Educate in the Spring Mile at Doncaster................................................................

Educate at Doncaster

I try to be as honest as I can when I do these blogs. My opinion, therefore, about Educate in the Spring Mile is that I don’t really know what to expect.

He was progressing at a rapid rate of knots at the end of last season. He surprised everybody by winning on heavy ground at York in October, including Jamie Spencer who said he hated it, and he has had the Lincoln/Spring Mile on the agenda since then.

He has been slow to come to hand, however, and if the race was run last week he would have struggled and the race may still come too soon on ground that will be far from ideal; he will be more effective on fast. His chance has also been compromised by the fact he hasn’t been working that well.

This is where the chicken and egg saying is appropriate. Has he been working poorly because he is short of peak fitness or is it because he doesn’t like the AW. Echo of Light’s have a terrible record on all types of AW surfaces and we wouldn’t run Educate on it in a race.

Yet, because all the grass gallops are still shut, he has been doing all his prep work on the Polytrack. There is no doubt he will improve for the run and his long –term goal is the Royal Hunt Cup. He will, however, have to rise at least another 10lbs to get in at the Festival.

Primarily, he will be kept to a 1m, on a straight track and, hopefully, fast ground. He can take a tug so plenty of pace and cover are his ideal requirements. He is assured of nearly all of those at Doncaster apart from the ground.

And it’s encouraging that he goes well fresh and his improvement was so swift. He is also amazingly well handicapped with leading fancy, Nameitwhatyoulike, even allowing for the fact that rival didn’t stay the 10f in his race at York.

It would be a major boost for the yard to land this  but I’m certainly more hopeful than confident given that he hasn’t been giving that many positive signals.