PRINCESS TANSY HANDILY WEIGHTED

Things have been going very well lately, with Blue Point and Showbizzy recommended on this page to follow the three winners on the line last Friday. We have used up quite a bit of ammunition but all selections have run well this week and I hope we can find some value on Saturday.

Richard Fahey won with Showbizzy and I find his runners are the first to look at on a busy Saturday. He is mob-handed at Newmarket and may well have a winner or two there but the Goodwood meeting interests me more, especially the valuable Festival Of Speed Handicap over seven furlongs. He has four runners in this and none is particularly well drawn. Farlow seems to have lost his way for the time being and Heaven’s Guest, an admirable servant over the years, remains handicapped to the hilt.

So I ended up studying Withernsea and NUNO TRISTAN, a horse I thought we should cover in the Great St Wilfrid at Ripon. He was far from disgraced in ninth but does not quite have the pace for ultra-competitive handicaps over six furlongs and needs today’s seven. He ran very well indeed behind Librisa Breeze at Ascot not so long ago and that brings him right into the argument here. Withernsea is not out of it and I wouldn’t put you off a saver; in both cases each-way is the call.
The Doom Bar Celebration Mile has cut up a shade disappointingly and I see precious little value. Toormore is as exposed as any horse could be but has taken on the very best over a mile. He has to concede the three-year-old THIKRIYAAT 9lb and that looks quite a task with the latter progressing through the season to date. Sir Michael Stoute is in good form and Thikriyaat has to be the call, with his third in the Jersey Stakes particularly appealing, though I would just point that that is top-class seven-furlong form and this is a mile.

My friend George Materna has Glaring to represent him in the March Stakes. Amanda Perrett thought about blinkers after a modest effort in the Goodwood Cup but waits a while before using them. In fact, Glaring held on in that race for rather longer than most experts predicted and he is not nearly so highly tried in this, though we need to see him involved in a finish before getting involved. George also has Tigerwolf entered up at Newmarket and this horse is much better than he showed when scrambling in at 2/9 at Salisbury, but he does not want firm ground. All in all, the owner’s best chance is probably with YOU’RE HIRED at Goodwood on Sunday, even if a 6lb rise for getting the best of a blanket finish at the Glorious meeting seems a bit harsh. He is definitely progressive but this is tough and once again each-way is probably right.

The star apprentice at the moment is Adam McNamara but another lad you should watch closely is David Egan, who can claim 7lb and had the better of Silvestre de Sousa, no less, in a tight finish at Yarmouth a couple of weeks ago. He will be very good indeed and several trainers have noticed him, including Gay Kelleway, for whom he has already ridden a couple of winners. He claims the full allowance on PRINCESS TANSY in the last at Newmarket, a modest sprint handicap, and that could make quite a difference. I suppose it’s asking too much for him to win that after his father John does the business on Nuno Tristan but we live in hope.