Nap of the Day: Haggas colt a Force to be reckoned with

The Dante Festival reaches a conclusion on Friday, with its seven-race card very much the main event of the afternoon, but it's down to Newbury I go for the Nap of the Day.

I think William Haggas has found a suitable opportunity for SEA FORCE to open his account at Newbury on Friday.

The three-year-old son of Sea The Stars improved leaps and bounds between the first two runs of his career, and he looks ready to strike at the third attempt.

His debut at Newmarket back in September was, on the face of it, extremely disappointing. He finished fourth of eight, a whopping 18 lengths adrift of the winner.

However, that was a decent contest - the first, second and third are rated 105, 86 and 81 respectively - and he went about business far too keenly after a slow break.

Haggas afforded the half-sister to Group 3 winner Pretty Crystal plenty of time to mature afterwards, with the Sheikh Rashid Dalmook Al Maktoum-owned colt making his comeback from 210 days on the sidelines at Doncaster last month.

He showed significantly more at Donny, going down by just a neck to a nice type of Owen Burrows'. A length-and-a-half behind in third was Richard Hannon's River King, who was better than the official result when second having been smashed into 5/6f for a novice event at Nottingham last Friday. The fourth and fifth were both last-time-out winners, too.

I think that's a relatively strong piece of form and the selection, who was sent off 5/2f suggesting he shows plenty on the gallops at home, can continue to progress.

I expect him to have few problems putting away nine of his 10 rivals here. I view this race as a match between Sea Force and Montpellier.

The latter, trained by James Ferguson in Newmarket, is one-for-one heading to Berkshire after a ready victory on debut at Thirsk exactly 34 days ago.

There’s lots to like about the son of Wootton Bassett, out of Group 1-winning sprinter Mabs Cross, but the consequence of his previous win in a race that’s yielded mixed results – the runner-up bolted up at Lingfield recently but the third finished down the field on handicap debut and the fourth was 100/1 – is that he carries a seven-pound penalty on Friday.

I suspect he’s going to find it difficult to concede that weight to the selection, who can provide his in-form trainer (32% strike rate in the past fortnight) more joy.

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