Thursday 27th November 2014

First day of the Newbury Hennessy meeting this afternoon, unfortunately today’s card is made up of small fields but with decent prize money on offer. The soft / heavy ground is likely one reason for the lack of runners but another is some of the bigger yards are struggling for form at the moment.

Donald McCain sent out his first horses yesterday for the first time in a near two week shutdown whilst Nicky Henderson has also withdrawn a lot of his intended runners due to a lot of disappointing efforts of late. Normally we have plenty of cold frosts at this time of the year that wipe out any bugs doing the rounds but it’s fairly mild at the moment with plenty of rain.

The 2:10 at Newbury, is a 3 runner race with £17,370 to the winner, My Silver Cloud who is a 66-1 shot and an average ex p2p horse will pick up over £3,000 for finishing a tailed off last, that’s more than most midweek novice chase wins. Yes the going and maybe few yards out of form has contributed to the small fields but there is a lack of horses around at the moment and far too many fixtures.

I can’t find any value at Newbury with 3 odds on shots that will be very hard to beat out of the 7 races.

Away from Newbury it’s more of the same, heavy going and a lot of short priced favourites, nothing stands out this afternoon but the next few days look a bit better.