Cut A Dash does just that at York Richard Hannon kicked off the new season at York by winning the British Stallion Studs EBF Novice Stakes with Cut A Dash. From a family Hannon knows well, he is now debating whether to send the Starspangledbanner colt to Royal Ascot. Impressive Turn of Foot at York Sent off an 11-4 chance, Sean Levey made his challenge furthest away from the stands and he quickened up impressively to beat Karl Burke’s Varzi by almost three lengths. The winner was given a 14-1 quote for the Coventry Stakes by Unibet. Hannon said: “We trained his mare, Promising, and he’s very nice for Prince Faisal (owner). He has always been a nice colt, I was going to go to Newbury but this race looked like it had cut up compared to there. “He was a little bit (fractious) and he is not like this at home but he has seen an awful lot today. Hopefully he has had a nice experience and will go home and have something to eat and think that if that’s the worst thing to happen to him, then he will be alright. He was a little bit green in the paddock beforehand and he was a little bit in the race. Targeting the Norfolk or Coventry Stakes “I’d love to think we are going somewhere like Ascot, hopefully he’ll grow up a lot from this, he will need to if we are to do that. He’s passed the first test very well, all the nice races at Ascot (Norfolk and Coventry) are very possible. He won’t run before, I like to leave them in the promised land between. “It’s great for Prince Faisal, he is a homebred and the dam was a lovely filly.” Dark Thirty (11-1) went one better than last year in the Churchill Tyres Handicap. Having just his third run for John and Sean Quinn since leaving Richard Hannon for 25,000 guineas, he was 1lb lower than 12 months ago and had to be game under Jason Hart to see off Binhareer, who made late gains to be beaten just a neck. Sean Quinn said: “I said to dad when we bought him, I wouldn’t mind trying to find a few more like him at that sale, but they were hard to buy. “He’s a nice horse to pick up as over the years he had rock solid form at tracks like this and Newmarket and you can’t fluke that form, so it wasn’t a case of having to improve him, it was just a case of having to sweeten him up and hope that there was a good day in him. “We’d have taken a big pot anywhere, but I’d be lying if I said we didn’t have a good look at this race. We haven’t looked beyond today – this was the plan.”
