Fontwell Preview with Racetrack Wiseguy

 One can look all one likes for the touch of class on Thursday evening's card at Fontwell but one will be searching in vain. We're not going in the hope of seeing world beaters or any sort of memorable sport but because, when all available discounts are applied, for which we are most grateful, we're almost being paid to go, so keen is the industry to have customers.

There are seven races and so there will be seven winners but few of the runners advertise themselves as worthy of a 1 against their name but all they have to do is arrive at the winning line before the others that also don't. It might not be until the fifth race, at 7.05, though, that one has enough serious faith in one that might when Anthony Honeyball's Pure Theatre is one that's on the go, with recent form and the stable look like they're trying. And on a night when it's not obvious how to go about making it a pay day, we might have to wait until the last and Smallach Liath (8.15) to land the double that could pay what expenses there are. Oliver Sherwood's a proper trainer and has a respectable strike rate here and it's not obvious what he has to beat.

That's always the problem with low quality racing, the winners don't have to be any good but any sort of price about those two will multiply a sensible outlay up nicely enough, separately and together.

The market might provide the necessary clues about the other races.

In the first, I prefer to read the form of Honeyball's Somespring Special at 4.50 as more attractive than Komedy Kicks in a race where descendants of three illustrious classic winners turn up to contest a race in circumstances their ancestors would be disappointed to see them in. The bold type could be transferred to another horse, though, if it looks as if there are some people in the know at Fontwell who read the form differently to me.

I'd only be inclined to Gary Moore's Tara Iti in the 5.25 because it re-appears only four days after having had a few excuses for getting beat when favourite at Plumpton on Sunday.

There only being four runners in the 5.55 doesn't make it any easier. Gary's Jerrash was sent to Ascot last time but showed precious little. Honeyball tries to succeed where Mr. Henderson could not with Farouk de Cheneau and Neil Mulholland's Any News had also been entered in the 3 mile race but it's not easy to be tempted by any of them.

At 6.30, we could go with In the Air on the basis that it stayed on over 2 miles at Taunton last time out on these shores as it continues to channel hop between stables and flat and jumps without having ever got closer than it did there.

By 7.40 I'm so exhausted by trying to find reasons why anything might win that I'm happy to wait to take my chance in the last.

I really don't mean any disrespect to these horses or the sport on offer although you might be forgiven for thinking so. People will be gladly paying money to watch them do what they were bred to do and nobody ever had to pay to watch me perform the several sports that I was no better than mediocre at and I'd have given them their money back if they had.

It''ll be a nice evening out. We won't come to any serious financial harm and it is to be hoped that nothing worse happens to anything else. I'm not even going to try to find a picture with which to illustrate this preview, though, because I doubt if any of the runners have ever been newsworthy enough to get their picture put on the internet.