Sabotage

As well as the runner-up Mystery Star, Sabotage was the other horse to take out of the mile-and-a-half heritage handicap at Ascot on Sunday for me. Settled nicely in mid-division in the early stages, Adrian Nicholls took him towards the outside in order to engineer a position in which he would be able to deliver a challenge as they approached the home turn, but he got shoved back inside, with the result that he had to thread his way through horses on the far side up the home straight. He was never checked in his run as such, but he didn’t have a clear time of it either, and once he got out a furlong from home, he finished with purpose to go down by just over a length in the end.

The only three-year-old in the race, this was just the fifth run of the Halling gelding’s life and he can progress again. He was disappointing in a heritage handicap at Goodwood on Wednesday, but that came just three days after his Ascot run, so you can forgive him that fairly easily. He is in the Great Voltigeur, and he would be an interesting outsider in that if he took his chance in it. If he doesn’t, he should be worth following in the next one of these heritage handicaps that he contests. He was just out-stayed by Akmal over a mile and six in a three-year-old handicap at York in mid-July, but he gets a mile and a half well, and he looks fairly handicapped on a mark of 95.

26th July 2009