Eileendover set for Flat debut at Haydock

Pam Sly picks out starting point for Listed bumper winner.

Pam Sly has a Flat debut pencilled in at Haydock this month for her classy bumper filly Eileendover.

The four-year-old, whose grand-dam is Sly’s 1000 Guineas winner Speciosa, began her career under the National Hunt code last November.

Campaigned in a bumpers through the winter, Eileendover was a runaway winner of her first two starts before going on to claim a Listed success in the Alan Swinbank Mares’ race at Market Rasen.

A run in Cheltenham’s Champion Bumper was vetoed in favour of a Grade Two mares’ event, in which she could finish only fourth after struggling to stay the two-mile one-furlong trip.

Sly was already settled on a switch to the Flat, but an engagement in Goodwood’s Listed Daisy Warwick Fillies’ Stakes on April 30 was skipped because Eileendover was briefly out of sorts on the gallops.

“She didn’t go when we were thinking of a Listed race at Goodwood,” said the Cambridgeshire trainer.

“Unfortunately she didn’t work very well on the Monday – she couldn’t even get past a hurdler.

“We thought ‘oh my God, we can’t go like this’, and ever since then she’s been flying!”

Eileendover remains in good form, and Sly is eyeing the Watch Racing TV Fillies’ Novice Stakes at Haydock on May 28.

“She seems fine – they have these off days now and again, I suppose,” she said.

“I’m looking to the 28th – there’s a novice fillies’ race at Haydock. I can’t find anything else to run her in.”

That race is over a mile and three-and-a-half furlongs, which Sly hopes will be an ideal starting point.

“I’m going to go a mile and half,” she added.

“The first time she won a bumper that was a mile and five (furlongs), then a mile and a half at Wetherby.

“When she ran at Aintree it was two mile one, and I don’t think she got that trip.

“We’ll see how we get on at Haydock and we’ll just go from there really.”

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