Dave Nevison's Tuesday Tips: Stallone to take starring role again
Plenty of talking points from the weekend, but I've always preferred to look forward and the two-day Dubai Future Champions Festival at Newmarket ought to throw up plenty of good clashes this weekend. In the meantime, it's a fairly slow start to the week but I've been through the cards at Catterick and Leicester, live on Racing TV, and hopefully found three decent-value bets.
2.30 Catterick: Atailof Two Cities
She has always looked like being a stayer and might improve past some exposed rival now stepped up to two miles. The horse that beat her last time at Redcar went on to win last Saturday and the form could turn out to be stronger than first appeared.
It really is difficult to find anything in this race that is either particularly capable or in form, and certainly having something about them that the handicapper doesn’t know. Hayley Turner got the best tune out of her so far last time (and the visor she wore there is retained) - armed with that experience, they look to have a great chance to score here.
A son of Mayson who was on a roll last autumn, he ran an absolute cracker on his belated seasonal reappearance at Haydock 10 days ago and can capitalise on his relative freshness and turn around form with Count D’Orsay (who finished two and a half lengths in front of him in second) on 4lb better terms.
Watch Ainsdale's latest run at Haydock again - can he reverse form with the runner-up?
There is no doubt that Tim Easterby’s four-year-old is in the peak form but he topped out last season winning off 91 and won off that mark on his penultimate start before being beaten off 96 at Haydock. He now runs off a stiff-looking 100 and I fancy the younger Ainsdale, who seems to love this kind of ground, to improve past him now.
This horse may well be following the almost-exact same pattern as last term where he gathered a string of duck eggs next to his name before hitting form for a couple of handicap wins on soft ground in this very week last year.
He was moved up from 66 to a mark of 78 after those two wins but over the 12 months since has shed 11lb off his mark and the signs were good last time that he might be poised to strike again.
He didn’t enjoy the best of runs last time at Kempton but was not knocked about and has ground to his liking here - indeed, if it gets even softer I would expect him to shorten up considerably as he is fully proven on heavy. Oisin Murphy is an obviously notable booking too.
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