Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
It’s not every Lambourn-based jockey who would fancy schlepping up to Catterick for a single ride, a journey that requires you to spend at least eight hours in the car there and back. So it’s interesting to see that that is Nico De Boinville’s comeback plan, two and a half months after he broke his right arm in a fall from Le Reve at Cheltenham.
Of course, if he was determined to make his comeback today, then his options are limited because the only other jumps card, at Chepstow, was abandoned because of waterlogging. So, hi ho, it’s off to North Yorkshire he goes, for Treaty Girl (3.20) in a mares’ handicap chase.
I imagine this is a plot he dreamed up with the horse’s trainer, Ben Pauling, since the two of them go back several years to the time they both worked at Nicky Henderson’s yard. Considering that handicap chases for mares must be one of the weaker divisions in racing, they’re pretty unlucky to find themselves up against such a prolific recent winner as Two Smokin Barrels.
But I think that one might finally have reached her ceiling, 19lb above the mark from which her run started at Wetherby in December. Treaty Girl, on the other hand, may have more to give and turned in a better performance in defeat last time than we have yet seen from her rival.
That last day was New Year’s Eve at Newbury, where Treaty Girl ran second of 12 in the Mandarin, beaten only by a dour Rebecca Curtis stayer. Pauling has had a couple of recent disappointments but I’m not panicking about the yard form yet and I fancy this one to give De Boinville a winning return. She’s halved in price overnight to 2-1.
Everyone seems to know the Ken Slack system now. Bell Weir (4.25) hasn’t won over hurdles for nearly three years but Slack’s newly acquired grey opened at 2-1 for the closer at Catterick and is still hovering around that mark.
This one has been with Dianne Sayer since coming over from Ireland and has dropped to a mark that is certainly beatable if Slack has been able to rediscover the horse’s former ability. This will be Bell Weir’s first run since late October, enough of a gap to make it possible to hope for some improvement on that heavy defeat at Aintree.
In the last at Lingfield, I shall indulge my new soft spot for Attain (4.40), a winner when tipped in this space a week ago. That was only an amateur riders’ race and he had the best jockey to help him get home in the nick of time, but the step up in distance seemed to help him and switching stables at the end of last year evidently hasn’t done him any harm. He can beat a penalty at odds of 2-1, his main opposition being the paceless Burnside, albeit that one has the fearsome Adam Kirby newly aboard.
The nap comes in the last race at Kempton tonight, when Black Hole Sun (8.15) is 7-4 to follow up last week’s Wolverhampton win, which was her debut for Ian Williams. She doesn’t have to carry a penalty because that was an apprentice race and this extra distance is suggested as A Good Thing by her pedigree.
Catterick
1.15 Walsingham Grange 1.45 Sam Spinner 2.15 Caprice D’Anglais 2.45 Cracking Find 3.20 Treaty Girl 3.55 Inchcolm 4.25 Bell Weir (nb)
Kempton
5.45 Welsh Inlet 6.15 Dark Destroyer 6.45 Popsilca 7.15 Born To Finish 7.45 Mister Music 8.15 Black Hole Sun (nap)
Lingfield
2.00 Skidby Mill 2.30 Flowers On Venus 3.00 Earthly 3.35 Mailshot 4.10 Gnaad 4.40 Attain
Chepstow Abandoned
