Saptapadi can win Henry II Stakes
Second-guessing trainers can be an expensive business but there can be some clues worth following.
Saptapadi goes into the Group Two Blue Square Henry II Stakes at Sandown Park as the lowest-rated of the 10 runners on official handicap figures but given that his trainer, Sir Michael Stoute, has a 31% strike-rate in Group races this season it is hardly a shot in the dark to suggest that the trainer believes that there is improvement to come. Probably quite a lot.
Stoute had seen enough last spring to run Saptapadi in both the Classic Trial and the Chester Vase, where he was far from disgraced. But Saptapadi was off the track – and gelded – until winning an ordinary 12-furlong maiden at Doncaster last month and it still takes a degree of belief that he can make the step up. In his favour he is a full-brother to Patki, the runner-up to Yeats in last season’s Gold Cup at Royal Ascot, and the manner of his victory at Doncaster gave every encouragement in terms of the step up in trip.
Opinion Poll, the likely favourite, does not seem likely to get the necessary rain to provide sufficient ease in the ground and may well not run while the Godolphin pair, Darley Sun and Sabotage, could be a potent threat on their best form but Saeed bin Suroor’s yard has a strike rate of just 7% in Britain this month.
Stoute can make it a Group-race double on the card with Glass Harmonium in the Group Three Blue Square Brigadier Gerard Stakes. This colt (pictured) is another of Stoute’s work-in-progress types who won the Gordon Richards Stakes – over course and distance last month – despite being below race-fitness according to the trainer.
Glass Harmonium will probably improve again when stepped up to 12 furlongs but he should have enough in hand here, with Sri Putra the most likely danger.
The pecking order for two-year-olds starts to take shape at this point of the season with the running of the bluesq.com National Stakes. Richard Hannon, whose juveniles have a 33% strike-rate for the season, has won this race for the last three years and can win it again with Cape To Rio.
The Captain Rio colt comes to this race having followed the same build-up as stable companion Monsieur Chevalier did before winning this race last season. Cape To Rio won at Windsor 10 days ago and the form of that race was franked when the runner-up won on Monday.
Fallen Idol showed plenty of promise when he won a handicap at Sandown last month, and can follow up in the Britain’s Got Talent Bingo At meccabingo.com Heron Stakes, which he will need to do if he is to justify his entry fee for the St James’s Palace Stakes at the royal meeting in three weeks’ time.
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