Alex Hammond: Fly with Concorde

The Sky Sports News HQ racing expert looks at this week’s Festival action and can see Silver Concorde winning not once but twice.

This week my attention will be divided between two magnificent meetings. We have the Galway Festival, where stamina aplenty will be needed to stay the seven-day trip at Ballybrit. Running alongside the Irish extravaganza is Glorious Goodwood with its unique charm and laid-back glamour. I’m going to try and unearth my best bets for the week, so here goes!

At Goodwood on Wednesday it’s the St James’s Palace Stakes re-match in the Qatar Sussex Stakes, where the English, Irish and French Guineas winners take each other on once again.

I fancied The Gurkha to win at Royal Ascot after his victory in the French Guineas, but it was Newmarket winner Galileo Gold that came out best under ‘super’ Frankie Dettori, who incidentally will take the roof off the stands at Goodwood if he can ride his 3000th career winner this week.

We witnessed Dettori at his best at the Berkshire track when he rode Galileo Gold to beat The Gurkha with Irish Guineas winner Awtaad in third. In my mind the best horse didn’t win that day and under a more positive ride I think The Gurkha can prove himself the best miler of the crop on the Sussex Downs.

Unlike the other two, Aidan O’Brien’s colt has run since Royal Ascot, when runner up in the Eclipse (third-placed Time Test has won a slightly lower grade race since). The drop back to a mile won’t faze him and I hope he is effective on faster ground than he has experienced before; he’s a strong fancy for me on day two of the meeting.

Okay, he isn’t the biggest of prices though, so let’s try and find something that’ll help get the beers in!

At Galway, Dermot Weld is pretty much a shoo-in to win a clutch of races and I think his Silver Concorde could win us some cash in Thursday’s Galway Hurdle (available at 8/1 with Sky Bet). In fact, you could possibly see the 2014 Cheltenham Champion Bumper hero win twice this week as Weld is keen to run him in the maiden hurdle on Wednesday and then have him line up 24 hours later in the ferociously-competitive event that is the Galway Hurdle.

Remarkably, this eight-year-old is still a maiden over timber, albeit after just four starts; twice in maiden …

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