Look Here

The Pretty Polly Stakes at The Curragh on Saturday wasn’t run to suit Look Here at all. With no obvious pacemaker in the line up, Jimmy Fortune was allowed an easy time of it up front on Dar Re Mi. Seb Sanders held Look Here up in behind runners at a relatively sedate pace, not at all ideal for an Oaks winner, a St Leger third who was competing over a distance short of a mile and a half for the first time since her racecourse debut in 2007. Predictably, when the pace quickened at the two-furlong pole as Beach Bunny came to challenge Dar Re Mi, Look Here was left flat-footed, to the point where it was obvious that she couldn’t win well before they reached the furlong pole. In fairness to Ralph Beckett’s filly, she did keep on really well, and closed to within a length of the duelling leaders at the line, but she was never going to get there, she simply didn’t have the speed to quicken with them over this distance off such a slow pace.

The daughter of Hernando may go down as slightly disappointing now this season, having lost on both of her starts. That would be grossly unfair. She ran a cracker on her seasonal debut in the Coronation Cup, again held up out the back and finishing best and widest of all to go down by two short heads to Ask and Youmzain, two high class older colts, and you can easily put a line through this performance in the Pretty Polly. High class three-year-old fillies can be a little hit and miss as four-year-olds, but there is no doubt in my mind that Look Here has trained on.

Strange that she has only won two of her six lifetime starts now, but she is still a filly who is worth following. I am not sure why they have felt the need to employ such exaggerated waiting tactics in both of her starts this term to date. When she beat Doctor Fremantle on her racecourse debut, Kerrin McEvoy kicked her on at the two-furlong pole. Seb Sanders did likewise when she was so impressive in winning the Oaks. She is not a filly who needs to have her head dropped on the line, and she obviously stays a mile and a half well – they thought she was a St Leger filly – so why not ride her more aggressively? She is in the King George, and that is interesting. Fillies do not have a good recent record in the King George, but not many try. The three-year-old Eswarah and the Elie Lellouche pair Vallee Enchantee and Aquarelliste are the only three fillies who have run in the race since Shiva finished last of seven behind Montjeu in 2000. It is not looking like a really hot King George this year, with the top three-year-olds, the three Derby winners Fame And Glory, Sea The Stars and Le Havre shaping up to by-pass the race yet again, and Look Here is interesting at 10/1.

27th June 2009