Epsom Derby: Lacklustre build-up leaves the betting wide open

Thursday’s Dante at York looks like being something of a last-chance saloon for a horse to stamp some authority on the Epsom Derby betting which currently isn’t so much wide open as near-unfathomable.

The run-in to racing’s ‘blue-riband’ sometimes features an immediately identifiable outstanding talent, à la Shergar or Sea The Stars, but 2015 doesn’t look like being such a year after a cluster of weekend results that has somehow conspired to make the Derby picture even murkier.

After Aidan O’Brien’s latest contender Highland Reel finished out with the washing in a French 2,000 Guineas won by André Fabre’s miler, Make Believe, the current Derby favourite remains Jack Hobbs, the unbeaten winner of December’s Wolverhampton maiden who has a handicap off a mark of just 85.

It’s hardly a profile that screams elite, although maybe John Gosden’s colt will step up in a major way in a Dante for which the Ballydoyle pair, John F Kennedy and Ol Man River, are in line to try to rehabilitate their badly dented reputations.

Significant move

But the most significant move in the Derby betting on the back of Leopardstown’s traditional Derrinstown Trial on Sunday was that Dermot Weld’s Zawraq got cut to second-favourite simply for not showing up in it.

Since O’Brien’s Order Of St George got taken out of the Derrinstown due to a temperature, the Group Three got reduced to four runners and the 8/13 favourite Success Days made all to follow up his shock Ballysax win by 10 lengths.

Bookmakers would be all over an O’Brien-trained horse with a similar profile but Curragh trainer Ken Condon is moving into unknown territory with Success Days, who isn’t even entered for Epsom yet is now three wins from three this season.

In the circumstances, Condon will be watching the Dante with keen interest and admitted: “We’ll see what the Dante works out like – and he would need slow ground – but you can supplement for Epsom the week beforehand and we will have to give it serious consideration now.”

Supplementing would cost close to a six-figure sum but it has proved a route to success in the past. The 2003 Derby hero Kris Kin was a late addition to the race in a year which appeared similarly open to this.

All of it is rarefied stuff for Condon and jockey Shane Foley to consider but the partnership could hardly be in better form as Success Day was adding to a Listed victory at Nottingham on Saturday for Newsletter. If she's a buzzy sprinter, her stable companion is anything but.

“He’s an undemonstrative horse. All he does is lie down all day and when they have that sort of temperament, they can keep improving. He’s so relaxed he wouldn’t blow a feather after that and he’s still a little green,” said Condon, who added that the Curragh Derby will be the target if Success Days bypasses Epsom.

Most bookmakers weren’t moved to price Success Days up for the Derby but there were 14/1 Oaks quotes bandied about after the regally bred Kissed By Angels broke her maiden on just her second start in the Group 3 1,000 Guineas Trial.

Stable companion

“She improved a lot from her first run at Limerick. The last day she didn’t know what to do, but she travelled and quickened today,” said her jockey

Seamus Heffernan

, a former Oaks winner on Was, who later doubled up on the Ballydoyle second-string Bondi Beach, who beat his stable companion Bantry Bay by a short head in the maiden.

Onenightidreamed thrived on the heavy ground to add the Group Three Amethyst Stakes to his Lincoln success in March and trainer ‘Fozzy’ Stacks said: “There’s no two ways about it – he needs it soft.” Joseph O’Brien picked up a one-day ban for his whip use on Geoffrey Chaucer in the Amethyst.