Great Wish has landed in Newmarket, where he will be trained through the coming week for Saturday’s British Champions Sprint Stakes (Gr.1) at Ascot. And there is news in the saddle: William Buick has the ride, because Mickael Barzalona is suspended.
The five-year-old chestnut horse travelled — as on his earlier trips abroad — with Susanne Lyseng, who also rides him every day in the week before the race. Bent Olsen’s star sprinter therefore has his regular partner with him for the last stretch of the road towards the biggest sprint Europe has to offer this autumn.
Barzalona out, Buick in
Mickael Barzalona, who rode Great Wish to victory in both the Dubai Sprint (L) at Meydan and the Prix de Meautry (Gr.3) at Deauville, cannot ride at Ascot. He was given a two-day suspension for his ride on Fairy Glen when he won the Prix de Royallieu (Gr.1) on the first day of Arc weekend — Saturday 3 October. He used the whip five times, once more than the rules allow, and the ban falls on exactly 17 and 18 October.
French riders have a “joker” that can move suspensions of five days or fewer, but Barzalona has already used his this year. And where Britain has a rule allowing short bans to be deferred from Group 1 racedays, no such rule exists in France.
The day after his second Arc win on Daryz he is therefore left without rides on Champions Day — including for Aga Khan Studs, where Christophe Soumillon has been booked for Calandagan and Rayif.
For Great Wish it means that William Buick takes over.
Buick is one of the most sought-after riders in the world and has been riding at the highest level all season — not least when he beat the Arc winner Daryz on Ombudsman in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes (Gr.1) at Royal Ascot in June. The booking is in place, but the rider is only officially listed at the declaration stage.
31 entries — the field is cut on Monday
The British Champions Sprint Stakes is run at 14.05 British time, 15.05 Danish, over 1200 metres on Ascot’s straight course. The race carries total prize money of £500,000 with £283,550 to the winner, and there is prize money all the way down to sixth place.
At the moment 31 horses are entered, but no more than 20 can line up, and the field is cut at the confirmation stage on Monday 12 October.
Great Wish is the only Scandinavian-trained horse among the entries. Among his rivals are Almeraq (Dark Angel), who won the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (Gr.1) at Royal Ascot ahead of Great Wish himself and then the Betfair Sprint Cup (Gr.1) at Haydock, Kind Of Blue (Blue Point), Comanche Brave (No Nay Never) and the Clive Cox-trained Jasour (Dark Angel).
Three of the names from Arc day at ParisLongchamp may turn up again: True Love (No Nay Never), who won the Prix de la Forêt (Gr.1), Mission Central (No Nay Never), who finished third in the Prix de l’Abbaye de Longchamp (Gr.1), and Samangan (Blue Point), who was fifth in the Forêt for Aga Khan Studs and Francis-Henri Graffard.
From Doncaster to Ascot
The story behind Great Wish began in the spring of 2023, when Bent Olsen found the chestnut at Doncaster’s Breeze Up Sale and won a bidding duel with Karl Burke at £130,000 — with Lone Kaj-Nielsen on the phone from home. She gave him his name: she had wished for a foal by Night Of Thunder, and she had wished to see her horse run in Dubai. She did not live to see it herself.
On 30 January this year Great Wish won the Dubai Sprint (L) at Meydan with Barzalona — Bent Olsen’s first ever winner in Dubai. In March he was seventh in the Al Quoz Sprint (Gr.1) on World Cup day under Silvestre de Sousa, beaten less than three lengths on his first start in a Group 1.
In June he was sixth in the Queen Elizabeth II Jubilee Stakes (Gr.1) at Royal Ascot under Kieran Shoemark, again with less than three lengths to the winner.
At home at Klampenborg he won the Zawawi Sprint Cup (L) on Derby day with Elione Chaves, and on 30 August came the biggest of his career so far: the Prix de Meautry (Gr.3) at Deauville, won by four and a half lengths.
That win took him from 1,778th to 224th in the world rankings at Thoroughbred Racing Commentary — the biggest climb anywhere in the world that week.
The task on 17 October is a different and harder one, but Great Wish has shown twice this year that he belongs in the company.
