The winter storms have been battering Britain over the New Year and Sandown’s Saturday card has been abandoned. Wincanton may suffer a similar fate and is subject to a 7am inspection leaving jumps action at Newcastle and all-weather turf racing from Lingfield.
I tend to lose track of the all-weather racing once the National Hunt season gets in to full swing but the quality of racing has definitely improved in recent seasons. Newmarket Trainer John Gosden is happy to support the all-weather through the winter months and has an impressive strike rate in recent weeks.
Gosden also shows a healthy profit to level stakes on the all-weather at the Sussex track and sends two maidens there tomorrow. Joyful Friend finished in midfield behind her stable companion Betimes here a couple of weeks ago and can improve on that effort. She is a daughter of Dubawi and was clearly unfancied on her debut, going off at 20-1 with the winner returned at 3-1.
Anglo Irish is a three-year-old colt by Dansili who showed plenty of promise on his debut at Kempton. He was staying on strongly in third after being briefly outpaced with two furlongs to run in the race won by Billy Blue. He shaped as though the extra quarter of a mile here will bring about significant improvement and his chance is obvious.
Rivellino was slightly disappointing on the turf last summer. He ran some encouraging races, notably when unlucky at Doncaster and York in highly competitive three-year-old sprints. His best run probably came at Town Moor where he was twice hampered before finishing a close fourth behind Moviesta. That horse went to win in Group company and could be competing for top sprinting honours again next turf season so it was a fair effort to get within a couple of lengths or so.
The son of Invincible Spirit got back on the winning trail under the lights at Wolverhampton recently, breaking well and taking up the running over a furlong out to win comfortably. He is up 7lbs for that victory but the opposition here does not look exceptional and he can go in again for Karl Burke’s stable.
The most valuable race on the card is the Coral.co.uk Handicap over a mile and a half and it may be worth siding with Modernstone despite being closely weighted with Grendisar. Modernstone got the verdict last time here after both horses came from behind but he still has room for improvement. A 13 stall is not ideal but he will be dropped in behind so it should not make that much difference.
Joyful Friend 12.20
Anglo Irish 12.50
Modernstone 2.35 @6-1 BetVictor, Paddy Power
Rivellino 3.10 @4-1 Paddy Power
