DAQMAN on Sunday

Sunday 5 July DAQMAN  128 POINTS PROFIT: After dipping out on Friday, Daqman came back with another winning Saturday to make it seven days with a profit out of eight for a total of 128 points. NINE LAYS IN A ROW: He sank Sands Crooner (unplaced 11-2) for his ninth consecutive winning lay of a morning favourite. His current score is 40 out of 46 (that’s 87%), and he needs six more for the 250 up. BANKER UP: Yesterday’s four returns included his banker, Strawberrydaiquiri (won 6-5). He’s now had 57 winning bets in 21 days. WHAT A RACE! Today he pays his tribute to Sea The Stars. It’s a quiet day but he finds a race at Market Rasen in which four horses have been placed a total of 50 times from 65 races. What a race! Sea The Star’s Eclipse was a little bit like the flight I took to Barcelona last year. An ultra-nervous woman buried her head most of the way until, finally, an attendant approached her: “It’s all right now, madam,” he said, “we’ve landed.” It was so smooth, she hadn’t even noticed, raised her head wide-eyed and wondered what all her fuss had been about. I can’t begin to make precise pecuniary references to Barcelona but at last there’s a racehorse in Europe worth as much as a footballer. Get set for inevitable comparisons with past champions but, for once, they are easy to qualify if not to quantify: Sea The Stars does not have the acceleration of a Nijinksy, nor is he a dominant freak like Sea Bird or Ribot, miles clear of anything else. He is simply one of the most complete athletes ever to appear in the guise of horseflesh. As to which will be his next Nou Camp - the King George or the International, then maybe the Arc -  ‘the horse will tell us,’ says John Oxx. You can almost imagine, a verbal exchange, in which they don’t speak for days until a laid-back Oxx almost apologetically asks an even further back Sea The Stars: “You OK for another run?” To which comes the reply with a shrug: “Sure; no problem. What’s the job this time?” We all hope it will be the King George for a showdown with Fame And Glory, but that’s less than three weeks away. Rip Van Winkle improved on his Derby run and there’s no doubt in my mind that Fame And Glory made more improvement when he went on to win at The Curragh and could, in theory, have made up the required couple of lengths on Epsom form. But, as Rip Van Winkle found out yesterday, it’s one thing to get up close to Sea The Stars; it’s another thing altogether to get past, as the impeccable Mike Kinane asks for a bit more and his colt changes gear. If York is next, then no doubt there’ll be another Ballydoyle attack and Aidan O’Brien, the king of tacticians, will want to replay an International of more than 30 years ago when Brigadier Gerard lost the only one of 18 starts, as an American jockey, Braulio Baeza, destroyed the race by a US-style ‘start faster than you finish’ performance. His mount, Roberto, didn’t stop and outsmarted the ‘Brigadier’, both horses breaking the track record. Baeza was known as ‘The Sphynx’ because his face was expressionless. So were the faces in the stands that day; no one could take it in. If Sea The Stars goes to Longchamp, the danger is the late developer: the French already have an impressive and improving filly in Stacelita and, among their colts, is a dark horse of the Aga Khan’s, Beheshtam; he’s only come to hand this year but finished well in Chantilly’s shortened version of a Derby. What we’re really saying - King George, International, or Arc – is that we can’t wait to see another eclipse of the stars because we almost feel we missed the last one, it was so smooth. All over bar the shouting, as they say. There are three Group races at Chantilly today which could throw up late season contenders. I don’t like to see – and have rarely seen - a blinkered winner of a Group 1, so I’m swerving Westphalia in the Prix Jean Prat. Instead, I fancy a return to form in the Chloe for Denomination (2.25); both she and Article Rare have seen the back of Stacelita and should both go well, dropped back to Group 3. Denomination is much the better trade on the Daq at 8.4, as I write. Such is the nature of racing, that I must turn from the year of the great eclipse of the sun (1764 when the eponymous Eclipse was born) to the 90th birthday of Granny Lock-Wheaton, whoever she is: her race at Market Rasen (3.50) is a grade or 10 lower than Saturday’s big’un but no less a thrill for that. I just hope she doesn’t faint away as Sea The Star’s owner did. Market Rasen was my first racecourse visit at the age of 14: no comparisons with Granny Locke-Wheaton please, but I will tell you that Braulio Baeza was already riding and my next trip to the races was to see Sir Gordon Richards ride at Birmingham. The Rasen race has the makings of a ripper: no few than half the field are front-runners or have led for part of the way in their races: ‘made all’, ‘with winner’, ‘prominent’ are all epithets in their past form suggesting that, on the firm ground and a turning track, there’ll be a few budding Baezas and, potentially, a record-breaking pace. The consistency of some of these horses is unusual for the same race: Chorizo eight wins out of 16, albeit most in points; Contact Dancer placed 12 out of 14 ; Knighton Combe 16 out of 17; Winsley Hill 14 out of 18 in the first four: Ours with a hat-trick of wins; Tempsford a quartet of win and place. Is this a race or what! On stable form, it’s between Contact Dancer, Porters War and Tempsford: Jonjo O’Neill has won it twice in the last eight years and Tempsford is, therefore, tempting with A.P. McCoy in the saddle on a hold-up horse: I’m sure he’ll be content to watch them break hearts and take over up that deceptive finishing straight. Don’t worry about the horse’s long absence; he’s bounced back from one similar and won before now. Unfortunately, Tempsford is priced accordingly and I’ll have my pound on Porters War at 8.8 on Betdaq: I believe his last run came too soon after he won at Fontwell: he needs plenty of time between races. Brighton is my least favourite racetrack but it’s Jim Best’s best (44%), with the combination of Best and Paul Doe 100% there; so is their runner, Choreography (three from three). My Learned Friend wins only at Lingfield and this is Choreography’s home from home. Seems the percentage choice.
TODAY'S BETS
BET 1pt win and place DENOMINATION (2.25 Chantilly) BET 5pts win CHOREGRAPHY (3.00 Brighton) BET 1pt win and place PORTERS WAR, and 2pts win (saver) TEMPSFORD (3.50 Market Rasen) We are now recording the daily profit and loss of DAQMAN to help readers gauge the current form of the service. We will provide the profit / loss on the previous day to a £1 level stake on each selection (eg: a 5 point bet = a £5 stake). In the interests of consistency the profit / loss will be recorded at SP prices, however BETDAQ users can reasonably expect to beat SP in the majority of races. Saturday's Return was: PROFIT 22.65 points
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