Fast Track Harry
Sometimes Racing can bring you back down to earth with a bump. Having tipped a couple of winners earlier in the week, I was feeling fairly confident about my sole selection on Newcastle’s Thursday evening card. For what it’s worth, Heavenly Heather ran a perfectly respectable race and clearly wasn’t suited by being in front from an early stage. I’ve put a line through that run as she will be much better in a bigger field with a pace to run at, which may well happen on All-Weather Finals Day. However, I don’t think she would have won the race regardless because the performance of FAST TRACK HARRY was exceptional.
He has now won 4 of his 8 starts for Clive Cox, including both starts on an artificial surface and after such a dominant display on Thursday evening, I think there is a case to be made that he could be a horse to follow when the Flat season gets underway in a couple of weeks. A winning time of 1:11.26 was over a second faster than the TPD expected time figure for the race and given that he recorded 3 consecutive sub 11s furlongs in the middle part of the race, he also showed plenty of speed to suggest that he may yet be capable of further improvement. He won this race from a mark of 95 and having won a £25,200 sprint by over a length, the handicapper is clearly going to have a say and my guess would be that his mark will be around 100 by this time next week. However, he was the fastest horse in the penultimate furlong (11.26s) and once he moved alongside the leader, he was able to pull clear under Rob Hornby. Both his top speed (42.1 mph) and late speed (37.3 mph) ranked 2nd, but the way he traveled into the contest would suggest that he had more to give had it been required. Although his average stride frequency figure did drop by 8% in the final furlong, he had the race won by that point and his run-out speed, taken 2s after the last, was a race best 32.82 mph. That would back up the visual impression that he was doing just enough once he went to the front. Although Stratusnine did run the fastest final furlong and was closing in the last 50 yards, the race was won by that point and I don’t think there is any reason to think this form would be overturned.
I was keen to oppose him because I felt that he was the beneficiary of circumstance when winning at Lingfield in February. In a slowly run race, he sat behind the leader and got the perfect run through along the inside when the leader swung wide off the turn. At no point in that Lingfield contest did he manage to run the fastest individual furlong split, but he probably didn’t need to and in hindsight, getting the better of Ferrous was a solid piece of form.
He has only made 2 starts on the All-Weather, so he isn’t qualified for All-Weather Finals Day and with only 2 weeks to go, it would be a tough turn around for Clive Cox to get him to the meeting on Good Friday. However, he ran perfectly respectable races on the turf last season and so there should be plenty of options open to him in April. If he continues to improve, then the chances are that he may only have one more run in handicap company before moving into pattern races. It is very early in the year to be getting excited about horses to follow on the Flat, but Fast Track Harry is one of the more obvious types that we have seen running on the All-Weather and it will be no surprise if he makes his mark in the early part of the turf season too.