Alfa Kellenic, Geoff Banks and the PRA

For our hard of hearing members please find my side of today's conversation below, plus Sean's selections for the four races we had a good old natter about.

• PROFESSIONAL RACING ASSOCIATION GOING AFTER RACECOURSES/TRANSPARENCY

A new pressure group has been created and they have called themselves the Professional Racing Association and the crux of the thing is, any racecourse that does not share full details of their total racing revenue will see their tracks boycotted by trainers.
They have about 150 trainers on board with this and they have agreed that, from 2025, any racecourse that fails to deliver, will be boycotted and those trainers will only run their horses at what are to be deemed PRA approved tracks.
Thing is, from what I have read, it will only be what the PRA believes meets their “kite mark” figure and they have yet to even talk with the Jockey Club, Arc, Ascot and Goodwood....can you imagine those trainer boycotting Ascot and Goodwood if they tell the PRA to get stuffed?
It’s great something is being done but from my seat it looks like they’ll be bullying the smaller tracks to put more up because the likes of Ascot will do what Mohammed Fayez used to do when he owned Harrods. HMRC would come calling once a year for what they were owed, Fayed would say here’s £10m, take it or leave it. They usually took it because to trawl through his books would have taken 10 years and they might have got £12m.
SATURDAY’S RACES

• BEVERLEY 2-05

Clive Cox has won the last three running’s of this race but has nowt in tomorrow. He also won it last year with the first 3-y-o in the last 10 years to succeed, which shows how difficult it can be for those young sprinters when chucked in with the more battle-hardened types.
Only seven taking the race in this season, and indicative of the situation that needs addressing, that being good young horse being sold to race abroad....hopefully the P.R.A initiatives we discussed earlier impact on that.
We only had seven last year, too but prior to that we had 13 runners, 11 runners, 10 runners in the four years previous....let’s get back to that, I say!
Seven of the last 10 winners were sitting front three on the tissue and I’m happy going down that road tomorrow so, one of:

• CLARENDON HOUSE


• COMMANCHE FALLS


• DEMOCRACY DILEMMA

Trading third and fourth favourite right now we have a pair of 3-y-o's and so tight is this market - 4/1 favourite, 7/1 the rank outsider - that it’s impossible to rule them out totally.....it’s quite possible tomorrow morning we see BLUE STORM in the front three in the market so wait with bated breath.
DEMOCRACY DILEMMA is a 4-y-o and in the last 10 years 19 of that age have tried to win this and only five have managed to even nab a place so I’m going to rely on one of:

• CLARENDON HOUSE


• COMMANCHE FALLS

To split them I’m looking at how well, or otherwise, a trainer has done both in this race, and at the track itself....that has been a cracking good way in recently and on that score it has to be COMMANCHE FALLS for me.
Michael Dodds has sent five for this, won it in 2020 with DAKOTA GOLD, and has placed with another. Robert Cowell, by contrast, has sent three for the Bullet, placed with just one.
He’s 1lb wrong with the top weight, who carries 9st 7lb, which is another huge negative, as nothing in the last 10 years has carted more than 9st 4lb to victory....which is the weight COMMANCHE FALLS has on his back tomorrow.
RON - COMMANCHE FALLS
SEAN - STAINCLIFF

• SANDOWN 2-25

I thought, with nine going to post, this would be a pretty competitive affair but the market is implying only one horse, TAMFANA, can win it....she is a 3-y-o trading even money favourite as I type, it’s then 13/2 bar.
I guess if she produced the form of her one length Guineas fourth to the table, she’s going to be might hard to beat.
She has since been sent to France twice to contest Group 1 races, finishing third in the French version of the Newmarket race, and then getting beaten just under three lengths at Group 1 level again, this time taking on the colts in the Grand Prix de Paris.
Her form is head and shoulders above the current second favourite, DOHA, who won a Clas 2 Ascot Handicap at Royal Ascot, beating a horse that had been beaten in a pair of Class 3 Handicaps by a head.
From a Profiling perspective you want to be a three or four year old trading front three on the tissue and from a market angle we have seen four winning at 12/1, 12/1, 14/1, 18/1 in the last decade but when nothing daft like that happens, you want to be with horses trading 9/2 or shorter because you woul...