Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
Yesterday, I learned what a stramash has to be gone through before your horse gets a run in the Breeders’ Cup, assuming you want him to run in one of the over-subscribed races. An international panel of handicappers has to sort all the entries into order and, boy, do they make a meal of it.
Phil Smith, Britain’s senior handicapper, reported at a press conference yesterday that this year’s debate had taken place on Tuesday, lasting from 3pm to midnight, our time. Smith and his Irish counterpart were linked by Skype to a panel of eight on the west coast of America, where the French handicapper sat alongside race secretaries from various US tracks.
These chaps are thorough workers and, clearly, it would have been too easy to just tidy the entrants into ratings order and confine the argument to those few who were on the same mark. “Ratings are a guide but by no means a straitjacket,” apparently.
Only those horses who were obviously qualified were waved through, Smith reported, with the rest having their relative merits thoroughly examined. “It’s quite tricky to get your point across when the Americans all want to speak simultaneously,” he added.
And that became a particular issue in the case of Dutch Connection, Charlie Hills’s Lennox winner who was a close fifth in the Maurice de Gheest but has been disappointing at other times. “The Americans were not fans and you can see why,” Smith said.
“They’re big on consistency and Dutch Connection is capable of really good performances but he certainly doesn’t do it every time he runs. It took quite a bit of persuasion to get him into the body of the race.”
Dutch Connection goes in the Mile a week on Saturday at Santa Anita and the circumstances of his access to the race will add some piquancy if he manages to succeed.
To Sedgefield, where they’re running the Durham National. Royale Knight (4.10) has won it for the last two years and, lo, Dr Newland has somehow got him back here on a mark just 5lb higher than last year.
The horse has had his customary defeat over hurdles to warm up and ran rather better this time than in the equivalent outing 12 months ago. He’s 10 but I don’t think there’s any question about whether he retains his ability, considering he was fourth (in a 28-strong field) in the Scottish National just two starts ago. I’ll take the 7-2.
In the preceding handicap hurdle, Doing Fine (3.35) is of interest on his first start since joining Neil Mulholland from Rebecca Curtis. Like a lot of Curtis’s horses, he did nothing great last season but in March 2015 he ran well for a long way in the Festival’s four-miler.
He gets to run here off the same mark as when landing a novice handicap chase two years ago and is quite unexposed over hurdles. He’s 4-1, which is a bit shorter than I was hoping.
I’m all for a bit of sophistication but there’s something odd about the fact that, in Chelmsford’s nursery tonight, the only horse to have actually won a race is a 12-1 rag. Then again, Let’s Be Happy (6.10) was 11-1 when she broke her maiden at Wolverhampton, so perhaps she’s just not the kind of horse that fires the imagination.
She ran just OK when fourth of nine on her nursery debut but that was on a softish surface at Salisbury. This return to an all-weather surface may help a great deal and her mark looks pretty fair after a 3lb drop for that one defeat. Her trainer, Richard Hughes, is not ending the year strongly but I’ll take a chance on this one.
Finally, there’s Majestic Girl (6.40) half an hour later. She’s still a maiden after nine starts but finally showed some promise here last time, finishing strongly to be third, half a length behind a horse who has since won twice. The fourth horse also won next time.
Another quarter-mile may help. Majestic Girl, available at 8-1, is ridden for the first time by the useful claimer Georgia Cox, who is on a 19% strike-rate this year and won seven races in September.
We are no longer able to continue with competitions every week, but they will still run in the biggest weeks (Cheltenham, Aintree, Royal Ascot, Glorious Goodwood and maybe one or two others, as well as the Christmas quiz).
We’ll still have a Talking Horses each day for tips, analysis and news, so we very much hope you’ll join us to chew over whatever racing happens to be going on and post your tips or racing-related comments below.
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