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CHESTER 2.05, MAIDEN STAKES, 2YO, 5F 110YD
Maiden races – for horses that have yet to win - don’t normally make it onto the ITV Racing schedule, but then, most maiden races are not worth £20k to the winner and this is a contest that will have been circled in red in many trainers’ programme books for some time. The original 13-runner field at declaration time has been reduced to 11 as, surprise, surprise, the horses drawn in stalls 12 and 13 have both been scratched. Bad case of high-numberitis, the cynics might suggest. Four of the remaining 11 runners are making their seasonal debut today, including two from Hugo Palmer’s local yard, which has plenty of success on the Roodee. One of those – Tricky Tel, the mount of Oisin Murphy – has been strongly backed today, and is currently priced up at even-money, while stable companion Dubai Time is the 8-1 second-favourite. That feels quite significant given that neither horse has been seen in public as yet, but I plumped for Dubai Time as the pick for the Racing Post tipping table yesterday and so feel obliged to stick with it, albeit that this is a race where only the foolish, brave or very well-informed will be getting involved.
SELECTION: DUBAI TIME
HUNTINGDON 1.45, MARES’ HANDICAP HURDLE, 2M 3F 137YD
After a trip to Newton Abbot yesterday, Huntingdon gets the nod to strut its stuff for the ITV Racing audience today, although this looks like a very trappy little handicap hurdle that is perhaps best left alone for betting purposes. Four of the runners lined up for the same Class 2 race – two levels above this one - at Cheltenham last time, but all were well beaten or pulled up bar Ile De Jersey in sixth. Of Course You Can’s best form is at Ludlow, which is right-handed and flat, so she should be at home around Huntingdon, but if pressed for a pick, it would probably be the lightly-raced Taxus Baccata, who returns to hurdles in first-time cheekpieces on a reasonable mark.
SELECTION: TAXUS BACCATA
Jumping ahead briefly to Saturday, the final fields are through for the Derby and Oaks trials at Lingfield this weekend.
There are just three runners in the Oaks Trial, although it does feature the seasonal debut of Aidan O’Brien’s Giselle, a supremely well-bred daughter of Frankel out of Newspaperofrecord, who took the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies’ Turf in 2018. She was an unlucky third in a Group Three on her final start at two and is currently a 20-1 shot for the Oaks.
Lingfield’s Derby Trial is longer on numbers, with seven declared runners headed by two colts from the O’Brien yard: Puppet Master, who was fourth in the Ballysax Stakes in March, and Stay True, the winner of his only start to date, in a maiden at Leopardstown in early April.
CHESTER 1.30, HANDICAP, 5F
A quick dash around the five-furlong course to open Thursday’s proceedings, and it may not be necessary to look much further than stall one for the likeliest winner. Fair Taxes, a four-year-old trained in Ireland by Ross O’Sullivan, likes to make the running, has the perfect pitch by the rail and showed that he acts around here when finishing third, off a 1lb lower mark, on similar ground here last August. He was beaten less than two lengths that day having had the worst of the draw in 12. Jer Batt has returned in fine fettle and posted a fine effort on the clock at Musselburgh last time, when running for the first time in 175 days, but he is out in stall nine, which is hardly ideal.
SELECTION: FAIR TAXES.
Preamble
Good afternoon from the Roodee in Chester – and welcome back to anyone who was following the action yesterday – on day two of Chester’s May festival, ahead of the Dee Stakes, the meeting’s second Derby trial, and the Group Three Ormonde Stakes for stayers.
The Dee has blown occasionally hot but generally cold as a pointer towards the Derby over the course of its 212-year history (though it may well be the only recognised Derby trial that has been won by a future Grand National winner, as Voluptuary, the Dee winner in 1881, ran unplaced at Epsom a few weeks later and landed the Aintree spectacular three years after that).
But today’s renewal looks stronger than several recent renewals, not least as the recent Wood Ditton Stakes winner, High Stock, is among the runners. The Wood Ditton, over a mile at Newmarket’s Craven meeting in mid-April, is restricted to unraced three-year-olds and frequently includes a future top-notcher that, for whatever reason, simply couldn’t get to a track as a juvenile. High Stock is bred to get at least a mile-and-a-quarter and today’s race is the perfect way to find out if it might be worth supplementing him for the Derby.
The Ormonde, meanwhile, is also a fascinating contest which pits Illinois, the runner-up in last year’s St Leger, against the impressively versatile Absurde, a former winner of the County Handicap Hurdle at the Cheltenham festival who has performed with credit in the last two runnings of the Melbourne Cup.
The Dee is due off at 2.35 while the Ormonde is at 3.05, and the card opens at 1.30 with a five-furlong handicap in which, unusually for a track where the draw is all-important in sprints, has a field of a dozen runners with no withdrawals from the higher-numbered stalls.
