First Ruler looks the most likely to be fit and ready for the William Hill Tapster Stakes

Firstly, apologies for such a poor Saturday, it’s crap having poor days on any day but Saturday is the main day of the week and the four runners didn’t deliver.

Frankie decided to make his own pace away from the main group, and that is what lost him the race in the opener on Equilateral. Get Shirty was positioned towards the back in a steadily run 12f race, which wasn’t ideal. El Caballo doesn’t seem to reproducing the same level of runs of early last year and Time Lock either despised that ground or she just isn’t that good, I’d probably side with the former as that run properly stunk.

Goodwood 4:25 – First Ruler 2/1 (2pt Bet365)

Sunday hasn’t got much to shout about on British soil, you have a couple of Listed races at Goodwood which is where my only selection of Sunday, First Ruler runs.

A four-runner race, which isn’t ideal as the odds aren’t as good as if it was a bigger runner field, but also the tactics in these types of races really do tend to ruin the race as you never know what’s going to happen till the race begins. However, though I believe Candleford is the best horse in the race, I think this is a prep run for the Hardwicke at Royal Ascot, I can’t see why they’d run him here if he didn’t need the run as he went to Royal Ascot last year on seasonal reappearance and won a big handicap in great style, so I believe he’ll need the run based on the fact he is here just a couple of weeks away from the big Royal meeting.

bet365

As a result of that, I’m taking the Haggas horse on with the Godolphin-trained First Ruler. This lad was decent last year running in handicaps, grabbing a win at Ascot last July before finishing in the places at Ascot again in September and running a decent race at Newmarket when well-fancied, finishing 5th/16. I believe he took his form to a totally new level when they sent him to sunny Meydan where he finished 3rd behind Enemy and then he went on to win a 40k handicap ahead of Get Shirty who didn’t exactly frank the form yesterday, but I wouldn’t believe that was his true showing. His best run came on his last start in Bahrain in a Listed race when finishing 2nd to Passion And Glory, producing an RPR of 110, and he pulled 3.5L clear of the third. The winner has been competing at a decent level for many years now including wins in Class 1 company.

As for the other two in the race, they’re both fillies and might struggle against the boys, and both haven’t run in 200+ days.

There’s plenty of racing on, including the Sunday Series at Beverley, but that looks far too competitive to get stuck into and the French racing which has some Group races doesn’t offer me anything in terms of seeing value or having a bet, so I’ll lay low for Sunday. Enjoy the sun and grab a beer and hopefully come 4:30 First Ruler will have recouped some of Saturday’s losses.