Connections harbour Derby dreams in wide-open renewal

James Fanshawe is confident Ambiente Friendly now has the maturity to shine on the biggest stage in the Betfred Derby at Epsom.

Having proved a cut above his rivals in a Leicester maiden last September, a step up in class for the following month's Autumn Stakes at Newmarket appeared to come too soon for the Gleneagles colt, who was soundly beaten by Ancient Wisdom when finishing third.

He again raced freely early on when fourth in the Feilden Stakes on his three-year-old debut and pulled hard in the opening exchanges of the Lingfield Derby Trial.

However, Ambiente Friendly highlighted his huge potential by ultimately powering home to prevail by four and a half lengths ahead of a decent yardstick in Illinois, and Fanshawe naturally feels there is even more to come as his charge strengthens mentally and physically.

Epsom on Derby day is no place for the faint-hearted, with lots of hustle and bustle and a tricky pre-race parade to negotiate, but Fanshawe said: "Hopefully that won’t be too much of a problem.

"It’s the same for everyone and we’ll do everything we can to keep things nice and calm before the race, but he’s not a jig-joggy, hyper-horse.

"Freddy Tylicki picked him out. Bill [Gredley, owner] was picking nine horses for his 90th birthday at the Craven breeze-ups, he saw Freddy looking around and said to Freddy 'go and find me a horse'.

"Freddy put this Gleneagles colt up to him and Bill bought him for 80,000 guineas. If he was going to be a Derby contender, he should have made a lot more than that, but he was an immature horse – he wasn’t a strong, two-year-old type, he was sort of an elegant, later-maturing type."

Connections caused a bit of a stir when opting to bring in experienced jockey Robert Havlin to replace Callum