Nick Luck’s blog: Not a friendly looking Goodwood Cup   

Goodwood is here and our man Nick Luck will be previewing the action each day. Nick Luck has run his eye over six races from day one here.   

ETONIAN can sneer at inferiors at 12/1 in the Goodwood TV opener on Tuesday (1.50pm). A smart looking juvenile, he hasn’t really put it all together since, but he has often been faced with impossible tasks, and there is every chance he has now found his job – as a decent, pace pushing, ten-furlong handicapper – if his run at Ascot is a fair guide. He split two completely unexposed and potentially high-class rivals that day and has enough speed to get a good position from a lowish draw.

GALERON is a speculative pick at 15/2 in a muddling edition of the Vintage (2.25pm). Clearly the favourite Holloway Boy did remarkably well to win the Chesham on his debut, but the form has been holed below the waterline by several of the beaten horses, and I want to be elsewhere at the current odds. The selection ran a lovely race on his debut, before stepping up nicely here in his comprehensive defeat of a cosy subsequent winner. The plentiful stamina on the bottom of his pedigree, allied to his running style, suggest a strongly run seven will bring about loads of improvement.

LUSAIL looks a thoroughly acceptable price at 9/2 in the Lennox, and can gain a deserved victory after a string of good efforts (3.00pm). He is only a tick behind the best miler three-year-olds, and faces nothing quite as frightening as Coroebus or Tenebrism here. Seven furlongs on a decent surface is what he wants on the balance of evidence and – most crucially – he ought to get handy from his draw, but get a lovely draft into the race from Pogo.

ENEMY, at a huge 50/1 each-way, is the play in the Goodwood Cup (3.35pm). The will-he-won’t-he about Trueshan running clearly makes this very hard, but I’m reckoning on at least eight runners at the very least and I am confident that my Buick-ridden selection can beat at least four of those, and hopeful that he can do better still. I like that he remains unexposed as a stayer, goes on the ground, has a bit more tactical speed for this track than the average sluggard and is in excellent hands. What is more, he should have beaten Princess Zoe and Quickthorn in the Sagaro, and his last run saw him poorly positioned in a messy race. Freshened since then, he can massively outrun his odds.

STONE OF DESTINY is a basket case, but this might be his day at 11/1 in the five-furlong handicap (4.10pm). Another hard luck story last time means that he is now 11 pounds lower than when running right up the back of Gale Force Maya and co at Newmarket just a couple of months ago. Clearly he’s his own worst enemy, but with confirmed five furlong specialists Just Glamorous, Night on Earth and Ornate in this field, this could peel away nicely for the selection, who has perfumed respectably in more than one King George Stakes at this track.

ATOMIC IMPACT looks a likely type at 12/1 for the concluding ITV race (4.45pm). A son of Group One winner Maids Causeway, and a half-brother to the stable’s useful Illustrating, he comes from a yard full of juvenile talent, has the page to make an impact, and does not have an insurmountable standard to aim at here.