The Bay Warrior & First Verse at Wolverhampton
Arlecchino's Gift ran well at Southwell yesterday just finding the stiffer test of the
Southwell tapeta over the Lingfield polytrack and the three pound hike
combining to get him caught close home by a clearly favourably
handicapped debutant; we will probably try and go back to Lingfield
with him and he should continue to be competitive and effective in this
grade for his kind Owners going forward.
Born to Please perhaps still hasn't come
back to hand compared to her form of the spring and early Summer and we
will have to think about how we manage her going forward; she is
capable of more than she achieved at Southwell yesterday.
We hope that First Verse will finally get off the mark in the First Division of the six furlong Classified Stake at tomorrow evening's meeting at Wolverhampton; the filly has been knocking on the door in her last four runs over five furlongs on the DP tapeta and, decently drawn this evening, should find that the extra furlong and the commensurate slightly slower early and midrace pace give more time for her and Charlie to avoid the traffic; she has an excellent chance at the weights and, if things drop right on the long turn, should not only be competitive but go close.
It is harder to weigh up the chance of The Bay Warrior in the extended nine furlong Handicap; he a particularly imposing specimem who was always going to be better with time and maturity and all of this was coming together nicely when he progressed to demolish a field at Chelmsford at the end of April; a significant setback followed which resulted him having the Summer and most of the Autumn off; we were quietly pleased with his comeback run at Kempton at the beginning of December but there is no doubt that he ran a modest race at Chelmsford the week before Christmas; we had hoped to run him in a slightly lesser grade race here a week ago but he showed one or two signs of needing a bit more time; we go to Wolverhampton in a better grade this evening to run well and to inform us of how we should campaign him going forward; he is capable of winning handicaps, possibly over further, off his current mark and we hope to see him back in the same form as at Chelmsford.