Lanwades Stud Nell Gwyn Stakes |
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| Group 3, Newmarket £95,000 guaranteed, 3yo fillies only, 7f, Class 1  |
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There is a particular optimism that attends the early weeks of the Flat season, a sense that what was hinted at last year might now be realised in full. For Awaken, that possibility carries a familiar echo, one that leads back to Cachet and a Classic campaign that began in similar fashion.
Trained by George Boughey and owned by Highclere Thoroughbreds, Awaken returns with a profile that invites comparison. Cachet, of course, used the Nell Gwyn Stakes as her springboard before landing the 1000 Guineas and coming within a head of repeating the feat at ParisLongchamp. The route is well worn, but rarely straightforward.
What Awaken brings is substance as much as promise. Her juvenile campaign offered a sequence of performances that placed her firmly among the better fillies of her generation, including a notable effort at Royal Ascot and a creditable fourth in the Rockfel Stakes at Newmarket, a race that often serves as a reliable marker for the following spring. Yet it is not so much what she did then as how she has developed since that appears to have elevated expectations.
Harry Herbert, speaking for Highclere, was clear in his assessment: “We’ve probably got as strong a group of horses as we’ve had for a while and Awaken is a very important horse for us this season.
“She was a very good two-year-old filly and has done very well physically – she’s transformed over the winter months.
“All being well she will go to the Nell Gwyn or the Fred Darling at Newbury, but I think George is probably favouring Newmarket.
“She was fourth in the Rockfel on her final start and ran a very good race, but she was very weak last year. She was placed behind Venetian Sun at Royal Ascot and she’s a really important filly, but it is how she has done physically that is the really exciting thing.”
That physical development, often the unseen variable between two and three, may prove decisive. Fillies who improve in strength and scope through the winter frequently bridge the gap between useful and top-class, and Awaken’s connections clearly believe she falls into that category.
The Nell Gwyn, scheduled for mid-April on the Rowley Mile, remains the most likely starting point, a race that will offer both a test and a measure. Its seven furlongs demand pace and balance, but also provide an early indication of whether a filly will stretch effectively to a mile. The alternative, the Fred Darling at Newbury, offers a similar examination, though Newmarket’s undulations and straight course often reveal more than they conceal.
The wider landscape of the fillies’ division is still forming. Early-season trials will begin to separate the hopeful from the proven, while the Newmarket Guineas itself will ultimately define the hierarchy. Within that context, Awaken sits in the category of the progressive type — not yet dominant, but with the potential to become so.
For now, the comparison with Cachet serves less as a prediction than as a reference point. The path is there; whether Awaken can follow it will depend on what the spring reveals.
Lanwades Stud Nell Gwyn Stakes
(Fillies' Group 3)
£95,000 guaranteed, 3yo only, 7f, Class 1
13 entries
Going:
