On the face of it Bouguereau ran pretty disappointingly – seventh out of 18 is nothing special and given the form of his trainer and my general expectation it was a poor result. He did show a lot of promise though, taking the long way round and moving up pretty smoothly before coming to a halt. Michael Hills said that he lost his action about a furlong and a half out, and that at that point he slowed him and tried to get him going again but it was too late – he said he gave him a really good feel and he had a “big future”. Pete had said beforehand that he was still pretty green and he might run in snatches, so it wasn’t too much of a surprise.
On reflection my opinion of Bouguereau is pretty much undimmed – he can still turn out to be a very good horse.
Effingham runs at Pontefract tomorrow, and he seems to have found himself in a pretty hot race. On RP ratings he has 25lb to find with Naomh Geileis and 5lb with Nickel Silver. I expect him to improve an enormous amount for his first run and he should go close.
I claimed another filly yesterday – Lilac Moon from the 6:45 at Carlisle – who will go to Nicky Vaughan. She was fairly cheap (£10k) and is rated a meagre 55. She doesn’t appear to have the best set of front legs and was lame this morning, although it doesn’t look to be serious. We hope she can improve with a little more time and may do a little better over slightly further.