Spoke To Car­lo looked a cer­tain­ty for the sev­en-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over a mile of 'good to soft' Good­wood wood tonight, af­ter a first glance; a sec­ond con­firmed there isn't the slight­est dan­ger to Eve John­son Houghton's charge, a mod­el of con­sis­ten­cy, long-over­due that first elu­sive suc­cess. Al­though drop­ping back in trip by two fur­longs Spoke to Car­lo should be in a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent league, on my time-hand­i­cap, judged on two re­cent ef­forts at New­mar­ket and Ep­som where this Halling colt was a length third to Roy­al As­cot-bound Wrotham House, trained by Sir Hen­ry Ce­cil.

Ep­som form of­ten works out well at this Sus­sex venue, be­ing sim­i­lar­ly un­du­lat­ing, and if John Fahy is al­lowed to set a strong pace this re­al­ly should be a pro­ces­sion for 'Car­lo!' An­oth­er strong fan­cy is rosie Probert, one of nine 'decs' for the Maid­en Stakes over ten fur­longs at Chep­stow where one of the most un­du­lat­ing cours­es in our coun­try is set to ride 'soft, heavy in places!' Once-raced Rosie Probert faces what should be a sim­ple task un­der James Doyle who has grasped an un­ex­pect­ed op­por­tu­ni­ty with both hands; ear­li­er this year Roger Charl­ton's sta­ble-jock­ey, Steve Drowne, was ruled un­fit for race-rid­ing (and dri­ving!) due to head prob­lems, which in­volved dizzi­ness.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly Steve hasn't re­cov­ered to sat­is­fac­tion of medics and Doyle, who deputised on a Dubai World Cup night 'big­gie' when Cityscape came to promi­nence with an un­chal­lenged suc­cess, is now en­sconced as re­place­ment and rid­jing with tremen­dous con­fi­dence as be­fits con­tin­ued suc­cess on top-grade thor­ough­breds. 'Rosie' must not be op­posed, a com­ment that al­so ap­plies to Ed Walk­er-trained Faith­fil­ly in a five-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over the five fur­longs Sandown 'Dash!' this af­ter­noon. Un­less one of two new­com­ers is a 'mys­tery wait­ing to hap­pen' Faith­fil­ly has on­ly Re­gal Dan to beat; the lat­ter is 7lbs in­fe­ri­or and rid­den by 49-year-old Michael Hills where­as Neil Callan rides the 'Fil­ly!' Re­gal Dan ran his best race to date un­der Charles Hills' sta­ble-ap­pren­tice, Math­hew Law­son, when third to sub­se­quent win­ners, Bun­gle Inthe­jun­gle and Ju­bilee Brig, at Sal­is­bury last month; his 5lbs al­lowance would have swayed my de­ci­sion! Fi­nal­ly one of my all-time 'favourite' races, the Sell­ing Stakes* over six fur­longs at York where we have a 'spe­cial!' I'll bet my record in this par­tic­u­lar race, amongst rac­ing cor­re­spon­dents is un­pass­able and Mick Chan­non-trained Fadein­toin­fin­i­ty def­i­nite­ly ticks every box; have your max­i­mum stake on!

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 2 (#6) TICK­LED PINK (nap)

RACE 8 (#1) TIGER SUN­SET

RACE 12 (#7) PER­FECT DE­LIGHT (e.w.)

RACE 16 (#7) RA­ZOR­BILL