11am Panther in race against time to be fit for Irish St Leger
Tony Paley: Brown Panther’s trainer Tom Dascombe says the Michael Owen-owned horse faces a race against time to be ready to try and win the Irish St Leger at The Curragh for the second year running.
Brown Panther was a comfortable winner of The Curragh Group One event last September and won the Dubai Gold Cup at Meydan on his racecourse debut this year.
A narrow defeat at the hands of the talented Snow Sky in the Yorkshire Cup had connections planning another tilt at the Gold Cup at Royal Ascot before injury intervened. Brown Panther is now on the road to recovery, but Dascombe admits it will be a close call as to whether or not he returns to Ireland on September 13.
The Cheshire handler said: “He’s being ridden now, as well as swimming, but he probably won’t start cantering until next week. We are looking at six or seven weeks after that [before he runs], so let’s see how he progresses.
“The Irish St Leger is the race we want to go for, obviously, but we’ll just have to wait and see. He won’t be able to run before then, anyway.”
Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
Telescope’s season goes from bad to worse with the news that he is now a non-runner in Saturday’s King George. Highclere, his owning syndicate, have tweeted: “TELESCOPE has had a minor setback and will not be able to participate in the King George on Saturday, but should be back on track very soon.”
It’s rather a pity, as I was just at a King George press conference yesterday, listening to a fairly plausible explanation from Sir Michael Stoute about why the horse had underperformed in the Hardwicke last time. The essence was that he ran too free in a slowly run race but in any case you can always forgive a horse one bad run after a most effective career. It would have been interesting to see how Golden Horn matched up against him.
Because I take an interest in such things, I happened to notice that Windforpower is 0/17 at Catterick, where he runs today in a sprint handicap. It’s one of those statistics that is quite easy to find but never seems to attract any attention. Wouldn’t you want to know if the horse you were backing had such a long run of futility at the track in question?
But I don’t think the right conclusion is ‘Ah, he hates this place,’ because he has run well there and was beaten just a nose on one occasion. To be honest, I’d be half tempted by the 14-1 about a horse that won two starts ago, if he had got a better draw than eight of eight, which is probably the worst place to be on fast ground.
So Orient Class (4.00) at a mere 10-1 is the pick. A course and distance winner last year who is back down to a mark just 3lb above his highest winning rating, he has excuses for his first two defeats of the year and may now be ready to show something more with cheekpieces on for the first time.
The tremendously game Cape Castle (8.15) is the nap at Sandown tonight, for which you can get 5-2 about Clive Brittain’s filly extending her winning run to four since moving into handicaps. She’s only up 3lb for her dead-heat last time and the step back up in trip should help. I think her prominent style of racing is likely to be a better fit for fast ground at Sandown than the hold-up tactics usually adopted by her market rival, Satellite.
In the opener, 7-2 appeals about Daisy Boy (6.05), who didn’t get his favoured fast ground for his reappearance run, when he nonetheless showed renewed promise.
Tipping competition, day three
Our winners so far:
Monday
Get Knotted 9-1
Cruchain 3-1
Slip Sliding Away 6-1
Tuesday
Beach Bar 9-2
Katie Gale 13-2
Picture Dealer 11-2
And our leader is ...
Lindsey6677 +11
... despite a winnerless Tuesday. 72luca and ken_taylor share second place on +9.50, having followed Get Knotted with Beach Bar. Dean055 (+7.50) has had Slip Sliding Away and Picture Dealer. Bonzodrongo (+1.50) was the only one to find Katie Gale.
Today, we’d like your tips, please, for these races: 7.35 Naas, 8.15 Sandown, 8.50 Sandown.
This week’s prize is a pair of Premier enclosure tickets to Sandown for Thursday 6 August, when an evening of racing will be followed by live music from top indie rockers (it says here) Kaiser Chiefs! More details are here for anyone who wants to buy tickets, having not won this week. Good luck!
As ever, our champion will be the tipster who returns the best profit to notional level stakes of £1 at starting price on our nominated races, of which there will be three each day up until Friday. Non-runners count as losers. If you have not joined in so far this week, you are welcome to do so today, but you will start on -6.
In the event of a tie at the end of the week, the winner will be the tipster who, from among those tied on the highest score, posted their tips earliest on the final day.
For terms and conditions click here.
Good luck!
And post your tips or racing-related comments below.
