NAP of the Day: Hardy’s Hero – and hopefully ours too

What a Saturday we have in store. Nine meetings across the afternoon and into the evening, including one at Lingfield which features a couple of key trials for the Betfred Derby and Betfred Oaks. They go racing at Ascot and Haydock too - and the rest.

My NAP of the Day comes from Lingers in the form of a William Haggas three-year-old that looks primed for a return to the winners' enclosure.

I'm finding it to be a successful strategy, backing William Haggas horses with a run under their belt, and I'm going to the well again on Saturday.

At Lingfield, in the penultimate race on the card which is a 0-80 handicap over seven furlongs, the 65-year-old runs HARDY'S HERO. He ought to be tough to beat.

The three-year-old son of New Bay is from the family of Group 1 winners Creative Force, who landed the Champion Sprint Stakes in 2021, and Persuasive, the Queen Elizabeth II Stakes heroine four years earlier, so he's already got a bit about him. That's why he sold for 82k guineas as a yearling in October 2024.

It was a modest performance on debut at Newbury almost exactly 12 months ago, for all it was a warm maiden, before a much-improved effort at Haydock in August, getting off the mark at the second time of asking.

Hardy's Hero followed up under a penalty at Carlisle, beating a 75-rated Karl Burke inmate, before a disappointing effort on handicap debut back at Newbury in September. That proved his final run of the season.

He was gelded soon after and returned as a three-year-old at Newmarket in mid-April, for a 0-80 handicap featuring a field of 13.

Just touched off by one of Richard Hughes' that as it goes was my NAP selection, I thought it was a huge run and my instant reaction was: that'll win next time. Hopefully I'm right, for I am very sweet on his chances in what is surely an easier race than his last.

Mr Writer has some smart bits of form in the book, but ultimately he's yet to win a single race. He also doesn't settle.

Similar comments, minus the settling bit, apply to French Affair. He has won a race, but just one of nine and I'm not convinced there's much wiggle room in his mark of 76.

The very lightly-raced Oracle Mission is interesting, but this is his return from a 152-day break, for which he sports a hood. He might need it.

Dagger Strike is the joint highest-rated runner in the field, but another that hardly looks ahead of the handicapper. Same goes for the rank outsider, Fresh Fade.

Assaranca has lots to find as far as I'm concerned, while Mystic Moment needs to put a seriously poor return to action a long way behind him. If managing that, he's a big price.

But I think they've all got it to do against Hardy's Hero, who's taken to defy a rise of just one pound under the Tom Marquand drive.

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