13:30 Chester

The Boodles May Festival gets underway at Chester with the Lily Agnes and it looks a decent renewal. I’m keen on Havana Grey filly STAR OF LADY M (best price 7/4) remaining unbeaten for the red-hot David O’Meara. She made a perfect start winning on debut at Redcar showing a professional attitude to get on top in the closing stages. She backed that up impressively at Ripon travelling strongly on the lead before finding more than enough. This is obviously tougher again but she has a great draw and I think she’ll go forward and prove too classy for these. Ocean Cloud is also 2-2 for Gay Kelleway and if she can transfer that form to turf she could emerge as the danger. I have slight concerns though so it wouldn’t surprise me if Absolutelyflawless was the one to chase the favourite home. This Ribchester filly won on debut and looks to have plenty of potential as well.
 

18:30 Kempton

The hat-trick surely beckons for the likeable THE MAD MONK (best price 13/8)? We’ve been with him the last twice and I’m not about to abandon him now. He won even more impressively than I had envisaged at Southwell last time and with further improvement a near certainty he can defy the penalty here. Connections have booked talented claimer Harry Davies and he takes off 7lb too which is clearly a huge positive. I can actually see this track bringing about further progress and I’m surprised he is 13/8 as I’d have him even shorter than that. Life’s A Beach has shown some promise but will need to improve to lay a glove on the selection. It’s still early days so he will step forward at some point so might still be the danger under Rossa Ryan. Tiare was disappointing at Windsor but again if she bounces back she is worth noting as well. Nemorum best of the rest.