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Saturday 11 July
DAQMAN
21 POINTS UP AT JULY MEETING: Daqman edged a profit yesterday with another winning lay and a first-race payout from Brief Encounter (won 5-1) to take his winnings to more than 21 points for the three days of the July Meeting, his 14-day winning run showing 175 points on the scoreboard.
11-1 WINNERS: It was a tough week of stonewalling since his big hits, 11-1 Total Gallery on Wednesday and another 11-1 scorer (Dickie Le Davoir) earlier in the week. He’s had 70 winning bets in the last 27 days.
12 LAYS ON THE TROT: Daqman is now 12 not out with his lays, all morning favourites, punters getting desperately close to bowling him out via Orpen Grey on Thursday and Captain Brilliance yesterday, but no prizes for second. His record is 16 in a row.
I always treat big-field handicaps like Russian dolls: inside every one of them is another smaller handicap. Solve them in turn and you have your short-list.
The obvious first strategy with the John Smith’s Cup is to unravel the mini-handicap of the lowest 10 in the draw, responsible for most of the winners – seven –in the last decade.
I’m dropping three of them because they are too old: not old enough to need Tanya Stevenson’s hair-dye but, at six and over, they don’t win this, according to the stats.
Richard Fahey has two of the remaining seven. Well, he would, wouldn’t he: when a trainer is on a roll, luck seems to lay a magic carpet for him.
One of them, Unbreak My Heart, is a key to collateral form: on the face of it, there’s precious little daylight between the gelding and Ladies Best (Epsom form) and, therefore, Albaquaa (Pontefract), and among ‘Heart’ and the Redcar 1-2-3, Kingdom of Fife, Nanton and Re Barolo. In other words, the handicapper has had his say.
But with two of those with the draw advantage, he has not had his say: he can’t assess Riggins or Ra Junior for this 10 furlongs because they are entirely unexposed at the trip.
Strangely, they top and tail the Betdaq market, as I write: for Riggins to be ahead of Kingdom of Fife in the market could be significant; for Ra Junior to be the 48.0 rank outsider seems absurd.
Riggins is obviously a glass horse, very lightly raced and ‘got up’ for a touch when he’s sound: that he steps up from a mile might be beneficial (he’s from a middle-distance family) but trainer Luca Cumani feels this is experimental and, though he’s best of the five-year-old group, it’s a late stage in any Flat career, however light, to be trying new trips.
Ra Junior is with a stable emerging from a sickening start to the year, with places in Classics where success would have had the name of Meehan towering over the Oxxs and O’Brien’s who stole his thunder.
If you agree that Meehan had the right ammunition, rarely tilting at windmills like, say, the arch Don Quixote, Clive Brittain, then you have to accept that his aiming Ra Junior at a Group-2 start to his season suggests that he’s proverbially ‘chucked in’ here off 8st. 6lb.
There’s an apprentice allowance on top, and three-year-olds have a good record in the race: they won it in 2000 and 2001.
Of the other Russian dolls – groups within the race – Moonquake looks best of the four-year-olds on his win here in May but tactics were easy for Frankie Dettori then from stall five: he’ll have to get over from stall 22 this time, if he is to tuck in on the rail.
Laterly will string the field out and help the hold-up horses. Will he last out into a place or get swamped at the finish? Local stable. Had a run within seven days. Joint top of the Racing Post ratings with Riggins and Sweet Lightning. Yet 35.0 on the Daq.
I can see Aqlaam (2.50 Ascot) improving past Cesare in the Summer Mile after a fine run in the Queen Anne when, according to his trainer, he would be ‘better later on.’
In fact, I’m going to 'get' Cesare: he did a lot of hard work at Ascot; he’s eight now and will find it hard to put two races together; apart from Aqlaam, he has another improver to beat, Imbongi, reckoned ‘only a length or so behind’ last year’s winner of this, Archipenko (Cesare second), according to the trainer in the trade Press today.
There’s a charge for the City Wall Stakes at Chester and I think the light brigade can win it: the fast-out flying style of Rievaulx World (3.30) – that’s “rivers world” if you’re from the North – is well suited to this track and 10.5 on Betdaq this morning was each-way value.
I’m taking on Borderlescott, whose big wins have come on straight tracks, like York, Goodwood and Newmarket. He’s got a good draw here and it will be a tight finish but we’ve got the kitty from 12 lays on the trot for gambles today against the old boys, Borderlescott and Cesare.
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