3:15 – Musselburgh – ISLE OF SKYE BLENDED SCOTCH WHISKY HANDICAP (FOR THE WILLIE PARK TROPHY) (CLASS 3) (3yo+ 0-90) Good To Soft, Soft in places 2m

In a race targeted by him Jim Goldie runs three horses in the best race on the card at Musselburgh this afternoon and while Los Nadis with the eye catching booking of Graham Lee riding is likely to go off as favourite, it is Gordonville, the outsider of his three runners which is of interest.

Gordonsville is a 9 year old bay gelding who was trained by Andrew Balding until he came to Jim Goldie in March 2008 since when his runs on the flat have been in the main over distances between 1 mile 4 furlongs and 2 miles 2 furlongs.  He has also run over hurdles five time, winning twice, both times at Musselburgh.

He has had a fairly low key season and is running for just the seventh time since January.  He is yet to win this year but he has put in a couple of decent efforts over staying trips at Haydock and Thirsk when he finished 3^rd and 2^nd respectively.  His encouraging Thirsk run was only two starts back and he runs off the same Handicap Mark today.

Gordonsville runs over 2 miles this afternoon and in seven runs over the trip on the flat turf he has won twice and been placed four times.  He has won over course and distance once and been placed twice from his three starts over the trip here.  The going, which is Good to Soft, Soft in places will also be in his favour as in six runs in Good to Soft ground he has won once and been placed twice and he has also been placed three times from five runs in Soft ground.

His overall record at Musselburgh on the flat turf is two wins and 6 placed efforts from 11 runs, which ties in very well with his jockey today.  He is ridden by Freddie Tylicki for the first time and Freddie is a bit of a course specialist himself.  Over the past 5 seasons he has ridden 21 winners from 107 rides at Musselburgh, giving him a 19.62% winning strike rate at the course.

Gordonsville is a little hard to predict these day’s as his winning efforts appear to pop up somewhat from out of the blue.  However, he certainly likes running in the Autumn as he has won twice and finished 2^nd twice from six previous runs in October and at Musselburgh his three runs in October have resulted in one win and two 2^nd places.  With this in mind and conditions in his favour it is more than possible that he could run into a place and potentially win this afternoon and at current odds of 12/1 looks a decent value bet.  He won this race three years ago and came 2^nd in it last season and his stable mate Los Nadis won it last year which gives Jim Goldie two wins from the three renewals of the race.  He has had a total of 8 runners in the three renewals to date and has had two placed runs to go with his two winners.