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The Timeform Expert's View: Royal Ascot Day Five
Posted in: Royal Ascot Tips
Ben Fearnley provides his best bet, next best and best longshot for Day Five of Royal Ascot 2017.
Best Bet
Willie Mullins completed the Ascot Stakes/Queen Alexandra Stakes double with Simenon at Royal Ascot in 2012 and the Ireland’s champion jumps trainer looks to have an outstanding chance of repeating the feat five years on with Thomas Hobson, who posted one of the most impressive performances of the week when winning the two and a half mile handicap on the opening day by six lengths. This isn’t a field packed with quality, and if Thomas Hobson runs a similar race in Saturday’s Queen Alexandra Stakes then he should be hard to stop. The horse most likely to spoil the party is undoubtedly US Army Ranger, though his attitude looked a little suspect last time at Epsom and he is yet to match let alone better the form of his second in last year’s Derby.
Next Best
The Wokingham is another fiendishly tough puzzle and is a race worth having a few stabs at. One of those stabs should definitely be Squats, who built up a solid profile in big-field handicaps at this track over seven furlongs last season. He hasn’t won for nearly three years, but may well have done had he not bumped in to Librisa Breeze – a Group 1 horse in a handicap – in last season’s International Stakes. He drops back to sprinting here for the first time since his three-year-old days, which shouldn’t be an issue given how well he was running over six furlongs at the end of that season, and is well worth chancing with some each-way money with his reappearance in the Victoria Cup under his belt (need the run last season).
Longshot
Two of the last three runnings of the Wolferton Handicap have been won by horses dropping down from pattern-class races into handicaps for the first time, and that is exactly what Muntazah is doing tomorrow. He has been something of an underachiever to date, finishing his two-year-old season with a good third in the Royal Lodge Stakes but not being able to build on that during a three-year-old season which only consisted of two starts. That said, he was better than ever when fifth in the Gordon Richards Stakes at Sandown on his return this season behind Ulysses and Deauville (form which has been well advertised already this week) and he is worth forgiving his run in a listed race here last time (unproven over further than a mile and a quarter). Favourite Khairaat is up 13 lb for his win at Chester last time and in a much more competitive environment here, so looks worth taking on at the prices.
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