DAQMAN on SUNDAY

Sunday 4 January DAQMAN went to Lingfield to buy money yesterday and landed his maximum-stakes banker, Premio Loco (won 4-9). Otherwise he talked up Paul Townend at Cork but missed his winner, Fixed Fee (won 2-1), and championed Jim Crowley at Kempton but missed his winner, Lopinot (won 14-1). Hardest to bear were the fortunes of the Daqman ‘dark horse’ Kilburn; forecast 33-1 and gambled on all day at Kempton, Kilburn (form figures 008096/) tried to make all and was beaten a neck at 6-1 (SP). Before the frost bit, Daqman had stepped up his strike rate to three wins a day, and is now on 44 winning bets in 15 days. Today Daqman questions the sanity of ante-post punters yet he, himself, attracts the men with white coats by laying two of today’s three horses forecast odds-on. ‘Live dangerously on a dull day,’ he says. It simply isn’t The Weekend without top-class racing; just when we’re trying to get used to normality after the holidays, Racing Time stays frozen. Maybe it’s some planetary change: how else could a team from the Bermuda Triangle of football (Derby, Nottingham, Leicester) beat a Premier League side, even a Man City in freefall? How else could normally sane (relatively sane?) human-beings hammer into Denman for the Grand National and make him favourite? A case of a lost weekend with nothing better to do with their money. I won’t go on about it: I simply refer you back to recent warnings concerning Denman in this column, and add the obvious: only Red Rum has won the National with more than 11st 5lb in the last 50 years. Appropriately, the looney bishop (sorry, The Bishop Looney, 1.45) is the best backed horse this morning at Naas, according to the Racing Post website as I write: but not on Betdaq, where he languished at 9.8 behind long-odds-on Mikael D’Haguenet. Mullins-Walsh and Mullins-Townend are on the rampage again and, after 25 places, 15 of them winners, from 46 runners (some of them Mullins-Mullins, as may happen again in the bumper today) there must be thousands of punters who are betting blind. Maybe it’s reached the stage now where the odds, mathematically, are against them: like the Nicholls runners in England (and Denman mania), the trades about Willie Mullins runners have become depressed and unrewarding. In this particular race, ALL other runners in the race are a better price for a place (first or second) than “Mikael” is for the win: my pound goes on Western Charmer (13.5 win and 3.5 a place). Western Charmer didn’t get the trip when he ran out in the 3m race won by The Bishop Looney but he started 13-8 where the winner was 10-1, having previously been 7-4 favourite when his saddle slipped behind the same horse at 9-2 in a Galway bumper. Western Charmer had looked very smart at Punchestown when beating subsequent big-field Leopardstown scorer Corskeagh Royale and the 12-lengths Fairyhouse winner, Mick The Man. Trainer Dessie Hughes said then that Western Charmer could be ‘very good’ and I’ll take 3.5 he’s in the ‘two’ against the Mullins-fever-induced 1.38 win only on offer about the penalty-carrier, MikaelD’Haguenet, whose reputation really relies on a three-runner race in which he stopped an odds-on shot. I might add, incidentally, that the favourite has been turned over every year in the five runnings of today’s heat, according to the Racing Post website. At such long-odds-on (1.4 the lay as I write), we’ve nothing to lose by laying him. The same applies to Lemon N Sugar (1.10) at Southwell: at 1.51 the lay on Betdaq to small stakes, live dangerously! You know the horse is in this race because it’s next-to-useless, and you have against it three complete unknowns and several unexposed, not least Nizhoni. Nizhoni’s yard, that of B Smart (and do wear a tie for Sunday lunch), has had four winners from its last six runners and none – not one –out of the ‘four’ for a fortnight. They’re digging in deep at Southwell after the rain and Three Strings (3.10) should take advantage; he likes to be up there with the pace and Raquel White has quickly conceded in her last two runs over this trip, while Kames Park is notorious for starting slowly. Of the others, only Black Falcon has shown form at anything like this trip and he’s nine-years-old now; like Kames Park, he’s only won claimers in the last year or so. The favourite, Colourful Move, is a maiden who has been one paced so far, hardly the material to catch Three Strings if he takes a grip on this race, which he is capable of and which ought to be the plan. I’ve only two places again for each-way betting but this looks a match.
TODAY'S BETS
LAY to win 10pts LEMON N SUGAR , plus 2pts win and place NIZHONI (1.10 Southwell) LAY to win 10pts MIKAEL D’HAGUENET, plus 1pt win and 3pts place WESTERN CHARMER (1.45 Naas) BET 3pts win and place THREE STRINGS (3.10 Southwell)
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