Marco Botti feels his stable star Giavellotto heads to Epsom with a realistic chance of causing a stir in Friday’s Betfred Coronation Cup but does have a few weather concerns.<\/p>\n
The six-year-old entire faces six rivals including French ace Calandagan in the 12-furlong Group 1 and was only fifth in the Longines Dubai Sheema Classic when finishing three places behind Francis-Henri Graffard’s charge at Meydan on April 5.<\/p>\n
However, Botti was pleased enough with that staying-on effort which came 118 days after Giavellotto’s breakthrough Group 1 win in the Hong Kong Vase at Sha Tin in early-December.<\/p>\n
Speaking on Wednesday’s Nick Luck Daily Podcast<\/a>, Botti, who won the Italian Derby with Molveno in Rome on Monday, said: “He’s in good form and we’ve been happy with his preparation.<\/p>\n “He’s versatile, he doesn’t get keen and he settles well. He doesn’t lead but Oisin (Murphy, jockey) will decide where he’s happy in the race.<\/p>\n “That day in Hong Kong he showed a good turn of foot, between the three and the two-furlong marker he got a little bit checked, had to take a pull, then he went through the gap and picked up really well. He showed us something he hadn’t shown before in his previous wins. It was a good performance.<\/p>\n “Things didn’t go his way in Dubai, he was drawn nine and we dropped out at the back of the field and there wasn’t much pace. It didn’t pan out for him but he stayed on in the final furlong. Hopefully they go a nice even pace (at Epsom) and that will be fair for everyone.”<\/p>\n “We’d just be a little bit concerned with the weather and the ground,” the trainer added. “There’s a bit of rain forecast tomorrow (Thursday) and that wouldn’t be in our favour. He wants top of the ground, so that’s a little bit of a worry in terms of what’s going to happen.<\/p>\n “In terms of the track, obviously he’s never run at Epsom but he’s run at other tracks like Newmarket with undulations and we’ve always felt he’s a quite balanced horse so hopefully the track shouldn’t really be an issue.<\/p>\n “The opposition looks a strong field, of course, but this race has been the plan since Dubai and he’s training really well. We just have to hope the ground won’t go soft as that would be a concern.”<\/p>\n More from Sporting LifeSafer gambling<\/p>\n We are committed in our support of safer gambling. Recommended bets are advised to over-18s and we strongly encourage readers to wager only what they can afford to lose.<\/p>\n If you are concerned about your gambling, please call the National Gambling Helpline \/ GamCare<\/a><\/strong> on 0808 8020 133.<\/p>\n Further support and information can be found at begambleaware.org<\/a><\/strong> and gamblingtherapy.org<\/a><\/strong>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Marco Botti feels his stable star Giavellotto heads to Epsom with a realistic chance of causing a stir…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":157448,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4107],"tags":[1071,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-157447","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-racing","8":"tag-racing","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114625047695586457","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157447","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=157447"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/157447\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/157448"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=157447"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=157447"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=157447"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}