Jef­frey Ross

Aryal looks a gilt-edged "pro­fes­sion­al spe­cial" for the sev­en-run­ner Maid­en Stakes over a mile of Kemp­ton poly­track to­day; re­mem­ber the de­but of Mark John­ston's charge ear­li­er this month?

"We" re­ceived a strong in­for­ma­tion for this this Singspiel colt which was backed in­to favouritism; un­for­tu­nate­ly Aryal was slug­gish in the ear­ly stages of a ten fur­longs race and it seemed a long time for the pen­ny to drop.

Down the straight Aryal ran on re­al­ly well but failed by a short-head and a head to beat Lit­tle Buxted and Gertrude Versed, sub­se­quent­ly an un­chal­lenged win­ner and our nap at this venue two days ago.

Ob­vi­ous­ly jock­ey Joe Fan­ning has ad­vised his guv'nor to drop back in trip.

On my time-hand­i­cap Aryal is clear "best-in" and like­ly to im­prove con­sid­er­ably, all the por­tents for a good bet al­though odds could be cramped.

This is a clas­sic case of an "an­chor" for a "patent" with­out the sin­gles; three dou­bles and an ac­cu­mu­la­tor.

Al­so worth in­clu­sion is Exn­ing Halt, one of sev­en "decs" for the Maid­en Stakes over about ten fur­longs at Wolver­hamp­ton.

De­spite an ab­sence of 97 days Exn­ing Halt is al­so a "stand out" judged on sev­er­al con­sis­tent ef­forts last year when trained by James Fan­shawe; sub­se­quent­ly this Rail Link geld­ing was sold at the New­mar­ket Sales and pur­chased by a client of Mal­ton-based John Quinn, doubt­less with a jump­ing ca­reer planned.

Quinn is a much un­der-es­ti­mat­ed train­er, or was, plen­ty have now "cot­toned on" fol­low­ing the ex­ploits of sev­er­al re­jects, name­ly Coun­try­wide Flame.

This "pock­et rock­et" was a sim­i­lar "ket­tle of fish" and is now a se­ri­ous Cham­pi­on Hur­dle con­tender hav­ing won the "Tri­umph" last year.

Sall-ish hors­es were al­ways my pref­er­ence, big horse, big prob­lem, eh?

Just a ques­tion of both Exn­ing Halt go­ing down and com­ing back un­der North­ern-based jock­ey Tom Eaves.

Train­er David Evans has de­clared Jack Who's He for the five-run­ner Sell­ing Stakes over a mile!

Noth­ing sur­pris­es any more, costs of train­ing are hor­ren­dous com­pared to prize-mon­ey and doubt­less this par­tic­u­lar own­er is feel­ing the pinch and has be­come dis­il­lu­sioned giv­en the re­ward from such a tal­ent­ed thor­ough­bred.

Sell­ers are more dif­fi­cult to win than most re­alise, they are lit­tered by such types and vet­er­ans which strug­gle with high hand­i­cap marks.

This be­came ev­i­dent nigh on twen­ty years ago when one was plac­ing El­ton Ledger. He won a fierce­ly-com­pet­i­tive hand­i­cap af­ter be­ing beat­en in a South­well sell­er and we backed him, heav­i­ly.

SE­LEC­TIONS

R13 (1) Aryal

R17 (5) Jack Who's He

R21 (2) Exn­ing Halt (nap)?