Jef­fery Ross

"Find the La­dy" at Ffos Las tonight. It shouldn't be dif­fi­cult af­ter look­ing through the sev­en-run­ner Maid­en Fil­lies' Stakes over six fur­longs.In fact, if thrice-raced Cale­do­nia La­dy runs to any­thing like her last two ef­forts in group two races at Roy­al As­cot and New­mar­ket Ju­ly meet­ings, re­spec­tive­ly, this will be a pro­ces­sion, ac­cord­ing to my time-hand­i­cap. The "pol­i­tics" are in­ter­est­ing.Cale­do­nia La­dy was trained by Pat Mur­phy when fin­ish­ing a short head, and a head third in the "Queen Mary," but raced for Miss Jo Hugh­es' yard when eighth (beat­en on­ly five lengths) to Gami­lati, in the "Cher­ry Hin­ton" at New­mar­ket thir­ty-two days back.Ob­vi­ous­ly now is the time to drop back to maid­en com­pa­ny and get that all-im­por­tant suc­cess which will con­sid­er­ably en­hance the stud val­ue prospects of Cale­do­nia La­dy, near­est thing to a "cert" imag­in­able.Not­ting­ham stages the oth­er evening fix­ture and nap is Richard Han­non-trained Lord Of The Shad­ows, one of six de­c­la­ra­tions for the Novice Stakes over six fur­longs and mount of son-in-law, Richard Hugh­es.

This is the "A-Team" when it in­volves two-year-olds and Lord Of The Shad­ows comes out clear best in, judged on a fine per­for­mance in a sev­en fur­longs Good­wood nurs­ery last month.Lord Of The Shad­ows ran on strong­ly but was third in a fan­tas­tic three-way fin­ish to Goldoni and West Leake Hare, beat­en two short heads.Com­ing back in dis­tance shouldn't rep­re­sent the slight­est prob­lem for this Ky­lac­chy colt, an easy win­ner at Wind­sor back in April and placed in all three races to date.Price-wise we should be ac­co­mo­dat­ed be­cause two win­ners, Choose­day and Gold City, hail from fash­ion­able sta­bles, Kevin Ryan and Saeed bin Suroor, the lat­ter will be rid­den by FrankIe Det­tori, the de­fin­i­tive pun­ters pal.Julie Burke is rapid­ly prov­ing to be an out­stand­ing fe­male jock­ey, as we fore­cast and her 5lbs ap­pren­tice al­lowance should weigh heav­i­ly against six ri­vals in the open­ing Maid­en Fil­lies' Stakes over sev­en fur­longs at Ayr, where a sev­en-race pro­gramme should prove an at­trac­tion for hol­i­day­mak­ers.