Haydock Sprint Cup betting: Make three-year-olds your friends

The addition of the Group 1 Commonwealth Cup to the Royal Ascot agenda in 2015 has served to heighten the profile of three-year-old sprinters at the highest level in recent years.

However, Classic generation representatives have been scoring periodically in the highest company in the United Kingdom throughout the last decade, with the Haydock Sprint Cup a particularly happy hunting ground for those of their vintage.

Three-year-olds have gunned down the past two renewals and three of the last five, courtesy of Dream Ahead (2012), G Force (2014) and Twilight Son last year, and eight of them are standing their ground for the 2016 edition at the time of writing.

The octet include 5/1 favourite Quiet Reflection, Donjuan Triumphant (14/1), Washington DC (14/1), Kachy (16/1), Mr Lupton (25/1), Ajaya (33/1), Only Mine (33/1) and Steady Pace (33/1).

Each is entitled to 2lbs in return for their youthfulness and Classic-generation types also of the female persuasion (such as the first and penultimate runners mentioned above) receive as much as 5lbs from older males.

Quiet Reflection finished third in her first run in all-age Group 1 company in the July Cup last month, after which her delighted trainer earmarked this race for his charge.

Already the joint-highest-rated horse in the field by the handicapper after the defection of original ante-post jolly Limato, she will have every chance of improving on that placing granted good, rather than good-to-firm, ground.

Among those three-year-olds available at a working-man’s price, Tom Dascombe’s Kachy makes some appeal returned to 6f.

Last seen over that trip when a length behind Quiet Reflection and half that distance ahead of Washington DC in the Commonwealth Cup, he already has a three-and-a-quarter length sixth to Profitable in all-age-Group-1 company at Haydock on his CV.

But for hanging dramatically left, he may even have beaten the former at the Royal Meeting. While he has to be forgiven his last two runs, the shorter trip tackled in each of those encounters offers a reason to do so.

All Odds and Markets are correct as of the date of publishing.