Jef­fery Ross

Lee West­wood was 'tailed off' in the Tour Cham­pi­onship tour­na­ment in At­lanta, Sun­day, hope­ful­ly Hoofa­long doesn't oc­cu­py a sim­i­lar plac­ing in the Maid­en Stakes over five fur­longs of fore­cast 'good to firm' Bev­er­ley this af­ter­noon. Thir­ty-nine-year-old West­wood has nev­er won a ma­jor, main­ly due to re­luc­tance con­tact­ing 'spec­savers' for his neme­sis, short putts; with colos­sal wealth Lee has in­vest­ed in horse-rac­ing own­er­ship and struck lucky with cham­pi­on sprint­er Hoof it, trained by Mick East­er­by, to con­quer all last year.

It's been a con­trast­ing sit­u­a­tion in 2012 but for a man who chal­lenges for prize-mon­ey of ELEVEN MIL­LION(S) plus such set­backs hard­ly jus­ti­fy a free text mes­sage.

Nev­er­the­less vic­to­ry to­day would boost morale of West­wood who rep­re­sents Eu­rope in the Ry­der Cup in Chica­go start­ing Thurs­day and it will be dis­ap­point­ing if this once-raced Pas­toral Pur­suits doesn't jus­ti­fy favouritism and go one bet­ter; sec­ond to Lastchancelu­cas at York reads well, even though that was way back in May. Due to the ab­sence we might get a price, pun­ters are al­ways wary of thor­ough­breds which are 'spelled' but re­ports sug­gest Hoofa­long has been work­ing well un­der watch­ful eye of East­er­by, who epit­o­mis­es the prover­bial 'Mr Pa­tience!' Don't op­pose Hoofa­long nor in­deed twice-raced Wyld­fire, one of eight 'decs' for the Maid­en Stakes over and ex­tend­ed sev­en fur­longs. Richard Fa­hey has been en­ter­ing Wyld­fire in plen­ty of races, he means to get it right and de­spite ob­vi­ous claims of like­ly Sir Michael Stoute-trained favourite, Al­tha­roos, this is my 'pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial' each-way bet, if all run­ners go to post and three places are on of­fer. Make sure that's the case.

Tony Hamil­ton rides Wyld­fire, what a dif­fer­ent con­fi­dence makes! Since Paul Hana­gan left this job for a con­tract with Ham­dan Al Mak­toum the bet­ter rides have been giv­en to Hamil­ton; I've been im­pressed with his con­sis­ten­cy and he's very much on my 'favourites' list. Folke­stone runs in tan­dem with this sev­en-race fix­ture and the dead­ly Richard Han­non/Hugh­es com­bi­na­tion is ex­pect­ed to strike with Sil­kee Supreme in the nine-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over six fur­longs.

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 5 (#1) HOOFA­LONG

RACE 7 (#6) SIL­KEE SUPREME

RACE 11 (#8) WYLD­FIRE (nap-e.w.)