French racing tips: Scott Burton has two selections to follow at Bordeaux

Sky Power
4.35 Bordeaux Le Bouscat
1pt win

Torancia
5.45 Bordeaux Le Bouscat
1pt each-way

Jean-Claude Rouget is not always the first in the queue to be ringing up journalists with news of his horses unbidden but, when he does speak to the media, he is a very straight talker.

He identified within days of the restart in France that his horses were short of work but made it very clear the fillies had been easier to get fit than their male stablemates.

The colts that did hit the board in the first week for the yard tended to be those that had run at Cagnes during the winter and thus were not coming off the back of a four or five month-break.

Viewed through that prism, what looked like slightly up-and-down form for the trainer was in fact a lot easier to decipher.

On that basis Lauenen – the joint top-rated horse in the Prix La Lagune (4.35) – can probably be trusted to run well.

The question is therefore not whether Lauenen can be expected to run to form, so much as whether he has done enough to justify what might be quite a skinny price in a very tight-looking race.

The France Galop handicapper has not much more than his pocket handkerchief to throw over all ten runners and while Lauenen might progress again, the same can be said of most of his nine rivals.

Two that have already had the benefit of a run since the resumption can be marked as having the potential to make life tricky for Lauenen.

Warzuzu is obviously well thought of by connections, judged both on the tasks she has been set so far and the entries she holds down the line.

Her run at Longchamp in what was probably a well-above-average Class 2 – the winner and the third will both take their chance in the Poule d'Essai des Poulains on Monday – needs a thick black line drawing through it, and she would be impossible to fancy on the basis of what was a fairly tame effort.

Like Lauenen she might be ready to break through, though the fact that his employers have not required Maxime Guyon to make the trip would temper expectations.

More solid than both of these would appear to be Sky Power, who finished some way behind Lauenen in a Chantilly maiden last September but who has progressed well since.

Trainer Gael Barbedette felt emboldened to pitch him into the Listed Prix du Pont-Neuf on his seasonal reappearance a fortnight ago, a race in which he seemed to be travelling well but – as can often happen on the Longchamp seven-furlong 'toboggan' – his rail sit turned into a prison from which there was no escape.

It would be fanciful to claim Sky Power might have troubled the easy winner Arapaho – another who is Deauville bound for the Poulains – but in the context of this line-up it marks him down as being perhaps ahead of where the official form book places him, while anybody who worries that Olivier Peslier might be on the decline should have a look at the ride he gave Call The Wind last Sunday.

The Prix de l'Association des Proprietaires au Galop du Sud Ouest (5.45) is a mile handicap where the top five or six might be in a different class to the rest.

Torancia has fewer kilometres on the clock than many of these and is bounced out again by trainer Bruno de Monyzey just nine days after finishing down the field at La Teste over an inadequate six furlongs.

The four-year-old daughter of Kheylef didn't give much assistance when refusing to settle for her apprentice rider, Aude Deporte, who has been impressive in picking up five wins from her last ten rides.

If the run has taken the fizz out of Torancia then this trip looks more within her compass, while she will be Duporte's only ride at the meeting.

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