appleby’s Al Suhail in third. Appleby’s stable, though, also houses Pinatubo, the 2,000 Guineas favourite, who was five lengths too good for Positive at Glorious Goodwood last month.

That form is the reason why Positive, who is trained by Clive Cox, is still among the 33-1 outsiders for next year’s Guineas, though with three runs behind him after his first Group Two victory here he still has plenty of time to close the gap on Pinatubo. Positive could yet meet him again in the Dewhurst Stakes in mid-October, while the Prix Jean-Luc Lagardère on Arc day is also under consideration.

King Of Change returns to the track, 137 days after finishing runner-up in the Guineas, but where is Magna Grecia?

One of many great things about the 2,000 Guineas is that it identifies the most classy young milers so we can have fun following them through the summer, right? But not this year! Neither Magna Grecia nor King Of Change, who finished first and second in the Newmarket Classic, have been seen since May.

Now, 137 days after the Guineas, King Of Change will return to the track at Sandown this afternoon and we’ll get some idea as to whether his effort at 66-1 last time was a fluke or not. But the mystery of Magna Grecia remains unsolved, as Aidan O’Brien’s colt has not run since he was a disappointing fifth in the Irish Guineas on 25 May.

Earthlight proved himself a star but the keenly anticipated Middle Park Stakes did not provide the hoped-for battle, one of the key runners, Siskin, having been backed out of the stalls about a second before they opened. There might have been a feeling of deflation had it not been for the bit of vaudeville put on by Frankie Dettori half an hour later as he won the Cambridgeshire on the heavily backed Lord North.

It has been a poor year for French racing, with most of its major trophies being boxed up for export over the summer. But the unbeaten Earthlight, trained in Chantilly by André Fabre, is a genuine star and broke the juvenile course record that had been set in the previous race.

• Young star odds-on with some bookmakers for 2,000 Guineas
• Race in May will be run on same course as Saturday’s success

There was a fair measure of relief mixed in with the elation after Pinatubo kept his unbeaten record by winning the Dewhurst Stakes, despite Newmarket’s soft ground posing a new question for Godolphin’s star juvenile. He will now spend the winter as hot favourite for the 2,000 Guineas back at the same track in May, a race for which some bookmakers already have him odds-on.

“People asked if we were taking a risk, running him again,” acknowledged his trainer, Charlie Appleby, after watching his charge achieve a two-length success that was comfortable rather than impressive. Pinatubo’s reputation could hardly improve after his awe-inspiring nine-length success in Ireland’s National Stakes last month and no one would have been in the least surprised if connections decided to call a halt for the year at that point.

But Appleby doubtless saw value in giving the colt a first taste of the Rowley Mile, on which the Guineas will also be staged, with its wide open spaces and tricky undulations. “If you’re a boxer going into the ring, you want plenty of experience behind you when it comes to a dogfight,” was how he explained it.

For a few seconds approaching the furlong pole on Saturday, a dogfight seemed likely as Arizona battled on dourly, refusing to concede the lead after Pinatubo cruised alongside. William Buick had to be firm in driving the winner out to the line.

“We didn’t see the Pinatubo like we saw on his last two starts, travelling and pulling a cart,” said Appleby. “William’s asking him to go through the gears. I was pleased to see his reaction, he was picking up. But it wasn’t until the last 100 yards that he was very authoritative.”

This was a first Dewhurst success for both trainer and jockey, and may have been especially important to Buick, as it was his first Group One win in Britain this year. The rider was sidelined for two months in high summer by a head injury.

The question now is whether we have already seen the best of Pinatubo, or whether he can be “the next Frankel”, as suggested by Saturday’s Racing Post, and extend his greatness for another season or two. Aidan O’Brien, who saddled Arizona and Wichita to be second and third, seemed happy enough. “Hopefully we can take him on again next year,” he said.

• Ascot considers unprecedented move for social highlight
• Classics in limbo as new dates sought for Guineas and Derby

What’s the point of Royal Ascot without the fancy dresses, absurd hats and the champagne-guzzling revellers who wear them? If there is an answer to that question, it will be identified this summer, as the 109-year-old event is to be staged behind closed doors, assuming that it goes ahead at all.

Fans of horse racing felt the ground shifting beneath their feet when the news was announced on Tuesday afternoon, just moments after Jockey Club officials said the first four Classic races of the year, the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas, the Derby and the Oaks, were to be postponed indefinitely. The Guineas would normally take place at Newmarket in May, the Derby and the Oaks at Epsom in early June, but it is now accepted as impossible to press ahead with such important races on those dates.

• BHA reveals plans for Classics and Ascot from June
• Guineas on first weekend in June and Derby in July

Royal Ascot is odds-on to be the first major British sporting event to take place behind closed doors this summer after the British Horseracing Authority confirmed its intended timetable for a series of major races, including the first four Classics of the season.

It will be a Royal meeting like no other if the five-day event opens as scheduled on 16 June, with no Royal procession, morning suits or millinery and without the Queen in attendance for the first time in her 68-year reign. However, with eight of the Flat season’s Group One races – the most valuable and prestigious contests in the sport – due to be run at the meeting, staging Royal Ascot in its traditional slot in the calendar would be a major boost to an industry that has been idle since the lockdown began in mid-March.

‘There’s not gonna be many hours slept’ says trainer aiming for win with Kenzai Warrior two years after saddling 50-1 runner-up

Roger Teal is so immersed in training horses, he literally forgot how old he was. When his birthday came around on Sunday, he told friends he was turning 54. “My wife told me: ‘You’re 53, you doughnut’. Bit of a bonus, really!”

Being given a year of his life back may not be the only good thing that happens to the genial trainer this week. Just two years after Tip Two Win gave him the biggest payday of his career by running second in the 2,000 Guineas, Teal is once more punching miles above his weight with another Classic contender, Kenzai Warrior.

The hot Classic favourite has had Saturday’s race as his destination since his demolition job at the Curragh

In most great racehorses’ careers, there is a moment when they do something so obviously beyond the capabilities of their peers that it marks them out not just as the best of their own generation, but among the best of any generation. For Frankel, it was the 2,000 Guineas nine years ago, when he flew down the Rowley Mile almost at a sprinter’s pace and had the race won with two furlongs left to run. About 100,000 thoroughbreds are foaled around the world each year and, most years, there is not a single one among them that can do something like that to a top-class field.

For Pinatubo, the moment was the National Stakes at the Curragh last September. He had impressive wins at Royal Ascot and Glorious Goodwood in the book already but no one could have imagined that he would cruise into contention travelling supremely strongly two furlongs out and then storm an astonishing nine lengths clear of the best two-year-olds in Ireland. Even then, seven-and-a-half months out, thoughts were already turning to Guineas day in May 2020, and Pinatubo’s next step towards a place among the all-timers.

• Oisin Murphy wins on 10-1 shot for Andrew Balding
• Odds-on favourite Pinatubo finishes only third

“I wanted to carry him on my shoulders and swing him round and make him dizzy,” Oisin Murphy said of Kameko’s trainer, Andrew Balding, after recording the first Classic success of his career in the 2,000 Guineas at a spectator-less Newmarket on Saturday. “But first of all, I’m not big or strong enough to do that, and secondly, there’d be a lot of bad press tomorrow morning.”

In this time of physically distanced racing behind closed doors, however, a back-slapping celebration was the only thing missing fortrainer and jockey, on a day when their belief in Kameko was fully vindicated.

Kameko’s trainer lines up the Derby after last weekend’s 2,000 Guineas triumph while Seinesational is one to watch on racing’s return to Pontefract

At Park House Stables in the pretty Hampshire village of Kingsclere, newly home to the 2,000 Guineas winner Kameko, the celebrations of Saturday’s Classic success have not just been muted, they have barely begun at all. Asked if there has been anything done in the way of swinging from the chandeliers, the trainer Andrew Balding replies: “Not really, yet. But we’ll find time for that, when we can safely do it. It can wait.”

As at other racing stables, staff at Park House have found a way of working while maintaining physical distancing but there seems little point in trying to celebrate the high point of one’s career in such constrained circumstances. Balding has put the party on ice but there is no doubting what Kameko’s win meant to the 47-year-old, whose previous Classic success came in the Oaks when he was a rookie trainer aged just 30.

Winners at either end of the Ayr card took the leader four clear of his big rival Brian Hughes in the race for the championship

Winners at either end of the Ayr card on Friday took Harry Skelton four clear of his big rival Brian Hughes in the race for the National Hunt jump jockeys’ title, prompting Ladbrokes to cut his odds for a debut victory in the championship to a prohibitive 1-10. Hughes, who drew a blank at Ayr, is out to 5-1 to defend the title he won for the first time last season.

Skelton opened the Scottish Grand National meeting with an easy success on the 4-9 favourite Stepney Causeway, but had to work much harder for victory on the 11-2 chance I’d Better Go Now, who got home by three-quarters of a length in a three-mile handicap hurdle at the end of the afternoon.

Trainer given Classics boost in early-season trials after pair triumph at Newbury

Few trainers’ dreams of Classic success survive the early-season trials largely unscathed, but Richard Hannon came closer than most here on Sunday as wins for Snow Lantern and Chindit left him with credible contenders for both the 1,000 and 2,000 Guineas at Newmarket next month.

Snow Lantern’s success came in a maiden at the top of the card, but she won it so readily that she was cut to around 8-1 to emulate her mother, Sky Lantern, who won the Classic for Hannon’s father, also Richard, in 2013.

Charles Hills’s colt lacks experience but stormed clear of a small field in a lightning-fast time at the Craven meeting

Aidan O’Brien has a record 10 wins in the 2,000 Guineas to his name already and has enough confidence in a three-strong team for this year’s Newmarket Classic to keep St Mark’s Basilica, the Dewhurst winner, at Ballydoyle while he waits for the French equivalent.

That feels ominous for the home team but while Battleground, Wembley and Van Gogh all have solid claims, there is no sense of a standout colt in the O’Brien squad, or in the race as a whole for that matter.

• Bolger-trained son of Dawn Approach wins by short head
• Lucky Vega finishes third with O’Brien horses well beaten

At 79 and 54 years of age respectively, Jim Bolger and Kevin Manning are among the more senior trainer-jockey combinations in the Flat racing game. As Poetic Flare’s narrow success in the 2,000 Guineas here proved, however, Bolger’s ability to train a horse to the minute remains as acute as ever, and so too does Manning’s knack of timing a challenge to perfection.

There was just a short-head between Poetic Flare and Master Of The Seas at the line, but the nod favoured the 16-1 chance to give Bolger and Manning, his son-in-law, a second success in the Newmarket Classic, eight years after their victory with Poetic Flare’s sire, Dawn Approach.

• Luxembourg finishes third behind stable companions
• Coroebus cut from 16s to 10-1 for Derby after victory

Charlie Appleby had made little secret of his nagging feeling that Coroebus could have the beating of Native Trail, last season’s champion juvenile, in their three-year-old season, so there could be no complaints from favourite-backers as the 5-1 shot beat the 5-4 market leader in the 2,000 Guineas here.

The 1-2 was Appleby’s first success in the Newmarket Classic, the first defeat of Native Trail’s career and a clear sign that Appleby will mount a strong defence of the Flat trainer’s championship, which he won for the first time in 2021. James Doyle, meanwhile, went into the race without a victory to his name in any of the British Classics and memories of near-misses in the 2,000 Guineas aboard Kingman and Barney Roy.

Lester Piggott, who has died aged 86, was regarded by many as the finest jockey ever to ride on British turf. His record in major races is unlikely to be surpassed. No other 20th-century jockey came close to his achievement. In all, he rode 4,493 winners in Britain and more than 850 elsewhere during a career that spanned 47 years, with major successes in France, Ireland, the US, Hong Kong and Singapore.

Wherever he travelled, he was feted in a manner unique for a jockey. However, his career was dogged by controversy, leading to a jail sentence for tax fraud in 1987 and the withdrawal of his OBE.

• Unbeaten colt down to 8-1 in betting for next year’s Classic
• Trainer keen to give winner one more run this season

Two-year-old debut winners for the master trainer Sir Michael Stoute normally turn out to be very useful and Nostrum proved that was the case again when following up in excellent style on the opening day of Newmarket’s Cambridgeshire meeting.

The strapping son of Kingman quickened clear to see off Holloway Boy, himself a rarer specimen as a debut winner at Royal Ascot, in the Group Three Tattersalls Stakes on Wednesday and earned an 8-1 quote for next year’s 2,000 Guineas back at the track in May from Betfair. The Godolphin-owned favourite Victory Dance was third.