(Wednesday, March 09, 2022)

Darci Joy has found his niche racing 1,800 meters at Happy Valley. Will he find his initial foray into Class 3 handicap competition too challenging? And can anyone be found to challenge Savvy Kingman on the lead?  

These questions and so much more will be answered during the last of nine races at Happy Valley on Wednesday. The 1,800-meter nightcap is one of the Class 3 handicaps for horses rated 80-60 that headline the card. First post is 5:45 a.m. Eastern and you can catch all the action at DRFBets.com. 

Even after a troubled trip in the stretch, Military Mission was only 1 1/2 lengths away from a win at Royal Ascot in England last June.

Since then, Military Mission has been transferred from trainer Hugo Palmer to trainers Gai Waterhouse and Adrian Bott in Australia. The gelding will have his second start in the country in a handicap at 7 3/4 furlongs at Canterbury Park in Sydney on Thursday. The program was scheduled for Wednesday, but was postponed for a day because of excessive rain.

Draft Day overcame a tardy start to win his debut at Sandown Racecourse in Melbourne, Australia, last September in what turned out be his lone start of 2021.

The win looks even more attractive six months later as Draft Day nears his second start in a handicap at 5 1/2 furlongs at Ballarat Racecourse on Tuesday.

Prowling and Growl, who finished third and fourth behind Draft Day in September, returned to win maiden races. Growl has won twice in his brief career.

Paul Lally:

R1 1-4-6-2

R2 5-4-2-3

R3 2-8-12-5

R4 2-7-5-8

R5 3-1-2-12

R6 8-5-7-11

R7 5-13-10-4

R8 6-9-1-12

R9 3-6-2-7

R10 7-8-4-2

Best Bet R1 N1 Will Power

Longshot R3 N2 Gold Comet

Play R9 QQP 2-3-6

Tom Wood:

R1: 4-1-5-2

R2: 5-2-1-3

R3: 8-1-12-2

R4: 2-5-8-7

R5 1-8-2-6

R6: 7-8-5-9

R7: 10-4-12-5

R8: 6-9-11-12-3

R9: 3-2-7-6

R10: 7-8-4-6-1

Last July and August, the Australian gelding Kapsali could do no better than second in the first three starts of his career. This year, he can’t lose.

Kapsali was rested for five months from mid-August to mid-January and has won his first two starts this year. He will be favored to extend the winning streak to three races in a handicap at about seven furlongs at Grafton Racecourse on Monday, the site of the 3-year-old’s two recent wins.

Hypothetically, any Thoroughbred can win at any distance if the competition is slow enough.

The 5-year-old horse Hypothetical appears to be a miler at heart, but he simply was better than the 13 horses he faced Saturday at Meydan in the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 3 and won the 2,000-meter contest by one length.

More than 10 months have passed since the Kentucky-bred gelding Wren’s Day finished second by a head in the $155,060 Tamworth Cup at Tamworth Racecourse in Australia last April.

The narrow setback was the latest in a span of six consecutive top-two finishes for Wren’s Day since June 2020. The 8-year-old Wren’s Day has an excellent chance to continue the streak when he returns from the lengthy layoff for a start in the $110,500 County Championship Qualifier at Tamworth on Sunday.

They’re starting out with both a bang and a whimper Sunday at Sha Tin. 

The first two contests on a 10-race card, a Class 1 handicap over 1,650 meters on dirt and a Class 2 handicap at 1,800 meters on turf, are the highest-level races on the program. They also have the shortest fields, six horses each. Combine the two groups and you’d get a more standard Hong Kong field size. 

Hot Rod Charlie, Country Grammer, and Midnight Bourbon, Grade 1-class American dirt horses, all are currently stabled in Dubai, but none of them are running Saturday in the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 3.  

The Group 1, $450,000 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 3 is the featured race among nine on so-called Super Saturday at Meydan Racecourse. Prep races for the Dubai World Cup card on March 26 fill a program that starts at 6 a.m. Eastern with an Arabian race.