Whistlejacket, a 500,000 guineas brother to champion juvenile Little Big Bear, shaped with promise when runner-up to Cowardofthecounty in a six-furlong maiden at the Curragh last month, impressing with how well he moved through the race, and he stepped up on that form when landing the odds in a five-furlong listed race at the same course last week.

Whistlejacket again displayed plenty of pace, going with enthusiasm at the head of affairs, and he ran out an authoritative winner from a trio of previous winners, passing the post three and three-quarter lengths clear.

That earned him a Timeform rating of 106p, making him the highest-rated juvenile so far this season and the only one to have passed the 100 benchmark. Incidentally, Little Big Bear was rated 106p when he won the Windsor Castle Stakes at Royal Ascot a couple of seasons ago.

Passenger (124p from 119p)

Ulysses developed into a top-class, Group 1-winning four-year-old after finding the Derby coming too soon in his career and there’s a fair chance Passenger might be able to emulate his sire after posting a smooth success in the Huxley Stakes on his return to action.

Passenger travelled well against the rail, made smooth headway inside the final couple of furlongs and was produced to lead inside the final furlong, readily beating the race-fit Israr with more in hand than the margin of a length and a half might suggest, lowering the track record that had stood since 2006.

His rating of 124p marks him out as the best winner of the Huxley Stakes since Noble Mission ten years ago and he will be well worth his place in the Prince of Wales’s Stakes at Royal Ascot. For context, Auguste Rodin, one of the highest-rated horses in training, is rated 129.

Ambiente Friendly (117 from 101)

Ambiente Friendly had been a 100/1 shot for the Derby prior to Lingfield’s trial but is now a general 8/1 shot after bolting up by four and a half lengths and earning a Timeform rating of 117.

The only colts entered in the Derby with a higher Timeform rating are City of Troy (123), Henry Longfellow (120) and Ancient Wisdom (118), and those figures were all achieved over shorter trips as juveniles, while the first two have a question to answer after disappointing on their return.

Ambiente Friendly, a son of 2000 Guineas winner Gleneagles out of a mile-and-a-quarter maiden winner in France, doesn’t have a stamina-laden pedigree but he showed marked improvement when upped in trip at Lingfield, seeing things out thoroughly in a race run at a strong gallop.

That strong pace helped Ambiente Friendly to settle and provided a platform for him to produce one of the best performances in the race in the last decade, arguably behind only Knight To Behold who was an emphatic winner in 2018 before finishing down the field in the Derby.

Ambiente Friendly will need to progress again in the Derby as the average winning Timeform rating in the last decade is around 125, but, having shown his stamina and his wellbeing, he’s a strong contender in an open-looking year.

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