Seagulls ready to swoop for Golden Eagle riches

It promises to be an exciting weekend across the globe for Hugo Palmer – who as well as having Ardisia run at the Breeders’ Cup, will travel to Sydney to saddle Seagulls Eleven in the prestigious Golden Eagle.

William Haggas’ Lake Forest took home the bumper first prize of A$10million in last year’s Randwick feature and Palmer will attempt to make it back-to-back victories with his son of Galileo Gold, who represents a syndicate which includes the likes of James Milner and his Brighton & Hove Albion teammate Danny Welbeck.

“It’s very exciting and the sport is increasingly global so it’s great to have runners on three different continents at the weekend,” said Palmer, who as well as his overseas runners will also be represented on home soil.

“The Seagulls Eleven plan was rather different to Ardisia which came together in a bit of a hurry and we hadn’t even contemplated until he ran so well at Ascot. But this has been the plan for Seagulls Eleven, loosely since Goodwood and more firmly since mid-September.”

The Goodwood victory Palmer references in the Group Three Thoroughbred Stakes represented the climax of a long endeavour to return the son of his Classic hero Galileo Gold to top form having seen his confidence dented in the 2000 Guineas on his first outing of the current campaign.

“Winning at Goodwood was great and we’ve been on a bit of a retrieval mission since the 2000 Guineas where it all went wrong,” explained Palmer.

“He completely lost his nerve and as a two-year-old he basically wore the second horse for the last furlong in the National Stakes at the Curragh and then he got crashed into from behind at Del Mar when he went to the Breeders’ Cup last year and I think that really affected his confidence.

“When he got tight for room in the 2000 Guineas he bottled it and spat the dummy out, so we have had to work carefully and hard to get his confidence back and he has really gone back in the right direction which is good.”

Now having elected to make the long journey to Sydney rather than venture to Del Mar, Palmer will be hoping to make it third time lucky in Australia.

Palmer has previously seen his Wall Of Fire finish second in the Herbert Power Stakes before being sent off fancied for the Melbourne Cup in 2017, while in the same year he also saddled Mask Of Time to finish fourth in a Group One at Caulfield.

However, he believes he now has the ideal candidate to make his latest visit a fruitful one having seen his son of Galileo Gold thrive on his globetrotting adventure.

Palmer said: “Seagulls Eleven is versatile in his run style and can go forward, take back, whatever Tom Marquand decides to do and he will be happy with whatever the ground is.

“There’s a bit of rain forecast this week and if they got more than expected, I don’t think that would effect him adversely at all.

“He’s a horse who is a dream to travel to the other side of the world as you can be confident when you get there conditions won’t be against him.

“We’ve been building to this for sometime and he has absolutely thrived in the Australian sunshine. He’s put on quite a lot of weight in a muscular way and he has trained great and really loved it.

“We’ve found Canterbury in Sydney has been much kinder than previously when I’ve been to Melbourne. It’s just been the Japanese, the Haggas horses and us, so we’ve been very spoilt to have a whole racecourse to ourselves.”