SUSSEX STAKES: APPROACH WITH CAUTION: It’s 2-0 to Dawn Approach but his last encounter with Toronado was a close-run affair at Royal Ascot. How does Daqman see Round 3 in the Sussex Stakes at Glorious Goodwood today?
GOODWOOD STAKES: BROCKWELL BRED FOR STAMINA MISSION: Day 2 opens with a 2m 5f marathon. The form looks good for the favourites but Daqman reckons Brockwell better bred for the job.
They brought the strawberries and champagne but the party was over. Goodwood was not so glorious for many punters yesterday as rain washed out the firm-ground form.
Put it another way, my tips looked wet when conditions changed after five or six hours of rain on the Goodwood track produced winners at 14-1, 16-1 and 25-1.
In amongst them, the market began to reflect the change of going, but far too late for my morning appraisal over the cornflakes.
And those high-temperature July days of my 40 wins in a fortnight are history until conditions return to normal. So I wisely tried no double-figure hits yesterday – and no bankers – but today I can do a balancing act.
If I back two horses to double-figure stakes (Dawn Approach and Parbold), I should at least break even with one winner, though of course I hope for two so that I continue my sequence of 10 in a row.
In the last summers when the weather, and therefore the ground, was consistently good – four or five years ago – I was hitting 100 winners a month as Daqman. Then we had a sequence of wet summers.
Rain, more particularly a change of going, is the punters’ worst enemy, and right now I’m reducing stakes (to ‘win 20’ level) until things settle down again.
1.55 Goodwood Stakes All form students have thumbed to the page where we see described Lieutenant Miller’s defeat of Broxbourne a shade beyond 2m at Doncaster in April. But will either of them last out this 2m 5f?
Lieutenant Miller has won at 20f over jumps but his Flat form would suggest he ought to be campaigned as a three-mile hurdler. Clearly not.
Broxbourne, underpriced because he’s a Mark Johnston at Goodwood, is also related to 2m hurdle winners, and this is his 11th race of 2013.
Both Lieutenant Miller and Broxbourne have stallions’ stamina indeces below 9.5. Only one winner of this race in the decade has. Seven out of 10 were got by stallions with 10.2 to 16.3 average of their progeny’s success.
If this stat is any guide, then we can also rule out another at the front of the market, Seaside Sizzler, and The Betchworth Kid, too, is black marked as likely to be lacking in stamina.
I fancy Brockwell (13.5 on BETDAQ last night), a fast-finishing third in the Pitman’s Derby and with consistent class-2 form between 12f and 2m (3343) as if a marathon test would suit.
2.30 Goodwood (Gordon Stakes) This goes four times out of six to a Group-placed animal rated around 103 to 112.
Cap O’Rushes did better than the one he set the pace for in the Irish Derby, finishing fourth, with Libertarian last but one.
Secret Number and Elkaayed were close together, fourth and fifth, in a Group 3 at Royal Ascot.
But the one I like is Excess Knowledge, who will beat that pair on a line through Van der Neer, and who was unlucky (hampered) not to win a Listed at Sandown.
He is by Novellist’s sire, Monsun, out of a daughter of Dansili, sire of Novellist’s main Arc rival in the betting, Flintshire.
3.05 Goodwood (Sussex Stakes) Three-year-olds are currently 9-14, with 26 winners since 1970 and the days of Brigadier Gerard. Frankel has won it for the last two seasons.
There’s nothing this year within a stone of him, if official ratings are correct, ratings which say that it’s another match between Dawn Approach and Toronado.
Toronado finished out of sight in Dawn Approach’s Guineas but got within a short-head of the same colt in the St James’ Palace Stakes at Royal Ascot on that very fast terrain.
He ‘would have won’ but for ‘a bump’ (quote unquote Junior Hannon).
But Ascot was run more than two seconds faster than Newmarket, which may have made the difference, but we are back to ‘the slow side of good’ (yesterday’s opinion by the jockeys at Goodwood) and expected to be genuinely good going today.
3.40 Goodwood (Vintage Stakes) Richard Hannon, who started the meeting so well yesterday, bids for a four-timer in this. So does Richard Hughes on Hannon’s Toormore, not forgetting however that Pat Dobbs outmaneouvred Hughsie’ on a Hannon supposed second string yesterday. Is he the Expert here?
In fact, though official ratings at this stage of their careers are scarce, the Hannon pair have at least 10 points (pounds?) to make up on Parbold on Racing Post Ratings.
To say Parbold ran second to War Command in the Coventry is to miss the point. Let’s say he beat a second Coventry, the one behind the winner racing alone: that winner, War Command, was in another race, in another parish.
War Command stormed clear but it was still a cracking effort from Parbold, who’d had winners behind him when taking a soft-ground, big-field maiden and, of course, trainer Richard Fahey was in form yesterday with Garswood at last taking his home ability to the track.
Toormoor’s form also looks good in the light of subsequent success for his Leicester runner-up, Ertijaal (seven lengths to the third). Group-entered Ertijhaal slammed a Yarmouth field six lengths.
5.25 Goodwood Amanda Perrett would no doubt like to win the race sponsored by the family’s racing club (father Guy Harwood trained the best horse never to win the Derby, Dancing Brave).
Her five-year-old Johnny Castle (only 17 races so far) was well out of the back door in the big Mile race at the corresponding Goodwood meeting last season but has dropped 13lb since then.
Off that mark in June, Johnny was the ‘moral’, beaten into third but giving weight to the first two, on the Newmarket July course.
DAQMAN’S BETS (to win 20 points each).
With the going in doubt, stakes have been reduced to win 20 points. Because of technical difficulties, today’s Daqman assessment was made last night.
BET 1.6pts win BROCKWELL (1.55 Goodwood)
BET 9pts win EXCESS KNOWLEDGE (2.30 Goodwood)
BET 2.5pts win JOHNNY CASTLE (4.25 Goodwood)
BET 4pts win RIBBONS (4.50 Goodwood)
DAQ MULTIPLES 10pts win on each and 5pts win double DAWN APPROACH (nap, 3.05 Goodwood) and PARBOLD (3.40 Goodwood) plus 2pts win treble with Excess Knowledge (2.30 Goodwood)
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