Newmarket Cambrigeshire meeting: day one

the first of Newmarket´s two big autumn meetings starts today, with the Cambridgeshire, one of the year´s top handicaps, the big race on Saturday but supported by plenty of black type events.Today´s main feature is the Group Three Somerville Tattersall Stakes for 2yo´s over 7 furlongs at 16.40 CET, in which local trainer William Haggas holds a strong hand with 2 runners- Mubtaghaa (Paul Hanagan) and Valley of Fire (Andrew Atzeni). Neither of them has run run beyond six furlongs, and the same goes for Maftool (Saeed bin Suroor/ Richard Hughes) and Markaz (Barry Hills/ Dane O´Neill). This an obvious disadvantage, as Newmarket´s open spaces require plenty of stamina, and so we would prefer those runners with form over today´ s trip. Azraff (Marco Botti/ Martin Harley) has in fact won over a mile, but in a much lower grade, while Dancetrack (Charlie Hills/ James Doyle) was an easy winner over 7 furlongs at Leicester and is also stepping up in class. Our choice is Make It Up (Andrew Balding/ David Probert), who made all to beat two prevlous winners at Goodwood last time over this distance and looks good enough for this grade. Balding and Probert can also take the previous race, a 1 1/2 mile handicap, with Der Meister, whose dam was once the top-priced lot at Baden-Baden. She was a sprinter and there must be a question mark over the distance here, but Der Meister has already shown that he can stay. Stamina could also be an issue in the listed race over 2 miles at 17.15. Times Up (Ed Dunlop/ Ryan Moore) certainly has no problems in this regard, having won this race in 2011 and since then the Doncaster Cup over even further twice, but his recent form is poor. The very lightly-raced Flying Officer (John Gosden/ William Buick) and the tough handicapper Pallastor (Sir Mark Prescott/ Atzeni) are both moving up in trip, but look the most likely winners here. especially the latter, who ran well under a huge weight in the Ebor and was far from disgraced last time in the Irish St.Leger against much stronger opposition.


Betting forecast:
1. Race: Mohatem - Game Pie - Secateur
2. Race: Azmaam - Prince Gagarin - Black Granite
3. Race: Almerzem - Oasis Fantasy - Dance Of Heroes
4. Race: Mubtaghaa - Maftool - Valley Of Fire
5. Race: Pallasator - Times Up - Flying Officer
6. Race: Master The World - Billingsgate - Shafrah
7. Race: Aetna - Athenian - Cordial