Emily Upjohn made clear favourite for Oaks after winning Musidora

Many horses were struggling to quicken on the ground here on Wednesday but Emily Upjohn was emphatically not among them. John and Thady Gosden’s filly shot away from her field with a sustained burst of speed two out in the Musidora Stakes, eventually crossing the line five-and-a-half lengths clear of Life Of Dreams, and is now clear favourite at around 6-4 for the Oaks on 3 June.

This was a seventh Musidora winner for the Gosden stable and the record of the previous six in the Classic at Epsom a few weeks later is uninspiring, with the only three fillies that went on to run in the Oaks all beaten.

Everything about Emily Upjohn’s win here suggested she will be the one to break the sequence, however, as the step up to a mile-and-a-half is likely to see further improvement from a filly with stamina on both sides of her pedigree.

“A mile-and-a-half will be right up her alley and she couldn’t have done it any better, really,” John Gosden said afterwards.

“That’s probably where she’ll stay after this. She’s very well balanced but there’s no reason we won’t go to the breakfast at Epsom [on 23 May], have a canter round the track there and see how she handles it. She likes to show off and enjoy herself but I thought she settled beautifully after a furlong. We’ve been lucky enough to win [the Oaks] three times and she very much deserves to be in that league.”

Frankie Dettori, Emily Upjohn’s jockey, suggested the winner is at a similar point at this stage of her career to Enable, the 2017 Oaks winner, who went on to take 11 Group One races in all.

“The ground is a lot deeper than you think,” Dettori said, “and everybody was struggling from four out. I kept her together and from the two-and-a-half to the winning post I didn’t see