Hills Confident Battaash will Make Goodwood History

Get ready for the blink-and-you'll-miss-it speed of the explosive Battaash at Glorious Goodwood next week.

That was the message from an upbeat Charlie Hills July 23 when the trainer outlined just why his stable star should be so hard to stop when he bids for a third consecutive win in the Aug. 2 King George Qatar Stakes (G2).

Officially rated the second-best active sprinter on the planet, the Hamdan Al Maktoum-owned Battaash has been awesome in the last two runnings of the £300,000 event and is a red-hot 4-7 favorite to make it a hat-trick of successes at the Sussex venue.

Hills, who showed off his turbo-charged sprinter to the media at his Lambourn base Tuesday morning, was in agreement with those odds and is delighted with how the 5-year-old—an undoubted handful in his youth—is behaving.

"Last year we were never 100% happy with him," said Hills. "He took a long time to come into his coat and was a bit on edge in his training. He came back this year a different horse and he's a pleasure to train and be around.

"As you saw this morning, he's beautifully relaxed, cantered with his ears pricked and really seems to be taking everything in and enjoying himself. I couldn't be more pleased with him."

Adored by long-serving groom Bob Grace, who also looked after the gelding's sire Dark Angel, Battaash was beaten for the second year running by the now-retired Blue Point in the King's Stand Stakes (G1) at Royal Ascot last month, but confidence remains sky-high.

"As long as we get the fractions right he should prove tough to beat and I can't see any reason why it shouldn't happen," added Hills.

"He's calmed down and is like a puppy now. He's pretty good at the track as well, and he kind of leads Bob around. Bob's got a bit of a limp now, so Battaash goes the same pace as him to help!"

When that throttle opens up, Battaash can thrill like few others and Hills continued: "He can clock up some serious speed. He's quite small and nimble, so perhaps he can handle going down that hill at Goodwood better than some of those bigger sprinters.

"At Ascot, nothing really went right for him. We thought we were going to get a good pace off the Australian horse Houtzen but he slipped unfortunately and that took us a little bit too far out of the race. We had to make our mid-race move a little sooner than ideal and, at a track like that, his stamina was always going to find him out."

Battaash's success at Goodwood 12 months ago was a pressure-relieving one for Hills, who had endured a testing summer.

His yard, however, is in much better form this time round and Always A Drama's victory at Windsor on Monday night was the trainer's 44th win of the year.

"The team are really happy at the moment and there's a great morale around the place," he said. "I think we're about 25 winners ahead of where we were at this time last year and it'd be nice to get to 50 for the season before Goodwood."

Asked if a maiden century was the aim, the cricket-loving Hills, who will also be represented at Goodwood by Tattersalls Irish Two Thousand Guineas (G1) winner Phoenix of Spain in the Qatar Sussex Stakes (G1), replied: "I'd like to and it's always been an ambition."