Saturday 13th February 2016

Betfair Hurdle day at Newbury, as per every year it won’t be easy to find the winner of this race and you need a good amount of luck in running. I tend to go for horses that race handy and stay strongly. The ground is soft at Newbury and it’s been raining this morning, it won’t be easy making ground up from off the pace and that’s even more of a reason to go with a front runner.

I’ve backed Kalkir EW at 28-1. The Willie Mullins trained horse ran a cracker last time out in a solid handicap at Leopardstown, the effort can be marked up as it was Kalkir’s first run for 10 months. The worry today is Kalkir could bounce, if he doesn’t the horse holds all the right credentials i.e. races up with the pace and likely wants further than two miles. It’s hard to be confident in such a race but Kalkir should go ok at big odds and looks worth a small EW bet.

The Betfair Denman chase has 7 horses taking their chance and arguably 7 horses in poor form. I’m not sure the race will take a huge amount of winning and maybe Bob Ford can cause a surprise at odds of 14-1. The horse can’t be fancied on ratings and needs to find 30lbs with some of these but he's possibly the one horse that will run his race. A seven length win at Ffos Las was ok before falling in the Welsh National four out when still holding an EW chance. Three miles on soft ground looks ideal and if remaining half decent form Bob Ford should go ok. The result all depends on one of the higher rated horses running to their mark and if they do Bob Ford has no chance but a mid 130 horse running to its peak can beat any rating if others don’t turn up. It's a risky bet and we have no proper EW terms, maybe a place bet on Betfair could be the sensible option.

Over at Warwick in the 1:30 Dawson City can go close if this race hasn’t come a bit soon. The horse was unlucky in the Somerset National and would have won if not for an error close home. Dawson City looks and out and out stayer and the weight pull he gets today could make the difference. 2-1 looks fair in a three runner race.

A few shares are left in our new horse Mountain Rescue, he’ll be running in three weeks time and looks another classy recruit to our string. If you would like any further information please get in touch.

Tel: 07939800769