Lad­brokes of­fer 20/1 un­beat­en Im­pe­r­i­al Monarch for the Ep­som Der­by, eight weeks on Sat­ur­day, why? If any oth­er firm was ad­ver­tis­ing such odds I'd go to the bank but Lad­brokes is in­ex­tri­ca­bly linked with the Bal­ly­doyle yard where Aidan O'Brien trains the most beau­ti­ful clutch of thor­ough­breds on this plan­et, "they" know! Their pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer, Mike Dil­lon, makes It his busi­ness to know what John Mag­nier, Michael Ta­bor and Der­rick Smith have for break­fast, nev­er mind what goes on be­hind the closed doors of this in­cred­i­ble es­tab­lish­ment. Af­ter watch­ing one of the most in­cred­i­ble per­for­mances dur­ing my forty-five years in rac­ing, I'm stag­gered such odds are avail­able be­cause Im­pe­r­i­al Monarch rep­re­sents nigh on a cert for the great race.

By my reck­on­ing Im­pe­r­i­al Monarch cov­ered more than 50 yards fur­ther than his ri­vals when win­ning the "Clas­sic Tri­al" over ten fur­longs at Sandown last Sat­ur­day, the race that Sher­gar won all those years ago be­fore spread-eagling the "Der­by" field un­der that in­ex­pe­ri­enced, "choir boy" teenag­er, Wal­ter Swin­burn. Guardian jour­nal­ist wit­nessed that and fa­mous­ly wrote, "this is the time to bet like men...!" Per­haps this is an­oth­er time to get those bet­ting boots on but, what does Lad­brokes know that we don't? School Fees and Can­dy will be a con­flict­ing is­sue in the Maid­en Stakes over six fur­longs of Kemp­ton poly­track tonight!

Drawn twelve, right on the out­side, School Fess would seem to have a moun­tain to climb but Hen­ry Can­dy's charge has plen­ty in hand and un­der ex­pe­ri­enced, Dane O'Neill might just prove good val­ue for those pre­pared to chance this pro­gres­sive, con­sis­tent, hith­er­to luck­less fil­ly.

Hen­ry is a won­der­ful train­er, no histri­on­ics about his meth­ods, just raw qual­i­ty and that's the man him­self, ex­treme­ly re­spect­ed.

School Fees had a "prep" nine­teen days ago. She's def­i­nite­ly trained on and fit­ness is key with so many yards strug­gling with virus­es and train­ing prob­lems due to des­per­ate flood­ing and cold weath­er. "You can't beat the draw" is a well-known max­im; I'm ful­ly aware of that but the on­ly time-hand­i­cap dan­gers, Khalee­jiya and Sir Fred­lot al­so have neg­a­tives. Khalee­jiya hasn't been out this sea­son and is al­so drawn wide, next to School Fees whilst Sir Fred­lot is reck­oned to be in need of a run. In sum­ma­ry, School Fees looks a crack­ing each-way bet with three places on of­fer and once-raced sta­ble-com­pan­ion, Jo­cas­ta Dawn, isn't be­ing jour­neyed all the way to Yarmouth with­out good rea­son. Jo­cas­ta Dawn, is one of eight "decs" for the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs and IF all go to post is a "bet to noth­ing" but, make sure they do be­fore in­vest­ing.

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 2 (#3) JUST PAST AN­DOVER

RACE 5 (#7) JO­CAS­TA DAWN (e.w.)

RACE 24 (#9) ZA­EEM (e.w.)

RACE 27 (#12) SCHOOL FEES (nap-e.w.)