Tuesday means new handicap marks, and this week's list could hardly be better timed: Glorious Goodwood started today and the Stewards' Cup is on Saturday. Seven horses from our reviews and our tracker caught our eye in the new file. As always, every suggested target is checked against this year's published race programme and against the horse itself, sex, age and rating band included, and suggested races link to last year's runnings where we can show you one.
The first horse is free for everyone to read; the other six are for Premium and Pro members.
Dovecote: a first mark of 76, and the wait is over
Dovecote went to Southwell on Thursday for the third run of his career, the one that qualified him for a handicap mark, and finished second again. We flagged him straight afterwards, and the note said the only thing that mattered was the number the handicapper would now hand him: everything about his campaign, two quiet seconds in two starts since being gelded, without ever being asked a truly serious question, said handicaps were the plan all along. The number is in: 76. For a Ralph Beckett three-year-old with this profile, that looks exactly the kind of mark the plan wanted.
Where next: a three-year-old handicap over seven furlongs or a mile, and the calendar offers a nice ladder: a modest opener at one of the northern tracks where the Beckett yard operates at a strong strike rate, Redcar, Ripon and Carlisle chief among them, then something like the 0-95 mile at Goodwood's August Bank Holiday weekend, worth £23,000-plus to the winner, once he has a win on the board.
