Fleur De Lys Fillies’ Stakes Tips & Betting Preview

Race Time: 3.20pm Meeting: Lingfield Day: Thursday 29th October 2015
Distance: 1m 1y Full Race Name:  32Red / ebfstallions.com Fleur De Lys Fillies’ Stakes (AW Championship Fast-Track Qualifier) (Listed)

At first glance this is most certainly not the strongest Listed event we have ever seen with just the two fillies rated 100 or more which is not what we would expect to see. Richard Fahey’s Dusky Queen (15/2) is highest rated off of 105 and already has a Listed win to her credit though that was at Chester, was over a furlong less, and was on good to firm ground, so today would be very different. Five tries at a mile have yet to see a success which can’t be a good thing, but in her defence she has never tried the all-weather surfaces and if she is to get home then the polytrack gives her as good a chance as any.

Three year old filly Pack Together (11/2) is rated exactly the 100 for trainer Richard Hannon but hasn’t actually won a race since her debut at Lingfield over six furlongs in June last year – on the turf. She has placed three times in Listed class so isn’t far away from taking this weak renewal, and with Sean Levely expected to ride we are hoping they try and keep her a little nearer the pace, in which case she would come here with a very decent shout.

Ed Dunlop’s Clarentine (16/1)  fits the bill for a lot of punters having won her last two races, one of which was over course and distance, and if she can step up on those efforts she could make the frame. They were both Class Five handicaps so this is a decent leap of faith by connections on our view, but you can’t win anything if you never go in to battle, and she may well run a better race than her ratings suggest she is entitled to do today.

With Roger Varian continuing to fire in the winners we also like the look of Redkhat (6/1) even if the four year old daughter of Shamardal is yet to score this season. She has been campaigned at close to this grade and ran what looked like a good race when second to Saeed Bin Suroor’s Local Time in a Group Three at Veliefendi in Turkey last time out which makes for decent reading, though if we are right there may be one horse improving fast enough to stop her winning regardless.

Step forward Very Special (7/2), a bred in the purple daughter of Lope De Vega out of a Danehill mare who started the season with promise thanks to a comfortable win at Kempton in early April – and who hasn’t been seen since! Clearly something has been amiss as her form as a juvenile when third to Osaila would make her this class at the minimum, so we cannot believe she has been saved for a winter campaign on the polytrack, and are more inclined to believe a few niggling problems. Fitness could obviously be an issue after close to seven months off the track, but we just get a sneaking feeling that she could be way better than anything she has shown.