All-weather racing at Lingfield and Kempton

Flat racing this afternoon on the all-weather at Lingfield and this evening at Kempton, and by far the best racing comes from the floodlit Kempton meeting, featuring a listed race over 1 1/2 miles at 21.20 CET. Only 6 runners, and Scintillo (Richard Hannon/ Richard Hughes) is clear best on ratings. However he has a very poor strike rate - one win from 17 starts - and can be opposed with Mark Johnston s pair Luberon (Joe Fanning) and Love Galore (Greg Fairley), who ran 4 times at the Dubai Carnival. However the most valuable and also most interesting race of the day is the Kentucky Derby Challenge Stakes for 3yo´s over 9 furlongs at 20.50. Worth 80,000 GBP in prize-money this is one of tne richest all-weather races of the year and the winner is guaranteed a place in the Kentucky Derby field on May 2nd.

Three trainers go double-handed into this event, John Gosden with Mafaaz (Richard Hills) and Close Alliance (Jimmy Fortune), Mark Johnston with Haashev (Jamie Spencer) and Mastery (Joe Fannig) and Richard Hannon with Sohcahtoa (Ryan Moore) and Weald Park (Richard Hughes), but with most runners coming off a break, it is hard to tell which is their stables´ major hope, let alone forecast the winner. The card at Lingfield is relatively weak by comparison, but the most popular winner of the day would be the consistent Desert Dreamer, trained by Tom Dascombe; in the 7 furlongs seller as 15.30, as this will be the last ride in public for jockey Alan Daly, who is handing up his boots and apparently is going to become a fireman.