Bedtime Story electric in the Chesham

Frankel two-year-old Bedtime Story routed her opposition by an incredible nine and a half-length winning margin in the Listed Chesham Stakes at Royal Ascot on Saturday (22nd June).

Taken from the Thoroughbred Daily News, 23rd June 2024, by Tom Frary:

Turning the Listed Chesham Stakes into her own Royal Ascot procession on Saturday, Ballydoyle's TDN Rising Star Bedtime Story recorded the widest-margin win of the week by some way to enter the 2025 Classic conversation.

Content to follow the leaders in the group racing up the centre, the 11-8 favourite who had won a Leopardstown maiden earlier this month was let loose by Ryan Moore two out and surged clear for an emphatic nin and a half-length success. Pentle Bay was next, with Brian half a length back in third.

"She's a very good filly," Moore said. "She travelled very easily and they've gone too slow for her really. When I moved the race was over very quickly. She is a level above all of them. A performance like that, you don't see normally."

Bedtime Story's sensational performance was as impressive on the clock as it was to the eye as she surpassed the eight-length winning margin of Three Valleys in the 2003 Gr.3 Coventry Stakes and the seven-length success of Lady Aurelia ) in the 2016 G2 Queen Mary Stakes. Closing out with sectionals of 11.38 and 11.57, she hit 35.14 for the last three furlongs which readily eclipsed the 36.05 of the four-year-old English Oak in Thursday's Buckingham Palace Stakes over the same trip.

Aidan O'Brien, who like Moore was welcoming his sixth winner of the meeting, said: "We never let Bedtime Story go before and this was the first time she was asked to stretch. Ryan said he couldn't believe it - he said everyone fell away, he said 'go on' and she just took off. He didn't even give her a slap down the shoulder."

"We thought she was probably a Group 1 filly, but we hadn't looked - thinking is one thing and seeing is another, so everyone saw it together today. It was the first time she was ever dropped down, really. She's got an unbelievable pedigree, she's a homebred. She's very special, isn't she?"

O'Brien is keen to keep Bedtime Story and Thursday's Gr.3 Albany Stakes winner Fairy Godmother apart for now. "Bedtime Story will be staying at seven furlongs," he added. "It is unusual on fast ground to do that."