FOUR NAPS UP OUT OF SIX: Daqman gave Betdaq punters early warning of plunge horse Kissed (nap, WON 2-5) yesterday to land his fourth winning nap from the last six, with success in the week at 100-30, 85-40 and 8-11. Total profit: 48 points, even at SP.
TWO WINNERS BUT THREE WINNING BETS: He named only one other horse yesterday – Cirrus Des Aigles (WON 8-13) – and, with the pair also doubled, made 16.45 points on the day. Kissed and Cirrus Des Aigles both won by around eight lengths.
TEN TO FOLLOW: Kissed is one of his Ten To Follow with a difference. This first 10 will run until after the Derby and Oaks; he will then revise the list before Royal Ascot.
Cup races: SEA MOON (Sir Michael Stoute), GULF OF NAPLES (Mark Johnston)
Sprints: CRUSADE (A O’Brien), MAYSON (Richard Fahey)
1m 2f: PLANTEUR (Marco Botti)
1,000 Guineas: DIALA (William Haggas)
2,000 Guineas: TRUMPET MAJOR (Richard Hannon)
Derby: SWEDISH SAILOR (Mahmood Al Zarooni)
Oaks: KISSED (Aidan O’Brien)
St Leger: ERNEST HEMINGWAY (Aidan O’Brien)
Frankel is useless. So is Camelot. Useless, that is, if you are searching for value with a horses-to-follow list. If, however, you want to earn Brownie points in the Racing Post competition, you can’t leave them out, as big-race prospects of the highest potential.
Frankel won’t be a price unless he meets Black Caviar or Cirrus Des Aigles, or both; even then, not much of a price. This trio has now won a total of 44 races, and it’s a sponsor’s dream to get them together.
Camelot is an example of the trainer’s nightmare: do you run a Derby horse in the Guineas? And risk his whole season, as happened with St Nicholas Abbey?
Same stable. Same sire even. Same conundrum. You certainly can’t be hard on him too early in his second season; meanwhile, such as Trumpet Major, Abtaal and French Fifteen are more the Guineas type and will have been brought on by their successful preps.
I’m including in my early list horses that have already come to hand, or are known to go well fresh, so have that advantage going for the top prizes at Newmarket, Chester and York in May.
But I’ll be looking to change my team and give it a summer feel before the strawberries and cream of Royal Ascot and the Irish Derby.
Crusade: Though still entered for the Irish 2,000 Guineas, sprinting could be his game: his sire was second in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint, and Crusade himself was sixth in the Breeders Cup Juvenile (8.5f) on the back of his Middle Park (6f) win at Newmarket.
To say the Juvenile form is rock solid is an understatement: the five US horses in front of him have since won two Grade-1 races, two Grade 2s and a Grade 3, and the horses behind him have collected three Grade 2s and a Grade 3.
The colt that finished 12th of the 13 runners, Crusade’s stablemate, Daddy Long Legs, won the Group-2 UAE Derby at Meydan on the last day of March.
Daddy Long Legs is currently 12-1 in a place for Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, though Ladbrokes, reckoned to have the ear of Ballydoyle, go 20-1. BETDAQ, which is ‘all ears’, listed 19.5 offers this morning.
Diala: Since I put up this filly for the 1,000 Guineas at 31.0, she has been closed down to 17.0 on BETDAQ. William Haggas’s daughter, out of a Danehill mare, is by a son of 2,000 Guineas hero Zafonic, himself a grandson of 2,000 (disqualified) winner, Nureyev.
Ernest Hemingway: He is in this list as a statement (that he is my early choice for the St Leger) but he may be able to pick up prizes along the way; after all, he’s still in two Derby trials and two Derbys.
But the way he won his maiden earlier in the month by 10 lengths – an exercise in the art of galloping – he is destined to make his mark over further.
Gulf Of Naples: Mark Johnston has brought this one along slowly, from class 4, to class 3, to class 2 handicaps, sluicing up straight as a gun-barrel on the soft at Ripon last week.
A bit unlucky not to win the Queen’s Prize and quoted in places at only around 7-1 for the Chester Cup. His Group entries – Yorkshire Cup and Ascot Gold Cup – look optimistic at this stage, but this lean and hungry grey is one to have on your side while he remains in handicaps. Then. who knows..
Kissed: A colossal gallop to the front rank of the Oaks market; I hope you had some of the 16-1 available before yesterday’s trial. Why is she still one to be on this morning?
With the removal of Wading from the Guineas market, and significantly from the Oaks market by Ladbrokes, she must be backed as the alternative to stablemate Maybe, who has not been seen or heard of yet this season. If you’ve already backed Maybe, you have no choice.
Mayson: Before the Craven meeting, trainer Richard Fahey gave a nod and a wink that this one had not yet been strong enough to let off the leash, though in the frame four times in Listed company.
Race-readers felt that the Abernant didn’t have much pace but the final time wasn’t bad on the soft ground, and Mayson showed a delightful turn of foot and a new maturity to dispose of the field by three and a half lengths, which is a wide margin in a sprint.
Planteur: Ground dependency – he needs a bit of cut – will help decide between the Prix d’Ispahan and the Tattersalls Gold Cup as the next target for Marco Botti’s French acquisition.
The Tattersalls race at The Curragh at the end of May would bring Planteur up against the might of Ballydoyle: Aidan O’Brien has entries of the highest calibre, including Await The Dawn, Excelebration and St Nicholas Abbey.
Planteur is very much a Spring horse – form before June 1113 – and came back from a long lay-off to run third for Botti in the Dubai World Cup on Tapeta on the last day of March.
He had another Ballydoyle horse, So You Think, behind in fourth and I would fancy him to turn round the form with the winner, Monterosso, if he meets the pair of them on turf at The Curragh.
Sea Moon: Sir Michael Stoute made a slow start and is currently on an abysmal turf strike rate of 1-23 but that hides the fact that Freemason Lodge suddenly turned the corner with three winners from four runners – two on AW – last week and its record with the money down shows this improvement in the last fortnight (recent runs at the end): 0022011.
In any case, Sea Moon goes well fresh, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Breeders Cup Turf runner-up when he reappears at Newmarket this weekend or at York.
That Stoute’s bird is on the wing could be gauged today by his having seven intended runners, had Windsor been on; as it is, his sole starter at Wolverhampton (8.25), Uprise, in the frame behind a Group horse, looks interesting: 5.5 on BETDAQ this morning.
William Buick, who earlier rides the seeming ‘good thing’ Fluctuate (5.55), can complete an evening double on Uprise and take second spot in the jockeys’ table.
Swedish Sailor: Out of a daughter of Guineas and Derby winner Nashwan, ‘told’ to me as a ‘big improver’ over the winter but reportedly had a slight setback recently.
The sire, Monsun, has progeny which includes Manduro – beat Dylan Thomas in the Prince Of Wales’s Stakes – Shiroccco, who stopped both Ouija Board and Hurricane Run in his time, and the very smart French filly Stacelita.
I took Swedish Sailor at 27.0 on BETDAQ for the Epsom Derby (now 19.5 but, unusually, easier to back at 25-1 with bookmakers) as my ‘coconut shy’ at the race before the trials begin.
It was partly on the ‘whisper’ I’d had, partly on his one run as a juvenile at Yarmouth late last October when he came home five lengths in front of a much-heralded runner-up, Frankel’s brother, Noble Mission.
Trumpet Major: There are colts held up by the weather; there are colts kept back because they are Derby types; there are colts already exposed and colts just beginning their second-season trajectory.
Trumpet Major is none of these: he’s a trial winner in the current conditions, who has improved 15lb since winning on firm ground in August. And he’s trained by a stable so expert with milers, you couldn’t name another yard to beat it.
Trumpet Major is 7-1 with Coral for the Guineas, and 8-1 in six places on the Oddschecker listings, but 12.0 on BETDAQ this morning, as I write.
DAQMAN’S BETS
BET 10pts win (nap) GOLD EDITION (3.15 Kempton)
BET 1.7pts win and place SEA SOLDIER (5.15 Kempton)
BET 4.4pts win UPRISE (8.25 Wolverhampton)
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