Re­gal Heiress will be a hot-favourite to make it fourth time lucky when tak­ing on five ri­vals in the Maid­en Fil­lies' Stakes over sev­en fur­longs at New­mar­ket to­day; still a maid­en, with just over two months of the 2011 turf-flat sea­son re­main­ing, this su­perbly-bred Piv­otal fil­ly has ob­vi­ous­ly proved a prob­lem for lo­cal train­er Sir Michael Stoute and own­ers, Cheve­ley Park Stud. Con­tex­tu­al­ly such a prob­lem could be­come a cat­a­stro­phe if Re­gal Heiress fails to land a 'penal­ty-kick' un­der Kieren Fal­lon who con­tin­ues to be­lieve he's got a chance of land­ing a sev­enth jock­eys' cham­pi­onship; un­til Sun­day evening I'd have shared his op­ti­mism. How­ev­er, cham­pi­on jock­ey Paul Hana­gan has since notched TWO hat-tricks and with Brazil­ian-born 'win­ning ma­chine' Sil­vestre de Souza very much on the case, with sup­port from Mark John­ston and oth­ers, it's im­pos­si­ble to vi­su­alise this in­de­fati­ga­ble 46-year-old as a se­ri­ous chal­lenger.

Fal­lon de­serves tremen­dous cred­it how­ev­er for a sus­tained, de­ter­mined ef­fort and the win­ners will flow, in­clud­ing aboard Re­gal Heiress un­less once-raced John Gos­den-trained In­ter­ac­tion im­proves con­sid­er­ably. Noth­ing is cer­tain in thor­ough­bred rac­ing, a rea­son why 'short­ies' can be in­clud­ed in our 'yan­kee an­chor' but not punt­ed as a sin­gle. Think pro­fes­sion­al­ly. Over the same course and dis­tance, half an hour on, Trum­pet Ma­jor looks a 'spe­cial' in the four-run­ner Con­di­tions Stakes; time-com­par­i­son will be in­ter­est­ing. Un­for­tu­nate­ly with small fields jock­eys of­ten mess about with the pace; hope­ful­ly Pat Dobbs will be pos­i­tive aboard Richard Han­non-trained Trum­pet Ma­jor, clear 'best-in' on the TH and napped. With sev­er­al ma­jor two-year-old races due for de­ci­sion it's not sur­pris­ing to see Han­non's yard fir­ing on all cylin­ders and his yard should pay to fol­low for the rest of this sea­son. In the past I've en­joyed sev­er­al won­der­ful good-priced win­ners from his Marl­bor­ough yard and in­deed have un­earthed a 'beaut' for Sat­ur­day!

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 9 (#5) RE­GAL HEIRESS

RACE 12 (#2) TRUM­PET MA­JOR (nap)

RACE 20 (#9) GUA­VA

RACE 30 (#6) HAYAKU