The final day of the Ebor Festival, and the Ebor itself is the feature. We put our 2 up for that earlier in the week, before the market moved, and you can read them in our Ebor selections post. This is the rest of the card.
Our NAP competition is free for everybody to enter. The first race is free for everyone to read, as always.
1:50 Strensall Stakes: Geryon, and a wrong we want righting
You will know who we are on here. Geryon (G M Lyons, Gary Carroll) has been on our tracker since the end of July. What we have been waiting for is a clear run, rather than for this race in particular.
He was 2nd at 15/2 in the Gordon Stakes at Goodwood, and we are convinced the best horse did not win. He was our Top Rated that day, he travelled all over the winner, and he never got a yard of daylight. He was blocked repeatedly, ran into the back of one, then went for a gap the winner himself shut. By the time he was switched out and into the clear the race had gone, and he was still closing at the line.
We wrote at the time that he did not need to find any improvement to win a race like that, he just needed a clear passage. Kindly enough, connections have put him straight back into another Group 3, and we think he is better than this grade.
Which brings us to the one real reservation, and we should be straight about it. What our tracker note actually said was to look out for him next over a mile and a half or thereabouts. This is not that. He drops from 1m3f218y at Goodwood to 1m 177y, and that is a sharp drop by anyone’s reckoning.
The reason we are prepared to take it on is the ground. With cut in it this will ride a good deal longer than the bare distance, which brings his stamina back into play rather than leaving it behind. If the ground dried out we would be a lot less keen.
If he gets a clear run and still gets beaten, fine. We will accept that. What we will not accept quietly is another afternoon of being stopped.