Marten Julian’s Weekly Roundup 22 April 2025

I was probably not alone in looking back at the form of 200/1 winner Heavenly Heather after she had won the Class 2 Fillies’ and Mares’ Championships Handicap at Newcastle last Friday.

I hold firm in my belief that the vast majority of races are won by the best horse in the field, and I was intrigued to see why the bookmakers had allowed the winner to start at 200/1 when her backers would have been prepared to step in at 50/1.

Well, for a start, the daughter of Shamardal was 22lbs out of the handicap – 19lbs wrong if you factor in Amie Waugh’s 3lbs claim. Second she came here a five-race maiden and finally she was from a low-profile yard.

But she had shown that she was not devoid of ability, indeed, far from it and in this regard a word of praise is due to the Racing Post’s race analyst Steffan Edwards, who had covered her first four starts and written favourably about her performance on each occasion.

After she finished fifth on her debut, beaten 18 and a half lengths, he wrote: ‘… she showed some ability on her debut …’ Next time out, when second, he wrote: ‘this was a nice step up on her debut effort …’ and then on her third outing, starting at 150/1, she attracted almost six lines of comment and explanation having caught the attention of the stewards.

It was her fourth outing that evoked the strongest response from our analyst, who wrote: ‘again showed ability, getting tight for room when moving up … she’s bred to be better than her opening mark will be, and looks the type with something to offer in handicaps.’

Those four runs took place on the AW surface at Newcastle and just over three months later, earlier this month, she made her handicap debut off 60 in a 7f 0-70 handicap at Redcar, her first try on turf.

Starting at 33/1 she made headway at halfway on the nearside before wandering around and dropping back to finish ninth of 13, beaten 11 and three-quarter lengths.

She then returned to the AW surface at Newcastle for last Friday’s race, dismissed as having no chance from her mark so far out of the handicap.
With hindsight there was sufficient evidence from her first four starts that she has ability and was not useless. Second, she has a decent pedigree, being a Godolphin-bred half-sister to a middle-distance winner, out of a winning half-sister to Melbourne Cup winner Cross Counter.

Finally she had been bought as an unraced three-year-old for 37,000gns … not a vast sum by modern standards but still enough to suggest that she was not viewed as a ‘chuck-out’ job. Knowing from personal experience how open Godolphin are about their horses at the sales this filly would not have fetched that sum if she had been thought useless or had irremediable issues.

On her AW form it was not unreasonable, based on the Post’s analyses, to assume that she had something in hand of her mark. Whether that amounted to 22lbs seemed unlikely, but that is the main reason that she was 200/1 and not 50/1.

Taking the comments of Steffan Edwards alone, without knowing the horse, and then being told it had won at 200/1 on its next run over the same trip and on the surface, you would not have been the only one kicking yourself for missing what could have been a life-changing opportunity.

She has been raised 24lbs, from 57 to 81, and she could defy that new mark, especially if stepped up in trip as she is bred to get beyond a mile.

Talking of life-changing opportunities, a long-term project had a successful outcome when Lagoon Nebula won the Fillies’ Juvenile Handicap Hurdle at Cheltenham last Thursday.

The trainer bought the daughter of Ulysses for just 6,000Euros in November with this race in mind. Looking back at video footage of her previous three runs the clues were there in plain sight.

Bye for now

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