The 2000 Guineas betting top four compared – form and breeding

Dawn Approach 11/8, Toronado 2/1, Cristoforo Colombo 8/1 and the increasingly well-backed Garswood 12/1 make up the current top four in Coral’s 2000 Guineas betting. Below news.coral.co.uk compares them on what they’ve achieved on the track and what may be still to come if the idiosyncrasies of their descendants are taken into account.

Form

Dawn Approach and Toronado are both unbeaten heading into the Newmarket classic, but less has to be taken on trust with the latter who we’ve seen to be in first class nick less than a month ago. Dawn Approach however does have the added bonus of having proven his superiority over Leitir Mor, Cristoforo Colombo and George Vancouver in their juvenile season.

Garswood may have an official rating 9lbs and 6lbs below the aforementioned runners respectively, but he won Newmarket’s Free Handicap last time out in the manner of colt destined for better things. Jockey Tony Hamilton was motionless in the saddle for much of the race before pushing out his mount with hands and heels.

Cristoforo Colombo has the lowest official rating of the top four in the betting, but was just one length behind Dawn Approach in the Coventry Stakes last year. He’s not encountered good ground in three winless runs since that classy performance and is entitled to get a lot closer to his Coventry rival given the good ground he’ll likely encounter on Saturday.

Breeding

Henrythenavigator and New Approach – the respective sires of Cristoforo Colombo and Dawn Approach – met in the Guineas in 2008 with the former prevailing by a nose and any doubt about their relative abilities over a mile was quashed when he repeated the dose on the Curragh in the Irish equivalent two weeks later

Being by English and Irish Derby-winner High Chaparral, Toronado can arguably be expected to improve for a longer trip in time, with quality middle distance beasts like So You Think, Redwood and Wigmore Hall others his sire has produced.

On pedigree it’d be difficult to expect Garswood to get much further than a mile with both his sire and dam’s sire rating under 7.2f on the stamina index (an aggregate of the winning trips of all his offspring to have scored a competitive victory date). However his sire Dutch Art was third in a 2009 Guineas behind Cockney Rebel and has already produced German Guineas winner Caspar Netcher.