Section:OBS 2S PaGe:16 Edition Date:190804 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 3/8/2019 18:42 cYanmaGentaYellowbla
- The Observer
16 04.08.19 Racing
Glorious Goodwood
Elliot Daly is expecting full-blown
Test match intensity during
England’s back-to-back World Cup
warm-up matches against Wales,
with Eddie Jones naming his World
Cup squad after the fi rst game.
England host Wales a week today
before mak ing the trip to Cardiff
on Saturday 17 August. England’s
31-man squad for Japan will be
announced a day after the opening
match at Twickenham.
“Every time we play Wales it is
a brilliant atmosphere. Especially
playing them home and away,
you are always going to get good
support and always a great game,”
says the 26-year-old.
“It’s a Test match , so [Test match]
intensity will be brought. Defi nitely- it will be similar to a Six Nations
game. You can’t be talking about not
going for those games, especially as
there are only four games before the
World Cup starts .”
Daly and the rest of the England
squad have spent the past week
at a training camp near the Italian
city of Treviso where they have
experienced sweltering heat and
humidity levels of up to 90% , a taste
of what lies ahead at the World
Cup in Japan, which starts on 20
September. While dealing with the
heat has posed problems, Daly has
been impressed by the attitude of
the squad. “Training has been really
competitive. It has just been about
going out and playing,” he says.
“Everyone is really looking
forward to these [warm-up] games ,
to try and get that team cohesion
we have been looking at in the last
three, four weeks of training .”
England will line up in Pool C
against France, Argentina, USA
and Tonga, and Daly said in-depth
analysis of them will begin soon.
“I will look at them over the next
couple of weeks,” says Daly. “While
we’ve been out [in Treviso] we’ve
just been trying to focus on what
we’re doing. Once we get back to
Pennyhill Park [the team’s base in
England], that’s when we will be
looking at more games involving
our World Cup opposition .”
Rugby union
Wales won’t
hold back in
warm-ups,
says Daly
Elliot Daly is expecting England
to play at full strength against Wales
as World Cup preparations gather paceCharles RichardsonKhaadem lands big
gamble in sprint to
leave bookies in red
Khaadem landed a major gamble in
the Stewards’ Cup here, beating a huge
fi eld by daylight in what is supposed
to be one of the most competitive
races of the year. In doing so, he con-
firmed Charlie Hills’s burgeoning
reputation as an excellent trainer of
sprinters, but the outcome was not
without controversy, as offi cials were
criticised for the overnight watering
that slowed down the racing surface.
“I so enjoyed that,” said Hills, who
had a big week, thanks to the record-
breaking third victory in the King
George enjoyed by Battaash on Friday.
Half an hour after the Stewards’ Cup,
he was back in the winners’ enclosure
after the two-year-old Persuasion
made a very classy racecourse debut.
Battaash remains the headline
act at Hills’s Faringdon Place stable
in Lambourn but Khaadem could
threaten that position and it willsurely not be long before he gets his
chance in a top-class contest. He ran
here off a stiff-looking rating of 107
and the fact that he was able to defy
the weight and win handsomely sug-
gests big things to come.
“This fellow is a very good horse
who is only going to get better and
better,” his 40-year-old trainer said. “I
was really impressed with the way he
behaved. He was mentally not quite
on his A game earlier in the year, he
had to have a hood on in the prelimi-
naries. But now he’s growing up and
starting to become a man.” The only
blip on Khaadem’s record was when
he was seventh of nine at Royal Ascot
but Hills said the colt scoped poorly.
“He was just so lethargic that day, and
I had really fancied him.”
Khaadem is entered in Newbury’s
Hungerford Stakes in a fortnight’s
time but it is hard to imagine him
being stepped up in distance after
this performance, when he showed
his pace by cruising into contention
along the far rail. Haydock’s Sprint
Cup next month seems a more likely
target, bearing in mind Hills went
there with Magical Memory after
winning the 2015 Stewards’ Cup,
and the grey failed by just three parts
of a length.
While Hills celebrated, bookmakers
were considerably less delighted
by the outcome. Brett Williams ofUnibet, the Stewards’ Cup spon-
sors, said Khaadem was “a massive
loser” for the fi rm after being backed
from 10-1 in the week to his starting
price of 4-1. Glorious week here can
throw up some puzzling results but
Williams said Unibet had lost over
the fi ve days, thanks to the likes of
Stradivarius and Too Darn Hot.
It was also a tough day for the local
trainer Amanda Perrett, for all that
she was pleased with Open Wide,
the strong-finishing runner-up in
the Stewards’ Cup. She was much
less happy about the 4mm of irriga-
tion applied to the track the previousevening and said: “I’ve got a real gripe
with Goodwood about this.
“It’s not fair on these fast-ground
horses. They’ve got to make the
ground safe but they shouldn’t make
it loose on top. These horses have
been waiting for fast ground all year.”
Some watering seemed inevitable
after three course records were low-
ered during racing on Friday but the
effect was perhaps slightly more than
intended. At any rate, Pat Dobbs, rider
of Open Wide, got his excuses in early
by saying of the ground after the fi rst
race: “A bit loose, too much water”.
But the clerk of the course, Ed
Arkell, said he had put less water
on the course than it had lost in the
previous 48 hours. “The track held
moisture very well up until Thursday
and then dried very quickly,” he
explained.
“The forecast for today was the
same as it was yesterday and if that
had been the case we’d have been on
absolute rattling ground. That’s not
an ideal situation. All we were trying
to do was just maintain the moisture
level and keep the ground where it
was on Friday.”
Lord Grimthorpe did not make it
to the winner’s enclosure on this card
but was still the centre of much media
attention when he confirmed that
Enable , the superstar of this sum-
mer’s action, will race next month
in the Yorkshire Oaks. It was a very
popular announcement, as there had
been fears the mare may already have
run her last race in Britain.
The Arc in October remains her
main target but connections evidently
feel the York race will be a useful prep
which she should be able to win with-
out ruining her chance in Paris.
Grimthorpe added that no deci-
sion has been taken about Enable’s
campaign after the Arc, so there is
at least a chance that she could turn
up on Champions’ Day or at the
Breeders’ Cup.Chris Cook’s tips
MARKET RASEN
1.20 Lucou 1.50 Cotswold Prince
2.25 Prancing Oscar 3.00 Court Duty
3.30 Fr Humphrey (nb) 4.05 Hattaab
4.40 Ulysses 5.10 Elena Sue
CHESTER
2.00 Sermon 2.35 Cognac 3.10 Vintage
Brut 3.40 Hereby 4.15 Oh Purple Reign
(nap) 4.50 Dragons Tail 5.20 Bold
StatementBig-race sponsors
blame a losing week
on run of success for
Festival favourites
Chris Cook
GoodwoodSTEVE CARGILL/RACINGFOTOS.COM/REX/SHUTTERSTOCKJim Crowley and Khaadem, the
4-1 favourite, surge clear to win
the Stewards’ Cup at GoodwoodON OTHER PAGESNo dotage for Dettori, racing’s
ageless household favourite
Grandstand, page 20РЕЛИЗ
ПОДГОТОВИЛАГРУППА"What's News"VK.COM/WSNWSРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS