IT’S DERBY DAY WEATHER DRAMA: The weather put punters in chaos this morning: after they swatted up the soft-ground horses, Epsom remained dry overnight, though it drizzled this morning and there was still the threat of showers to tip the Derby balance.
22.0 GAMBLE: BETDAQ SPEAKS VOLUMES: Daqman was on the gamble of the Oaks, Volume, tipped at 22.0 on BETDAQ, and a late order down to 9-1 SP, finishing third after trying to make all under an inspired Richard Hughes.
DAQMAN’S 75th WIN OVER PRICEWISE: The place return from this massive outsider was enough to take Daqman even further ahead of Pricewise in their mutual value hunt. The score is now a landslide 36-9 to Daqman on the Flat (75-21 overall).
TWO BIG-RACE WINNERS IN ONE? Daqman made a profit on the day, but was robbed of a one-two with Abseil (WON 5-2) and the badly hampered Velox. Says Daqman: ‘Abseil will win the Royal Hunt Cup and Velox the Cambridgeshire.’ You read it here first!
AUSTRALIA! HOW HE FINISHES ON TOP
Top Derby jockeys in last 10 years ride TRUE STORY (Fallon) and KINGFISHER (Moore)
Top trainers AUSTRALIA, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, KINGFISHER, ORCHESTRA (all O’Brien), SNOW SKY (Stoute)
Top-rated colts: AUSTRALIA (119), KINGSTON HILL (118), TRUE STORY (114)
Top of the pops (sires): GEOFFREY CHAUCER (Montjeu), AUSTRALIA, KINGFISHER, IMPULSIVE MOMENT, ORCHESTRA (all Galileo)
Top-drawer dam: AUSTRALIA (Ouija Board), GEOFFREY CHAUCER (Machiavellian mare), ROMSDAL (Singspiel mare), TRUE STORY (Darshaan mare)
Top of the draw (9-10 winners from stalls 3-10): AROD, EBANORAM, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, IMPULSIVE MOMENT, PIZOLO, RED GALILEO, SUDDEN WONDER
Top trialists: AROD, AUSTRALIA, KINGSTON HILL, ORCHESTRA, ROMSDAL, TRUE STORY.
Top of the market (10-10 single-figure SP): notionally AUSTRALIA, GEOFFREY CHAUCER, KINGSTON HILL
Top ABC Guide (Daqman Archive, Thursday): AUSTRALIA, AROD, EBANORAN, FASCINATING ROCK, ORCHESTRA, TRUE STORY
Top four (on total marks from the above): 1 AUSTRALIA, 2 ORCHESTRA and GEOFFREY CHAUCER, 4 TRUE STORY
IT’S KINGSTON COME THE RAIN
Message for Andrea Atzeni and Kieren Fallon. If your stalls 1 and 2 draws mean you are on the inside, tight on the rail, coming up the hill toward the camber, you will not get through to win the Derby on Kingston Hill or True Story. So just don’t try it.
A low draw is sweet music – stalls 3 to 10 have won the Derby nine times in the decade – but the inside traps are just that, witness how Ryan Moore got stuck with nowhere to go on Mango Diva (from 1) yesterday, and Atzeni himself was almost put over the fence on Velox. Will win next time. But that’s no good to punters on the day.
So it is that squall and stall may decide the 2014 Derby unless there’s a Nijinsky among them.. a Troy, a Galileo or a Sea The Stars will do. Quality that can overcome.
The Oaks is often decided on potential from a small number of runs. But Derby winners are solid, as results by price reveal. Forget the hype: what have today’s colts actually done? How will rain, if any, affect their chances?
AUSTRALIA
FOR: Superbly bred, by a Derby winner out of an Oaks winner – Galileo and Ouija Board – he was placed in a Newmarket 2,000 Guineas boosted by Kingman (Irish 2,000) and The Grey Gatsby (French Derby).
AGAINST: He was driven, trying to win that day, and had a hard race; rather we wanted to see a smooth staying-on performance, as if another half-mile would see him the winner. Any change of ground is a worry.
GEOFFREY CHAUCER
FOR: By Montjeu, sire of Authorized and Camelot, and unbeaten last year, though green. Was giving weight to the first two in the Leopardstown Derby Trial.
AGAINST: You would be backing this one on potential, rather than what he’s done, and the official handicapper thinks he is 7lb off Australia. But he looks guaranteed to improve.
KINGSTON HILL
FOR: He would only have to reproduce his Racing Post Trophy form of last season when The Grey Gatsby was seventh and Snow Sky eighth In his Guineas run in May, he was going on at the finish, eighth, just what was needed of a mile-and-a-half colt.
AGAINST: The Racing Post runner-up last year won only on AW afterwards and was 13 lengths off Kingman in the Irish 2,000; the third, fourth, fifth and sixth have never won another race.
ORCHESTRA
FOR: Like Geoffrey Chaucer, has had only three starts, and it was important to take this big colt to Chester to see if he could cope with a turning track. He did so to win the Vase, looking well balanced despite his size.
AGAINST: He beat Romsdal only narrowly at Chester after that one got boxed in behind a wall of horses, and is third string for Ballydoyle on jockeys’ pick.
TRUE STORY
FOR: Ran away with the Fielden Stakes and would have finished runner-up in the French Derby on a line through the winner The Grey Gatsby, who took the Dante Stakes, with True Story third.
AGAINST: Those behind him in the Fielden were trounced by Kingman, Pinzolo and Western Hymn, and he was beaten favourite at York. Rain a negative.
ALSO-RAN: Rain would scupper the chances of Western Hymn. Ebanoran and Fascinating Rock may well be overtaken now by Geoffrey Chaucer who was third, hampered and giving weight, when they were one-two at Leopardstown.
Romsdal is, theoretically, as good as, if not better than, Orchestra on Chester form but doesn’t have the breeding to carry off a Derby trophy. Arod doesn’t have a reliable trainer, even though he’s won two Derbys, and rain would be against him.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT ON THE 2014 DERBY
The Grey Gatsby holds the key. Though he probably beat nothing much in the French Derby, he won our best Derby trial, the Dante, just in front of Arod and True Story.
But he was behind Kingston Hill in the Guineas and in last year’s Racing Post Trophy. Kingston Hill, himself, was behind Australia in the Guineas but looked more of a Derby winner, being allowed to run his own race over the inadequate trip.
Kingston Hill, whose connections were praying for rain, is the only Group-1 winner in the field, and would be the first Epsom-bred hero since Amato in 1838.
Geoffrey Chaucer may or may not have beaten Australia on the Ballydoyle gallops; even if he did, we don’t know the weights or the work-riders’ instructions. But there was strong indication of his prowess as Ladbrokes went much shorter than the others at 6-1 this morning.
Those that Orchestra and Romsdal beat at Chester had already been beaten by Western Hymn and Sudden Wonder by a similar distance or more. So that form’s all in a heap.
I take Kingston Hill (9.2 on BETDAQ) – read my message, Atzeni, – and Geoffrey Chaucer (11.0), and I am obliged to carry forward my early-mouse outsider, Kingfisher, at 53.0 and have a place bet on him at 17.0. Australia is my stakes saver (but I do not count break-even in the Pricewise challenge).
1 Kingston Hill
2 Australia
3 Geoffrey Chaucer
4 Kingfisher
LAST WORD ON THE WEATHER: Remember, we are dealing with three-year-olds, with few public appearances, lining up with every chance of sudden improvement and of taking a perverse shine to any bad weather.
How’s this for contradiction. John Gosden, trainer of Romsdal: ‘If it continues to dry out, it will suit Romsdal more’. Jockey Richard Hughes: ‘He definitely has a chance, especially if the rain is as heavy as expected.’ I am indebted to the Racing Post for this conundrum.
‘EVEN’ CUTS A DASH AT VALUE 13.5
1.35 Epsom A very open BETDAQ market early mouse, with 7.0 the field, virtually each of three. But eight winners out of nine have come from the lower half of this handicap, with Mark Johnston (three runners) and William Haggas (two) bent on winning this £50,000-guaranteed handicap.
Lucky or what, stall 7 has won the race for three years in succession, and that’s where you’ll find a lightly-raced Haggas hope, Yenhaab, off 8st 6lb, now trying a trip for the first time.
But Haggas also steps up in trip the Pivotal filly Flippant, her sire producing mud-lovers more often than not. So we have an early test of the ground.
It looks fast and furiuous, whatever the weather. Front-runners drawn low, Black Shadow and Double Bluff should take them along at a good clip. Al Busayyir also made all at Redcar and Zampa Manos at Kempton, while Lyn Valley and Stars Over The Sea race keenly.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: This is a pinstickers’ race, in which Yenhaab (6.8 on BETDAQ) is with the right trainer in the right section of the handicap and with the right breeding for his step up in trip.
Black Shadow (offers of 8.4 as I write), well drawn and already proven roujnd the turns of Goodwood from the front, was also the ‘moral’ when giving weight, runner-up to Lingfield Oaks Trial winner, Honor Bound.
2.05 Epsom (Woodcote Stakes) The last six winners had all had two or three outings already and all had won a race. That applies to six of today’s field.
But it would be a rare thing for a filly to win it, so we are down to five, of which Lightning Stride is Brian Meehan’s only two-year-old winner, so no juvenile depth in the stable there, then.
Burtonwood looks exposed already but Baitha Alga is Richard Hannon’s choice from six entries and – like Ballymore Castle (beat Red Icon) – won at another nippy track, Chester, on good to soft, which is my forecast for today’s gtound.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: Baitha Alga can follow up last year’s win for Richard Hannon with Thunder Strike, which may yet be an appropriate epithet for the day.
2.40 Epsom (Coronation Cup) This race commemorates hat-trick winner St Nichols Abbey but Aidan O’Brien is not represented for a race he’s won seven times. Instead, there’s an international flavor to it.
Clear in the market, a shade of odds on with bookmakers, but 2.04 on BETDAQ, is Cirrus Des Aigles, a horse I’ve never latched onto, and never regretted it, until he stuffed my banker, the Arc winner, Treve, on the last day at Longchamp. She wasn’t ready.
That he’s eight has not clouded Cirrus’ class and, though today’s 1m 4f is not his best trip – form figures 22102021042 – two of his rivals are mere handicappers, and Joshua Tree, third in this last year, has not ripened with age in the same way.
There’s not much between Ambivalent and Empoli on their third and fourth when Cirrus Des Aigles was second at Meydan in March, but I prefer early-season performers Flintshire and Talent.
Ralph Beckett’s second-season fillies have done well again, though not quite up to Talent’s standards of last year: she completed a hat-trick here when winning the Oaks and, when the ground eased again in the autumn, she ran up to Leading Light in the St Leger.
Flintshire’s Group 1 win, the Grand Prix de Paris, wasn’t a race of great substance and he struggled on the soft in the Arc.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: Flintshire is expected to make a better four-year-old but, on this sharp track, where she made her mark, I take Talent (9.4 on BETDAQ) to upset Cirrus Des Aigles at today’s trip.
3.15 Epsom Dash With one exception this 5f streak has been a young man’s game. In theory, we can eliminate the seven starters over the age of six.
Stalls 10 to 20 have a remarkable record of 18 out of the 24 placed horses over eight seasons, and a mark of 9st 1lb downwards has produced seven of the last eight winners.
If the rains come, the stats suggest that Even Stevens, prepped only seven days ago, is a standout. A winner on heavy, his successful winter campaign has seen his AW rating soar to 101, some 13lb higher than his old turf mark.
When he won on heavy, the Racing Post racereader reported: ‘A fine front-running display. He showed blistering speed and maintained his gallop all the way to the line.’ Perfect for Epsom.
Caspian Prince, Eton Rifles and Swan Song have sound chances on an easing surface, but Monsieur Joe and Elusivity would prefer flat tracks. Smoothtalkinrascal drops from Group level but, like Elusivity, tends to get behind early, which is no good thing with the downhill start at Epsom.
DAQMAN’S VERDICT: Despite top weight, Steps (10.5 on BETDAQ this morning), is a class act on easing ground and has won his last two races at Listed level. Even Stevens is an Epsom sprint horse par excellence, and will be hard to catch the more it rains: 13.5 as I write.
DAQMAN’S BETS (each staked to win 30 points, unless stated)
BET 5pts win YENHAAB and 4pts win BLACK SHADOW (1.35 Epsom)
BET 12pts win (nap) BAITHA ALGA (2.05 Epsom)
BET 3.5pts win TALENT and 3.3pts win (stakes saver) CIRRUS DES AIGLES (2.40 Epsom)
BET 3pts win STEPS and 2.5pts win and place EVEN STEVENS (3.15 Epsom)
BET 3.6pts win KINGSTON HILL, 3pts win GEOFFREY CHAUCER and, already ante-post, 1pt win KINGFISHER at 53.0, plus 1pt place KINGFISHER today at 17.0 and 4.4pts win (all-stakes saver) AUSTRALIA (4.00 Epsom)
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