Shot at Greatness: Wathnan Filly Shines at Royal Ascot

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Earth Shot showed herself to be one of the best three-year-old fillies in training with a highly impressive victory in the G2 Ribblesdale Stakes, becoming Wathnan Racing’s second winner of the week at Royal Ascot.

An impressive winner at Newmarket’s Craven meeting in April before finishing a close second in the Listed Height Of Fashion Stakes at Goodwood, she took another step towards a potential Classic run when prevailing in an eventful contest which saw Hector Crouch unshipped from Lady Roisia as the stalls opened.

 The filly’s trainer William Haggas said, “I thought Earth Shot possibly should have won at Goodwood. She has always been a beautiful filly and I’ve always said she wants soft ground. Fair play to William Buick — she ran second to another one of ours last year in a maiden, and William Buick said ‘she’s pretty good’, and they all say he knows what he’s talking about. We always had hopes she would be good and, I guess, for a middle-distance filly, winning the Ribblesdale is second best to winning the Oaks. It is a hell of a prize to win.”

 Jockey James Doyle added, “When we got to the turn, she started to zoom into it really good. I was up behind Ryan [Moore], and the loose horse must have swerved out, because Ryan swerved and I had to swerve because I was close to his heels. I lost a good bit of momentum there and had to regather her momentum a couple of times up the straight. But once she got organised, she really stuck her neck out.”

Bred by Classic-winning breeder Anthony Oppenheimer of Hascombe and Valiant Studs, Earth Shot hails from a top-class family which includes the Derby and Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Golden Horn.