Faith in Logic could pay off

Eight months is a long time to wait for a 5-2 chance, but seven lengths is a long way between the first and second in a Group One two-year-old race too. Queen's Logic swaggered away with the Cheveley Park Stakes at Newmarket yesterday afternoon, with more to spare than most of the winners at the jump meetings at Exeter and Sedgefield, and is no better than 4-1 this morning for the 1,000 Guineas at the same course next May.

Queen's Logic will face far stronger opponents in the Classic – assuming, of course, that fate allows her to progress that far. The Cheveley Park is Britain's premier contest for two-year-old fillies, but yesterday's renewal was diminished when Silent Honor, the Cherry Hinton winner, was scratched a few hours before the race, while Sophisticat, who finished second, looks to be ordinary by Aidan O'Brien's standards.

She will also need to keep galloping for another quarter of a mile. Her stride in the final two furlongs yesterday was both effortless and unrelenting, however, and the Classic trip of a mile should be well within Queen's Logic's reach next year.

The memory of the easy stride which took her clear will keep her backers warm through the winter months. Even at the 5-2 on offer with Ladbrokes (who offered 14-1 yesterday morning), she will surely attract steady money in the weeks ahead, as punters put any spare change onto the Classic favourite. Gossamer, who was similarly impressive in the Fillies Mile at Ascot on Saturday, is now 5-1 (from 4-1) for the Guineas with the same firm, who go 10-1 bar.

"She is a proper racehorse," Mick Channon, Queen's Logic's trainer, said. "She has got such class, she has improved all year, and she will get a mile standing on her head next year, the way she settles. She has taken on all the best two-year-old fillies and come out the other side unbeaten."

Channon has trained juveniles with Classic pretensions before, only to see them siphoned off by Godolphin or, in the case of Bint Allayl, who like Queen's Logic won the Queen Mary and the Lowther, struck down by injury.

Queen's Logic, though, is likely to stay put in his yard this winter, generating excitement and stress in equal measure for Channon and Steve Drowne, his stable jockey. "I said beforehand she would win but even I didn't expect her to do it like that," Drowne said.

"She settles really well, she travels, she just has everything. In three races, we have now taken on the best and beaten the best and I've no worries about her staying the extra two furlongs in the Guineas. The Gossamer camp will really have something to think about now."

The bookies' representatives were busy after the Houghton Sales Stakes too, offering 33-1 about Sir George Turner, the narrow winner, for next year's Derby. It seems doubtful, though, that he would have taken the £200,000 first prize if Landseer, the 10-11 favourite – or rather Mick Kinane, his jockey – had found a clear passage in the final quarter mile.

Mark Johnston, the winner's trainer, said. "When I saw this race andlooked at the prize money, it didn't look a great field so we came here. The Guineas would be too sharp for him, so the Dante and Derby is his kind of route."