2000 Guineas Tips 2026: Billy Grimshaw’s 25/1 Best Bet For Newmarket Classic

In what looks one of the more open renewals of the 2000 Guineas in recent years, 15 will take their chance at Newmarket in the first Classic of the new flat season in Britain. Billy Grimshaw is once again on hand to preview the big race of the weekend and makes the case for his pick at a double figure price...

I have a nagging feeling that come four o’clock on Saturday afternoon I may feel pretty stupid for missing the obvious one, but without hindsight it is not entirely clear which horse that obvious winner is.

Gstaad sets the standard on known form. He was a Breeders’ Cup winner at two, has plenty of experience under his belt, and now gets Ryan Moore back in the saddle after the world’s best jockey missed his final three runs of 2025 through injury. That American success was a deserved reward for a colt who had run three excellent races in defeat beforehand, including when touched off in the Dewhurst by the sadly departed Dewan.

The horses who beat him last season may yet prove properly elite, and that could make his form look even stronger in time. Even so, I cannot shake the feeling he is the sole Ballydoyle runner here by default rather than design. Aidan O’Brien remains the winning-most trainer of this race since the turn of the millennium, but he has not won the season’s first Classic since 2019. Gstaad brings rock-solid credentials, but at the prices I can leave him alone in a field containing several less exposed rivals with scope to improve past him.

The Charlie Appleby pair, Distant Storm and King’s Trail, also have obvious claims. Appleby has made this race his own recently, winning the last two renewals and three of the last five, and he is well known for having his horses forward early. If choosing between his two, I would side with King’s Trail at around double the odds of his stablemate. His profile has shades of Notable Speech, Appleby’s 2024 winner, having raced just once at two before returning with another smooth Kempton all-weather win at three. Distant Storm has looked high class and would be no shock winner, but like Gstaad he was fairly exposed as a juvenile, and I would rather chase greater potential improvement at a bigger price.

Bow Echo has been ante-post favourite since Albert Einstein’s reputation began to unravel, despite the usual Ballydoyle gallops whispers. George Boughey’s unbeaten Night Of Thunder colt has been weak in the market in recent days and is now much easier to back at around 5/1. The 3/1 looked short enough, but this is getting interesting. He is a course-and-distance winner after his Royal Lodge victory and was perfect in three starts last season. Gstaad’s Breeders’ Cup win is probably the best single piece of form in the field, but Bow Echo is not far behind and may have more to come, although stall 15 is hardly ideal.

The draw is hard to be dogmatic about given the watering and warm weather at Newmarket, but looking at the likely race shape, those drawn low may be happiest. Distant Storm is well placed in stall two, while King’s Trail is wider in 13. Moore should have options on Gstaad from stall seven, almost bang in the middle.

Oxagon could be the one to force the pace from stall 10, and it would be dangerous if the field allowed him to build the sort of lead he enjoyed in the Craven. That said, no Craven winner has followed up in the Guineas since 2004, and while last year’s Craven winner was probably the best horse in the race and finished second, I am still not convinced this year’s renewal will prove strong enough. Avicenna was behind him in the Craven and will expect to get closer now with course experience, but I'd be against the race as a whole.

Needle Match is interesting from stall one, although his price has shortened all week as more people decide he was the best horse in the Greenham despite finishing fourth. Alparsian, who beat him that day, also runs here, but I would expect William Haggas’ colt to reverse the form if this does not come too soon for such an inexperienced horse from a yard that usually gives them time.

Clearly, there are plenty in here who will fancy their chances but at a huge price I think Jim Boyle's INTO THE SKY is the one to side with, each-way, in the 2000 Guineas this year. An 80.1 winner on debut, he proved there was no fluke about that seven length Newbury romp when running a huge race for second in the Mill Reef. That day he had Pat Cosgrave onboard rather than winning debut jockey Kieran Shoemark, who takes the ride back here, and he just seemed to run away with Cosgrave at a crucial point of the race.

Jim Boyle's colt has blistering speed to burn and I understand some are concerned he won't see the mile out, however, if Shoemark can get his horse to the lead but make him race a touch more economically, he could spring a massive surprise in what would be an awesome story for connections. There have been countless stories of two year old horses that look like tearaways being calmed down by the break over the winter as they turn three, and if this lad has he could surprise the racing world, stay the mile and bag this Classic. As I have mentioned, this looks a Guineas lacking a superstar so backing an underestimated outsider you can envisage their path to glory is the way to play the race.