Rachel Candelora's top tips for Wednesday: Spirit Warning can rise to occasion

While most people will be focusing on the Jumps Finale meeting at Sandown on Saturday, I am heading stateside this weekend for some American jumping action at the Queen’s Cup Steeplechase meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina.

The feature race is the $100,000 The Queen’s Cup Steeplechase, which is a 2m3f “graduation” hurdle, which features the 2018 Fred Winter winner Veneer Of Charm taking on two former Alan King residents in Gibralfaro and City Dreamer.

However, the star of the day comes in the Steeplethon (Cross Country) where Carrickboy, the 2013 Byrne Group Plate winner for Venetia Williams and Trevor Hemmings, seeks a third win since moving to the States at the grand old age of 15.

As for Wednesday’s action, Epsom takes centre stage and I’ve got four selections for the meeting.

Bahamian Sunrise bids for a repeat win in what effectively is the trial for Epsom’s Derby Day Dash, having taken the race 12 months ago from several horses who renew rivalry again this year.

Last year he won this race from stall 4 but is better drawn this time, in gate 8, and he resumes his partnership with Silvestre De Sousa who should be able to get him tight up against the favoured nearside rail early in the contest.

This is a race that has been dominated in recent years by John Gosden and Frankie Dettori.

Dettori has ridden the past four winners for Gosden and the trainer has a record total of six wins in the race.

While Turgenev may not be in the same league as one or two of his illustrious stablemates who have won here he still looks an exciting colt who showed enough as a two-year-old to suggest he should have a future this season.

Paddock watchers at Newbury, when this son of Dubawi make his seasonal reappearance, appeared to think that he was badly in need of the run on the soft ground that day and therefore we can expect significant improvement.

Gosden does not usually win this race with existing Derby entrants (this horse is not in the Derby) and it appears that he sees the race as a legitimate early-season target in its own right rather than a stepping stone race.

I am not old enough, and I was born on the wrong side of the Atlantic, to remember when the “Great Met” was a race run over 2 ¼ miles with the horses starting by the winning post and going the wrong way up the Epsom home straight.

I bet that was really cool and would have liked to see that!

It is still a cracking race for a midweek handicap and it is a race in which four-year-olds have a good record.

A brace of that age group caught my eye and although I can see the filly Maybe Today going close, I have decided to side with Soto Sizzler who might be a slightly bigger price.

I thought he ran better than his finishing position suggested when fifth in the Rosebery Handicap at Kempton and I also like the fact that he has previous winning form on a switch-back track, having scored last season at Goodwood.

A 12-runner three-year-old handicap closes out the card at Epsom and Spirit Warning looks primed to take his third career success.

Since being gelded and switching to handicaps this winter, Spirit Warning has found his stride and has won twice and been placed in his four handicap runs on the all-weather.

He returns now to turf, which he has run well over in the past particularly on good to firm, and to Epsom, a course he has good form at when finishing second last year in a maiden.

Spirit Warning has an early turn of foot, which should see him either making the running or sitting right off of Recuerdame, who is drawn to his inside, and we all know that racing prominently at Epsom is the preferred run style.

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