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Monday February 20th 2023

A scrambly weekend all round, though JD landed a good 28/1 place on Sunday. If I've left anyone out, I apologise; please leave a message on this thread and I'll update.

GRAND NATIONAL

William Hill offer NRMB for the Randox Grand National – EW to 5 places. At 100/1 I think Hill Sixteen is 3 or 4 times the price he should be. He has yet to be seen this season, but that is a deliberate tactic from his trainer Sandy Thomson, who specialises in staying chasers.

A few weeks ago Sandy said:

Last season we got him out of Nigel Twiston-Davies’s stable and on only his second run for us he put up a career-best effort when a nose second behind Snow Leopardess in the Becher Chase, and that was followed by a good fourth in the Listed Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster. This season I thought the Grand National Trial at Haydock would be ideal, but as it falls the weekend before the National weights are announced he will not be going there. I have no intention of running him before the Aintree weights are out so he will go for either the Premier Chase or the Eider. This fellow is a proper stayer.

Hill Sixteen is 10. Aside from that nose defeat in the 2021 Becher Chase, he was 7th of 22 in the 2022 running. Currently on an official rating of 143 he ought to get into the final field, especially this year with such a reduced entry.

I strongly recommend a fiver EW on him, and you can have some fun by putting him in some small multiple bets with some of your Cheltenham fancies.

Good luck

Joe

27 comments

27 Comments

el gran senor

Feb 20

Enraged won the 18.00 dundalk at 4/1

Pebbles

Feb 20

Our Sam won at 14/1.

Harrytheactor

Feb 20

Nice to see Suzi Best having a winner at Lingfield today with Good Time Ahead. That's two wins on the bounce in the last few days - maybe there is a good time ahead for the yard at last. I still believe she and her husband Jim were the recipients of rough justice from the BHA inquiry several years back, one of a series of controversial and shambolic hearings where the reputation of racing's governing body was in tatters. Jim's name has been added as joint trainer as of earlier this month, which is great because they were always a proper team when his name was above the door.

I've just checked Suzi's stats, and she is really operating at the basement level. Since taking over the licence the yard has had 27 winners with prizemoney of £99,000 - an average pot of £3,666 per winner. That really is chickenfeed. In fact it would feed only a very small flock of chickens.

Harrytheactor

Feb 20

A very warm tribute to Tom Scudamore today on the RP's The Front Page programme today. It is a welcome antidote to the awfully sour and ungenerous posts on TH over the weekend. There are regulars on there who seem to hate racing or at least revel in all the negative stories flying around. Of course, racing doesn't help itself with its capacity for self-harm. Chris Cook virtually had his head in his hands when talking about Julie Harrington's speech at the Global Racing shindig on the whip issue.

Tom Jolliffe

Feb 20

Replying to

It is somewhat unrealistic to think that everyone will put aside their feelings about the Bryony Frost affair just because Tom Scudamore has called it a day as a jockey. Recent events inevitably predominate over a long career of his success as a jockey. Posters on the Guardian forum obviously saw TS's role in that as a big negative factor - particularly Bryony Frost's view that he had ostracised her. I think it is instructive that that was the reaction of some comments, as it shows that strong feelings still exist about it. I don't think that is particularly surprising or indeed a matter of concern. TS, as you pointed out, Harry, has got a job as a TV commentator.

Tom Scudamore's decision to retire seemed a wise one to me.

I haven't been able to read what Julie Harrington said as, apart from the Racing Post, which I don't subscribe to, I can't find a report anywhere. I would have thought the BHA would have put up a Press release, etc, but I can't see one.

But on the issue of the number of whip strikes, etc, etc, it has been done to death. There was an interminably long lead in from last July, plenty of warning, a long consultation including jockey reps, a (probably predictable) attempt to head off the change by reactionary elements, which partially succeeded as the element which caused most opposition (reportedly) was removed and then the inevitable hullabaloo when the date of the changes arrived. Willy Mullins popped up at the last minute (and may have helped avoid a calamity at Cheltenham). But who knows? The argument changed from Never! to Not This! to Cheltenham! Not now! A feast for the Press, a coming Apocalypse, a story with legs.

Meanwhile whip changes in the same direction, but further, across the channel go ahead with few problems.

Harrytheactor

Feb 20

Replying to

Harrington was asserting that the whip debate is no longer a welfare issue but a "perception" issue. She wants to avoid the target audience of new racegoers aged 18-25 seeing whip-rule infractions on the main TV news on Gold Cup day. Apparently the BHA has been polling that age group, focusing on those who are "uninterested in" or "not engaged with" racing. Some of them believe "racing is cruel" in general, jockeys carrying and using whips being only one sign of cruelty. (Some claim that saddling a horse and putting a bit in its mouth is inherently cruel.) It is enough to put them off the sport. However, other polling of the same age group shows that it is the cost of a day at the races, and a perception that it is exclusive, snobbish or "upper class", and this is what puts more of them off. Whether or not one can rely heavily on opinion polls is beside the point; the worrying thing is that the BHA is spending time and resources on a group of people who for a variety of reasons are perhaps the LEAST likely ever to become lovers of the sport.

And they pay Julie Harrington HOW MUCH?

Tom Jolliffe

Feb 21

Replying to

Thanks Harry. I am still puzzled, though, about why the full speech is not freely available.

I suppose JH is focussing on a future potential audience to try to make them more likely to be interested in horseracing.

But the broader picture is that welfare issues, and the whip use falls into that category, are significant drivers of change. It is not just in the UK.

john987

Feb 20

1830 newc my duty e/w

Harrytheactor

Feb 20

Morning Line was an also-ran in the Lingfield 1.30. I note the dam is named Blodge. A very good word for some of the stuff on the programme of the same name.

Jonathan Dawe

Feb 20

United Force in the 18:30 at Newcastle.

Hill Sixteen is one of my trackers. No idea why he is, but Joe mentioning him as a potential GN winner fully justifies my then thought process from a couple of years ago.