Racing - It's Curtains for the rest (From The Westmorland Gazette)

Racing - It's Curtains for the rest

10:39am Saturday 7th June 2008 in Sport By Flared Nostril

HAS there ever been so many ifs and buts about an Epsom Derby.

It's all to do with how well-bred you are - the horses that is not the folks in toppers watching the action.

Most people want flashy milers in their stableboxes rather than solid-fashioned staying horses, so a lot of this field are likely to come up short - literally - on the way to this finishing post.

Supplementary entry New Approach may have been runner-up in two Guineas, but Jim Bolger's Irish raider runs as if he will be packing his bags and heading for the exit at the two-furlong pole!

Sir Michael Stoute saddles three and that means they are probably much of a muchness, and if he can't pick one out of the crowd then why should I.

Dermot Weld's Casual Conquest handed out a five-length thrashing to a small but select field in the top Irish Derby trial at Leopardstown and is bred to get this trip, but then so is CURTAIN CALL.

Luca Cumani's charge has had a typical low-profile build-up to this race, but he split New Approach and Henrythenavigator as a juvenile, and has bundles of staying power in his armoury.

He's not got top-class form in the book yet as a three-year-old but look at it this way. Paul Newman could talk the talk as the Hustler, but he needed a pool cue to show what he could do. This is the cue .....but in this game you've got to stay out of the pockets on a tight track!

With a great run under Jamie Spencer, he looks capable of clubbing his way to victory past some excellent but under-fuelled opponents, with Rio De La Plata maybe causing a bit of a surprise by running into a place at decent odds.

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