French Hollow to ‘shine’ in Take That handicap
The feature event of Beverley’s card on Thursday is the Take That 2 Here On Saturday Handicap at 3.50pm, and Tim Fitzgerald’s French Hollow can gain a well overdue success. Considering he is now five years of age, this son of Beat Hollow remains lightly raced, having made just nine racecourse appearances. His only victory to date came last season, when making a very promising debut in a national hunt flat race at Market Rasen. Taking up the running two furlongs from home, he stayed on well to record an eight-length verdict over Sheila’s Castle.
Although he has failed to trouble the judge since, he has performed consistently well in four outings this season. He began the year with two runs on Lingfield’s All Weather surface, the most notable of which was finishing runner-up to Two O’clock John. He looked likely to win that day but failed to quicken in the closing stages and went down by half a length.
Possibly his best effort came last time though, when he contested a decent handicap at Thirsk. Having tracked the leaders in the early part of the race, he came through to lead at the furlong pole. However, he was unable to repel the challenges of Simple Jim and Dan’s Heir and slipped back into third place at the line. Nevertheless, it was a good performance and behind him that day were a number of much higher rated horses including Bollin Greta, who re-opposes here. With that in mind, he looks well treated and can open his account for the season.
The Mark Tompkins trained No Rules makes the journey from Newmarket for his seasonal reappearance having finished 2009 on a high. He showed real battling qualities to fend off the fast finishing Agglestone Rock in a handicap at Catterick. More recently, he has been plying his trade over hurdles, winning a maiden event at Fakenham back in January. However, his best performances have come with plenty of give in the ground and with plenty of sunshine around, his chances look to be diminishing.
Rare Ruby could pose a bigger threat and Jennie Candish’s six-year-old mare will have the assistance of Paul Hanagan in the saddle. She gained her first victory of the year in handicap at Nottingham back in May, when she stayed on gamely to deny Strikemaster by a length and a half. She was very heavily supported in the betting that day, backed from an opening 7/2 into 5/2 favourite.
On her return to that course the following month, she again ran well but this time had to settle for minor honours when finishing three lengths adrift of Outland. As well as she has done this year, her final start suggests she is now in the grip of the handicapper as she weakened rather tamely behind Theola at Chester, trailing home in fifth place. If this is the case then she will need to find some improvement to win here.
The Tim Easterby trained Bollin Greta has some reasonable performances under her belt, but would appear to have a difficult task to reverse the form of her running with French Hollow last time. She has almost a length to make up on that opponent and is only a pound better off at the weights. Her best efforts have also come on left-handed galloping tracks such as Doncaster and Redcar, and her only previous visit to this course resulted in a very poor performance, finishing seventh of eight to Patio back in 2007.
Having begun the season so well, the constant flow of winners from the Easterby camp appears to have slowed down lately, and their strike rate of just 7% at this course over the past five seasons hardly inspires confidence. Overall, she does seem to have a lot on her plate here and is worth opposing.
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