Race In Focus: Tom Collins previews the Super Sprint and provides Saturday's best bet

Scorching weather will grace the British Isles on Saturday, so why not visit your local racecourse? There are much worse places to be on a warm summer’s day, that’s for sure! 

The best action is at Newbury, where the Listed Steventon Stakes and Group 3 Hackwood Stakes pose as high-quality support acts on a card that revolves around the 31st running of the Weatherbys Super Sprint. With weights decided by sales prices rather than official ratings, this two-year-old contest is a bloodstock agent’s dream as bargain buys generally appear well-treated against comparatively limited rivals.

Trainers Richard Hannon and Richard Fahey tend to purchase cheap yearlings with sales races in mind and their recent success in this race has to be recognised. The best strike-rate goes to the Hannons, who have won an impressive 11 renewals of the Super Sprint since the inaugural running back in 1991.

A five-strong team - Miami Girl, Swift Asset, Galore, Land Of Summer and Armour Propre - will represent Hannon this time around, though all need to improve a great chunk on what they’ve shown to date. Miami Girl has the most realistic form chance based on her Queen Mary fifth and recent Windsor victory, but a repeat of either performance wouldn’t be good enough to win here.

Meanwhile, Fahey, who won this in 2013, 2015 and 2017, runs just two this year in the form of Dare To Hope and Claretina. The former, who is one of two selections in this race, is an extremely interesting runner given he beat subsequent Windsor Castle runner-up and Listed Dragon Stakes winner Rocket Rodney on his first start at Nottingham back in April.

Obviously that juvenile has sharpened up plenty since, but he’s now rated 104 and Dare To Hope barged him aside with relative ease. Fahey’s runner was given two months off the track after that spin, which allowed him to develop and mature ahead of bigger targets in the second half of the season. 

I don’t believe that his reappearance effort 30 days ago saw him in best light as he raced furthest away from the favoured stands’ side rail at Ripon, while seemingly failing to handle the undulations. He was beaten by a rival who has recently let the form down, but I’m happy to put a line through that effort and I’m expecting much better things on this more orthodox track.

As much as I think he’s a player and therefore won’t let him go unbacked at a double-figure price, he might struggle to beat the David O’Meara-trained Maria Branwell, who should be shorter in the market given the strength of her form.

This daughter of precocious sprinter James Garfield, who won the Group 2 Mill Reef at this venue during his juvenile campaign, won her first two starts, including the Listed National Stakes at Sandown. She drew clear with Irish challenger Crispy Cat that day, and he supplemented the form with a luckless third in the Norfolk at Royal Ascot.

Maria Branwell filled the same berth in the Queen Mary, but she ran extremely well in defeat behind the highly talented Dramatised and was consequently awarded an official rating of 100, which is 4lb higher than her nearest competitor in this field.

As she cost just €22,000 at the 2021 Goffs Yearling Sale, Maria Branwell will carry just 8st 11lb in the Super Sprint and gets valuable weight from the majority of her rivals. Providing she continues her upward trajectory, she looks extremely hard to beat. 

Saturday’s Best Value Bet

Jumps fans will rejoice as quality action returns after a three-month hiatus this Saturday. Market Rasen hosts a seven-race card that features the Grade 3 Summer Plate, a 2m5½f handicap chase that offers £55,000 in prize-money and always attracts a competitive and punter-friendly field.

Mortlach, a former point-to-pointer who is seeking a fifth straight success under rules, and last year’s seven-and-a-half-length Summer Plate winner Francky Du Berlais will probably head the market. But it’s a stablemate of the latter-named runner that catches my eye in Statuario.

This flat-bred gelding was thought good enough to run in the Group 3 Somerville Stakes as a two-year-old when he was trained by Eve Johnson Houghton, and also contested the Grade 1 4-Y-O Juvenile Hurdle at Aintree’s Grand National festival in his first season with trainer Peter Bowen. Those entries give me hope that he must show plenty at home.

The formbook tells you that he’s been pretty disappointing on the track throughout his career - just three wins from 37 starts - but I have a strong suspicion that this race has been the plan for a fairly long time and it’s crucial to his chance that he had a look around this track when second behind the reopposing Mahler’s Promise, who now has to give Statuario an extra 2lb, just 29 days ago.

Prior to that effort, he ran on left-handed tracks on all ten starts between October 2020 and June this year. It was evident from the first of those races that he can’t perform at his best going that way around (he jumps markedly to the right) and there is a very good chance that he will improve a great deal now that he can jump in a straight line. A mark of 121 appears pretty fair on that evidence and he might finally break through over fences here.

Bowen doesn’t send his horses on the 644-mile round trip to Market Rasen from his Pembrokeshire base for no reason, and Statuario is almost certainly not journeying north to keep his more fancied stablemate company. 

Recommended bets

Maria Branwell (3.30 Newbury) @ 3.35
Dare To Hope (3.30 Newbury) @ 21.5
Statuario (3.14 Market Rasen) @ 14.5