More disappointment yesterday as Max came nowhere in her listed race. For her it was a case of going from one extreme to another – two weeeks ago she ran on firm and found it too quick, whereas she appeared not to handle the heavy at Haydock yesterday. Again I’ll shrug and draw a line through it – it was specialist ground.
I had a good day’s betting yesterday, eating in to some of my losses backing my horses in recent weeks. I worked on the basis that most of the runners at Haydock wouldn’t handle the ground – not many flat horses truly go on heavy and the trainers I spoke to with runners at Haydock had expected the ground to have dried up a lot more.
I’m only looking at one race today – the 2:55 at Newmarket. The betting suggests it’s a three horse race; three time runner Mijas Playa takes on newcomers Angel’s Pursuit and Dahakaa.
Angel’s Pursuit is the one that interests me. He was the sale topper in the Doncaster breeze up in April (£190k), realising more than twice as much as any other horse. He’d previously been sold for £45k so he’d obviously improved a lot between times – the picture on the DBS page shows what a good looking and forward colt he is;
www.dbsauctions.com/results/03BreezeUpSales.htm
The pedigree has a 2yo look to it – he’s a half brother to Dark Angel by a speedy first year sire. I would expect him to show up extremely well today. He’s up against a Darley home bred trained by Michael Jarvis – the pedigree doesn’t look special but anything Jarvis puts out at this time of year should be noted and I’d expect this one to be the danger ahead of the Chris Dwyer trained Mijas Playa. Mijas Playa looks decent but exposed and I don’t think a fitness edge will help her much in a 5 furlong race on g/f.