Thoughts on three runners tomorrow
A busy day for the team tomorrow with three runners, all bred by one of our great supporters Peter Onslow and race in partnerships with various of his friends. It seem somewhat incredible that of the three yearlings sent to us by Peter last year that they should all conspire to be racing on the same day. It would be nice to pull off a Barney Curley style coupe with the treble, however confidence isn’t quite at those levels.
At 12:55 Flooded makes his racecourse debut in the mile maiden with George Downing on board. Flooded is a big rangy gelding who is still in the process of filling his frame. On looks and homework he will likely make up into a middle distance horse. He is by Archipenko out of an American family so ought to handle the surface. Most of our horses benefit for their first day out and our feeling is that will be the case here.
Flooded is the only debutant in the field here which makes things tough for him and one would expect there to be more progression from the the once raced Bonnie Gals and Miramar and they therefore the most likely winners in comparison the more experienced runners, amongst Miss Osier would be the standard setter.
Dixie’s Double goes in the 2:35 and is returning from a bit of time away from the track following a disappointing nursery debut in August at Brighton when she really struggled with the track. She won well at Lingfield the time before under tomorrow’s jockey Luke Morris over the 5 furlong trip. She is a handily sized filly and seemed happiest on quicker ground so the track is a slight uncertainty, however she is a half sister to a couple of multiple Fibresand winners and her sire gets his share of winners on the surface.
White Royale has some decent course form and has shown the best form to date of any of the runners and is the clear danger.
We head to the 7:00 at Chelmsford where Av A Word runs over ten furlongs under leading all weather jockey Adam Kirby. A gawky horse who is still learning to race he should take another step forward from his recent return to action at Kempton. He ran in snatches that day and ducked and dived a bit in the kick back but stuck to his task well enough towards the end. Ten furlongs is quite a long way for a three year old at this stage of his career and we are in little doubt that he will get the trip in due course, whether he quite will tomorrow remains to be seen. The advantage of going ten furlongs at this stage is that it will all happen a little slower than over a mile and should therefore help to concentrate better. He is a slow learner but we see enough in his homework to believe that he will win races in due course and he will progress with regular racing.
Serenade the Stars went close in a similar race to this on handicap debut and sets the form standard. Whatelseaboutyou is a well bred filly and ought to be suited by the extra distance she gets tonight and was dropped back in trip for her third start after plugging on over an extended mile on her second start, suggesting that handicaps were very much the plan for this filly in order to get an all important win on the board.
