Betfred’s Owen McMahon picks out his best bet from all seven meetings across the UK & Ireland on Friday 18 August 2023.

Aidan O’Brien has won the Give Thanks Stakes – a Group 3 contest over 1m4f for fillies and mares – four times, and I’m hopeful he can extend that to five at Cork on Friday afternoon courtesy of three-year-old BOOGIE WOOGIE.

The daughter of Dubawi has shown a high level of form this season, leaving her juvenile exploits well behind.

She started the campaign as she meant to go on with a brilliant second to Betfred Oaks runner-up Savethelastdance in a red-hot maiden at Leopardstown, before a facile success at Naas, beating Scarlett O’Hara, who went close in a G3 contest at Deauville the other day, by over 5L.

Aidan then sent her across The Channel to Longchamp for a Group 1 assignment. She was comfortably beaten there, but not disgraced. It’s her latest effort at Chantilly that I want to hone in on, however.

The selection was second that day to a promising Andre Fabre-trained, Juddmonte-owned horse called Ottery and over 5L clear of the rest of the field, who were certainly no mugs.

That’s without a doubt a career-best performance suggests, despite her having mainly raced on soft or worse, that she could actually be at her best on good ground and over this trip – something which can’t be said about her main market rivals.

Speaking of, Shamida is probably the biggest danger when it comes to her seven rivals. However, she has a 3lb penalty to defy as she bids for a hat-trick as a consequence of winning at this level at Leopardstown last month.

Library would have to be considered a threat if you could trust that Irish Oaks form (which I don’t, as it goes), but it’s surely significant that Moore has picked the selection over her. I also question how she’ll get on over this trip/ground combo.

I’m not going to go through them all, but frankly I’ll be disappointed if Boogie Woogie can’t beat this field – especially the four-year-olds who have to give her 9lbs.