Racing: Presto can do the trick for Hannon in Super Sprint

Richard Hannon and his juveniles have always been five of the most worrying words for rival trainers in the business of trying to coax victory out of the nappy end of the racing market. This year, though, they have been enough to send the toys whistling out of the pram.

By daybreak yesterday, Hannon had already sent out the winners of 36 two-year-old races with what he describes as the strongest battalion of young horses he has assembled in a career going back over 30 years. To prove the point he popped in a further two in Newbury's opening races during the afternoon.

Hannon is back at the Berkshire course today with a veritable tribe for the Weatherbys Super Sprint, a race he has not so much cultivated as farmed intensively over the years. The East Everleigh trainer has won the sales contest with Lyric Fantasy (1992), Risky (1993) and Miss Stamper (1996), while also saddling four seconds in the 11-year history of the race. In this two-year-old event, and in this two-year-old season, he's the man.

These are not titles he is willing to relinquish. Hannon sends out six runners, a quarter of the field, this afternoon, as he attempts to repel both others with a good record in the race and those with multiple entries.

Tim Easterby is no afterthought in this contest either and he goes for his third win in five runnings following the successes of Flanders in 1998 and Good Girl last season. Roman Mistress is the better drawn of his pair, that is she is drawn high.

Nevertheless, Easterby considers other northern-trained fillies in Miss Mirasol and Wunders Dream to be better qualified. The latter is trained by James Given, who has also not left himself short today with three representatives.

Wunders Dream is the best of them, but, like Hannon's winner of a similar race in Ireland last month, Hurricane Alan, she has an apparently disgusting draw. The Hurricane, however, is by no means ill-named. He will make all the pace on the far side from the No1 stall. He could make all.

"When I first found that Wunders was drawn seven I was disappointed, but then I saw that Hurricane Alan was drawn one and it wasn't quite so bad," Given said yesterday. "I think he's got the worst draw.

"It depends where the pace is. Wunders has got a reasonable enough draw and she's not far away from Hurricane Alan, who'll probably be favourite and we'll see what we can do."

Hannon himself quite likes the look of his PRESTO VENTO (nap 3.35), who has struggled in Group races recently after winning a Listed contest earlier in the season. But then her price label did not really allow her to be competing with the aristocratic fillies. That is why Presto Vento, with her near bargain-basement purchase price, gets into this race. She has most to fear from Mick Channon's Queen's Victory, who is close both in terms of their stalls position this afternoon and in the form book.

Channon sees one of his old boys go into battle today when Tobougg attempts to follow Sakhee into the record books as a winner of the Steventon Stakes for Godolphin. Tobougg was second in the Champion Stakes last year and third in the Derby, but has not actually won in six efforts for Godolphin. We shall take him on.

A current Channon inmate,, Aramram, would have a squeak but he is beginning to compile jumping form, having unseated in two of his last three runs. That leaves us with Marcus Tregoning's Highdown, who was fourth, but the moral winner at the weights in the Listed Hampton Court Stakes at Royal Ascot. Burning Sun, the first home that day, won a Listed race in France last weekend. Highdown (next best 3.00), will love the ground.

Newmarket's Listed race, the Aphrodite Stakes, looks a toss-up between Esloob (3.15) and Jalousie, with preference just for the former.

Warwick features the experiment of the day, with a card that starts at 11.30am. Nottingham, Worcester and Redcar will follow in time as betting-shop punters get a chance to start scribbling just after their elevenses and well before lunch. This betting fodder is to try to wean punters off South African racing, which forms the staple of morning betting-shop fare.