No excuses from the two runners at Sandown for the reason why they didn't manage to get the wins.
Military Code just never got going. Billy Loughnane clearly made the wrong decision in choosing the worst Godolphin runner, as his stablemate under Oisin Murphy got the job done.
Double Meaning was positioned well to do damage if he was good enough, and he simply wasn't. If I went with the runner-up, like I said I would if the ground was softer, I'd have been fuming. The winner came fast and late and was 50/1.
Bloom 9/1 (0.5pt EW, 3pl) – Cork 4.48
With the French Oaks taking place at Chantilly, Ryan Moore is riding over there, so we have to settle for Jack Cleary in the saddle on Bloom.
Based on what we know, Sparan Nua looks ridiculously short. She is 2/2 and was a good winner last time out, but that race doesn't look too strong and it was only a four-runner field. At the price, I couldn't touch her. As a result, I wanted to give a chance to Bloom, who has not progressed too well on the two runs this season.
She ran well on seasonal reappearance at Navan in Group 3. She was third that day, and the winner of that race was the eventual Epsom Oaks winner, so it's not a bad piece of form. On Bloom's next run, she went to the Oaks trial at Lingfield. She was somewhat fancied in the market to run a good race, going off at 100/30. In hindsight, she was used as a pacemaker for her stablemate, and eventual winner of the race. Because of that, I think you've got to take that run with a pinch of salt, and give her another try.
She has a lovely pedigree, being by Wootton Bassett and out of a Galileo Mare, which points towards a horse capable of winning races like this. She does like to run from the front, so if they let her loose and she gets her own way, she can definitely run away with this. She is still very lightly raced, and she gets 16 lbs off the second favourite and 13lbs off the other four-year-olds.
It is worth noting that one of the runners in the Lingfield Derby Trial was pretty poor, but then came back to Ireland and won whilst being massively overlooked in the market. Bloom is currently 9/1, and I struggle to see her getting much bigger, as she is already a very big price. You rarely see an Aidan O'Brien horse this price in a Class 1 race, and I think she would be a fair bit shorter if Ryan Moore were in the saddle.
GambleAware