JOHN Quinn’s Hawk Mountain is well up to defying a 5lb rise in the handicap in the Bond Tyres Stakes at York.
He is actually running off 1lb higher mark than he will in future as he has been reassessed but over two miles that should not make much difference.
Now six, he is well up to carrying big weights and having failed to stay in the Cesarewitch last year, this could be his optimum distance.
He was only just hitting top gear when making a winning reappearance over two furlongs shorter at Musselburgh and this should set him up for races like the Northumberland Plate and the Ebor.
Quinn can double up with Duchess Dora in the Charles Clinkard Fine Footwear Anniversary Stakes who has finally been given a chance by the handicapper.
Ed McMahon certainly knows how to handle sprinters and he could have another useful one on his hands in the shape of Verbeeck, who looks the best bet on the card in the Irish Stallion Farms EBF Maiden Stakes at Sandown.
McMahon already houses Astrophysical Jet, who will be looking to bounce back from a poor reappearance, for which she had excuses at Ascot, and Noble Storm.
And Verbeeck, who has had the double misfortune to bump into two well aboveaverage recruits on his first two starts, may be capable of holding his own in smart company later in his career.
A son of the very speedy Dutch Art, he was a green as grass on his debut at Bath when third behind John Hills’ B Fifty Two.
The winner has since go on to prove how good he is by beating Richard Hannon’s Lilbourne Lad, subsequently a six-length winner of a Listed race in Ireland.
With that under his belt McMahon could have been forgiven for thinking his next race was a formality but he came up against Brian Meehan’s St Barths, who had finished fourth in a red-hot maiden at Newbury that is working out extremely well.
Verbeeck managed to make Meehan’s colt work hard for his win, harder than his odds of 4-11 suggested he would have to, but the winner is now heading for Ascot.
So taking all his form as relative, Verbeeck is surely going to break his duck.
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