FORTUNE COOKIE AND NAP UP AT 5-2: Daqman doubled down on his confidence in Rosallion by naming his Fortune Cookie the nap of the day when Royal Ascot opened with the first accolade to ground staff, who produced winners right across the track, though that’s no help to punters hoping for draw bias!
Tuesday
WON 5-2 ROSALLION (Fortune Cookie and nap)
Monday
WON 10-1 THURSDAY (day’s profit 25.00)
WON 4-9 GALAXY PRINCESS (BETDAQ 2.79)
DAY-ONE GLORY FOR BILLY LOUGHNANE: A 1-2-3 at 80-1, 40-1 and 50-1 in the Coventry at Royal Ascot yesterday with tall and talented 18-year-old Billy Loughnane on the winner, Rashabar, looking like the young Long Fella (Lester Piggott) in the same Robert Sangster colours, brought out of mothballs by his family at Manton and trainer Brian Meehan.
WARD GETS GRACE AND FAVOUR
DAY-BY-DAY STATS: last Wednesday. FORTUNE COOKIES: Sunday.
BETDAQ Sportsbook: daily prices. BETDAQ Exchange: offers you can trade.
🎩 2.30 Royal Ascot (Queen Mary Stakes, 5f) Wesley Ward has totted up six winners in this (4) and the Windsor Castle (2), and the firmish ground is in favour of the American runners, which tend to race like quarter-horses, straight into a gallop from a standing start.
Despite those winners, he says he is paying the price for his love of Royal Ascot (‘it’s very expensive bringing them over here’) and they don’t come over without my being ‘confident’. That’s good enough for me.
The last three Queen Mary winners have come out of stalls 22, 17 and 28 but the last time Wesley was ‘confident’, Campanelle won from the one stall (2021), though the whole scenario was changed by heavy rain, so damning two stats in one go!
Ultima Grace comes out of 17 this afternoon, following yesterday’s one-two by stall for the sprint results: 5f in which 17 beat 15; 6f when 10 beat 18.
Kassaya (out of 21) is growing up by the minute and this half-sister to the Andrew Balding stable’s Guineas winner Chaldean should go in the Fortune Cookies, if only placed here today.
Miss Rascal (5) and Truly Enchanting (9) are the pace fillies in the low draw, while we expect Make Haste (18) and Kassaya to threaten Ultima Grace
DAQMAN’S 1-2 with BETDAQ offers: 11.5 Ultima Grace, 12.5 Kassaya
POWER IN HIGHBURY’S ARSENAL
DAY-BY-DAY STATS: last Wednesday. FORTUNE COOKIES: Sunday.
BETDAQ Sportsbook: daily prices. BETDAQ Exchange: offers you can trade.
🎩 3.05 Royal Ascot (Queens Vase, 1m 6f) In this race, you need to be driven round the bend, literally; or at least get a good position before you have to take the right-hander very early in the race.
So it is that single-figure stalls have won 11 out of the last 12, which has three times helped Aidan O’Brien take home the prize four years out of nine.
Eazy-peazy then except that, of O’Brien’s three runners today, two of them are drawn low. Gunners fans will want to remember Highbury, their stadium until the Emirates.
He could be best of the Ballydoyle pair. Ryan Moore seems to have picked Illinois, but Highbury has had his form super-boosted. Though he beat them seven lengths and more, six behind him have won or been placed since.
Illinois hung right-handed in the Lingfield trial when second to the subsequent Derby runner-up, Ambiente Friendly, with Meydan third.
Illinois’s brother, Venice Beach, promised to get further but was only 8th of 11 in the St Leger, and it was the Chester Vase he won, not the Queen’s Vase.
DAQMAN’S 1-2 with Betdaq Betting Exchange offers: 4.1 Highbury, 2.94 Illinois
MILLENNIUM TO REPAY MILLIONS
DAY-BY-DAY STATS: last Wednesday FORTUNE COOKIES: Sunday.
BETDAQ Sportsbook: daily prices. BETDAQ Exchange: offers you can trade.
🎩 3.45 Royal Ascot (Duke Of Cambridge Stakes, 1m) Though Team Gosden has won this twice in the last four seasons, four-year-olds have scored 12 out of 13.
LAYS LOGIC also condemns Laurel for her draw in the one stall and lack of a run in more than a year. Rogue Millennium is same age at five, same rating, and from a similar stall in 2.
At least this is the straight course and I can’t see this pair fighting each other for an early lead.
Rogue Millennium won last year (pictured below), held up in the rear from gate 7. She has since moved from Tom Clover to Joseph O’Brien’s barn for 1,650,000gns.
Rogue Millennium was the sufferer (‘not clear run repeatedly’) when third recently at the Curragh to Ocean Jewel (who gets a Group-2 penalty), tipping the balance for her own failure to get a run behind Tahiyra and Rogue Millennium in the Matron Stakes at the Curragh in September.
It’s Doom and Bloom for William Haggas! He has won it before (2019) with one off 104, where you’ll now find Orchid Bloom (first-time tongue-tie), who was fourth in Ocean Jewel’s Curragh race. Tom Marquand seems to prefer Doom.
★ DAQMAN’S nap with BETDAQ offers: 3.9 Rogue Millennium
HIDDEN STAR OVER THE HORIZON
DAY-BY-DAY STATS: last Wednesday. FORTUNE COOKIES: Sunday.
BETDAQ Sportsbook: daily prices. BETDAQ Exchange: offers you can trade.
🎩 4.25 Royal Ascot (Prince Of Wales’s Stakes, 1m 2f) This is the match of the day: the champion versus the hidden champion.
If Auguste Rodin is at the races, he will be very hard to beat; if he’s not, Horizon Dore could shake off the mud of his French career and at last prove his worth on the European stage, maybe even taking on the world at Del Mar.
Auguste Rodin (pictured below) has won two Derbys, a Champion Stakes and a Breeders Cup but his wings have been clipped (2lb removed from his overall rating down to 123) as beaten favourite in 2,000 Guineas, Sheema Classic and Tattersalls Gold Cup.
Which Auguste Rodin will we see today? It may not matter too much, if we see the real Horizon Dore.
This extremely fluent mover with a fine turn of foot, sired by a good-ground specialist, has never been able to run on a sound surface in Europe, was headed only in the final strides of the Ispahan (soft) and ranks just 5lb behind the enigmatic Auguste Rodin.
DAQMAN’S one-two BETDAQ offers: 9.7 Horizon Dore, 2.69 Auguste Rodin
REAL GAIN, PEROTTO LOVE FIRM
DAY-BY-DAY STATS: last Wednesday. FORTUNE COOKIES: Sunday.
BETDAQ Sportsbook: daily prices. BETDAQ Exchange: offers you can trade.
🎩 5.05 Royal Ascot (Royal Hunt Cup, 1m) LAYS LOGIC: The favourite has won only once in 28 years.
Sonny Liston, who was second in last year’s Hunt Cup, beat Metal Merchant and Talis Evolvere at Newbury (1m good) in May. It followed the Newbury Spring Cup the previous month, when Metal Merchant won, with Talis Evolvere third and Thunder Ball fourth, refitted with blinkers today.
That sort of slide-rule approach has to be applied these days, with handicaps ever narrower. As Sir Mark Prescott said after the Ascot Stakes: ‘Getting a few pounds ahead of the handicapper is hardly possible anymore.’
Winners of this, usually four-year-olds, have won 10 of the last 11 carrying between 9st and 9st 5lb. My short-list has two in stalls each side of the line-up:
Real Gain (stall 29) is a very strong traveler on a firm surface and has won over that little bit further, 1m 1f. Beshtani (9), best on good ground in France, had an excellent primer at Epsom.
Streets Of Gold (stall 5) and Holloway Boy (23) finished third and fourth, just a neck apart in the Group-3 Jersey Stakes (7f) at this meeting last year, and Streets Of Gold looks well prepared for this.
The Britannia winner of 2021, Perotto (17) comes here fresh for trainer-in-form Roger Varian. Perotto loves good to firm.
DAQMAN splits stakes each side of the track: 9.9 Real Gain, 10.5 Beshtani, 29.0 Streets Of Gold, 31.0 Perotto
DAQMAN’S BETS
2.30 Royal Ascot (win-50 bull’s-eye bets)
BET 5pts win ULTIMA GRACE
BET 5pts win KASSAYA
3.05 Royal Ascot (win 30)
BET 10pts win HIGHBURY
BET 5pts to win 10 ILLINOIS
3.45 Royal Ascot (win 30, nap)
BET 10pts win ROGUE MILLENNIUM
4.25 Royal Ascot (win-50 bull’s-eye bet)
BET 5.75pts win HORIZON DORE
BET 5pts to win 10 AUGUSTE RODIN
5.05 Royal Ascot (win-50 bull’s-eye bets)
BET 5pts win REAL GAIN
BET 5pts win BESHTANI
BET 1.6pts win PEROTTO
BET 1.6pts win STREETS OF GOLD
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