Skidmore's Selections: Saturday Racing

By Ryan Skidmore

Newmarket 13:50 - Zetland Stakes G3

This isn’t the strongest renewal of the Group 3 Zetland Stakes ever but Charlie Appleby looks to have a good chance of winning this race for the second year running with his horse Flying Honours. This colt ran a race full of promise on debut and looked quite special on his 2nd and 3rd starts, with a combined winning distance of 15 lengths across the victories.

Unsurprisingly he was sent off a warm order in the Royal Lodge where the race wasn’t run to suit and he was a bit dissapointing to finish 3rd of 4. He can bounce back today and being out of Sea The Stars the step up in trip could eek out further improvement and he will be hard to beat in a more regularily run race.

Selection:

• Flying Honours 5/4 2PT WIN

Newmarket 15:40 - Cesarewitch Handicap

National Hunt trainers have won 7 of the last 10 renewals of this stamina test so it is no surprise to see Nicky Henderson, Charles Byrnes and Willie Mullins have the market principals for the 2022 renewal. I think that record may will improve on Saturday as my two fancies for the race are both trained by trainers who operate across both codes.

Keith Dalgleish’s horse Evaluation is the first selection, he has been a model of consistency winning 4 of out his 6 starts and finishing 4th and 2nd in the others, the 2nd being when just touched off for the £100,000 Sunday Series bonus. I think the step back up in trip will suit Evaluation’s cruising speed and hopefully he can keep some up his sleeve to display his turn of foot at the end.

The other selection is Not So Sleepy of Hughie Morrison’s who won this race in 2016 with Sweet Selection. The Fighting Fifth winner has been a great horse for connections and is useful on the flat too and he looks overpriced to run well here and hopefully improve on his previous efforts in the race when finishing 4th in both the 2019 and 2020 renewals.

Selections:

• Evaluation 12/1 1PT EW

• Not So Sleepy 40/1 0.5PT EW