Talking Horses: Appleby’s champion trainer defence takes some stopping

Since the start of the 20th century, 39 trainers have won the championship on the Flat for the first time. Just five – Frank Butters, Cecil Boyd-Rochfort, Paddy Prendergast, Peter Walwyn and Aidan O’Brien – retained the title the following season. The old saw in football that winning the championship is tough but hanging on to it is even harder seems to hold true in Flat racing, too.

But as the racing caravan moves on from Guineas weekend at Newmarket, towards Chester, York and the Derby meeting at Epsom, it is already clear that Charlie Appleby will take a great deal of stopping in his attempt to become No 6 on the list, two decades after O’Brien won his second title in 2002.

A one-two for Appleby in the 2,000 Guineas was followed on Sunday by a convincing win for With The Moonlight in the Pretty Polly Stakes, a key trial for the Oaks at Epsom next month. Andrew Balding, John & Thady Gosden, William Haggas and O’Brien, second to fifth respectively in last year’s title race, had 23 runners in all over the three days of the meeting and just one winner: Balding’s Shine So Bright in a handicap on Friday.

The Gosden stable could not even muster a runner on Saturday’s card, while O’Brien drew a blank in the Newmarket Classics for the first time since 2014. The man with a record eight Derby winners to his name already does at least head into the next fortnight of Epsom trials with the ante-post favourites for both the Derby and Oaks, however, thanks to the eye-catching performances of Luxembourg and Tuesday in their respective Guineas.

Ballydoyle, as usual, has several entries in the Classic trials at Chester this week, including Changingoftheguard, a son of Galileo who won a maiden by six lengths in early April, and is one of