Scoville made a winning debut at Windsor, beating the Gosden horse, who had plenty of experience over him.
It was an impressive run by the William Haggas runner, who was extremely strong in the betting, which made me think we were in with a very strong chance. Tom Marquand positioned prominently and was stride for stride with his main market rival. When push came to shove, he was travelling much better than the runner-up, and he managed to lengthen away.
The runner I had at the Curragh wasn't up to standards. It was worth a chance on the basis that the main horses at the top of the market might have needed the run, but it wasn't the case as they were first and second and both ran great races.
Planned Paradise 10/3 (1pt) – Fakenham 4.50
It's been a long season for Planned Paradise, but if he can run to the level that we know he can, he has a solid chance of winning this race.
I don't think this is a particularly strong race, so it won't take much for Planned Paradise to win, given he has won a couple of times this season in arguably better races. He has been competing in tougher races in recent times, and has run with credit on multiple of those attempts.
He is on a decent enough handicap mark when you take Charlie Maggs' 5lb claim, as that means he is running off a mark of 106, which is 1lb lower than his last win and 2lbs lower than his runner-up finish in this race twelve months ago.
The good recent weather we've had in the UK has come at the right time, as Planned Paradise is arguably best on a quicker surface, with two of his best performances from RPR's being on good ground. We all know how good Christian Williams is at training horses over this type of distance, so I'd imagine he will be well fancied and might go off as the favourite. It's a tad worrying that he has another runner in the race, so it's hard to decipher which is his main runner for the race, but I do like the booking of Charlie Maggs, and I've always had a soft spot for this horse from when he was trained by Neil Mulholland.
GambleAware