Cheltenham Festival Week 8 & Race Previews uploaded - Andy Richmond’s Beating The Bias (17/12) uploaded - General Sports uploaded (15/12) - Cheltenham Festival Week 7 & Weekend Race Previews uploaded
12/9/16
Phew, what a hectic and dramatic week that was! The intention was to upload a September Catch Cup for the Cheltenham Festival Ante-Post section last week, which I have more or less finished, but I felt it best to hold it back for a quieter spell so that will be uploaded this week instead.
Although my Ante-Post Focus advice of Fascinating Rock didn’t make it to the Irish Champion Stakes following a bad blood count, the on-the-day replacement suggestion of Almanzor (returned at 7/1) more than made up for that. Whoosh! Suave Dancer Mach II. In addition, my 14/1 each-way recommendation for the St Leger a week earlier, Housesofparliament, hit the frame (third) for a profit, though obviously we got lucky following Idaho’s mishap, even though he was only beaten less than a length. Ante-Post Focus returns on Wednesday.
With regards to Irish Champions Weekend, I enjoyed Leopardstown more than The Curragh but, then again, so did the vast majority of punters with winners at 25/1, 25/1, 22/1, 16/1, 14/1 and 11/1 on the Sunday card. In fact there was only winning favourite over the two days and nine horses were beaten that started at 2/1 or under. I think it should be renamed Irish Bookies' Weekend!
As for the sport over the last week, the golf couldn’t have gone any better with my only pre-tournament recommendation for the BMW Championship at 10/1, Dustin Johnson, running out a brilliant winner. It was also nice to enjoy stress-less final round as his only challenger was Paul Casey who I suggested we add as our sole back up at 7/1 at the half-way stage so it made for very pleasing viewing. I will be back to preview the Tour Championship on September 20th.
In addition, Carl Redden gave us another profitable Grand Slam at the US Open Tennis with Gael Monfils winning the second quarter after being recommended at 6/1 being the highlight but the cherry on the cake was his advice to back Stan Wawrinka at 5/2 to beat Novak Djokovic last night which he did in four sets. A big thank you to Carl again for the sterling work over the last fortnight where he advised 14 winners from 23 recommendations which worked out at a 53.91% return on investment. I have included some of the rationale behind the Almanzor, Johnson and Wawrinka recommendations on the Home Page.
I’d also like to think our Sports Personality of the Year position has improved given Andy Murray’s surprise defeat to Kei Nishikori in the quarter finals. If he was to have added the US Open and Davis Cup to his Olympic and Wimbledon titles then that would have been game, set and match as far as SPOTY is concerned. However, if GB also don’t win the Davis Cup, I think he will then become a very vulnerable favourite indeed.
Ross Miles kicked off the NFL season where he left off from the SuperBowl with his sole Week 1 selection obliging at 6/4 when Denver beat Carolina. They rode their luck but a winner is a winner is a winner. His full season preview with six ante-post advices is available to view for All-Inclusive Service subscribers and he will be previewing each weekend throughout the season.
As for the football Premier League Picks, we have Monday’s night game to see if we can rescue this weekend after showing a profit for the previous two weekends covered. I did say that some of my early-season recommendations could look embarrassing after the games as I like to take on the big teams but we do still just about have our noses in front.
Just a reminder that I am away for a week from September 21-28 but I will be uploading content early that week so everything is still covered.
