Rous Stakes Tips & Betting Preview

A flyer to finish with over the minimum trip of five furlongs and one without a single winning favourite in the last ten years and we can see why if the others have been as competitive as this renewal. The early betting for our race preview sees punters all over Roger Varian’s Double Up (9/2) who arrives here on the back of a decent enough third to Caspian Prince at Beverley in a Class Three Conditions race a little over a week ago. Yet to win outside of handicap company he will need a career best today at the age of five and with the poor record of recent favourite’s we are sorely tempted to look elsewhere for our suggestion here.

With value the name of the game we have come down on the side of Willytheconqueror (8/1 Each Way) who is trained by the amiable William Muir and will be ridden by Sam Hitchcott. Nine races this season have seen him hit a top four place in five as well as two victories at Nottingham and Sandown with his latest start a perfectly respectable second to Alpha Delphini at Beverley in the Listed Beverley Bullet Stakes. Only beaten a neck that day he has showed us all he is up to this class and if he gets the breaks they all need in these sprints he won’t be far away as they flash over the finishing line.

Looking at the younger generation next and Clive Cox will be looking for a huge run from Priceless (13/2) as the son of Exceed And Excel looks to follow up a cosy three-quarter length win at Doncaster in a similar race. That was only his second win on his ninth start but he did it well in the end and better still, he appears to stay a sixth furlong so if they head off at a suicidal pace as seems likely, Silvestre De Sousa can switch him off out the back and come with a late run as the leaders weaken. This will require a career best assuming the better horses turn up on the day, but he is improving and is not one to be easily discounted, for now at least.

To round things off, Norwegian challenger Easy Road (16/1) is an interesting option even if his form means very little and is hard to fathom. Trainer Cathrine Erichsen is pretty handy when it comes to the speedier horses and this son of Compton Place has won thirteen races now from thirty-three starts, most of them at Ovrevoll but also at Taby (in Sweden) Bro Park (also in Sweden) and even Doncaster when he took a Class Two handicap in October last year. We aren’t for a moment saying he will win, but we are saying his race record suggests he cannot be ignored, and at a big price we are willing to suggest that he will not be finishing last!

Lastly, how can we not mention Sole Power (15/2) as he looks for win number thirteen on his sixty-second start this afternoon. At his peak he would pick these up and carry them but at the age of nine he isn’t the force of old, though he hasn’t dropped to this class since May 2013 and if he does get back to winning ways the crowd will raise the roof regardless of whether they backed him or not!