GOODWOOD: DOUBLE BANKER: Goodwood Day 2 features a today champion and a tomorrow young pretender in Kingman and Highland Reel. Daqman makes them both banker bets, and naps Kingman to win one of the festival features, the British Champions’ Sussex Stakes.
GALWAY: DOUBLE BULL’S-EYE: Daqman sifts from top to bottom of the handicap for the Galway Plate, looking for a quality top rated or a handicap snip. He finds both! What to do? Make them bull’s eye bets (to win 50) and double them with two in the Goodwood Stakes.
KINGMAN FOR THE SUSSEX CROWN
1.55 Goodwood Stakes Maid In Rio won the Brown Jack Stakes at Ascot last week like a Group mare in a handicap. Though this is another half mile, her dam is related to a 3m 4f NH winner, and she is following in the hoofprints of stablemate Broxbourne, who did this Brown Jack and Goodwood Stakes double last year.
But she was four at the time and we wouldn’t normally expect a three-year-old to catch up with the older horses over extreme distances until the Cesarewitch in the autumn.
Lieutenant Miller was runner-up last year but is now 11lb worse off with Brockwell, from the Brown Panther camp, fifth that day (rated 7lb higher than he is now) and running on well after being hampered in the Ascot Stakes. Ray Ward, also hampered, finished in front of him
Local trainer Amanda Perrett runs both Presto Volante and Lion Beacon, a strong galloper, who won on the course recently over 14f.
Brockwell has had numerous chances and is easy to back at 10.5. Ray Ward hasn’t won beyond 1m 2f, nor since the Spring of 2013.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: Maid In Rio, up 31lb since the end of May, sluiced home at Ascot last Friday and it may not have taken too much out of her, though I shall not go banco on a three-year-old.
Lieutenant Miller is likely to place without having the speed to win.
The two unknowns are a) whether Sir Mark Prescott has Solar View back to form b) whether unexposed Lion Beacon, a course winner, can get the trip. I shall take 11.5 Solar View on BETDAQ, as he goes well fresh and since Amanda Perrett says that Lion Beacon needs rain.
2.30 Goodwood (Gordon Stakes) Sir Michael Stoute has won this with a handicapper, a King Edward V11 runner-up, even a maiden (who turned out to be Harbinger!). So studying the form will just make you dizzy.
If you did, you’d find that Observational won the Derby trial here (Cocked Hat Stakes) in May but hasn’t been seen since. Red Galileo was a staying on fifth in the Epsom Derby, unable to challenge on the wide outside.
But that takes you straight to Sir M Stoute, whose Snow Sky had Red Galileo more than seven lengths behind in the Lingfield Derby Trial.
Snow Sky was fourth in the very King Edward V11 Stakes that Stoute had Conduit run second in before winning this.
Snag is that Scotland turned round Newbury form with Snow Sky at Royal Ascot, and the indications are that Snow Sky needs cut in the ground. So, too, Observational.
That leaves us Somewhat confused! But, with the BETDAQ orange 100% this morning (that’s sensational; unheard of among bookmakers), we must have a bet to bait our hook in such a value swim.
Somewhat seemed to step up on his Ascot pacesetting (finished behind Cloudscape) when third in the Eclipse, making such as Mukhadram and Trading Leather work for their money. Goodwood looks ideal for him.
3.05 Goodwood (Sussex Stakes) My very first horses-to-follow list for the 2014 Flat season contained Kingman; then I changed my mind. It’s been that sort of season for me, but I’ve still managed to beat Pricewise 51 times (sorry, 53 by now after the opening races!)
We have ratings to guide us (Kingman is already, officially a better colt that Toronado), stats to guide us (three-year-olds have won five of the last six Sussex Stakes) and the evidence of our own eyes that Kingman can quicken off firm and soft ground, mark of a champion.
3.40 Goodwood (Vintage Stakes) A champagne four in a row for Team Hannon has included Olympic Glory who went on to win the Grand Criterium (Longchamp) that year and the Champion Mile as a three-year-old.
But the man from the old country stands in the way of a seemingly sub-standard Hannon pair today with Highland Reel, bred like an angel by Galileo out of a Danehill mare and a runaway winner on fast ground on the first of the month, the only worry that he got lonely out in front.
4.50 Goodwood Three-year-olds dominate this in numbers and winners (8 out of 10) and, as the last two years reveal – both winners drawn 13 – it’s often far better to be in a wide stall, than get trapped or shuffled back on the rail.
Now we’ve cut the field in half (famous last words), we have a book within a book, choosing from Uchenna, Hot Coffee, Lady Tiana, Patterned, Hedge End and maybe Principle Equation now that Water Hole and Sandra’s Diamond have dropped out.
Since we have a top trainer of fillies, Ralph Beckett (6.8 on BETDAQ Principle Equation) and a top trainer at Goodwood, Luca Cumani (7.4 Patterned), I’m inclined to dutch those two.
Different tactics will be needed on Hiking, who takes time to warm up, if she is not to get shuffled back from stall 3.
19.0: QUICK, QUICK BALNASLOW!
GALWAY PLATE 1-2-3: Balnaslow 1, Alderwood 2, Golden Wonder 3
5.30 Galway Plate Only one horse in the decade has beaten the 11st barrier, and only one has been of a double-figure age. So maybe that’s four J P McManus runners out of it, though A P McCoy prefers the 10-year-old Alderwood.
Still leaves three, headed in the market by It’s A Gimme, which has won twice for A P this summer. He seemed to have the full McCoy treatment at Market Rasen on the last day, so to Alan Crowe is the task of getting more from him than the champion. Unlikely.
It could be that McCoy doesn’t want to do the 10st 6lb today but that’s no excuse for the rejection of his hat-trick winner, Rum And Butter, Richie McLernon taking over.
So what is the attraction of Alderwood? He also landed a treble for the champ in 2012, and the Grand Annual in 2013, though nothing since, and seemingly deserted by McCoy after being beaten at Aintree that year.
Alderwood has been seen in public only once since April, 2013, so the mystery deepens. On the plus side, trainer Thomas Mullins has had three winners from his last six starters and, when a trainer says a horse is right, the stable’s good recent form is the kind of substantive you want.
McCoy has won four major races on the horse, including the County Hurdle at Cheltenham and the Punchestown Champion Novice Hurdle.
Runner-up to Alderwood in the Grand Annual of 2013 was Kid Cassidy, the last horse to beat Sire De Grugy, interrupting a sequence of 10 races. Sire was unbeaten in the nine others, including in the Champion Chase at Cheltenham.
Alderwood is beginning to smell like a job, a good thing and a certainty, all rolled into one. What can beat him?
Look for a young improver, trained by Willie Mullins. Balnaslow has a Mullins’ prediction on his CV that he’d go to the top, and he could not be better handicapped: including a 5lb claim, he is 18lb well in with Spring Heeled than when he ran out of gas over a trip too far at Cheltenham in March.
He had also travelled like a dream until fading to fourth in the Thyestes Chase, jumping superbly. This 2m 6f on good ground could be perfect for him.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: If ever there was a quality horse at the top of the ratings primed for a big prize, and a handicap snip near the bottom, Alderwood and Balnaslow fit those bills.
Rain might bring Irish Grand National runner-up, Golden Wonder, into the picture: he beat Spring Heeled at level weights here over this CD at Galway last year but the ground was heavy that day
DAQMAN’S BETS
BET (to win 30) 2.8pts win and place SOLAR VIEW (1.55 Goodwood)
BET (to win 30) 7.5pts win SOMEWHAT (2.30 Goodwood)
BANKER: BET 20pts win (nap) KINGMAN (3.05 Goodwood)
BANKER: BET 20pts win HIGHLAND REEL (3.40 Goodwood)
BET (to win 20 points) 3.5pts win PRINCIPLE EQUATION and 3pts win PATTERNED (4.50 Goodwood)
BULL’S-EYE BETS (each to win 50 points): 5.6pts win ALDERWOOD, and 2.7pts win and place BALNASLOW (5.30 Galway)
DAQ MULTIPLES: 4 x 3pt win doubles Maid In Rio and Solar View (1.55 Goodwood) with Alderwood and Balnaslow (5.30 Galway), plus 4 x 1pt win accas the same four with Kingman (3.05 Goodwood) and Highland Reel (3.40 Goodwood).
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