Having watched our profit decimated to +7.42pts this week it is a relieve to return to a bit of horse racing and start the Cheltenham previews. Now it is still a few weeks til the off so feel free to leave comments with your own thoughts or arguements. I should probably start this preview by saying that apart from a handful of races over Christmas i haven't seen any racing this season at all. I am basing my thoughts purely on who the horses have beaten where they have beaten them and how quickly they did it. Hopefully any info I lose from not having seen the races will be counteracted by the lack of noise from over-hyped horses.
OK so going to start with the World Hurdle. It is hard to knock what Big Buck's has achieved - undefeated since the festival 2 years ago winning on all 3 visits to Cheltenham since however this may partly be explained by people's reluctance to keep their horses running 3m hurdles unless they turn out to be top class at them - usually the horses that could compete are sent chasing as in the case of Punchestown last years runner up. BB is the real deal but at 4/6 I would not be in a rush to back him.
Karabak is a top quality horse but he has a nastyu habit of always finding one to good for him, as was the case last year with Mikael d'Haguenet. He was easily held by BB over Christmas and no reason to think thathe will turn that around at Cheltenham.
Tidal Bay is the horse I think provides the value in the race as the horse with a bit of real class and finally back in good form. I don't think it was ever connections long term plan to have this horse run the WH but after a largely disappointing spell chasing he was sent hurdling to freshen himself up and all of a sudden a fast and impressive win over course and distance made this the obvious target. The manner of his Arkle win 2 years ago combined with the time he posted last time out leaves me to believe ther is not much between him and BB. Given TB is available at 9's and that his place price of 9/4 is closer to what I believe his win price should be it is time to get on.
Of the horses at bigger prices 3 stand out for me with not much between them - WOA, Powerstation, and Oscar Dan Dan. Of the 3 if I was to have a little each way on any of them it would probably be Powerstation whp is in reasonable form this year and ran into a place in this last year and was 2nd to Black Jack Ketchem the year before. I would love to see WOA do well and end his career in stlye but he isn't as good over hurdles as he is over fences and I can't see him finding the improvement necessary at this stage in his career. Oscar Dan Dan strikes me as a horse that will love the hill and as the others start to stop he will still be moving throught the field - whether he'll be close enough to the business end of things at that stage is the big question. There are definitely worse 100/1 e/w shots than him.
2pts e/w Tidal Bay(Ladbroke, Paddy Power)
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