A Great Yet Cruel Week For Little Black Book

Last week’s work out’s in the states went very well. Akhmatova is due to run today in an allowance race with a purse just shy of $30,000. She is one of 7 runners and looks to be going off around mid division in the betting. This will be her first run on the turf track in Arlington Park having run on the fibre sand on her last start there. I am in America for the weekend and I am very happy with how she looks and I am looking forward to seeing her train this morning. We will also be working Pachattack from the stalls this morning. She is still on target for the Beverley D stakes and if she keeps going in the direction that she is, she will go there in super form. 

Little Black Book has had a great week all be it slightly frustrating! He ran a blinder here at HQ last Saturday in a 0-90 handicap and after making nearly all of the running, was cruelly denied on the line by Jamie Spencer and a very talented horse of Michael Bell’s rated 86. We are clearly due a rise in the handicap so before that came into effect we ran him at Sandown. He ran his heart out and was again cruelly denied by the inform Electra Star. We will now give him as much time as he needs to recuperate (although the way he was at exercise this morning, you wouldn’t guess he has run twice in a week!) and then we will think about where to go with him next. We will be looking for races over 7f – 1m. 

Zain Point is making his 2nd start this evening at Lingfield. We have dropped him back from 6f to 5f after the speed he showed us at Windsor on his debut. We have declared him with a tongue tie and he has been ridden out at home wearing it this week. He accepts it very well and it seems to help him to breathe more air into his lungs. He has an OK draw for Lingfield and is super quick from the gates so we would like to think that we are in with a good chance if we can get passed the very short priced favourite of Barry Hills’. 

Behlul is set to travel north back up to Southwell on Tuesday. After the promising start he made there a few weeks back, we have waited for the 1m races to start appearing and there is a perfect race for him there on Tuesday. Ted Durcan will ride him again and he has matured greatly from his first run. Hopefully he will be able to go with the early pace this time and avoid the nasty kick back that he so bravely endured on his first run.