A highlight of the European Flat racing season, the 2,000 Guineas is the first of the five British Classic races and the first leg of the Triple Crown. Run over a straight mile on the Rowley Mile Course at Newmarket, the race is open to three-year-old colts and fillies, but not geldings, worth £525,000 in total prize money and traditionally scheduled for the first Saturday in May.

The 2,000 Guineas was inaugurated in 1809, five years before the fillies’ equivalent, the 1,000 Guineas, which nowadays is run on the following day. One of the finest riders of the Victorian era, James ‘Jem’ Robinson, remains the leading jockey in the history of the 2,000 Guineas with nine winners between 1825 and 1848. More recently, the current Master of Ballydoyle, Aidan O’Brien, has saddled 10 winners of the first colts’ Classic, the most recent of which was Magna Grecia in 2018, and is the leading trainer.

The 2,000 Guineas is obviously a prestigious and valuable contest in its own right but, as the first leg of the Triple Crown, often provides pointers towards the second leg, the Derby, run over a mile-and-a-half at Epsom the following month. Since the races have co-existed, dozens of horses have completed the 2,0000 Guineas/Derby double, the first being Smolensko, in 1813, and the last Camelot, in 2012.

From a punting perspective, the last 10 runnings of the 2,000 Guineas has produced just one winning favourite, Churchill in 2017, but five other winners came from the first three in the betting. The other winners in that period were sent off at 16/1 (twice), 14/1 and 10/1, so it sometimes pays to look beyond the market leaders. The smallest field assembled for the 2,000 Guineas in the past decade was 10 runners in 2017 and it is interesting to note that seven winners in that period were drawn in single-figures. Interestingly, although recognised trials for the 2,000 Guineas, the Craven Stakes, run over the same course and distance, and the Greenham Stakes, run over seven furlongs at Newbury, in mid-April, are rarely significant on the outcome.