Pipette

The Andrew Balding-trained filly Pipette did well to win a one-mile fillies’ conditions race at Kempton on Saturday given the fact that the early pace was fairly sedate. William Buick was allowed to set his own pace on Clairvoyance up front, and Pipette was fairly well back in the field in the early stages. Jimmy Fortune had to get after George Strawbridge’s filly when the pace quickened as they rounded the home turn, and the response was not immediate, but she found her stride when they straightened up, and she picked up nicely two furlongs out to take it up at the furlong pole and win well. She only got home by a length and a quarter in the end, but she probably wasn’t doing a great deal in front, and she is almost certainly value for a fair bit more than this.

This wasn’t a bad contest, it is probably the modern-day Masaka Stakes, for all that Pipette was the only filly in the race who held a Guineas entry. Runner-up Bella Swan ran well enough in a Group 3 race at Newmarket at the back-end of last season, while the third filly Clarietta finished third to the highly-regarded Timepiece at Newmarket on her last run last season. Pipette didn’t make her racecourse debut until last September, when she won her maiden, but she was even more impressive in defeat on her next run, in a seven-furlong listed race at Newbury at the end of October, when she again got outpaced in the middle section of the race, but stayed on really well to finish third, beaten just over a length by the winner Electric Feel. The step up to a mile on Saturday was sure to suit, she is by Pivotal out of a Sadler’s Wells mare, although, given her breeding, it may be that she will need cut in the ground to be seen at her best this season. She would be an interesting outsider in the Guineas if the ground did come up soft – if it doesn’t, she will probably run in the Pretty Polly, where she would also be of interest – and she would be of even more interest in the Oaks if it rained at Epsom. She has raced just three times now in her life, and she is an interesting prospect for the season ahead.

3rd April 2010