Red Hand to make her mark in the Maid­en Stakes over ten fur­longs of good to soft Bath to­day, sev­enth time lucky? That should be the case be­cause John Gos­den has found an out­stand­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty for this well-bred Mr Gree­ley fil­ly; im­por­tant that Red Hand wins, for two very good rea­sons. First­ly "Big John" is now more than a "hun­dred grand" clear in the 2012 train­ers cham­pi­onship and needs every win­ner avail­able; Red Hand des­per­ate­ly needs to win for breed­ing pur­pos­es. There are hun­dreds of su­perbly-bred sorts that don't gain win­ning brack­ets and the stud book val­ues them ac­cord­ing­ly, hope­ful­ly Red Hand will con­firm what my time-hand­i­cap in­di­cates, shes nigh on a "cert!"

Oth­er fash­ion­able train­ers field op­po­si­tion and there­fore we might get a de­cent price but in my book evens or bet­ter will be a good ex­cuse to lump on Red Hand. Lat­er ex­pect "Flash" to clean up in the aged hand­i­cap over an ex­tend­ed two miles and gain com­pen­sa­tion. Gor­don Flash was beat­en a short-head over course and dis­tance last month, rid­den by William Twiston-Davies who claims 7lbs ap­pren­tice al­lowance. That should prove vi­tal over such a colos­sal dis­tance and with train­er Char­lie Hills re­port­ing this five-year-old in good form Gor­don Flash must not be op­posed with­out good rea­son.

William has tak­en a while to ad­just to flat-rac­ing but I've been suf­fi­cient­ly im­pressed and dur­ing the fi­nal five weeks of this 2012 turf-flat sea­son he could be much sought af­ter and suc­cess­ful; cer­tain­ly Char­lies has de­signs on mak­ing use of that claim. In the open­ing nurs­ery, first of five suc­ces­sive races over ten fur­longs, Wal­ter White ap­peals, es­pe­cial­ly with an­oth­er use­ful ap­pren­tice, Thomas Brown, claim­ing the full al­lowance. Thomas has a fu­ture, rides pa­tient­ly and looks well bal­anced; he's def­i­nite­ly with the right firm be­cause An­drew Bald­ing has brought on William Buick, David Probert just to men­tion a cou­ple. Wal­ter White looks a crack­ing each-way bet with three places avail­able and, in fact, we might just play the place tre­ble on three sol­id-look­ing se­lec­tions.

SE­LEC­TIONS

R4 (4) Wal­ter White (ew)

R15 (9) Red Hand (nap)

R21 (8) Gor­don Flash (ew)