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
November 14th
With too much action to cover in one day I have split the weekend preview into two so Sunday’s racing analysis will be uploaded late afternoon today. Ross Miles’s NFL Week 9 advice is now uploaded as is Cameron Stansfield’s Paddock Notes from an interesting card at Bangor on Wednesday and Mike Henderson continues with his coverage of the Grand Slam of Darts and has two advices for tonight's quarter finals. Carl Redden's preview of the ATP Tour Finals from the O2 which start tomorrow will be uploaded later today.
More Of That and Shantou Village were the stars of the show on Day 1. I will go into more detail about their performances in Week 1 of Cheltenham Ante-Post on Monday at 7.00 p.m. but I hope I convinced you to have a few quid on Shantou Village who bolted up at 9/2 in the Grade 2 novice hurdle. I did feel that his stablemate, Minella Present, was very unlucky in the opener. I don’t think I am talking through my pocket but I’m sure he would have won but for meeting two pieces of interference, firstly when squeezed for room three out and then approaching the final fence under a very confident ride from Noel Fehily. Listening to the Channel4 Racing post-race analysis you could have been forgiven to believe he wasn’t even in the race mentioning virtually every other horse whereas I saw him as one of the unluckiest losers of the season so far. Still, that means we can hopefully get a bigger price next time. He travelled beautifully.
The Morning Line is back to its later 9.00 a.m. slot start, a decison which probably had a lot more to do with ITV showing an interest in bidding for the next batch of racing TV rights than anything else, with AP McCoy making his debut this weekend as a regular part of their team. Given his position with J P McManus, it will be interesting to see how than pans out when it comes to discussing how some of his horses run. Let’s hope he speaks his mind and doesn’t hold back and his comments this week that lady jockeys should receive an allowance has caused a spark. Probably not the best timing as shortly afterwards Nina Carberry gave Josie’s Orders what will be one of the rides of the season to win the cross-country chase when notching up a day 1 double
Enjoy the fare this afternoon, it looks a cracking Paddy Power Gold Cup and almost as good a staying handicap chase with a couple of excellent novice races thrown in.
