Queens' to come up trumps in the Maid­en Fil­lies' Stakes over an ex­tend­ed mile of good to firm Leices­ter to­day when a sev­en-race pro­gramme in­cludes three for ju­ve­niles. That's a bit like old times, this par­tic­u­lar Mid­lands track was once very pop­u­lar with train­ers who want­ed to get a line on their two-year-olds, be­ing ac­ces­si­ble to all ma­jor train­ing cen­tres; Ce­cil, Stoute, Hills, Berry all con­tributed to some re­al ac­tion dur­ing the 1970's and sev­er­al grad­ed per­form­ers were in­tro­duced at the Oad­by race­course.

Nowa­days, with race­course plan­ning some­what awry such char­ac­ter­i­sa­tion has been lost, a re­al shame. Any­way life is here and now and I'll bet Val­ley Of Queens is able to re­trieve re­cent loss­es un­der Mick­ael Barza­lona, one of sev­er­al con­tract­ed jock­ey for Godol­phin. Val­leys Of Queens im­proved con­sid­er­ably on her New­mar­ket Ju­ly course de­but last month, thir­teen days af­ter a course and dis­tance de­but.

She's fan­cied and ready to go one bet­ter in what promis­es to be a fas­ci­nat­ing, not to men­tion in­for­ma­tive, race with six new­com­ers, one owned by Godol­phin! Nev­er un­der­es­ti­mate their 'fly­ers!' Ear­li­er, In­tim­i­date gets an­oth­er chance in the open­ing Maid­en Stakes over sev­en fur­longs. Fol­low­ing two use­ful ef­forts, third and sec­ond, In­tim­i­date was again run­ner-up at Kemp­ton but failed to reg­is­ter pre­vi­ous time-hand­i­cap marks on poly­track. That will have to be an ex­cuse. Some thor­ough­breds aren't suit­ed by AWR sur­faces but apart from the deep fi­bre­sand of South­well, it's dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand why be­cause poly­track has been specif­i­cal­ly de­signed for speed and com­fort. Run­ning in tan­dem this af­ter­noon is Red­car, where Mil­lie N Aire is ide­al­ly suit­ed by con­di­tions of the Maid­en Auc­tion Stakes over five fur­longs. Be­ing a cheap-ish pur­chase she car­ries a low weight and Fran­ny Nor­ton, in trou­ble (again!) last week when stood down for fail­ing a breath test for al­co­hol. Hope it works out but fear he could be fac­ing a lengthy ban, rul­ing him out of the win­ter all-weath­er sea­son.

SE­LEC­TIONS

R2 (9) In­tim­i­date (ew)

R6 (6) Mil­lie N Aire (nap ew)

R11 (11) Val­ley of Queens