Jef­fery Ross

Shouts of 'Bra­vo' could greet jock­ey Adam Kir­by on his re­turn to the win­ners' en­clo­sure at Leices­ter to­day! Kir­by will be the fourth jock­ey in as many out­ings to part­ner Bra­vo Youmzain when Mar­co Bot­ti's charge faces three win­ners in the Novice Stakes over six fur­longs of 'good to firm' ground which has been 'wa­tered!' On my time-hand­i­cap Bra­vo Youmzain has a clear-cut chance of go­ing one bet­ter even al­low­ing for im­prove­ment from de­but win­ner, Se­cretinthep­ark, and the fact Don­cast­er win­ner, Kim­berel­la, will be fan­cied, be­ing the mount of Jamie Spencer.

It's that time of year when sta­bles need to clear out some mod­er­ates but oth­ers are un­der pres­sure from un­suc­cess­ful own­ers who even­tu­al­ly come to terms that own­ing race­hors­es is an ex­pen­sive hob­by; own­er­ship, though ex­cit­ing, be­comes ex­treme­ly cost­ly and the pit­falls far out­weighs the plea­sures for the ma­jor­i­ty. Pur­chas­ing a thor­ough­bred isn't the prob­lem, at a time when bud­get­ing costs, keep­ing them is the crux giv­en the av­er­age cost is at least £60 a day; there are some bar­gains to be had and the Sell­ing Stakes over sev­en fur­longs ap­pears to rest with con­sis­tent, some­what luck­less Fi­celle, re­cent win­ner Mar­ford Mis­sile and La­dy Lay­la a re­cent beat­en-favourite for which Spencer is al­so booked. Re­al­is­ti­cal­ly La­dy Lay­la jus­ti­fies a se­ri­ous each-way punt with three places on of­fer; it's in­con­ceiv­able she could be out of the plac­ings.

Run­ning in tan­dem with this sev­en-race pro­gramme are 'heavy' Hamil­ton and Kemp­ton; both have marathon eight-race cards which, for the most part, are al­ready in the 'too dif­fi­cult' tray. An ex­cep­tion is the Maid­en Stakes over nine fur­longs and an ob­vi­ous op­por­tu­ni­ty for William Hag­gas-trained Dan­chai, for­mer­ly trained by David Lani­gan. Once-raced Dan­chai has, ap­par­ent­ly, been work­ing re­al­ly well and so it's sur­pris­ing fel­low New­mar­ket train­er James Fan­shawe al­so jour­neys Kept a 'mil­lion miles' from New­mar­ket to chal­lenge a neigh­bour. What's go­ing on?

SE­LEC­TIONS

LEICES­TER

RACE 6 (#3) BRA­VO YOUMZAIN (nap)

RACE 12 (#2) DAN­CHAI

RACE 14 (#4) LA­DY LAY­LA (e.w.)