Chazzesmee flat out at Lincoln to add to Curragh
The start of the Flat turf season isn’t as big a deal as it was before all-weather racing filled the gap between early November and late March.
These days the Lincoln fixture at Doncaster is more like lower-key relief, between the climaxes to the jumping season at the Cheltenham and Aintree festivals, than spectacular curtain-raiser.
One tradition hasn’t changed: the Lincoln Handicap itself remains a high-grade head-scratcher for punters. More recent clues are at hand since the advent of the all-weather programme than when form and race-fitness were taken entirely on trust after a long winter recess.
But solving the Lincoln puzzle actually became more difficult, not less, after sand racing was introduced in the late 1980s. The average price of the winner over the following decade was 25-1 – and the shocks have kept on coming.
Last year’s 18-1 winner Migration is back, carrying top-weight again, but has shown nothing since.
More serious attention is being paid to Ireland’s challenge. The most recent Irish success in this contest was 40 years ago, but Fozzy Stack is making a brazen bid for an unprecedented Lincoln double with Chazzesmee, the smooth winner the Irish version at the Curragh only last Monday. Blues Emperor is the other from across the water. His form last summer ties in nicely with Chazzesmee and he’s trained by Johnny Murtagh, who has plenty of previous when it comes to British handicaps. Last year’s runner-up Awaal and the 2022 winner Johan are among the leading home fancies, along with Karl Burke’s Liberty Lane, whose two career wins from just seven starts have come on soft ground. Shock results? They wouldn’t be shocks if we knew where to look, but there are a few lurking down the bottom of the handicap with the potential
to way outrun their odds. Jennie Candish’s Spirit Genie is one of them. His last victory was in a lowly Leicester seller (in a canter) in October, but he then finished strongly to be runner-up in a decent Newmarket handicap and will be as happy as a hippo squelching through Town Moor’s muddy surface.
That Newmarket winner was Dashing Roger and though William Stone’s seven-year-old is trading freely at 25-1 in the opening Doncaster Mile, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that he could also spring a surprise. He had a three-figure rating in his younger days and was enjoying a renaissance when we last saw him. What is more, he’s at his best when the going is as testing as it will be this afternoon.
The best jumps action comes from Newbury, where Party Vibes, ridden by talented 5lb claimer Alice Stevens for Henry Daly, looks good for her hat-trick in the Grade Two Mares’ Handicap Hurdle.
Her two wins have been over two miles, but she is bred to appreciate this step up in distance.