Frankie Dettori celebrates after riding Advertise to victory in the Commonwealth Cup at the royal meeting. (Pic: Courtesy of Royal Ascot) 

Horse Talk with Simon Jackson:

Top horse racing tips and the latest news.

ADVERTISE benefitted from a drop back in trip when running out an easy winner of the £500,000 Group 1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot.

The son of Showcasing at his previous start had flopped in the QIPCO 2000 Guineas, and connections have opted to keep the son of Showcasing to six furlongs for the Darley July Cup at Newmarket on July 13.

After Advertise beat only one home in the 2,000 Guineas, trainer Martyn Meade shut down his stable for a month due to concerns about the health of his team and reaped a significant reward when Advertise won the Commonwealth Cup to secure the trainer’s first winner at Royal Ascot.

“Advertise was pretty special over six furlongs last year,” Meade said.

“But the problem was I had trained him to run the mile and getting him switched off we thought “how do we jazz him up again?” so maybe put the blinds (blinkers) on, just so he knows he has to sprint.

“Luckily, it did the job as he jumped and went. Clearly that demonstrates that this is his distance, if we can step him up a bit then clearly we will.

“It has been a difficult year, the horses were running very flat to start with, a good example was Advertise in the Guineas – it was so disappointing as we went here with high hopes. We were always a little bit worried whether he would get the mile or not, but certainly we thought he would run better. Then you’ve got to pull up stumps, but it is really difficult with a yard full of horses.

“It’s huge elation – to win a Group 1 at Royal Ascot, it doesn’t get much better than that – but there is certainly relief because the horses have been a little but under par. It’s brilliant, brilliant, brilliant.

“He only had one bad run in all fairness, in the Guineas, but it is very easy today – everybody writes horses off pretty quickly and think “he has run poorly, maybe he didn’t train on” and all that sort of thing.

“I have always had great faith in him. I thought let’s go back to basics, where we were before over six furlongs. We know that he is brilliant at that, so if I can just reproduce what he was doing as a two-year-old, that shouldn’t be a problem.

“Getting Frankie [Dettori] back on board was not too difficult – he knows how good the horse is. It was just lucky that he was available to ride him.

“At this stage will keep him around six [furlongs] and we have a few options now. At least he is back on everybody’s radar and we can look and see where the best place to send him is.”

Horse Talk with Simon Jackson. Showcasing horse racing in London and the south east.