The 2,000 Guineas is one of my favourite races but I simply cannot work out how City Of Troy ran so badly on Saturday

The Flat races I spend most time thinking about are the two Guineas races at Newmarket. My train of thought has never been about what horses have already done but what they might go on to achieve and the Guineas are the first chance for me to see if my ideas were right or wrong.

Having backed the two runners-up at the weekend, I nearly got it right but didn't get the cigar. Furthermore my thinking about the Guineas doesn't stop at around 4pm on the Sunday of the 1,000 but continues until Epsom and Royal Ascot. That's why those two Classics have always been my favourite Flat races every year.

My first thoughts after the weekend's action were that where I went slightly wrong was not factoring in the incredibly wet winter and spring we had and how hard it has been to get horses to fever pitch first time out. Bar Rosallion and Porta Fortuna, all the other horses who hit the frame at Newmarket had had a run and in Notable Speech's case he'd had three.