6 more poor meetings

If anything, today´s 6 cards are even weaker than yesterday´s and consist almost entirely of low grade handicaps. Arguably the most interesting race of the day is the 7 furlongs 3yo maiden which opens this evening´s Irish card at Gowran Park. Among the 9 contenders are two runners from top stables, Sir Isaac Newton (Aidan O´Brien/ Seamie Heffernan) and Valac (Dermot Weld/ Pat Smullen) who have both finished runner-up on both their career starts but went down to embarrassing odds-on defeats last time. Sir Isaac Newton was regarded as one of O´Brien´s Derby hopes until beaten at 6-1 ON (!!!) at Chester, while Valac is a half-brother to stable star Free Eagle but has clearly nowhere near the same ability. Also in the line-up is Black Wolf Run (David Wachman/ Wayne Lordan), a colt out of group winner Damson who made a very promising debut, and the well-bred Aga Khan debutant Shamash (Mike Halford/ Shane Foley). In view of the question marks over the leading contestants, this is not a race to bet on, but one that should be watched with a view to the future. However Valac fares here, we expect Weld and Smullen to have another successful meeting, with decent chances fpr Shahzeena at 19.20, Serefell at 20.20 and debutatnt Eshera at 21.50, all also sporting the Aga Khan colours.

The best betting race of the day is the 6 furlongs handicap this evening at 21.40 at Kempton. Normally we would have fancjed Marmalady (Gary and Ryan Moore) as the Jockey has an exce,klkent strike rate when riding fpor his father, but the oitside draw is a huge disadvantage here, and the same goes for the forecast favourite Doctor Sardonicus (David Simcock/ Andrew Miullen); we shall take a chance on Desert Command (Andrew Balding/ David Probert), who is well drawn and has been running well enough in similar events, without actually winning for ages.