Only two entries this week but, unless something goes wrong in the next 23 hours, they'll both run: Hope Is High and Das Kapital in consecutive races at Newmarket tomorrow evening. Hope is in the 12-furlong handicap which Indira won two years ago, while Das Kapital is in a 10-furlong maiden. He's a nice horse, but he was beaten a long way on debut at the end of last month, and he's up against some more real blue-bloods tomorrow (although at least the most blue-blooded of all the many patrician entries, the Frankel half-brother to Kingman, doesn't run). Consequently it's hard to envisage him making the frame, although he'll obviously be doing his best and I'd love for the form-book to be proved wrong.
I'd also love for the form-book to be proved wrong in Hope's race. She obviously ought to some sort of chance of making the frame as she is generally competitive, but my reading of the book is that she's up against the best-handicapped horse in training, so all the horses bar the top weight might just be running for minor place-money. It could well be that the handicapper is right and I am wrong, but the last time I looked at a race we were contesting and thought this was when Silken Thoughts was in a handicap at Sandown set to give a Godolphin handicap debutant 6lb - and I couldn't see how the horse was even eligible for the race.
The horse on that occasion had shown very smart maiden form (he had won a back-end Newmarket two-year-olds' maiden race as the 8/13 favourite by four and a half lengths on his previous start) and was bred to be a top-class middle-distance horse (being by Kingmambo from Irish Oaks winner Shawannda, by Sinndar). I couldn't understand why he had been let in so lightly, and he did indeed win. He was called Encke, and two months later he beat Camelot in the St Leger. It looks as if we might be in a similar situation tomorrow.
Godolphin's handicap debutant tomorrow is a Teofilo half-brother to Red Cadeaux who won a maiden race at Newbury on debut last summer. Most recently on his third run he was beaten a neck at level weights in a novices' race at Wolverhampton by Glencadam Glory. Glencadam Glory is currently rated 110; this horse (White Desert) makes his handicap debut off a mark of 83. Let's hope that his last run, as the handicapper clearly believes, either was a fluke or flatters him; or let's hope that he isn't able to reproduce the form tomorrow. We'll see. Whatever happens, Hope will do her best, and that's all one can ask.
Only two entries this week but, unless something goes wrong in the next 23 hours, they'll both run: Hope Is High and Das Kapital in consecutive races at Newmarket tomorrow evening. Hope is in the 12-furlong handicap which Indira won two years ago, while Das Kapital is in a 10-furlong maiden. He's a nice horse, but he was beaten a long way on debut at the end of last month, and he's up against some more real blue-bloods tomorrow (although at least the most blue-blooded of all the many patrician entries, the Frankel half-brother to Kingman, doesn't run). Consequently it's hard to envisage him making the frame, although he'll obviously be doing his best and I'd love for the form-book to be proved wrong.
I'd also love for the form-book to be proved wrong in Hope's race. She obviously ought to some sort of chance of making the frame as she is generally competitive, but my reading of the book is that she's up against the best-handicapped horse in training, so all the horses bar the top weight might just be running for minor place-money. It could well be that the handicapper is right and I am wrong, but the last time I looked at a race we were contesting and thought this was when Silken Thoughts was in a handicap at Sandown set to give a Godolphin handicap debutant 6lb - and I couldn't see how the horse was even eligible for the race.
The horse on that occasion had shown very smart maiden form (he had won a back-end Newmarket two-year-olds' maiden race as the 8/13 favourite by four and a half lengths on his previous start) and was bred to be a top-class middle-distance horse (being by Kingmambo from Irish Oaks winner Shawannda, by Sinndar). I couldn't understand why he had been let in so lightly, and he did indeed win. He was called Encke, and two months later he beat Camelot in the St Leger. It looks as if we might be in a similar situation tomorrow.
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