If she was human Rainbow View would be a stroppy teenager, chucking down her school satchel and heading straight out to the sort of club you wouldn’t want your daughter in. One word from a parent and she would do the other thing. Threaten a smacked bottom and she’d be off to the child protection officer, knowing her rights. She is a head-tossing little madam who puts the x into minx, the original wild child. But she also inspires infinite patience because her strength of will is matched with exceptional physical ability. Given the right mood on the day, Rainbow View will confirm that by winning the first fillies Classic, the Stan James 1,000 Guineas, on 3 May for her trainer John Gosden and owner George Strawbridge.
Visiting a trainer’s yard is always fun at this optimistic end of the racing year. Serious questions are just beginning to be asked on the gallops. Any of the heads popping inquisitively over box doors can turn out to belong to something special. But visiting John Gosden’s Clarehaven yard is an experience. The running commentary, delivered at shock-jock speed, is not limited to recitations of horse performance. It throws in a condensed history of the great Pretty Polly, who was trained there in the early 1900s — ‘She ate the colts from five furlongs to two and a half miles’ — and a discussion of the Munnings and Constable Suffolk skies. There is no shortage of opinions either, for example on racecourse parades: ‘It’s nice for the public to see them cantering down but I’ve never been a believer in them marching to the furlong pole and coming back. You can do it in America where they train on track but they’re all accompanied by ponies. They’ll sleep on the pony and the jockey doesn’t have to ride them. You get an American jockey here and tell him, “You’ve got seven races and you are cantering them to the start and there’s a six furlongs, a seven furlongs, a mile and a two miler,” well, he’s going to want an oxygen tank and a conveyor belt.’
Parades, of course, don’t suit Rainbow View, who would have been flicking pellets and chewing gum through class roll-calls. ‘She just doesn’t do waiting around,’ says her trainer. ‘One day she got bored waiting for a canter and took off, five furlongs away. Down the walking grounds and in. She nearly took out Sir Mark Prescott’s wall on the way. Of all the fillies I’ve trained she’s a long way the wildest.’ Now Rainbow View goes out on her own, with a lead horse. ‘She doesn’t do strings.’
In a corner box of the top yard, with its yellow brick and duck-egg blue box doors we are allowed finally to see the pocket rocket herself. The door is open but she isn’t allowed out. ‘She’d have gone through us, broken a window and finished up in [wife] Rachel’s office.’
Munching handfuls of grass from her stable hand’s pocket, madam is comparatively co-operative. But the last time I saw such a naughtily flickering eye it belonged to a princess. The message is clear. ‘I’m in charge. I do what I like, when I like.’
Her trainer confirms: ‘She takes some riding. She can just throw shapes for no reason.’ He goes on: ‘That is part of her character that makes her so determined and so good. It’s important not to think of beating the spirit out of them, the idea that when you “break” a horse you beat any evil spirit out of them. That’s crazy. That was the old concept. I don’t believe in that at all. Our job is to channel that determination, that nervous energy, to turn them into athletes.’
We are talking about some athlete. As a two-year-old Rainbow View ran four times and won all four by a cumulative margin of more than 16 lengths. The last was an impressive victory in Ascot’s testing Fillies Mile, a Group One race. In that, despite sweating up in the pre-race preliminaries, she beat Fantasia by two and a half lengths. Fantasia, who has since been bought by Rainbow View’s owner and who will not face her in the 1,000 Guineas, came out last week and spreadeagled a high-class field, winning by seven lengths.
Size, says John Gosden, is not an issue. ‘It’s not a case of a little two-year-old that hasn’t trained on because of her physical limits. She’s trained on in terms of ability. Mentally she’s tough to deal with, but it’s that nervous energy that gives her such a competitive edge.’
He has some holes to fill this year, having seen five Group One winners, including his Breeder’s Cup victors Raven’s Pass and Donativum, move on. But if Rainbow View is only a little thing she can still fill a sizeable gap. Note that she hasn’t had a prep run for the Guineas because her connections have a Breeder’s Cup in mind at the other end of the season…
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