Talking Horses: The latest racing news and best bets
Tuesday’s best bets, by Chris Cook
Many thanks to those of you who posted kind words on here yesterday after I won Racing Reporter of the Year at the Horserace Writers Awards. M’colleague Greg Wood was also nominated, though frankly I think he should have been up for the main award, Racing Writer of the Year, which he won in 2009. Surely stablemates are not supposed to end up in the same division?
(You can find the three articles which won Chris the award here – ed).
I enjoyed a chat with Paul Nicholls, who happened to be on the same table on Monday, and some of what he said has ended up in the second half of this piece. He also offered hope to people like me who imagined that Hinterland was going to make a smashing chaser and be a live candidate for the Arkle.
Hinterland flopped on his chasing debut at Exeter, when he was beaten 11 lengths by Theatre Guide, having started at 4-9. But the race fell into the winner’s lap when Hinterland and Peckhamecho took each other on over the first mile, both being spent forces by the turn for home, and Nicholls is sure that the horse is much better than he was able to show. “Put a line through that,” he told me.
Hinterland will be in the Henry VIII Novice Chase at Sandown on Saturday and the trainer says: “A fast-run two miles will suit him really, really well. We’ll just walk him out the gate and ride him sensibly. I think he’s a speed horse and he wants riding like that.” Nicholls hopes the pace will come from Overturn, possibly supported by Captain Conan.
Anyway, today’s Talking Horses comes to you from Paris, where it is absolutely bucketing down with rain. The reason for that is that three British hacks have made the journey over to spend the day standing outside France Galop’s headquarters in case Frankie Dettori should happen to pass by. The Gods do not love racing hacks and why should they?
No rain is forecast just on the other side of La Manche at Folkestone and I hope none arrives, as the present good going, with good to soft places, on the chase track there will be just fine for Roc De Guye (1.30). His last two races have been high on drama, a late faller presenting him with victory at Stratford and then a horse taking the wrong course at Fakenham, almost handing him another lucky win, only for him to be nabbed on the line by another rival.
Those were decent runs without being spectacular but he looks like a horse working his way back to peak form and odds of around 9-2 would be fine in this company.
Predictably, Gary Moore has a good record at this track, just along the south coast from his Sussex base, and he may land the earlier novice hurdle with Portrait Emotion (1.00). This Irish points winner made his hurdles debut at Fontwell last month and went down by just a head to a well-backed beast from Dr Newland’s yard, which was in form at the time.
Portrait Emotion was more than 20 lengths clear of the other eight in the race, despite some sketchy leaps. A more fluent round will put him right in this and he’s around 5-2 because the market seems to expect a big run from the hurdles newcomer Minella For Steak, another Irish points winner but unseen for a long time. He comes from the Jonjo O’Neill yard which is 1/27 in the past fortnight.
Tipping competition – a new week
Congratulations to chris1623, who held on to win last week’s competition, despite a winnerless Friday, finishing on a score of +15.50. Nobody found Fair Along (33-1) and only mmmdanish found Killimore Cottage (20-1), alas his first winner of the week
This week’s prize is a copy of the Racing Post’s annual, now in its second year and a really good-quality offering that any fan of the sport will enjoy, with masses of lovely pics and contributions from Tony McCoy, Richard Hughes and Willie Mullins. If you don’t win, you can buy a copy here.
To kick things off, we’d like your tips, please, for these races: 1.30 Folkestone, 2.30 Folkestone, 5.10 Wolverhampton.
You’ll see that we have a new presentation format for comments in the sports section of the website, below. Apparently, a bug means that you can’t display more than 50 comments on the same page, but they’re working to fix this so that you will, once again, be able to display all comments at once.
As ever, our champion will be the tipster who returns the best profit to notional level stakes of £1 at starting price on our nominated races, of which there will be three each day up until Friday. Non-runners count as losers.
In the event of a tie at the end of the week, the winner will be the tipster who, from among those tied on the highest score, posted their tips earliest on the final day.
For terms and conditions click here.
Good luck!
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And post your tips or racing-related comments below.