{"id":394548,"date":"2025-09-03T12:36:18","date_gmt":"2025-09-03T12:36:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/394548\/"},"modified":"2025-09-03T12:36:18","modified_gmt":"2025-09-03T12:36:18","slug":"william-haggas-gutted-as-setback-scuppers-merchants-arc-hopes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/394548\/","title":{"rendered":"William Haggas \u2018gutted\u2019 as setback scuppers Merchant\u2019s Arc hopes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The Highclere Thoroughbred Racing-owned colt was a Royal Ascot hero earlier in the summer before following up in the gloom of a rainy Goodwood afternoon in the Gordon Stakes, a battling success that inspired dreams of ParisLongchamp glory this autumn.<\/p>\n<p>The son of Teofilo was due to put his Arc aspirations to the test in the \u2018win-and-you\u2019re-in\u2019 Prix Niel this Sunday, but trainer William Haggas has been left \u201cgutted\u201d, as his name was missing from the list of confirmations on Wednesday.<\/p>\n<p>Haggas told the PA news agency: \u201cHe\u2019s just met with a little setback so unfortunately he will be out for the rest of the year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cIt was always the plan to go to ParisLongchamp for the Prix Niel but unfortunately we\u2019re not going.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe feel a bit gutted but sadly that\u2019s just the way it goes.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Merchant ends his season having won three of his four starts and advanced his career record to four wins from seven.<\/p>\n<p>He has risen to an official rating of 115 thanks to his winning heroics, firstly at York during the Dante meeting and then subsequently in the King George V Stakes and at Goodwood.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Highclere Thoroughbred Racing-owned colt was a Royal Ascot hero earlier in the summer before following up in&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":394549,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-394548","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115140400514088711","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394548","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=394548"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/394548\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/394549"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=394548"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=394548"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=394548"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}