THE jury's still out on whether or not Derby trials are a help or a hindrance to punters, so instead of watching today's Chester Vase with one eye on Epsom, why not just sit back and enjoy the £65,000 contest for what it is?
As always, of course, said enjoyment will be that much greater if we can come up with the winner, and given the way he's started the season, anything Aidan O'Brien saddles in a race such as this deserves close inspection.
So just to complicate ma
tters, he saddles two of the eight-strong field.
O'Brien won the event 12 months ago with Soldier Of Fortune, who went on to capture the Irish Derby, and given the presence of new stable jockey Johnny Murtagh aboard Vivaldi, it seems fair to assume he's the yard's No 1 hope.
Purely on their juvenile form, Vivaldi's credentials don't look as strong as the other Ballydoyle challenger Wassily Kandinsky but then, we're not privy to how the pair have been working of late, are we?
Unlike the O'Brien duo, Pampas Cat didn't make it to a racecourse as a two-year-old but lack of experience didn't stop him creating a 20-1 shock when winning at the first time of asking at Newmarket's Craven meeting.
What that form amounts to is open to conjecture, but he did beat Daraahem by five lengths at Headquarters and the success of the latter on the Roodee yesterday was hardly a negative.
He has a bit further to travel today but there's stacks of stamina in his pedigree and after just one outing, there's undoubtedly much more to come.
For all that, we'll stick with Feared In Flight, who scored on his debut last term but hasn't managed to get his head in front in five subsequent outings.
Barry Hills' charge has been mixing in the best of circles, however, and given how much his handler loves to have a winner at Chester, he looks the pick of a closely-matched bunch.
Jockey Richard Hills should be able to afford himself the luxury of engaging automatic pilot in the Huxley Stakes as his mount Maraahel has won the race for the past three years.
Victory would take the seven-year-old's career earnings through the £1million barrier but there's good news and bad news on that score.
The bad is that Henry Cecil-trained Multidimensional is fancied to deny him the lion's share of the purse. The good is that even second place will still be good enough to see Maraahel hit the seven-figure mark and he should be up to collecting at least that.
As always, none of the races on the card look easy, with the Halifax Handicap looking particularly tricky, so that's where we'll go for the nap.
Selecting a horse called Royalist as the best bet doesn't sit easy on the Kean shoulders but Philip Robinson's mount looks nicely weighted so, for once, I'll swallow my principles.
The big race on the Roodee yesterday was the Totesport.com Chester Cup and it was quirky stayer Bulwark, a 33-1 shot, who captured the big prize on his first Flat start for Ian Williams.
Som Tala and Tilt were set to dominate the finish when drawing clear in the final two furlongs, only for the Williams-trained six-year-old to come from the clouds in the marathon contest and spring a shock.
Jim Crowley's mount had run some notable races in defeat for Amanda Perrett, with places in the Yorkshire Cup and Henry II Stakes to his name in addition to an unlucky sixth in the Chester Cup two years ago. But his form declined towards the end of last season, forcing Perrett to send him to the sales, where he was snapped up by Williams and sent hurdling over the winter.
Williams also had other things on his mind, though, and had been planning a raid on the £120,000 event, which came off in good style – although connections had to survive a stewards' inquiry into interference in the closing stages.
Bulwark crossed the line with half a length to spare over Som Tala, with Tilt a neck third and Double Banded eight lengths adrift in fourth.
Williams, celebrating his biggest Flat success, said: "I watched the race from the top of the hill and people were looking at me as if I was mad!"
Earlier on the card, O'Brien's Sail breezed through the Weatherbys Bank Cheshire Oaks field to stake her claim for a place in the Juddmonte Oaks at Epsom next month. Ladbrokes offer a standout 16-1 while most other firms, including Coral, Totesport, Boylesports, VC Bet and Paddy Power, go 10s for the 6 June event, with runner-up Sugar Mint a general 20-1 chance.
Having been available at 11-2 in the morning and opened up at 3-1 on course, the Michael Tabor-owned filly was sent off 9-4 favourite. The daughter of Sadler's Wells made steady headway rounding the turn and flew down the straight to peg back Sugar Mint.
MOIQEN FANCIEDKEVIN Prendergast believes that Moiqen can end the domination of Aidan O'Brien in the weekend's Derrinstown Stud Derby Trial.
O'Brien has won the race six times in the past ten years with horses such as Dylan Thomas, Yeats, High Chaparral and Galileo, but Prendergast said of Moiqen, a 40-1 shot for the Derby on 7 June: "He'll run on Sunday. The ground drying up will help him a lot."
The full article contains 931 words and appears in The Scotsman newspaper.
