There was a local winner of the Coral Golden Mile as Toimy Son, who is trained at Pulborough by David Menuisier, overcame the widest draw.
Jockey Oisin Murphy settled in near the rear of the 16 runners but, when he made his move on the outside of rivals, 12/1 shot Toimy Son responded generously to lead at the furlong marker.
Toimy Son ran on strongly to score by two lengths from runner-up Dutch Decoy, one of three runners from Charlie Johnston’s stable. The 5/1 joint-favourite Holloway Boy finished third, with another half-length back to Darkness, who proved best of David O’Meara’s five runners in fourth.
This was Toimy Son’s third appearance at Goodwood this season following good efforts when second and fourth at the track in May and June respectively.
Menuisier said: “I don’t know if I had Toimy Son wrong, but he just wasn’t doing anything last year, so we decided to geld him and give him an all-weather campaign. He had a couple of colic operations and nearly died, so we had to give him time.
“This season you could tell that he was coming back to some form. I kept him over seven because he was always a bit keen and, by racing, he settled naturally, so I decided to go back to a mile and save him for this.
“I thought, if he gets in, he should be competitive but when I saw the draw a couple of days ago, I kind of lost all hope – he was 21 of 21. Oisin rode an absolute peach. He’s won a massive race so we’ll enjoy this one. Big time. He was beaten by Wild Tiger, who won the Royal Hunt Cup, so we knew he was capable of doing something big.
“The symbol of France is the cockerel because it’s an animal that is always proud, even when he has his feet in the mud. That’s exactly what we are.”
Murphy said: “David is a local trainer and will be over the moon. It’s really hard to win these competitive handicaps and Toimy Son had a terrible draw, but showed a good turn of foot. Kyle Strydom has done a lot of work with him – thanks to him and all the team at David’s for getting the horse here in great shape.
“I revved him up at the start a little because he can be slowly away. I tried to get inside his head and actually it worked as he broke better. I couldn’t use up too much petrol, but I was able to get in one-off [the rail], travel, and he picked up well.”
Karl Burke said of Holloway Boy: “He has run a great race again – he’s strung three good races together in a row in big handicaps now. It is so hard to give 18lb to the winner, which was a much higher rated horse a year or so ago, and giving lumps of weight away to the second. He travelled beautifully through the race and possibly we got there 100 yards too soon; I don’t think so, though. We were just beaten by a better handicapped horse on the day. It is probably wise now to look for a Listed event or a Group Three or something – he’s that type of classy horse.”
Dutch Decoy’s trainer Charlie Johnston said: “A bit frustrated. I thought he was the best chance we had in the race. The winner has won from 21, but you need the rub of the green from that draw [20], and from two and a half to the furlong marker, we were all dressed up with nowhere to go. I actually thought my two in front were setting it up perfectly for him, because they were going a strong gallop. That’s fourth, third, second in the last three renewals of this race, so we’ll just have to make sure we’re back here next year.”