Dane Nelson ... will ride Harmonics today. - file

Thirteen horses from the $220,00-$190,000 claiming spread are down to contest race No. 1 in the Champion Betting Limited/CTL Claiming Series which gets under way over 1200 metres at Caymanas Park today.

Thanks to a $2-million injection from new sponsors Champion Betting Limited, the series offers substantial increase in prize money. Each of the six races in the series offers a total purse of $500,000 - up from $385,000 over the first CTL series which ran from January to June.

At the end of each six-month period, bonus incentives totalling $500,000 will be awarded to the top two owners, trainers, jockeys and grooms. These incentives are based on points accumulated in each of the races.

The noted bookmaking company will sponsor the six races from July to December, as well as the first six races in 2010 from January to June. The second race in the series will be run on Saturday, August 29, over 1400 metres.

Lucky Loser competition

In addition, there will be a Champion Lucky Loser competition tied in to each race. Champion will sponsor the competition to the tune of $50,000 each month.

This promotion requires punters with losing vouchers of $200 and over bought at Champion outlets to write their names and addresses on the back of these and place them in a box at the betting shops, to be drawn at Caymanas Park on the day of each race.

The lucky losing punter will receive $40,000, while $10,000 will be shared by the staff at the Champion Betting outlet from which the bet was purchased. If there is no winner, the $40,000 will be carried over to the next race in the series.

The bang-in-form CHINA TOWN, to be ridden by champion jockey Omar Walker and the down-in-class HARMONICS, the mount of title-chasing jockey Dane Nelson, should decide the feature.

However, while I believe it will come down to these two, others such as KEELER, who won the first two races in the first series, BADJEROS ROSE, COCK ROBIN and the recent course-winner PRODIGAL SON, cannot be left out of calculations.

My idea of the winner is the Steadman Curtis-trained HARMONICS, who steps down from a $250,000 claiming tag to $220,000 to contest this race.

Useful races

Although yet to win in nine starts this season, HARMONICS has run some useful races in defeat among better horses. He has good speed, should be able to lead this field and, despite the sound claims of the Tony Kirlew-trained CHINA TOWN, who has won three of his last four races, HARMONICS has more appeal in a race of this nature.

Other firm fancies on the card are RED SONJA to repeat in the first race, MR BLAIR in the third, JET SKI D'OR in the fifth, POSEIDON in the seventh and FULL SPECTRUM in the closing Track Price Plus Dig Out Handicap over the straight five courses.