Richard Hoiles Betway column NEW
The horse racing broadcaster runs through the card on the opening day of the Newmarket Craven meeting and picks out four selections.
The Flat season steps up a gear with the start of Newmarket’s Craven meeting, the first of five days racing on ITV over the course of the next week.
When Newmarket falls during Easter week, the meeting gets a shuffle so that the first two – rather than the last two days – get covered to allow the repositioning of all of the equipment before Good Friday programmes from Newcastle and Saturday from Musselburgh. This week, there will be blogs for Tuesday and Wednesday at Newmarket and one for Saturday which will also include a summary of the Classic trials run so far.
The four ITV4 races on Tuesday get underway with a competitive looking sprint handicap. By and large, handicaps are won by two types of horses – improvers who the handicapper is struggling to keep up with, or those who are only being asked to repeat something they have proved capable of in the past. These are the ones that – because of the fact they often arrive with less flashy form figures – can jump at bigger odds. In this race, Elmonjed looks the improver with Dark Thirty and Woodhay Wonder the two proven under the conditions.
Dark Thirty won this last year off a higher mark and has form figures of 213 in three runs up the Rowley Mile. The only downside is the fact he has already shown his hand, to a degree, with his win at Doncaster where Physique was an eye-catching fourth in his first start for Pam Sly. Of the two, I still prefer Dark Thirty to confirm the placings and a bigger threat can come from WOODHAY WONDER 5/1 (13:50 Newmarket) who is unbeaten in three starts on the Rowley Mile and placed off this mark at Ascot last July. She is a gutsy filly, though she can be hard to load into the stalls, and also won at this meeting last season, beating Trefor in the three-year-old equivalent of this contest. At the time of writing, the fact that she is a bigger price than Dark Thirty is the deciding factor between the pair.
A different kind of puzzle next, with the Feilden Stakes over 9f for three-year-olds, usually thought of as a Derby trial and won by Golden Horn back in 2015 for John Gosden. Last year’s field also included Derby runner-up Ambiente Friendly back in fourth, who will be in action 35 minutes later in the Earl of Sefton. Here it is more a question of which horses will improve off the back of lower profile victories, and also be fit enough to do themselves justice with all the runners having a first run of the campaign.
In terms of actual level of form achieved, Green Storm, whose owner loves a Derby runner, sets the standard, but it is a difficult one to assess by how much. A Group 1 placing reads well but it was in a small field on Heavy ground and he is probably better judged by his Zetland Stakes second on the Rowley Mile when he made the running – tactics he is likely to adopt again here. Masai Moon currently heads the market for the formidable Newmarket pairing of Appleby and Buick, who have superb records at the track. The fact he is not one of the four Derby entrants should not be viewed as a negative, as these days Godolphin tend to prefer to supplement their leading candidates at the five-day stage rather than block enter lots of horses.
Nightwalker is having his first start for the Gosdens after leaving Sir Michael Stoute, and two of the three Gosden winners of the race – Golden Horn and Kick On – won first time out. Even allowing for him coming on for the run, he looks a big player but preference is for ALMERIC 9/2 (14:25 Newmarket) whose stable have made a much faster start to the season than is often the case. His owner stands Almeric’s sire Study of Man (sire of Kalpana for the same yard) and will be keen to have the horse ready to go first up on a day when they also sponsor the Nell Gwyn.
Attention turns to the older horses next with the Group 3 Earl of Sefton where it can be business as usual for OTTOMAN FLEET 5/4 (15:00 Newmarket) who will be bidding to win the race for a third time before embarking once again on his travels. Those two wins were actually his last two UK runs, and he once again comes here having wintered in Dubai. The previously mentioned Ambiente Friendly will be his chief market rival on his first start for James Owen, who is excelling in so many disciplines. The presence of the same yard’s Lavender Hill Mob looks designed to ensure a reasonable pace to let Ambiente Friendly settle, but that will also play into the hands of Ottoman Fleet, who has the more convincing overall profile with four wins and one second from five Rowley Mile starts.
Finally, the Group 3 Nell Gwyn over 7f and a trial for the 1000 Guineas. It hasn’t got a bad record, with four fillies winning the Fillies Classic off the back of the Nell Gwyn from a total of 80 that have tried (A/E 1.04). Two of those won the Nell Gwyn – Speciosa and Cachet – and two were beaten Sky Lantern (second) and Billesdon Brook (fourth).
Once again, this is about identifying horses capable of stepping up on lower grade wins, and Nardra and VERSE OF LOVE 2/1 (15:35 Newmarket) look at the top of that list. Preference for the Godolphin horse is based on her having already shown she can handle the track with her demolition of a big field of maidens here last October. What she actually beat is open to question, but the time was up to scratch and she showed the ability to sustain a turn of foot right to the line. Nardra’s success was only in a four- rather than a 15-runner race, and in a more modest time.
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