Saturday’s Horse Racing Tips: Newmarket NAPs follow Stewards’ Cup longshot

Goodwood has been glorious for Ryan Moore, who once again proved his dominance over his counterparts with excellent victories aboard Kyprios, Jan Brueghal and Opera Singer earlier this week.

Whether he has done you a punting solid or not, it’s impossible not to love his proactiveness in the saddle. He can win on all types of horses - front-runners, stalkers and closers - and nine times out of ten he will get his tactics spot on. Simply sublime.

Fortunately for his weighing room colleagues, Moore is jetting off to New York to ride Diego Velazquez in the Saratoga Derby on Saturday so the big domestic prizes will be up for grabs! They include the Lillie Langtry, which doesn’t interest me this year, and Stewards’ Cup, which is one of the best and toughest betting races of the season.

Bookmakers go 11/2 the field in the Stewards’ Cup with Wokingham runner-up Dark Trooper topping the bill. I don’t have much against this horse, to be honest. He seems to be improving despite consistently rising up in the handicap and he loves fast ground. Considering he has a good draw and this is just his second start of the season on these shores, it’s tough to see him finishing far away.

However, there’s little value in that price in what is likely to be a 28-runner field. Anything can go wrong when there are horses spread across the track at Goodwood and I want a little more potential reward if I’m happy to risk my money on one of these.

I ended up coming down on Apollo One, who finished second in this race last year off 2lb lower. The heavens opened 12 months ago and we had heavy ground for Glorious Goodwood, so he will be competing on completely different ground conditions this time around, but he seems extremely versatile in that regard as proven by his Royal Ascot second on good to firm last June.

Apollo One has failed to notch a victory since November 2022, which certainly isn’t a positive, but I thought he shaped well on both of his first two starts this season and I’m more than happy that connections bypassed Royal Ascot this time around in a bid to keep him fresh for some handicap targets.

Now that he steps back up to six furlongs, gets the assistance of Richard Kingscote, and bounces from a good draw in stall 27, I will be disappointed if he didn’t hit the frame at a pretty tasty price.

I will head over to Newmarket for my remaining two selections, starting with Fighter Command in the 1m4f handicap (4.25) for trainers John and Thady Gosden. I don’t expect this horse to be much of a price come post time, but he appears to have an obvious winning chance now that he faces his elders.

Fighter Command is a big and raw unit who has taken time to come to hand. He shaped nicely on his reappearance this year when third at Yarmouth and he built on that run with a decisive strike at Windsor, where he battled well to hold off an 82-rated rival with a subsequent winner back in third. 

The Gosdens pitched him into the London Gold Cup last time, which shows you how highly they regard him, and I’m more than happy to overlook the performance given he suffered traffic issues and faced superior opposition. He now drops down to a realistic level and should have excellent claims off the layoff.

I’m equally interested in the closing 5f handicap (5.00 Newmarket), despite it featuring pretty low-grade horses rated between 57 and 70. The majority of the competitors are out of form, so Marching Mac and Captain Dandy stand out at the foot of the weights after creditable placed efforts.

I much prefer Captain Dandy out of that pair given his upside for new trainer Stuart Williams, who picked him up for 12,000gns at the horses-in-training sales. This four-year-old ran nicely at Hamilton for former trainer Richard Fahey just 37 days ago, where he finished a clearcut second and had five lengths further back to the third. 

Williams goes back to the well pretty quickly, which shows how fit this horse must be, and applies a first-time tongue-tie, which could be the catalyst for further improvement. I like the drop to five furlongs (he has only run over this distance once) and Silvestre de Sousa takes over.

Saturday’s Horse Racing Tips

Apollo One (3.35 Goodwood) @ 16/1
Fighter Command (4.25 Newmarket) @ 3/1
Captain Dandy (5.00 Newmarket) @ 9/4