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Saturday 15th August

There is certainly an element of guesswork as to how the inclement weather will affect the going at various meetings today. At the time of writing, Newbury had reported 3mm of rain and the ground described as good to soft, soft in places. I find with Newbury that it can change quite quickly when the rain falls and my opinion is that if they get any further rain, it could ride quite testing. As a result, I'm going with a proven soft ground performer, Morando in the Group 3 Geoffrey Freer at 3.00. He is hardly improving at the age of 7, but he probably will not need to improve to win this and a number of his previous efforts will probably be good enough. He has been soundly beaten at the top level on a number of occasions but the opposite must be said at Group 3 level. In his four attempts at this grade over similar trips, his form figures read 1121 and the only defeat came in this race last year when attempting to give Technician 12lb and only failing by 3/4 of a length. I doubt if there is a Technician lurking among the 3 year olds this year and his form is comfortably better than the other older horses. His reappearance was a moderate enough effort but I suspect this was his target and conditions may have come right for him.


1pt win Morando (7/2 General) Newbury 3.00

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