Hugo Palmer Royal Ascot day five runners blog: 'On his best form he could be right in the mix'

Hugo Palmer has two runners on day five of Royal Ascot 2025, and the leading trainer previews it in his latest exclusive Coral blog.

Strictly on ratings, if Seagulls Eleven on his best form turns up, he’s right there in the mix.  However, while it’s easy to forgive him his Breeders’ Cup run last year, as he was running well before he was smashed into from behind, the 2,000 Guineas was a disaster for him. 

We’re dropping back in trip, which I think will help, and he’s been gelded which I think has helped, but we are on a retrieval mission, and Royal Ascot is a tricky place to go for a retrieval mission. He does look fantastic though, and a draw of 15 should be fine, although you never really know about the draw here.  We’ll keep our fingers-crossed for the best.

Roman Dragon is drawn in stall 18, so in the middle, and I suspect plenty of them, including him, will come stands side.  Hopefully he will have something to aim at from that position, we said before Chester he needed a career best effort to win, he produced it that day but he will need to produce another career best effort to take this.

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