Good Friday Preview: All things All-Weather

They all count, and earlier this week, adding another to his total in a head-to-head with Mark Johnston for top All-Weather trainer, Mick Appleby won a seller with Viewpoint, who has his own teeny-weeny piece of racing history as the first winner on the first Finals Day, in 2014, when beating no less than Grendisar in the apprentice handicap. That race was worth £50k, then as now, but the money for the main events has since swelled, making it a £1m day, and making it a day for the diary, for racing and not just All-Weather racing.

In four years it has come far, but not necessarily wide, and widening it out, inside and out, is the only way forward, domestically by touring Finals Day around the other All-Weather tracks and internationally by plugging it in more into Ireland, for starters. The link with France is significant and strong, a definite dimension added with as many as four horses coming across, including two in the Classic, but the lack of Irish representation this year (only one, and in the apprentice handicap), and the fact the day doesn't seem to be on Aidan O'Brien's radar at all, means a trick is being missed, preventing a really valuable card becoming a really meaningful one, to turn a full stop for a season into a comma for the summer.

But all of that is the bluest of blue-sky thinking and easier said than done, and to focus on what All-Weather Finals Day doesn't do is to underestimate what is does do, and do very well, and to celebrate it here's a general Good Friday guide.

THE COURSE

For a crash course in Lingfield, here's rule number one: it's a crash course. Bumping and barging is the norm at Lingfield as the field tend to be on top of each other in the last two furlongs, to which the only antedotes are the ballsy loop-and-swoop or the Kirby fast-forward move on the downhill run to the straight. That's everyday Lingfield, though, with everyday Lingfield horses and riders, and this isn't.          

THE APPRENTICE HANDICAP

The clue's in the title, a handicap for apprentices, therefore a free for all, and moreover it's a Lingfield free for all. It's better then to be creative and hope, rather than hope the rider gets creative, and the play that way involves concentrating on the second half of the market. A rollercoster of a track, speed is at the essence, far better to have a horse going up than coming down in trip, and Dougan looks overpriced at a course where he's 2 from 2, and a trip over which he's 2 from 4 (runner-up other occasions), back to it now after spending the last year sprinting. He'll need things to drop right, but not so much as his double-figure price might suggest, and, in Callum Shepherd, he has probably the best rider in the line-up.

THE MARATHON

Several qualify on the unscientific 'better up than down' rule in the Marathon, including Pinzolo, who sets the form standard after his second in the Winter Derby, but front-running tactics have reignited his renaissance and returning to this trip calls for something different, reagrdless of whether he's taken on. The dark horse, turning into the blue horse all week on Oddschecker, after Ryan Moore was booked, is Cohesion, who glided through his first two races in France and went off 5/2 for a mile-and-a-half Group 3 at Deauville last August, won by St Leger runner-up Ventura Storm. David Bridgwater had to go to 85,000 to get him on his team for this year, but he's acclimatised quickly, and a surface-scratching success at Wolverhampton last month suggested he was more then ready for this distance, and more than ready for this company. On profile, if not yet form, Cohesion is a standout.

THE FILLIES AND MARES

On a day of some complex conundrums, this is perhaps the simplest equation: Ashadihan or Muffri'ha. To think of it as more of a home fixture for Ashadihan, because of the trip, is to misunderstand Muffri'ha, whose last ten runs have been at a mile or further, yet the feature, all along, has been her cruising speed, that rather than stamina getting her the rating which marks her out from the crowd. Stall 1 makes the equation simpler still.

THE SPRINT

The tightest race of the lot, with just 7 lb between ten of the twelve on Timeform ratings. It's the past, the present and the future for the market principals. Look in the past and Pretend is the answer, for what he did in this race in 2015; look into the future and Kimberella makes sense, for what he may do for Richard Fahey, after starting with a bang; and the present says Lancelot du Lac, who was half a length away from a hat-trick last time, in the key trial, when conceding 3 lb all round.

Of the three, Lancelot du Lac is probably the most dependable and the least dependent on how the race develops, able to race handy, with the draw to do just that, but a tactical appreciation of the race brings Mythmaker right into the mix, as a front-runner out of stall 1. He cleared the field from the widest drawn when nosed out in the last stride by Lancelot du Lac in the Cleves Stakes over this course and distance in February, 16/1 then and similarly overlooked in the betting here, but it's easy to see him being in pole position into the short straight.

THE MILE

He's got the best form. He's got the most potential. He's prepared differently to everything else after qualifying in mid-November. He's viewed differently to everything else according to his Lockinge entry. Ennaadd is one of those horses for whom it's easy to say he's 'too short for a race like this'. But he's not, for all the above reasons. Ask those who say it to lay it, and few if any would. Ennaadd is the star of the seven-race show.

THE THREE-YEAR-OLD ALL-WEATHER CHAMPIONSHIPS CONDITIONS STAKES 

Not so snappy a title as the Mile, and not so cut-and-dried as the Mile either, the short-priced favourite looking a little more shaky this time. That Second Thought is going to be the best of these isn't in doubt, but that he's got much to play with over this trip very much is, given how he appreciated seven furlongs in the Spring Cup, needing all of the trip to overwhelm Sutter County. Joe Fanning may just be able to control things from stall 1 aboard Sutter County, which will increase his chances of revenge, the six-furlong distance balancing the power between them.

THE EASTER CLASSIC

It's odd, given they've mixed in the same circles for years, and look made for each other, but Battalion and Adam Kirby have never paired up, not until now. Battalion brings the quality and the quirks, and Kirby brings a steel and an iron to flatten out those flaws. The latest blot on his copybook was in the Winter Derby, where he blew the start, but the fact he went off as short as 7/4 for that, in no better field than this, tells of his talent when in the mood, and he definitely has the tools for this job.