Monday 25 August 2008

Best laid plans....

A quick review of today’s races…

Well the conditions race at Kempton didn’t turn out to be the burn up that I predicted. As the guy on RUK said when referring to the possible pace issue ‘these jockeys aren’t stupid’ – I’m sure that’s true of at least some of them…!
Jimmy Fortune evidently decided that today was the day that Kandidate would lose his unbeaten record around Kempton, as he chose to reign the horse back and force it to race in a manner that it clearly didn’t appreciate. IMO, Frankie is probably the best tactician riding on the flat, so if he decided that Gravitas didn’t need to race prominently, I’m not going to argue with that. As a result, Hearthstead Maison got an uncontested lead at a leisurely pace – and as a consequence, would probably have won if he’d been good enough. As it turned out, he wasn’t and the class and pace of Many Volumes won the day. The lack of a searching gallop didn’t do Dansant any favours and he could only stay on into fourth. Similarly, the race wasn’t run to give Big Robert the best chance and fifth was probably a reflection of his ability.
Meanwhile, poor Kandidate trailed in last, and will be worth considering next time if the market reacts negatively to what appears to be another poor run – but in reality was probably an injudicious ride (though in fairness to Jimmy Fortune, deciding on tactics when there are multiple front runners, can’t be easy)…

Over at Huntingdon, Levara was amazingly available at 6-4 on Betfair 5 minutes before the off. I was extremely tempted to play as I felt the horse should have been around about a 1-2 shot. I didn’t – and I’m glad I didn’t, as I know I would have subsequently regretted it (even though he won !). In the race itself, Levera tavelled well and jumped economically (for a hurdling debutant). In fairness, he did come under some pressure approaching the second last, but when you’ve run the earlier part of the race at a speed similar to that which you normally canter down to the start, racing for a couple of furlongs is probably quite a nice thing to do !

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