Valuable all-weather races today

There is currently a big push towards improving the standard of racing on the all-weather courses in the U.K., and although 90% of the races are still rubbish, we see some of the fruits of that policy today, when both Lingfield this afternoon and Kempton this evening stage one extremely valuable handicap each, and both of them have attracted a really strong field.


The Lingfield race is over 6 furlongs at 15.30 CET and is worth more than most listed events. The field of 11 includes the 2011 and 2012 winners of Goodwod´s Stewards Cup, Hoof It (Mick Easterby/ Martin Harley) and Hawkeyethenoo (Jim Goldie/ Graham Lee); they have both been running in the top sprints since, although without much success, but clearly this race is much easier. Forest Edge (David Evans/ Adam Kirby) has won his last 3 races, including last week over 5 furlongs here from Addictive Dream (David Nicholls/ Tony Hamilton), who had earlier defeated If So (James Fanshawe/ Hayley Turner) over this CD. The weights now favour If So - if only slightly- and he has a good CD record, so we give him the vote in a very open race.

The Kempton race is at 19.40 over eleven furlongs and the winner will collect more than 43,000 GBP, i.e. more than most German Group Two winners. It is the final race of a series, which means that almost all the runners have good recent CD to their credit. Halfsin (Marco Botti/ Martin Harley), Shavansky (Rod Millman/ Shelley Birkett), I´m Fraam Govan (George Baker/ Jim Crowley) - owned by football legend Sir Alec Ferguson- and Jazz Master (Luca Cumani/ Andrea Atzeni) are all recent CD winners, but are all up in the weights as a result. This is very tricky, but we shall go for Castilo del Diablo (David Simcock/ Jamie Spencer), who has not won for ages and finished only 7th in the race won by Shavansky; he was a hot favourite on that occasion, he is now better handicapped and much better drawn - always important at this track- and we shall give him another chance.

The two N.H. meetings today are only of minor importance, but we are certainly interested in how ex-German Silsol (Paul Nicholls/ Jack Sherwood) gets on in the conditional jockeys novice hurdle at 13.40 at Leicester. The Soldier Hollow gelding made an excellent U.K. debut for his new connections and we expect him to win here before going on to better things.