Everyone has an UNCLE FRED

No selections yesterday, and it’s another fairly ordinary day’s horseracing today.
There is a meeting at Brighton, but I’ll give that a miss as I don’t like the track. There is another Flat (turf) meeting at Nottingham and an AW meeting at Kempton.
At Nottingham, a jockey I keep a lookout for – Graham Gibbons – has just one ride; Rowan Spirit in the opening 6f h’cap for 3yo’s. He had a single ride last night at Windsor for Ed McMahon and that one came last of 7. Outside of the elite top jockeys with their handsome retainers, life for a “freelance” can be tough.
The rest of the meeting at Nottingham looks very ordinary and nothing catches my eye.
At Kempton, it is not surprising that Gosden’s BANKSY is the fav for the opener. This 2yo cost £70,000 in March this year, and showed a lot of speed LTO at Haydock. With Gosden having a good record at Kempton with his 2yo’s this is the most likely winner of the 6:00.
The only other item of interest at this meeting is why has Sir Michael Stoute kept the 4yo BOTANIST in training? OK, so he’s a full brother to Group 1 winning filly Full Bloom (also trained by Stoute), but the horse was lacklustre in 2 appearances last season. Since that last run, botanist has been gelded and that may bring about an improvement in attitude – but perhaps he’s just not that much good as his half-sister Full Blossom wasn’t up to much winning only a Class 5 maiden on her 11th start. For me, with the presence of Botanist in the race, there should be value elsewhere and UNCLE FRED should get the good pace he needs. UNCLE FRED is in top form at the moment, and he’s a winner at Kempton on the AW. He also ran well here on his last visit over a mile last July, and the only worry is that he may be held-up too much. At 6/1, he looks the value for me as if Botanist was with any other unfashionable stable, he’d be more like 10/1 for this and UNCLE FRED would be 7/2 or maybe even shorter.

No selections today, but UNCLE FRED is worthy of a small eachway wager at 6/1 or longer.

I have been updating the “2011 – Flat Racing Notebook” page (look to the left-hand side of the screen), and will continue to update during today. Some that I have written about include:

Zuider Zee / Imperial Guest / Free For All / Baisse / Admiral Of The Red
Boogie Shoes / Four Nations / Space War / Colombian / Tres Coronas / Winter’s Night

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