Hugo Palmer believes there's more to come from Aktabantay and Short Squeeze

Newmarket trainer Hugo Palmer believes that there's more to come from his exciting juvenile Aktabantay this season.

The Oasis Dream colt only missed out narrowly at Newmarket on debut before suffering a surprise reverse when long odds-on at Nottingham.

There was no mistake on his third start at Newcastle, however, and Palmer was delighted with the performance of his youngster.

"Aktabantay confirmed the promise of his previous runs and he won very nicely at Newcastle last Thursday," he told his exclusive blog on stanjames.com.

"From the looks that the other trainers gave me as he returned, I think it was probably quite a good race. I think John Quinn fancied his and Michael Dods fancied his and we won it very well.

"He's now run three times without the jockey ever having to pick the stick up on him which is nice and we're very excited about him.

"The winner of that race last year, Good Old Boy Lukey, went on to win the Superlative Stakes on its next start. That just disproves what some people say about giving a horse a bad name and expecting it to be any good because I can't think of a worse name than Good Old Boy Lukey.

"We'll enter him in the Superlative on Monday morning and he'll work on Tuesday and we'll have a think about it. He's not certain to go there but there's quite a chance he will. But I'm delighted he won and that he won well."

Short Squeeze flew the flag for the stable last year, winning three on the bounce and rising from a mark of 75 to a high of 106. 

Things haven't fallen right for him in two starts this season but Palmer hasn't lost faith in his four-year-old despite his midfield finish at Windsor.

"If he had run in the first race of the day on the good ground that Home Of The Brave ran on, he would have been absolutely fine and I'm certain he'd have won because he travelled like the best horse in the race and when Jimmy (Fortune) let him go to go and win his race he couldn't pick up on the ground which had become very loose.

"Loose ground is horrible ground, it's not necessarily soft ground, it's just loose and uncomfortable as you can imagine. A lot of horses don't like it and Jimmy said afterwards that there were a lot of soft ground horses that won't like the ground today.

"Short Squeeze will have a little break and we'll look at a race for him at Goodwood.

"I think Goodwood will suit him and I've been debating with the owners over whether we run him over seven furlongs or a mile. I'd like to try him over seven as he's got bags of speed. He can be a little bit free in the early part of his races and they'll go faster over seven. And Jimmy did comment after Windsor saying, "I'm just not certain the horse stays a mile."

"Someone reading that might think that silly as he's won three races over a mile but that was winning off 75, 82 and 94. It's one thing winning handicaps when you're handicapped to win but when you get up to weight-for-age, level weights racing and taking on stakes horses, that's where you find out whether horses genuinely stay and perhaps at that level maybe he is more of a seven-furlong horse so we'll certainly think about trying that," he added.