Last week was all about New Approach, this week it's Panties

General / Simon Rowlands / 24 October 2007 / 1 Comments

Racing journalist Simon Rowlands looks back at the Newmarket action and ahead to Monmouth in this week's Rowley File

It was a weekend of agonisingly near misses: the Mark Cueto try; the Lewis Hamilton Formula 1 championship. Worst of all, I nearly managed to back a winner at 16.5 (Racjilanemm) in Ireland on Betfair.

To that list can be added Eagle Mountain in the Champion Stakes at Newmarket. The Derby runner-up was The Rowley File's only hope of denying Literato - one of three put up as lays in the race in last week's column - going into the closing stages but lost out by the narrowest margin to the much-improved winner.

Literato is not a vintage winner of the Champion Stakes, in the mould of a Bosra Sham, a Pilsudski or a Kalanisi, but he has clearly been holding a bit in reserve, and there could well be better to come from him next year.

"Vintage" would, however, be a fair word to describe the Dewhurst Stakes that took place 35 minutes earlier. With a Prix Jean-Luc Lagardere winner ( Rio de La Plata), a Champagne Stakes winner (McCartney) and a Middle Park Stakes winner (Dark Angel), plus the unbeaten trio of New Approach, Fast Company and Raven's Pass, in attendance, it has to have been one of the strongest juvenile races for a long while.

New Approach emerged victorious in an excellent overall time, but I was once again not entirely convinced by him.

He showed the quirky side of his nature once more in the preliminaries and made hard work of it in the race (his jockey was suspended for overuse of the whip) before beating the less-experienced Fast Company.

The representative of a leading bookmaker (is that a four-letter word around here?) who described New Approach as being "head and shoulders above his contemporaries" was perhaps correct in a literal sense - half a length is a head and shoulders and a bit more besides, I suppose - but not in the idiomatic one. The runner-up is snapping at his heels and the third and fourth, Raven's Pass and Rio de La Plata, have good prospects of making much more of a race of it another day.

In particular, Raven's Pass looks a terrific prospect for the 2000 Guineas, for which he can be backed at 9.2 on Betfair's ante-post market following this. He looked comfortably the best horse for a long way but probably had too much use made of him in what was a strongly run race on softish going.

His sire, Elusive Quality, was a good sprinter-miler in the US and has already sired the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes winner Smarty Jones. Raven's Pass' dam won at a mile as a two-year-old, and he himself is likely to be a specialist miler next year, when firmer going and a more patient ride will do him no harm whatsoever.

My knowledge of Argentinian breeding is not all it might be, but I am beginning to wonder whether Rio de La Plata will actually stay beyond seven furlongs. He's got a rare turn of foot, which was in evidence only briefly on the softer going on Saturday, and is apparently closely related to a Grade 1 winner at the trip in the third-best Rugby Union nation in the world.

Long before Newmarket next spring there is the small matter of the Breeders' Cup - the self-styled World Thoroughbred Championships -- at Monmouth Park on Saturday to consider.

I am strangely drawn to Panty Raid (though not necessarily for the right reasons), am very impressed by the sound of the trainer George R Arnold II, am hoping that at least one of the contestants will sport colours involving something along the lines of "rooster rampant with vermillion insets" and am resigned to even British commentators mistaking the "juvenile" races for the satirical Roman poet "Juvenal".

More seriously, it's very difficult to look beyond Dylan Thomas (2.10 on Betfair) in the Turf, while Lawyer Ron (5.0) could well return to winning form on this tight track and with little pressure on the early pace in the dirt.

I intend to return to the Cheltenham Festival ante-post picture before long and look at the hurdlers. But I don't fancy my chances of matching, much less improving upon, the comments made by a forumite called "Cyclops" on a thread entitled "Champion Hurdle - where's the value?" on the Betfair's Horse Ante Post Forum. Besides anything, he does not have a word-count to stick to.

The thread is well worth checking out. Indeed, if you have a view on this subject, why not log on, click on "Forum", go to the Horse Ante Post section and share your views?

And if you've got a view on my piece above, why not comment below?

Comments (1)

1. Thourryeffevy | 23 January 2008

   Hello!
   Nice site ;)
   Bye