All week the Timeform team will be providing a horse to follow. Adam Houghton is first with a relatively new recruit for Andrew Balding.
Bounce The Blues (Andrew Balding)
Bounce The Blues started last season in the care of John Feane in Ireland but made the switch to Andrew Balding after winning a 7f Listed event at Naas in August.
She had opened her account in a maiden over the same course and distance earlier that month, landing the spoils comfortably by a length and three quarters, and there was plenty to like about how she then coped with the step up in grade, still last entering the straight but staying on well from two furlongs out to win by half a length with a bit in hand.
Bounce The Blues made her first start for Balding just 17 days later in the Sceptre Stakes at Doncaster, where she very much caught the eye in being beaten a length and a half into third behind Foxtrot Lady, finishing better than anything else having begun her run from a long way back.
That Group 3 worked out very well, too, with three of the first five winning next time out, including the fifth Cloak Of Spirits, who reversed the form with Bounce The Blues when they filled the first two places in a Listed race at Newmarket later that month.
Crucially, Bounce The Blues was conceding 3lb to the winner at Newmarket and emerged as the best horse at the weights, producing a career best to be beaten just half a length.
Settled in touch on only her second try over 1m, she went prominent entering the final three furlongs and stuck to her task well despite being carried left on the uphill climb to the line, with the first two pulling three lengths clear of the rest.
That was a smart performance which suggests that Bounce The Blues will continue to be a force in listed/minor pattern company in 2021. She is still relatively unexposed at a mile and has only made two starts for the Balding yard, both reasons why she may improve again as a four-year-old. The Duke of Cambridge Stakes at Royal Ascot appeals as an obvious target during the first half of the season.
(Adam Houghton - Senior Content Editor)
