Jef­frey Ross

Hay­ley Turn­er to 'Star' in the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs at Ripon to­day! Be­lieve it or not, and de­spite her neg­a­tiv­i­ty about the jock­eys' cham­pi­onship, Hay­ley is ac­tu­al­ly get­ting amongst the lead­ing group of se­ri­ous chal­lengers by virtue of a tremen­dous­ly con­sis­tent spell of race-rid­ing; I'll re­peat my­self, there sim­ply isn't any­one bet­ter, on this plan­et. I've wit­nessed/mon­i­tored sev­er­al gen­er­a­tions but reck­on Hay­ley com­pares to their very best in­clud­ing Lester Pig­gott, Pat Ed­dery, Steve Cau­then, Willie Car­son; her 'list' of achieve­ments much-re­duced, in­clud­ing two group one win­ners last sea­son which firm­ly es­tab­lished 'dai­ly earn­er' at the ac­cept­ed high­est lev­el.

As­sured and con­fi­dent, on the back of crack­ing spell of suc­cess, Hay­ley will task her­self with win­ning on Star Of Rohm, fourth to Funk Soul Broth­er over six at York on de­but ear­li­er this month; she's prob­a­bly ad­vised train­er Michel Bell to drop this Ex­ceed And Ex­cel colt back to the min­i­mum dis­tance. 'Funk' achieved a use­ful time-hand­i­cap mark, good enough to be en­tered for Roy­al As­cot, and Star Of Holm, af­ter lead­ing for most of the race, was beat­en on­ly a length; I'll be sur­prised if he's ex­tend­ed nev­er mind beat­en and is napped. In­ci­den­tal­ly our record when nap­ping thor­ough­breds rid­den by Hay­ley Turn­er mer­its close in­spec­tion; in or­der to be the best you need to sur­round your­self with the best and re­cent­ly nap­ping hors­es rid­den by the creme de la creme has paid off. My task is to win the Na­tion­al (Rac­ing Post) Naps Ta­ble for the eighth time! Join me on the jour­ney to 'Is­land of re­ward' for the rest of this sea­son which promis­es so much for flat-rac­ing afi­ciona­dos. At first glance thrice-raced Muntasir looks a cut above ten ri­vals for the Maid­en Stakes over ten fur­longs of Ling­field poly­track; af­ter a sec­ond look, it aint! John Gos­den-trained Gal­lipot is much bet­ter than her form sug­gests and was backed in­to favouritism on 'heavy' New­bury ground last month, on the back of a crack­ing de­but run last sea­son; she failed to cope and was wise­ly looked af­ter by William Buick who rides again.

Ear­li­er Ham­dan Al Mak­toum-owned Pul­ver­ize, trained by Sir Michael Stoute, should go close un­der dual cham­pi­on jock­ey, Paul Hana­gan. 'Stoutey' is work­ing to­wards get­ting back to for­mer glo­ries; he wont be­cause at 66 en­er­gis­ing is much more dif­fi­cult than most re­alise. As a con­se­quence a train­er is on­ly as good as the staff and most of his stal­warts are al­so get­ting old.

Prob­a­bil­i­ty re­tire­ment isn't far away and that will 'pul­ver­ize' him!

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 2 (#5) STAR OF ROHM (nap)

RACE 18 (#6) PUL­VERISE (e.w.)

RACE 21 (#9) GAL­LIPOT