The rain got to Hamilton.
Every runner we have there goes on heavy, and heavy does its own sorting. Two of these races are over five furlongs, and five furlongs on heavy is not really a sprint at all. It turns into a question of who is still going in the last hundred yards, which is a different question from the one the market usually answers. Prices get set off the last thing a horse did. The ground decides what it can do today.
Hamilton
MAXIMISING (4:00 Hamilton, 3/1) was beaten half a length at Kempton on 2 July. The horse that did it has since gone and won a Class 4, and is now rated 14lb higher than it was that afternoon. Nobody goes up 14lb for nothing, so being half a length off one of those is worth a good deal more now than it looked at the time. Another rival out of his recent starts has won since as well, which means this is not one race flattering him, it is a run of them standing up. He won last time out himself and was placed on two of the three before that. The honest query is the clock, where his figures have been edging the wrong way rather than the right one, and off a mark of 84 in a Class 4 with eleven of them lining up he has nothing spare. We will take the form over the clock at 3/1.
PERSIAN SPIRIT (3:30 Hamilton, 10/3) is officially the best horse in her race and has not won since five starts back, which is a combination that normally describes something on the way down. Read her the other way round. The clock has her improving sharply off a modest base, and that is how a well handicapped sprinter tends to announce itself, before the winning rather than after it. Two fifths in her last three is the reason she is 10/3 and not 2/1, and we would rather have the price than the certainty. She has had six furlongs on this ground before. Stall seven is the right end of the track over the trip, and Hamilton is one of Edward Bethell’s stronger courses.
PROSPERITY ANGEL (2:30 Hamilton, 11/2) is back down in grade from the one she was winning in, which is the simplest edge there is in this game. At Thirsk on 7 August she finished three quarters of a length in front of a horse that has won since. Third last time out, a winner the start before that, and back within 24 days over a trip she has already run. Seven runners and 11/2 is a price worth having.
Yesterday our headline picks returned a winner in Operation Gimcrack at 5/1 and a place from Percy Shelley at 11/4.
KILMAC AIR (3:00 Hamilton, 11/2) is the one with the least to show you. Six runs without a win, and her figures on the clock sit below her own par with nothing in them pointing to a turn. What we will say for her is that she is running close to as well as she has ever run, whatever those placings look like, and stall four over five furlongs at Hamilton is the part of a race you cannot buy at any price. Twelve days since her last run is nothing at all.
She is 11/2 in a Class 6. That is the case.
FARABOVE THE LIMIT (5:00 Hamilton, 13/2) won last time and came out of it well enough to be back 24 days later. What makes that win look like a beginning rather than an end is how he arrived at it, his best efforts on the clock being the most recent ones and the climb steep from a low start. Back at Ayr on 10 August he was beaten a nose by one that has won since, though that was a Class 6 win and we are not going to make it carry more than it can. A mile and a half on heavy is the other thing in his favour. He has done both before.
Plumpton
NAP HAND (4:08 Plumpton, 2/1) drops in class from the grade he won in last time out. For a horse whose recent times sit above his own par, that is most of the argument made before you look at anything else. He was second on each of the two starts before that win, so the win came off a horse already running to a level rather than one that found something from nowhere. He knows the trip and he knows the ground, and Fern O’Brien takes 5lb off his back.
Nap Hand is the only one of today’s picks who does not have to get through mud. At 2/1 in a five runner race, the fewer complications the better.