Horse racing

The entries for the Cheltenham Festival handicaps races were announced this week and so now seems a good time to try to steal a little value from bookmakers, with the four days of elite jump racing just around the corner next month. We still don’t yet know the weights that each horse has been allotted for these races but, in most cases, that’s fairly easy to predict given that official ratings for every horse on both sides of the Irish Sea are updated weekly. As usual, the British handicapper is going to give several of the Irish-based horses a slightly higher rating – and therefore weight – than his Irish

Evan Williams has not got as many ‘Saturday horses’ as he once had but he remains a trainer that I like to have on side when he targets some of the bigger handicaps. The form of his stable, with the Cheltenham Festival less than a month away, is good and he had a double at Hereford earlier this week with horses priced at 17-2 and 6-1. I am hoping he might have a winner or two at Ascot tomorrow as well because he brings two of his decent handicappers to the Berkshire course from his base in the Vale of Glamorgan, South Wales. PATRIOTIK, who will be ridden by the

Trainer Rebecca Curtis has experienced plenty of challenging seasons since her successes in the early 2010s, when her owners included the legendary Irishman J.P. McManus and her numerous winners included four at the Cheltenham Festival. She eventually added a fifth Festival winner in 2020 when the 50-1 shot Lisnagar Oscar landed the Stayers’ Hurdle. As if to prove the old saying ‘form is temporary, class is permanent’, Curtis has showed signs of reviving the glory days with an impressive 18 per cent winning strike rate from her runners this season. Furthermore, I think that she has a massive chance of landing a sixth Festival winner next month with her horse

This is a big weekend for two of Britain’s best young trainers, both with the Christian name of Harry. Neither will want to come away empty-handed from the next three days of racing because both men are giving racecourse outings to some of the best horses in their respective yards. I will start with Harry Derham, nephew of 14-times champion National Hunt trainer Paul Nicholls, and who is no less ambitious than his uncle to make a name for himself. Derham is also astute at picking the best possible races for the equine talent in his care, not being afraid of crossing the Irish Sea and taking on the likes

The two big handicaps tomorrow are the bet365 Bunbury Cup at Newmarket and the John Smith’s Cup at York. Both are early closing races in which the weights were framed by the official handicapper several weeks ago. This means several horses in both races are ‘well in’, in that if the handicapper was in a position to evaluate their most recent runs – after he set the weights – they would be carrying several pounds more tomorrow. However, the most difficult issue to factor into which horses to tip today is undoubtedly the weather: both Newmarket and York are forecast to have large amounts of rain which could make the

When I put up Zoffee at 20-1 for the Jenningsbet Northumberland Plate six weeks ago, I said that I was hoping he would swerve the big staying handicaps at Royal Ascot. I had suspected trainer Hugo Palmer wanted to keep his horse fresh for tomorrow’s target which has a first prize of more than £80,000. Sadly, the temptation to dress up in top hat and tails was too hard to resist for his owners and the seven-year-old gelding lined up in the Ascot Stakes, running well despite a poor passage and an average ride to be sixth behind Ahorsewithnoname. That race over a marathon trip was only ten days ago

It is usually the Grand National at Aintree that throws up a delightful human interest story for the media to relish. Think Devon Loch throwing away the race when poised to win for the Queen Mother in 1956, Foinavon’s 100-1 victory in 1967, Red Rum winning his third National in 1977 and former crock Aldaniti and cancer-suffering jockey Bob Champion’s triumph in 1981. I could go on and on…but I won’t. Tomorrow I am hoping that it is the turn of the Betfred Derby (Epsom 1.30 p.m.) to produce a story to tug at the heartstrings when two horses, which I believe represent the best bets in the race, would

James Tate is an accomplished young trainer who has won several top races in his time but landing a Group 1 contest is still missing from his CV. That will undoubtedly change at some point and the horse currently in his care most likely to achieve it for him is ROYAL ACCLAIM. Aged four, this likeable filly has only had five races in her career, which means there is still plenty of scope for improvement – particularly as the Newmarket handler has been patient with her to date. Tomorrow (Haydock 3.30 p.m.) Royal Acclaim will line up for the competitive Group 2 Betfred Temple Stakes. I am usually loath to tip horses which

Master trainer Aidan O’Brien provides a quandary for punters by sending over two very different horses from Ireland to contest tomorrow’s Qipco 2000 Guineas Stakes. Little Big Bear is officially the highest rated horse in the race (Newmarket 4.40 p.m.) after four impressive wins last season but he has never raced over further than six and a half furlongs. He may well not stay the one-mile distance of tomorrow’s contest over Newmarket’s demanding straight course. Auguste Rodin, on the other hand, is already tried and tested over a mile with two of his three wins last season coming over that trip, one on soft ground and the other on heavy.

My late father, who was the kindest man I have ever encountered, introduced me to horse racing when I was a small boy. Although he died all of 33 years ago, I still remember his advice to me when betting on the world’s most famous horse race: ‘The best form for the Grand National is… the Grand National.’ He was convinced that very few horses were capable of both jumping the unique Aintree brush fences and truly staying the marathon trip, which is now 4 miles 2 and a half furlongs. So he concentrated his bets on horses that had done well in the race the year before. A few

The new flat season and the Pertemps Network Lincoln at Doncaster (tomorrow 3.35 p.m.) will dominate the racing pages this weekend, and rightly so. The bookmakers have the correct horses at the head of the market for the Lincoln: two improving four-year-olds, Al Mubhir and Awaal, but both at cramped odds. I largely stay clear of betting on the flat for the first month of the season because it is hard to know which horses are fit and which are not after their winter break. If I was forced to have a bet, it would be an each-way play, many places, on Charlie Fellowes’s Atrium, another four-year-old improver who has