Jef­fery Ross

No sur­prise, if once-raced Avon Breeze caus­es one this af­ter­noon, in the nine-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs at Bev­er­ley, where 'good' is fore­cast for a sev­en-race pro­gramme. Avon Breeze, a 25/1 shot, was slow­ly away, a fort­night ago in the Don­cast­er maid­en over six fur­longs won by Sign­or Sas­si. The Richard Whitak­er-trained, Avon­bridge fil­ly re­cov­ered and fin­ished fourth which rep­re­sent­ed a cred­itable ef­fort. Third home, En­rol con­firmed val­ue of the form when win­ning a well-con­test­ed Ling­field maid­en on Wednes­day. Ob­vi­ous­ly, mul­ti-raced El­e­gant Girl will be backed (again!) to re­trieve re­cent loss­es but Avon Val­ley doesn't need to im­prove, though sure­ly will.

A sol­id each-way bet, with three places on of­fer and like­li­hood of Amy Ryan not let­ting up for a sec­ond. What a jock­ey, a re­al friend of punte. Mick Chan­non and sta­ble jock­ey, cham­pi­on ap­pren­tice, Mar­tin Harley, have been en­joy­ing suc­cess and more is an­tic­i­pat­ed on the Chester Rood­eye where Sorel­la Bel­la is suit­ed by con­di­tions of the Maid­en Stakes over sev­en fur­longs; that's a long way for a ju­ve­nile and the 5lbs fil­lies' al­lowance should weigh heav­i­ly against eight ri­vals. My cal­cu­la­tion is 2lbs a length for this dis­tance on good to soft ground.

An­oth­er good place propo­si­tion and I'll be play­ing an each-way dou­ble (and tre­ble!) be­cause Mandy Lay­la is our nap for the £18,000 Fil­lies' Con­di­tions Stakes over six fur­longs, rid­den by Gra­ham Lee! Re­cent­ly Mandy Lay­la, sport­ing colours of Dr Mar­wan Koukash, stayed on strong­ly un­der Frankie Nor­ton to land a five fur­longs nurs­ery on this course. Pre­vi­ous­ly, her on­ly oth­er suc­cess was over six on the stiff Hamil­ton track. Sta­mi­na wont be at is­sue and one feels con­fi­dent with 'Mr Lee' on our side. It's a dif­fi­cult, some­what over­whelm­ing day but we've sort­ed out three 'pro­fes­sion­al' bets; stick with them and in­deed this col­umn be­cause this is def­i­nite­ly our time of year for flat-rac­ing as re­cent re­sults tes­ti­fy. Jock­ey­ship is so im­por­tant, the crux, in fact.

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 2 (#9) SOREL­LA BEL­LA (e.w.)

RACE 16 (#4) MANDY LAY­LA (nap e.w.)

RACE 28 (#4) AVON VAL­LEY (e.w.)