Hugo Palmer blog: 'She deserves to be favourite'

Hugo Palmer is back with his latest exclusive blog for Coral, with the leading trainer running us through his runners at Newbury, Ripon, Newmarket, Doncaster and Haydock.

Several of the runners at the head of the ante-post betting didn’t stand their ground for the Weatherby’s Super Sprint, including the favourite Ain’tNobody, so our filly is now favourite, which can only be a positive. This hasn’t really been the long term plan with her, the plan was to earn some black type, which we’ve done, and that’s why we came here rather than the Duchess Of Cambridge at the July meeting, and the extra time between races was also another factor in waiting for this race.

Her sales price means she gets in here off a low weight, so another positive, and she’s versatile in terms of ground. We’re very well treated against second favourite, Vingegaard, receiving nine pounds and being only rated four pounds lower, although on a similar theme Kaadi is a pound well in with us, having finished just in front of us at York in May. If only it was as simple as a game of maths! 

She’s really well, this is a wonderful prize pot to go after, and we’re delighted to have Oisin Murphy ride. We were only a neck behind Arabian Dusk at Newmarket in June, and she went on to the win that Duchess Of Cambridge, so she has form in the book and I hope she can grab as much of this big prize money as possible.

It’s hard to believe in a summer where all it seems to have done is rain, but L’Astronome just hasn’t had has his preferred soft going, and as a result has been declared and then made a non-runner on several occasions, including at Epsom and Ascot. I even fear it may dry out here, but hopefully they might get some more rain. He needs to run, he’s ready to run, but we are ground dependent if he’s not to just have a look at some more of the country’s motorway network!

The Waco Kid ran really well here at Newbury to finish fourth on debut, and normal improvement could see him be very competitive here, albeit this does look a stronger race. That said, they are largely newcomers he’s taking on, so plenty of unknown quantities, but of the ones to have run, we have the highest Racing Post rating.  

We have Oisin riding for us again, which I’m pleased about as he could have ridden for Andrew Balding. There are some powerful owners represented with newcomers, so we’ll have to see how we fare against them, but I hope we have a winning chance.