Marie's Diamond places a superb 3rd in the Group 1 Queen Anne!

Wed 17 Jun 2020

The £250k Group 1 Queen Anne Stakes over 1m on Royal Ascot Tuesday

MARIE'S DIAMOND, trained by Mark Johnston, placed a superb 3rd in the race yesterday, ridden by Joe Fanning. It was an absolutely superb performance by him, with some very classy horses finishing behind him!

He's a thoroughly likeable 4-year-old colt by Footstepsinthesand. Impressive, when winning the Listed Paradise Stakes at Newmarket prior to his Royal Ascot run, he put in a career best performance in the Queen Anne on Tuesday. Timeform have settled on a rating of 118 and upgraded his Newmarket run in the afore mentioned race to 116 with the benefit of hindsight.

Joe Fanning gave him an absolute peach of a ride. It’s very easy to go too quickly early in the race at Ascot and it’s very easy to kick on for home too soon at Ascot and he got both parts exactly right. It’s very rare that you see them stacked up at Ascot but that’s what he managed to achieve. The horse was gutsy and brave in the final furlong to ward off the closers for a thoroughly deserved 3rd place. We'll give him a well earned break now and look for further Group races for him over the summer.

Well done to his owners and as syndicate manager Mike Prince (called 'a friend of the show' by Ed Chamberlin on ITV Racing yesterday after his second video appearance!) Said this morning: "He’s an absolute pleasure to be involved with and he's not done too badly in his career so far, for a €35,000 yearling purchase!"