Jef­frey Ross

Re­straint of Trade at Hay­dock to­day and it will af­fect you in the Maid­en Stakes over a mile of the left-hand­ed Lan­cashire track which is ex­pect­ed to be 'good' for a sev­en-race pro­gramme. By Ep­som Der­by win­ner, Au­tho­rized, out of a Sh­er­nazar mare, Re­straint Of Trade is bred to be a qual­i­ty in­di­vid­ual and was backed in­to short-priced favouritism for his de­but over a sim­i­lar dis­tance at Good­wood last month; it was ob­vi­ous he'd been im­press­ing train­er Mah­mood Al Za­rooni. A first-up ex­pe­ri­ence is nev­er to be un­der­es­ti­mat­ed and Re­straint Of Trade was in­deed slug­gish leav­ing stalls; in the clos­ing stages how­ev­er he was re­al­ly tank­ing on and fin­ished a cred­itable third to Pearl Cas­tle, beat­en less than four lengths. At one stage he was at least dou­ble that in rear.

On the time-hand­i­cap Re­straint Of Trade rep­re­sents a strong bet­ting propo­si­tion, es­pe­cial­ly with Mikael Barza­lona part­ner­ing him again. Too of­ten two-year-olds have a dif­fer­ent jock­ey sec­ond time out, that ran­kles but, there again, it isn't al ways pos­si­ble to re­tain a part­ner­ship. Godol­phin owns Re­straint Of Trade and have their own jock­ey pool, Barza­lona, Sil­vestre de Siuza and, of course, the inim­itable Frankie Det­tori, not to men­tion use­ful ap­pren­tice An­ti­o­co Mur­gia . 'The boys in blue' are prov­ing our re­cent fore­cast ab­solute­ly right, plen­ty of win­ners, some­times an un­fan­cied run­ner beat­en a sta­ble-com­pan­ion, as was the case ear­li­er this week when odds-on Ruban found Barza­lona-rid­den Rep­re­sen­ta­tion too good in a Wolver­hamp­ton maid­en.

This time Raven's Tow­er and Mur­gia car­ries the sec­ond colours! Ear­li­er this sea­son Mur­gia part­nered the eas­i­est win­ner of a hand­i­cap I've ever seen, at Thirsk; the horse was Farhh! Four­teen 'decs' for the fol­low­ing Maid­en Stakes over six fur­longs, there can on­ly be one win­ner, ac­cord­ing to the TH, Erodi­um! Fol­low­ing a slight fal­low spell, by the very high stan­dards of Richard Han­non's Marl­bor­ough base, the cham­pi­on train­er is right back to top form and op­pos­ing his run­ners, with­out good rea­son, is a 'no-brain­er!' Twice-raced Erodi­um im­proved from a promis­ing Sandown ef­fort at New­bury ap­prox­i­mate­ly three weeks lat­er; both races were over sev­en fur­longs. This Ky­lac­chy colt has plen­ty in hand un­less there is a 'mys­tery' lurk­ing amongst sev­er­al new­com­ers, it's un­like­ly to af­fect the pro­gres­sive Erodi­um, bred for speed on both sides of his pedi­gree. Get on and have an each-way 'patent!'

SE­LEC­TIONS

RACE 3 (#11) Re­straint Of Trade

RACE 4 (#6) Miss Mar­jurie

RACE 6 (#6) Erodi­um (nap-e.w)