Twenty-four runners, six furlongs, soft ground at the Curragh. In a race like that a good part of the field is beaten by where it starts, and COOL AZUL (4:15 Curragh, 6/1) starts from stall 17. That is the right part of the track for this trip.
The draw is the first reason we are with him, and it is a real one. The second is how he arrives. He won two starts back and was runner-up last time, so he comes into a big handicap with his form figures pointing the right way and no excuses needed. He has run over six furlongs on soft ground before, so the conditions ask him nothing new.
There is a thinner thread from Navan on 11 July, where he finished a nose in front of one that has gone on to win since. On its own that would not get him on the list. Here it sits alongside everything else and points the same way.
The question is the 47 days since he last ran. W. J. Lee rides for the Oliver yard, and in a field this size 6/1 is a fair price for a horse whose only real doubt is the break.
Uttoxeter is a different kind of race altogether. Six runners, two miles seven furlongs, good ground, Class 3.
ERNEST GRAY (3:15 Uttoxeter, 4/1) has finished fourth, second and first in his last three runs, and the clock has moved the same way as the placings. More to the point, the times he has already run would stand up in this grade without him finding another inch. Alan King’s horse comes back after 30 days, which is a sensible gap. He has run over this trip and on good ground before, and Tom Cannon takes the ride. In a field of six you want a horse whose recent work already matches the level. He fits that.
Back at the Curragh, the J S Bolger yard sends out MAEVE BRENNAN (4:50 Curragh, 3/1) for the mile-and-a-half handicap, with Miss J Townend riding. She is the shortest of our three. She has been off for 114 days, and that is the honest doubt.
Her form reads 5-5202. She was second last time and has been second in two of her last five without getting her head in front. At Fairyhouse on 12 June she finished a length and a half in front of a horse that has won since. Stall 13 is a good place to be over this trip at this track.
What we are not saying is that she is on the up. Her recent times have gone the other way, so this is about her form, the draw and conditions she has met before, a mile and a half on soft ground. At 3/1 in a thirteen-runner handicap, that is enough.
Of yesterday’s five headline picks, El Cairos won at 11/8 and Wild Dahlia placed at 11/2.
The two Curragh runners go off 35 minutes apart on the same soft ground, and both start from the stalls we would have picked for them.