Tricky time of year, this, when you are not sure how fit or forward the flat horses are and when you are not sure how much a long season has taken out of the jumpers or how close to their Cheltenham peak they will be in the after-thought. And that’s without even taking the changing ground into account: heavy since Irish Derby day last year, now talk of watering at Aintree.
That said, you have to have a go at the Lincoln. You can’t really allow the Lincoln pass you by without having a bet in it. We have been looking at it for long enough now as well. Even if you haven’t been thinking about it since last November, you had probably formed an opinion for last week’s race, and if you had, you probably shouldn’t drift too far from it today, one re-schedule and seven days later.
I had. Lahaag, I had said. John Gosden’s horse was nicely progressive last season. He won his maiden on fast ground at Yarmouth in June, then was off the track until October, when he returned to win a soft ground handicap at Nottingham off a mark of 83, and then probably should have won another soft-ground handicap at York off a mark of 90.
There is a lot to like about Lahaag. He obviously had his problems during the summer, but it is significant that Gosden persevered with him and got him back to the track for two runs late in the season. On his penultimate run, the one at Nottingham, he looked beaten as they entered the final two furlongs, but he picked up impressively, appearing to appreciate the soft ground and the premium that it placed on stamina, to get up inside the final 50 yards and beat Border Legend by a tail-swishing three parts of a length.
On his final start of the season at York, he probably should have won, he probably should have beaten Chapter Seven. He and Richard Fahey’s horse moved up on either side of long-time leader Lady Macduff at the two-furlong pole, and the pair of them had a real tussle for the entire of the final furlong.
Chapter Seven always appeared to be a nostril up, but you always felt that Lahaag was going to get there. Until, that is, Chapter Seven appeared to go about a neck up with 25 yards to run, and Paul Hanagan appeared to get really animated on Lahaag. In the end, he was beaten by the bob of a head. The fact that he was a neck up three strides past the line was neither here nor there. (To paraphrase Ruby Walsh, there’s no winning post three strides past the line.)
He is 1lb better off with Chapter Seven (now trained by Stuart Williams) today, but that isn’t why he should turn the tables. Chapter Seven was having his 14th run that day at York, Lahaag was having his fourth. He has much more scope for progression than his contemporary.
Therein lies Lahaag’s chance: in his scope for progression. The handicapper raised him 5lb for his York run, which was fair. He and Chapter Seven came clear of their rivals, and the fifth horse, Swing Alone, came out and won a decent handicap at Lingfield last Sunday. Also, he is trained by John Gosden, who sent out Expresso Star to win the Lincoln in 2009, and he was a similarly unexposed progressive four-year-old who was making his seasonal debut and who – perhaps not completely coincidentally – had also won at Nottingham on soft ground the previous October. Expresso Star was thought good enough to run in the Group 1 Coronation Cup at Epsom just two months after his Lincoln win.
The presence of Eshtibaak in the race complicates matters, mind you. Like Lahaag, owned by Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum and trained by Gosden, it appeared that he was the yard’s number one hope for the race last week, it appeared that the owner’s retained rider Paul Hanagan had chosen to ride him, which left Lahaag for the trainer’s rider William Buick. I wasn’t too worried about that last week, I convinced myself that there probably wasn’t much between the two horses, and that Hanagan had been out riding in Dubai and that perhaps the trainer had decided who should ride whom.
A week later, and both Hanagan and Buick are tied up in Dubai World Cup duties, which leaves Dane O’Neill and Robert Havlin to step in for the Lincoln rides. I’m not certain about this, but Dane O’Neill rides a lot for Hamdan Al Maktoum, Havlin rides for Gosden, so it looks like Dane O’Neill has chosen to ride Eshtibaak. That reinforces the view that perhaps Eshtibaak is at least the owner’s number one hope.
Eshtibaak is not dissimilar to Lahaag. He won his maiden as a juvenile, and he won on his three-year-old debut at Lingfield last March. He ran just twice after that last season, first in the Rosebery Handicap on this day last year, and then in a good 10-furlong handicap at Ascot on King George weekend. On both occasions he was impeded in his run, so you can put a line through both. You worry that he might get impeded again today, in a Lincoln, given his running style, but he is progressive and potentially a lot better than his handicap mark.
Also, he is obviously a horse with plenty of ability. At Ascot in particular, in a messy race that was full of hard-luck stories, he looked like a horse who was full of running, but he was just locked away on the inside and couldn’t get out. And he is obviously impressing at home.
I do like these progressive four-year-olds, who have been lightly-raced as three-year-olds, for the Lincoln. Okay, so for the last two years the race has been won by battle-hardened warriors, Brae Hill and last week’s Irish Lincoln winner Sweet Lightning, but the previous three were won by four-year-olds.
More than that, though, it makes sense that the lightly-raced four-year-olds should hold the edge. They are the unexposed horses, the ones who have probably matured and developed over the winter from three to four, but who get to race off handicap marks that reflect only the ability that they were able to show as three-year-olds.
Also, the ground may be a lot better today than we were anticipating in the lead up to last week’s race, and that could help the pacier younger horses. Of course, a member of the older brigade could win the race again, but you could do a lot worse than back the two Gosden horses.
If you do want to get one of the older horses on side, Jack’s Revenge could be the one. He is a little under the radar because he didn’t make the cut for last week’s race, and he may not be to the forefront of people’s minds as a result. But he was highly progressive through last season as a four-year-old, and he rounded off the term by running a cracker to finish second to the useful Tartiflette in a good handicap run over an inadequate seven furlongs at Doncaster.
That is his only run to date at today’s track, so he obviously likes the place. He goes well fresh, he goes well on soft ground, he will appreciate the step back up to a strongly-run mile, he gets into the race on a nice racing weight of 8st 8lb, and he could out-run odds of around 22.
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