Johnston considering Ebor for Lumiere and Buratino

BUOYED by a record-breaking 47 winners last month, Mark Johnston has raised the possibility of his top juvenile prospects Lumiere and Buratino lining up at next week’s Welcome to Yorkshire Ebor Festival.
Lumiere ridden by William Buick.Lumiere ridden by William Buick.
Lumiere ridden by William Buick.

Both are amongst the leading ante-post contenders for next year’s 1000 and 2000 Guineas respectively and have been instrumental to the success of the seemingly unstoppable Johnston yard in recent weeks.

An emphatic winner on her racecourse debut at Newmarket last month, Lumiere is to be supplemented for Thursday’s £200,000 Pinsent Masons Lowther Stakes – the richest race in the country for two-year-old fillies, according to the Middleham trainer’s son and assistant Charlie.

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“The plan is to supplement for the Lowther. She missed a couple of days in the week of the Princess Margaret Stakes at Ascot, so we missed that and decided to come straight here,” he said.

“She has been A1 since and we are pleased with her. It is not the ordinary route for us to jump straight from a maiden win to a Group 2 but we don’t think she is an ordinary filly.

“She was very impressive at Newmarket and we are still dreaming. William Buick, her jockey, was incredibly complimentary about her that day and feels she is up to this grade. I am not sure that she beat a lot at Newmarket but she couldn’t have done it any better and we shall learn a lot more about her at York.”

Last year in the equivalent race saw Tiggy Wiggy and Cursory Glance, both subsequent Group One winners, in a high-class renewal and the boost in prize money means that Lumiere should form part of another high quality field.

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The Johnston team is still considering whether the colt Buratino, a Royal Ascot winner, will line-up in the Irish Thoroughbred Marketing Gimcrack Stakes on Saturday week, a race likely to feature American raider Finnegan.

Third in the Group One Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh last Sunday, the horse appeared to be inconvenienced by the ease in the going – fast ground at York would certainly increase the likelihood of the colt’s participation.

Although Dermot Weld’s Free Eagle, winner of the Prince of Wales’s stakes at Royal Ascot, could now bypass Wednesday’s Juddmonte International, the four-year-old’s absence could be more than offset by news that Aidan O’Brien’s dual Guineas winner Gleneagles is set to head to York, in preference to other engagements, and take on John Gosden’s unbeaten Epsom Derby winner Golden Horn.