PENITENT GRANDADDY OF THEM ALL: With two naps up out of the last three – yesterday’s didn’t run it’s race – Daqman sticks his neck out for Penitent in an amazing heat of ‘grandad horses’ for the Ripon Rowels. There are two aged nine or more in the race, including the four-times winner, Osteopathic Remedy, who is 11.
A TOP TIME FOR TWO-YEAR-OLDS: One of today’s Ripon races is the Champion Two-Year-Old Stakes and, on the first day of September tomorrow, Daqman checks out the top-two-year-olds of the season so far, as the month brings the Champagne Stakes, the Moyglare, National Stakes, Mill Reef, Rockfel, Royal Lodge, Middle Park and Chevely Park!
HOW THE BETDAQ TRUMP CARD WON THE TRICK
It’s the punter’s worst nightmare. They are going down to post and you know – for near certain – that your horse isn’t going to win. And, when you’ve worked hard for it, or had the ‘wink’, it’s even worse.
I napped Kiltara at around 3-1 in the morning on good advice but she slithered out in the betting at Goodwood, unable to keep her feet in the market.
Same in the race. She was propping in the mud like Lady Muck picking her way over a rain-soaked lawn to retrieve her croquet ball. She viewed the whole thing with disdain. She simply was not at the races.
Kiltara was out to 11-2 near the ‘off.’ Time to bring in the fail-safe, and back the favourite to recoup stakes.
But the favourite, Peterhof, was equally ‘all at sea,’ in the market at least. Absolutely nothing else fancied, yet you can back a Stoute ‘good thing’ at around 6-4, as if in a maiden race. It should have been odds on, as the dangers drifted.
Peterhof is a glass horse, behaved in the market like one; ran his race like one. There was going to be a turn-up, so I laid him. It was BETDAQ to the rescue.
It will be interesting to see these horses run again. The winner was a seven-race maiden, in a time six seconds slow.
But, as the man said, something’s got to win and, if you’re playing your cards right on BETDAQ, it’s likely to be you. Don’t lose heart when the ace you play for a first position turns out to be a ‘nine’. The game is still to be won and you have jokers in your hand.
PENITENT WORTH A PUNT IN THE RIPON ROWELS
3.10 Ripon (Billy Nevett Memorial) Billy Nevett, Cock-o’-the-North riding ace before Edgar Britt and Edward Hide, won three wartime Derbys, including on Dante, immortalised in the York trial.
Scott Dixon landed a gamble in the race last year and has Penny Dreadful claimed off and well drawn to take a front-running role at a tasty 6.4.
3.45 Ripon (Champion Two-Year-Old Trophy) With rain about, the eye goes straight to 6.8 offer Holy Grail, soft-ground scorer here at Ripon before taking a 20-runner nursery at Newmarket (July) over today’s trip.
But Still On Top and Whitman have experience of cut in the ground, both in quality heats at the Ebor meeting at York.
The worry for followers of Still On Top is that it was a first-time hood got him in the picture in a Sales race, and the concern for Whitman is that he may need faster ground.
So the main danger to my selection may be Muhadathat, fourth in the Group-3 Molecomb at Goodwood before disappointing last time, but with Mark Johnston insistent that we put a line through that.
4.20 Ripon Rowels The 11-year-old Osteopathic Remedy took this four times up to 2013 for trainer of the moment Michael Dods (won the Nunthorpe with Mecca’s Angel).
‘Remedy’ was only just run out of it again last year, and the handicapper has kindly dropped him 8lb below his mark that day.
But another old boy, Penitent, aged nine, is down 18lb on his highest winning rating and is likely to get his ground if the rains come.
Dubai Dynama (he’s 10) completes the grandad’s line-up, as a winner already over CD at Ripon this season.
Less than three-times his age, Quick Defence is up from Newmarket, which has taken this with a three-year-old before in the decade. But ‘Quick’ might be true of nature as well as name, since his win came on a firm surface.
It’s such a cracking contest, I may not yet have mentioned the winner but I know David O’Meara is keen on Penitent’s chance – 6.8 on BETDAQ as I write – and he’s my Bank Holiday value-nap punt.
ON THE ATTACK WITH GODOLPHIN AT NEWCASTLE
2.25 Newcastle Here’s a quality nursery which seems to have produced a thee-cornered contest between the major Arab owners, Sheikh Hamdan (King’s Pavilion), Al Shaqab (Shabar) and Godolphin (Simple Attack).
As a course winner with ease in the ground who promised to get further, Simple Attack gets my vote, receiving weight from the two others but it will be close with Frankie Dettori keen on Shabar.
3.05 Epsom More dangerously small fields. More soft-heavy ground. And the best race is a sprint. Give me strength!
Boom The Groom and Monumental Man have no winning form on such a surface. Captain Dunne and Duke Of Firenze have and both have scored at Epsom.
Duke Of Firenze has been rested since ‘going wrong’ in the Spring, and is sure to bounce back in the autumn. Today we have to at least do a saver on his Robert Cowell stablemate Desert Command, a soft-ground scorer earlier in the season.
But let’s start following ‘the Duke’ right now to small stakes at 11.5 on BETDAQ this morning in an eight-horse race in which all bar two are within a four-point parameter in the orange. Open or what!
DAQMAN’S BETS (staked to win 20 points)
BET 7pts win SIMPLE ATTACK (2.25 Newcastle)
BET 2pts win and place DUKE OF FIRENZE, and 1pt win (stakes saver) DESERT COMMAND (3.05 Epsom)
BET 3.5pts win PENNY DREADFUL (3.10 Ripon)
BET 3.5pts win HOLY GRAIL (3.45 Ripon)
BET 2.3pts win (nap) PENITENT (4.20 Ripon)
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