Jef­fery Ross

Ashaadd should be worth wait­ing for in the Maid­en Stakes over six fur­longs 'soft' Wind­sor tonight, even though we had a rare dry Sun­day with plen­ty of wind and sun­shine. Uness it rains again, this course could ride con­sid­er­ably faster than pes­simistic fore­casts sug­gest. The race-times will be in­ter­est­ing, es­pe­cial­ly three of the first four races, which are sprints. Once-raced, Ashaadd is reck­oned a bit 'spe­cial' by rook­ie train­er Roger Var­i­an, in his first full sea­son hav­ing tak­en over from the late Michael Jarvis last year. To date he's done well and a suc­cess­ful fu­ture can be an­tic­i­pat­ed be­cause he looks a calm, in­tel­li­gent, un­hur­ried young man. Pa­tience is the supreme virtue, es­pe­cial­ly in this tough en­vi­ron­ment, giv­en weeks of per­sis­tent rain but with wealthy own­ers sup­port­ing his sta­ble, Roger can, in­deed, af­ford to take his time.

Ashaadd achieved a half-de­cent time-hand­i­cap mark when a strong-fin­ish­ing run­ner-up to odds-on favourite, Ask Dan at Sal­is­bury last month. That's Richard Han­non's 'back-yard' and all the lo­cals, to a man, were on the Richard Hugh­es-rid­den win­ner, which was un­doubt­ed­ly giv­en a scare. Con­sid­er­able im­prove­ment can be ex­pect­ed which bodes ill for the twice-raced, Han­non-trained Ronald­in­ho, a Je­re­my colt which hasn't shown any­thing like enough, to trou­ble my con­fi­dent se­lec­tion, Ashaadd. Lin­col­nrose is al­so fan­cied to go one bet­ter in the sev­en-run­ner nurs­ery over six fur­longs of South­well fi­bre­sand. This could prove the de­fin­i­tive two-year-old hand­i­cap bet. Last week, Lin­col­nrose ran re­al­ly well when sec­ond La Sylphe over five fur­longs of the 'deep stuff' and three-quar­ters of a length back was Stripped Bear, in op­po­si­tion again on the same terms.

Alan Mc­Cabe's charge will, prob­a­bly, be more suit­ed to ex­tra dis­tance and it's sig­nif­i­cant William Twiston-Davies is booked again, claim­ing the full 7lbs ap­pren­tice al­lowance. WT-D has tak­en well to the switch from jump­ing, he's a nat­ur­al judge of pace and though many of his rides have fin­ished sec­ond, William should be sat­is­fied with the gen­er­al stan­dard of his ef­forts.

His ride on sta­ble-com­pan­ion Lev­i­tate at York, Sat­ur­day, was su­perb. Keep the faith. In­ci­den­tal­ly, it usu­al­ly pays to stick with nurs­ery form when back­ing in nurs­eries be­cause they rep­re­sent good, nec­es­sary ex­pe­ri­ence. Ad­vice worth heed­ing for the dis­cern­ing ones among you. Al­so on this card, Mar­malade Moon should go close in the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs. Don't miss out!

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 5 (#4) LIN­COL­NROSE

RACE 25 (#8) MAR­MALADE MOON

RACE 37 (#8) SHAH­DARO­BA (IF AB­SENT #5 MUL­LIT e.w)

RACE 40 (#1) ASHAAD