Best bets for day one QIPCO Guineas Festival 2020 - Thursday 4th June
It looks a little different and feels a little different, but it is still the QIPCO Guineas Festival at Newmarket’s Rowley Mile this week and we have some big races to enjoy and no less than TEN races each day! If you live Cambridgeshire way you might want to pick up a copy of the Hunts Post https://www.huntspost.co.uk/home or the Ely Standard https://www.elystandard.co.uk/home this week as yours truly has produced a special article for my old mate and Sports Editor in Chief Lee Power for those two newspapers.
Anyway, that’s enough self-promotion on to the job in hand and finding some winners at the QIPCO Guineas Festival 2020. Thursday is the quieter of the four days, no big races, in fact it's A bunch of two-year-old maidens and tricky little handicaps – the sort of card Bookmakers enjoy! Charlie Appleby sends four young’uns for Godolphin to make their debuts and as you would expect they all look potentially decent on breeding. Renown for sending some of their better ones to HQ to make their debuts the Bookies aint taking any chances but then again, I wouldn’t be offering flashy prices either!
First one out the starting gate is Magical Land in the Betway Maiden Stakes over 6f at 2.25. Pedigree suggests he could and should be ready, half-brother to 2yo winner last year Althiqa, and I am confident he’d have been taught what's required at home by the Charlie Appleby team. I have the ear’ole 6-4 overnight.
At 3.00 we get our first glimpse of Creative Force in the second Betway Maiden Stakes over the same track and trip. Cost a tidy 400,000 euros as a yearling by Dubawi out of Choose Me he is a half-brother to five different winners that I can find including the top-class QEII heroine Persuasive. 11-8 is the price I have.
Sky Angel makes her debut in the Heed Your Hunch At Betway EBF Stallions Maiden Fillies' Stakes at 3.35 again over six. Clearly, she looked alright as a yearling as she cost 800,000 euros. By Dark Angel out of Group winner Mayhem her half-sister Donnybrook was a 2yo winner last season for Godolphin trained by John Gosden. Short again I am on at 5-4.
Sunset Memory is the last of the potentially fabulous four, racing in the Heed Your Hunch At Betway EBF Stallions Maiden Fillies' Stakes at 4.10 over, you guessed it, the 6f trip. Perhaps the riskiest of the four being by Shamardal out of middle-distance winner Final Stage you might think this trip a bit sharp for her. That said the dam is by Street Cry and out of Moyessi and there is plenty of 6f-mile trip form in the pedigree ahead of her parents. I have 9-4 overnight.
A little Yankee if that is your thing, I of course am on singles to level stakes, for what might be a cracking day for Charlie Appleby and William Buick.
Be lucky