HIGH STANDING SO HOT

HIGH STANDING hails from a hot yard and can blaze home in the big John Guest Diadem sprint at Ascot this afternoon.

He has been improving all season and won the massive Wokingham Handicap at the Royal Meeting - landing a right old 6-1 touch into the bargain.

And in typical William Haggas fashion he has stepped up in class successfully since.

The bay gelding won a Group Three race in July at Newbury and put up his best performance yet when third in the Group One Betfred sprint at Haydock last month.

Today's Diadem is not as high quality as that and Haggas won this last year with King's Apostle.

He was another improver who was graduating from races such as the Wokingham and the Stewards'.

High Standing has one major quirk in that he can be a bit mulish before the start.

But Ryan Moore has won twice on him this season and will more than have his measure. It is not often you get overexcited about a horse who has been beaten eight times so far this season.

Yet I genuinely fancy NIGHT CRESCENDO in the opening mile and a half handicap.

The key to Night Crescendo is that he loves Ascot and won here last September before coming back 14 days later to take this very event.

So not surprisingly, the handicapper upped him for landing two Ascot handicaps.

Today though he races off exactly the same mark as he did 12 months ago. Last time out at Doncaster on Leger day, he ran a very decent third and is back at a course which brings out the best in him.

And with Jim Crowley returning in the saddle he can do the business.

Next Saturday's Cambridgeshire is the usual jungle of plots and schemes but whatever you back you have to include SIRVINO who is one of the market leaders at 12-1. He has won five out of five this season and his last victory was the massively competitive John Smith's Cup at York in July.

When he won back at Beverley in April, he ran off a mark of 65.

He goes into the Cambridgeshire off 101, which represents a staggering improvement. The last thing to go into orbit like that was trained by NASA.

The John Smith's Cup- Cambridgeshire double was last pulled off by Pasternak back in the 90s. But Sirvino has a handicap master as his trainer in the shape of David Barron. And after a three-month break he will be freshened up.

While he has not yet been a mover in the market, I hear the first significant support came in for him in recent days.

Among the 20-1 shots, a little each-way on Andrew Balding's BRIEF ENCOUNTER is worth a punt. I had thought he was a miler but he may need further - and this nine-furlong sprint could fit him like a glove.

Read Alastair Down every week in the Racing Post

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