Hughes no Bentley!

The battle for the 2014 Flat Jockeys Championship took centre stage on the All Weather yesterday with Richard Hughes riding a double and Ryan Moore a four timer across the two cards taking their tallies to 161 and 162 respectively.

Both rode subscriber selections: Richard Hughes - Arab Dawn and Ryan Moore - Perfect Persuasion. Both contributing in adding to our tally of placed horses for the day. Most disappointing of which being Malaysian Boleh @ 16-1. 

It would be harsh to criticise Harry Bentley after providing us with Poor Duke on Tuesday, and whether this erratic ride was due to traffic problems, without the benefit of the 'head on' is hard to judge. Notoriously slow away, Malaysian Boleh seem to have a stop start trip in the final two furlongs as it closed to within ¾ length of the winner at the line while appearing to have room to come through. The saving grace being unlike Richard Hughes, during its stop start surge, Harry Bentley lost third and battled back to regain the position at the line.

Our final selection of the day Cerutty, backed down from 12-1 to 7-1 also appeared to be unfortunate in being carried across the course by winner Kalataah while delivering its challenge causing Martin Harley to stop riding when in full drive and ended up almost on the stand-side rail.

After a moderate season by normal standards for Goldophin, Kalataah marked up a four-timer for Saeed bin Suroor on the day. That is now 6 winners and 2 seconds from their last 9 runners over two days.

We head back to the wonders of Tapeta this evening where Saeed bin Suroor has no entries and Ryan Moore has no rides! Richard Hughes on the other hand has a book of 6 rides on a 7 race card. One of which is a selection, a selection in a race he is absent from, and we take him on with our third selection.