Horse Talk with Simon Jackson:

Top horse-racing tips and the latest news.

POETIC Flare won the QIPCO 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes and bids to secure a dream treble by winning the Qatar Sussex Stakes at Goodwood on Wednesday.

The Jim Bolger-trained Poetic Flare has won three of his five starts this season and returns to the track for the first time since landing the St James Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot on June 15.

Poetic Flare has remained in full-training since Ascot and bids to go one better than his sire Dawn Approach who in 2013 won the QIPCO 2000 Guineas and St James’s Palace Stakes before finishing a close second in the Sussex Stakes, which this year carries total prize money of £1 million.

Three horses since the millennium have secured the lucrative treble, Rock Of Gibraltar (2002), Henrythenavigator (2008) and Frankel – who completed the treble in 2011 and returned to win the Sussex Stakes for a second time in 2012.

Bolger, speaking to representatives of the QIPCO British Champions Series said: “He’s (Poetic Flare) only had a break in as much as he hasn’t been racing, but he’s a horse who I have to keep moving and so it hasn’t exactly been a holiday. He’s very well and I couldn’t be happier with him.” 

The going at Goodwood is soft at the time of writing (Wednesday) and Bolger intimated he would ideally like to see conditions dry. 

Bolger continued: “Dawn Approach was a really good horse on good ground or faster, and the day he was beaten by Toronado in the Sussex Stakes it was officially good to soft. It was moving on top, so he never really got a hold of it. He didn’t like it. 

“It was fast ground when Poetic Flare won at Ascot, and it might well be that he’s better on that better ground, but he seems to handle all going and he’s pretty good on soft too.

“My preference would be for good ground, but I’m not much given to worrying anyway. Whatever it is, I’ll take it. I’m very happy with my horse and I don’t worry too much about anybody else’s.”

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