IT’S A BLAZING HOT 10-RACE START TO FLAT 2020: Ho’way the lads! We’re racing again, with a card of 10 on the Geordie shore for a punting puzzle of a start to Flat 2020. Is it Good Tidings in the 5.05 race at Newcastle, Blazing Hot in the 2.10 or I Am A Dreamer (3.20)? Punters everywhere will want to launch the delayed season with fantasy doubles and trebles on BETDAQ Multiples. Here are the first-day headlines:
🔹 FORMIDABLE FABRE TO BE VICTOR
🔹 STONE BONKER OR ONE TO LAY?
🔹 CURTIS LOOKS ELECTRIC AT 23.0
🔹 FRANKLY, MY DEAR, I GIVE A DAM
SEVEN WINNERS IN 3 DAYS: BACK-TO-BACK NAPS: Daqman sees this time as a proving ground for his methods. He’s had 3-3 back-and-lays successful and launched his Fortune Cookies with a win. Today he opens with a double whammy of one to back and one to lay in the same race. He has a BETDAQ place bet and faces Pricewise of the Racing Post in the first of the season’s value challenges on a day of three Guineas. Daqman has had seven winners in three days, with back-to-back naps:
Sunday
✔️ WON 1-5 OCEAN ATLANTIQUE (supernap and Fortune Cookie)
✔️ WON 3-5 ROSE GOLD
Saturday
✔️ WON 5-1 JUGEOTTE from 9.0 on BETDAQ
✔️ WON 23-10 ENOLA GAY from 6.5 BETDAQ
✔️ WON 23-10 HIGH KING (nap)
Friday
✔️ WON 54-10 SPIRIT INTIME from 9.0 on BETDAQ
✔️ WON 14-5 FANTASIA DU ROCK
FORMIDABLE FABRE TO BE VICTOR
⭕ 2.50 Deauville (French 2,000 Guineas) The Summit was given an easy lead in the Fontainebleau trial, leaving Ecrivain and Victor Ludorum to chase late on deep ground and, for the third consecutive year, a beaten horse there can now win the Guineas.
Victor Ludorum headed stablemate Alson to win the Lagardere, with Ecrivain back in fourth, and is taken to come out best of a formidable Andre Fabre trio, completed by Arapaho, who has the year’s jockey sensation Pierre-Charles Boudot to effect this leap from Listed class. A shade under 3.0 on BETDAQ.
⭕ 3.25 Deauville (French 1,000 Guineas) Tropbeau, Dream And Do and Tickle Me Green were 1-2-3 in the Prix de la Grotte trial, clear of the remainder. All three were in front at some stage in the final quarter-mile.
When they’re in a heap like this, you have no way of knowing which one will come through and take the diva position; you have to look for something to beat them.
Simeen is bred to get a lot further and a threeway battle up front could bring in her stamina late in the day. I took BETDAQ 4.0.
⭕ 3.45 Cologne (German 2,000 Guineas) Leading German trainer Henk Grewe is double-dreaming of glory with grandsons of Lomitas, who was responsible for Arc de Triomphe winner, Danedream.
They are Wonderful Moon and the unbeaten Rubaiyat, who won the German Grand Criterium five lengths and took the prestigious Dr Busch-Memorial at the Berlin Hoppegarten on his return.
Stablemate Zavaro kept him up to his work that day and Fearless King was running on, but there is no reason to suppose that they can overturn the form.
STONE BONKER OR ONE TO LAY?
Ho’way the lads! Newcastle’s 10-race card today rescues English racing from the long grey weeks of inaction through the green days of a sunshine Spring that would by now have had Classic stars and handicap heroes.
The turf itself will not be back until Yarmouth on Wednesday; the Classics are Guineas next weekend where Derby and Oaks are usually due. We won’t have the crowds but the sport lives on.
It’s a time to test all the betting possibilities on BETDAQ, without spending like a green amateur before results begin to create trends. In that respect, it’s Spring come late and the grey area that remains is the form.
⭕ 1.00 Newcastle I set out some rules during the close(d) season but might have been waiting for this race to add another: don’t join in a gamble when you missed the big prices.
Early 4-1; a struggle now to get 5-4 Stone Mason. I see 2.56 on the BETDAQ exchange as I write. Let it go. It’s somebody else’s value. Or not.
There’s nothing in the form book that shouts Stone Mason (2.62 the lay) and there are question marks: why follow a horse that’s been let go by a shrewdie trainer (Roger Charlton) and gone to a country yard (Michael Appleby) which hasn’t had a winner in 81 days?
Why on Tapeta back an animal sired by a soft-ground specialist, whose lowest strike rate is on AW?
There are plusses, like the draw in stall 11, and Appleby has a good overall record on AW, which is why he is leading trainer in 2020, with 30 (to Tony Carroll’s 29 and Mark Johnston’s 21), but with the sour note that his level-stakes loss is £107 to pound level stakes.
I shall have my pound on Curfewed at 14.0, who has one or two things going for him that others wish they had. Course-and-distance winner, he just about lived on the Newcastle track between November and February!
Six races in a row there, one of just eight horses from which trainer Tracy Waggott has managed four wins this year so far; that’s 50% winners to runners.
CURTIS LOOKS ELECTRIC AT 23.0
⭕ 2.45 Newcastle Another race; another gamble? No, two! There’s been a battle at the bookies as to which of Art Power and Magical Journey will go off favourite.
Art Power, third on debut at Newcastle in September, and then five-lengths winner at York, has much better form but therefore a much higher weight and, if you were to bet who would be ready first time, it would be James Tate (Magical Journey) rather than Tim Easterby.
Both horses have been absent more than 200 days and we don’t even know if they’ve trained on. Don’t ignore leading jockey Ben Curtis on Electric Mistress, says my man in the long grass, who has been practising social distancing on the gallops ever since I can remember!
⭕ 5.05 Newcastle Another Daqman rule is to bet blgger stakes in class 3 and above; that restricts you to this 1m 4f handicap.
Ice Pyramid’s Newcastle form is 4311; Good Tidings (BETDAQ 6.2) has risen through the ranks, where Alignak has yet to do so. Again you have to choose: who is further forward, Gosden or Stoute, or is the prize on ice for Ben Curtis again?
FRANKLY, MY DEAR, I GIVE A DAM
⭕ 5.40 Newcastle We started with a hot-pot (Stone Mason). Now here’s another they’ll want to be on, with a sire and dam that shout quality, speed and class.
The difference is that even-money Frankly Darling is class, trained by class, in the hands of John Gosden, the punter’s godsend, who has 23% strike rate on this course and a 100% reliability rating.
She’s a Frankel out of a Daylami mare and, with a decent run already on her CV, can be expected to perform, whereas you’d think the Sir Michael Stoute contender, Thibaan, would need time, and that Dream With Me, a Frankel but a colt this time, would give way to the stamina surge of Gosden’s filly.
DAQMAN’S BETS
1.00 Newcastle (bet to win 20, place win 10, lay the favourite to lose 5)
BET 1.5pts win 3pts place CURFEWED, 3pts lay STONE MASON
2.45 Newcastle (win 23, place win 10)
BET 1pt win and 4pts place ELECTRIC MISTRESS
3.25 Deauville (win 10)
BET 3.25pts win SIMEEN
5.05 Newcastle (win 10)
BET 2pts win GOOD TIDINGS
5.40 Newcastle (win 10)
BET 10pts win (nap) FRANKLY DARLING
FORTUNE COOKIES (20pts level stake)
VICTOR LUDORUM (2.50 Deauville)
RUBAIYAT (3.45 Cologne)
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