The poet says you are nearer God’s heart in a garden than anywhere on earth. Goodwood on a summer day with sun gleaming off chestnut flanks, Jamie Spencer and George Baker swooping sweetly and just enough breeze to ruffle the mini skirts does it even better. Admittedly, the Almighty let me down on Saturday when I had five legs of the Placepot up and the money on the favourite in the last. But his temporary blinding of the bookies over Luca Cumani’s Ialysos at Haydock made up for it.
Ialysos’s seven previous runs, in Greece, had been on sand but he had won them all and Luca is a dab hand with foreign imports, demonstrated with Falbrav and Starcraft, La Vie de Colori and Cima de Triomphe. Yet Ialysos was allowed to start at 14–1. He took time to wind up and will be better over 6f than 5f, but he did the business.
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