Haydock Sunday tips: Three to follow at latest Sky Bet Sunday Series fixture
DERRY LAD (5.15)
From being beaten 108, 57 and 23 lengths in three hurdles starts earlier this year, to standing on the cusp of pocketing a £100,000 bonus. That’s the tantalising prospect Derry Lad’s owners, the aptly-named Dreamers Alliance Syndicate, now find themselves within touching distance of.
Victories at Hamilton in May and then the most recent Sunday Series fixture at Pontefract six weeks ago see Kevin Coleman’s Tipperary raider battling it out with Ian Williams’ Blow Your Horn (runs in 6.45) to succeed where Evaluation failed by a nose 12 months ago and become the first horse to win three times in the Series.
While Derry Lad has gone up 13lbs for his two wins, compared to Blow Your Horn’s 10lb, he looks better equipped to cope with the demands of a Merseyside mud bath.
The form of his last three runs has been franked umpteen times over, too, most notably by Pontefract runner-up Wootton’Sun, who snaffled Haydock’s Old Newton Cup on his next start, while the fourth, sixth and seventh from that Ponty race all won next time out.
A 7lb rise for that fluent success seems fair, then. The way he cut round the field from the 4f pole showed he has sufficient gears to cope with this quarter-mile shorter trip, plus he has plenty of slow-ground form back in Ireland, including a close second to a big improver on heavy at Navan in March, to turn that £100k dream into reality.
The Inside Word:“I hadn’t ridden Derry Lad until this season, but even though he’s five he seems to be improving with age. Dropping back in trip won’t be a problem for him on soft ground, which is what he wants. The six-week break since his last win has been perfect for freshening him up and I know Kevin is quite happy with him.” - Shane Gray, jockey
NIGIRI (6.15)
Excellent though the Sunday Series prize-money is, it’s probably fair to assume connections of this filly would’ve been looking at loftier targets before she made her racecourse debut at Newmarket last October. That’s usually the deal for fillies that come with a 300,000gns price tag and a pedigree to turn heads among a bevy of catwalk queens.
Nigiri clearly improved for getting a run under her belt this season when third in a Wolves novice in late-June, form that’s been well franked by the winner and fourth, both of which won their next two. An opening mark of 68 clearly underestimated this Lope De Vega filly’s natural ability then, a fact she underlined with an emphatic handicap debut success over 7f on good to soft ground at this track 16 days ago.
That was only a modest race and the handicapper has taken a swipe with a 7lb rise. However, Ralph Beckett’s charge hit the line hard in the manner of a filly who will relish stepping up to 1m here; and the fact that both her sire and dam were effective with plenty of cut means there’s plenty in her breeding to suggest she’ll be just as effective, if not even more so, on this slower ground.
The Inside Word:“She got the stalls all wrong at Wolverhampton and came from a very unpromising position to finish third in a race that’s working out really well. I thought she’d win wherever she ran next, although unfortunately I wasn’t on her at Haydock the last time! This is a stronger race but I think she’s capable of making the step up and winning a nice race like this. She gets in off a light weight, which is no bad thing on this kind of ground.” - Hector Crouch, jockey
PYRAMID PLACE (6.45)
It’s been 1,275 days since Pyramid Place made the last of his four starts on the Flat for John Gosden. Since then, he’s proved himself a useful hurdler on slow ground, notching up no fewer than six wins for Milton Harris.
The Wiltshire wonder has had his six-year-old in rare form of late, scoring at Cartmel at the end of May and then producing a career-best back at the Lake District track a fortnight ago when conditions were heavy, a surface he’s now a perfect two-from-two on over timber.
As such, a Haydock quagmire shouldn’t hold any terrors for Pyramid Place. And although Saffie Osborne will need to hang on to her mount until the last possible moment before delivering a challenge, there’s reason to think this smooth-travelling, 121-rated hurdler could prove leniently treated off 69 for his return to the Flat. The 10/1 with bet365 is a stand-out price.
The Inside Word:“Pyramid Place is a funny horse in that he handles soft and heavy ground really well, but has a few issues which mean he doesn’t cope too well with winter weather. We’ve done well with him over hurdles when we’ve managed to get him on some watered ground. He goes on anything but he copes with testing ground better than most horses, so heavy up at Haydock will be lovely for him! He’s fresh and well, and I think he’s well-handicapped.” - Milton Harris, trainer
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