As usual with these bumpers it should pay to concentrate on those with proven experience or from yards that do well in this sort of contest, and therefore our short list is Word Gets Around, Maybe She Will and Talama Lady, with preference going to the latter. The mare came back after two years off the track with a decent effort at Wetherby last time, when being heavily eased when clearly having no chance up the home straight. That outing should have helped to blow off any cobwebs and we can concentrate on her previous form, when a winner at both Huntingdon and Market Rasen in the spring of 2001. Either of those performances would probably be good enough to land this, which will be her final outing before she has to move to hurdling, and with improvement expected from her recent run, she can defy top weight to score. Maybe She Will must merit respect after running on strongly to land a course and distance bumper last time, but she will definitely need to improve to trouble a back-to-form selection, while Word Gets Around comes under the category of yards that do well in this type of race. His form and the receipt of weight from Talama Lady give him some appeal, though he is unproven on fastish ground and this will tell us plenty here. Nevertheless, from the formidable Lungo-Dobbin combination, he will surely improve again and should so close, but for today we will nail the colours of Talama Lady to the mast.
