Good luck with Sky Lake,
P
PHS
Broome won well yesterday, so I made the right decision not to bet against him.
4th May
2:35 Gowran Park - no bet
I liked Holly Golightly (16/1), as she has a really nice pedigree, by Gleneagles out of Cassandra Go, and half-sister to multiple Group 1 winner Halfway To Heaven and a couple of other stakes winners.
She made her debut at Dundalk in November, finishing 5th of 13, 2 lengths behind her stablemate Split Passion (4th) who had benefit of experience and re-opposes today. HG returned to action at the same track a month ago with 3rd of 12 (7 lengths behind the 87-rated winner). I would rate her performance in that race as about 72, so she does need to improve as one of the favourites here is rated 81. I think the switch to turf can bring about some improvement as Gleneagles progeny does better on turf than all weather, but I am not sure if it will be enough.
Other things that put me off a bit are, one that Colin Keane is on stable’s other runner Split Passion (OR 78), and although Ger Lyons’ 2nd strings do win sometimes, more often the market is right about his runners. Having said that Gary Carroll did very well at the Curragh yesterday with his 4 rides finishing 1412.
Other thing is the draw, neither of Ger Lyons’ runners appear to be drawn well. Lyons does have a very good record here though, backing his runners at Gowran to level stakes has returned a 16% ROI, and that is from over 350 runners.
So there are positives and negatives, and the price is tempting, but it is a competitive race with others also open to improvement, so I have decided to leave it. I didn’t think of backing each way as I find that in big field maidens that is rarely a good idea.
Other one in this race that I looked at was the newcomer Final Payments, she is 66/1 currently, but pedigree doesn’t look bad, dam is a half-sister to Paco Boy and she has produced 4 maiden winners so far. I know very little about the trainer, but maybe worth keeping an eye on betting.