The horse racing broadcaster offers up his best bets for the first day of the Guineas Festival and the start of the flat season at Goodwood.
Quite a few eyes will obviously be drawn to Punchestown and Constitution Hill in the Boodles Champion Hurdle, back up against State Man and Golden Ace, but the ITV cameras reflect the domestic changing of the seasons with seven races split between the first day of the Guineas Festival at Newmarket and the commencement of the season at Goodwood.
The quick ground has had an impact on the field sizes at Newmarket and, as a result, the Listed race over 7f has been switched to 14:20 to be included in the coverage. CHANCELLOR 13/2 (14:20 Newmarket) looked to need the race on his reappearance in the Greenham and there was also the suspicion that the centre of the course may not have been the best place to be ground-wise. The market has a good each-way shape to it with the very promising Cosmic Year dominating. He was particularly impressive when scoring on the All-Weather at Kempton, but the time wasn’t anything special and Chancellor’s only previous foray into Pattern company, on just her second career start, was third to two subsequent Group winners in Al Qudra and New Century. He looks overpriced, especially if he remains in double figures.
RHYTHM N HOOVES 9/1 (14:35 Goodwood) bumped into one at Southwell last time in Completely Random who has since followed up in style at Leicester. This will be his first turf run for a while, but he handles the track and there is not a horse of Completely Random’s potential in this line up.
Regular readers will not need reminding of the Appleby/Buick stats on the Rowley Mile. Buick is 212/1063 for an Actual/Expected ratio of 1.16, meaning he outperforms market expectations by 16 per cent off a large sample. Appleby is an even more impressive 164/600 with an A/E of 1.23, showing that even though plenty of their horses go off short at Newmarket, they still comfortably punch above their weight. SPECTACULAR VIEW 2/1 (14:55 Newmarket) could be another case in point on his handicap debut, having been allotted what looks a fair mark of 88. He cost plenty as a foal and can begin to make a more tangible return on that investment here, with the yard having had a good April (10/36, A/E 1.34). He was gelded after a disappointing debut and that seems to have improved him.
CHORUS 4/1 (15:10 Goodwood) featured in our virtual tracked stable last year but it turned out we had just jumped on the bandwagon a little early, as after marking time when first moving into handicaps she really began to find her feet towards the end of the season. She races in the Cumani family Fittocks Stud colours, bringing back Goodwood memories of the canny Milanese trainers’ Extel handicap exploits with Fish N Chips, Free Guest and Chinoiserie. She can hopefully pick up where she left off, and while the aim here is clearly black type for the paddock value, perhaps she can be thrown into a Glorious Goodwood handicap for old time’s sake!
Back at Newmarket, there looks to be an appropriately named winner of the Nifty Fifty handicap in FIFTY NIFTY 13/8 (15:30 Newmarket), who ran well when runner-up here over the trip in April. That looked to represent a clear career best, the stable is in form and the presence of a couple of highly rated horses gives Fifty Nifty a nice racing weight.
In the last of three ITV races at Goodwood, it could be worth taking a chance with KIWANO 7/1 (15:45 Goodwood), who is among the outsiders after some below-par efforts in Bahrain over the winter. He has dropped in the weights as a result, and since moving into his new yard at Epsom, George Baker’s fortunes have taken an upturn (9/34, A/E 2.31), which is little surprising given the excellent facilities the refurbished Downs House has been equipped with.
Finally, another Buick/Appleby horse, SILVER KNOTT 5/4 (16:05 Newmarket), can provide the answer to the day’s Group 2 feature race. This conclusion is arrived at almost by a process of elimination, with the small field making it hard to settle Ambiente Friendly and, after a good start, the Balding yard stalling with a losing run of 37, which should according to exchange SPs have yielded 6.10 winners. The yard is so large that they can’t all be tarred with the same brush, but for the time being it seems prudent to bypass the stable’s runners.
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- Source: https://blog.betway.com/horse-racing/richard-hoiles-my-tips-for-newmarket-and-goodwood-on-friday/