General Sports uploaded (22/12) - 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
11/6/17
There’s no other place to start really other than with Wings Of Eagles after winning the Derby having been my Ante-Post Focus recommendation. Another one for the office wall.
In fact, it proved to be one heck of a weekend with Real Madrid (recommended at 5/1 at the start of the knockout stage) winning the Champions League a few hours later meaning that we ended the football season showing a Level Stakes Profit of 31 points and then the following night, the cherry on the cake was Ciaran Meagher following up his 20/1 successful advice of Alex Noren the previous week with Jason Dufner winning The Memorial at 66/1. We’ve had worse weekends! Ciaran and I will both be covering the US Open which begins on Thursday on Tuesday.
Wings Of Eagles ended up at a bigger price on the day (40/1) once punters didn’t have a Scooby Doo who Padraig Beggy was, so I hope that some of you went in again when he began to drift. He even touched 94 on Betfair! I heard Matt Chapman on ITV offer the view straight after the race that we should be wary of the form. What?! Because the winner was 40/1? Not only was the Derby run at a right proper gallop but the cream came to the top as the first three in the betting finished second, third and fourth. Part of my argument for recommending Wings Of Eagles ten days before his triumph was because that I felt he was a late developer and it was only at Chester when the penny looked to start to drop with him late on, so I only see him progressing again. The same for the runner-up and second too. The full reasoning for my recommendation can be accessed by clicking on ‘View Example Copy’ in the right-hand menu of the home page.
Moving on and I am delighted to announce that we have new name shortly to be joining the list of guest contributors to the website as Mark Ball has kindly agreed to provide regular horseracing copy for us starting later this week. Mark ran the successful Let’s Live Racing ownership syndicate for 16 years and is now returning to making a living from gambling so he will be sharing his betting diaries with us, looking both back and forward around 3-4 times a month in what will be an entertaining and informative read. I’ve known Mark for a long time and wouldn’t be inviting him if I didn’t rate him a good judge so I hope that All-Inclusive Service members will enjoy his content.
The next big event on the horizon is Royal Ascot which Mark will be touching on in advance with a few fancies of his own and for which I am covering daily from June 19th and have already uploaded trends for all 30 races, comprising almost 15,000 words. The final Royal Ascot Ante-Post article will be uploaded tomorrow night, though I dare say I will have another ante-post bet or two the following Monday when I upload the Day 1 preview.
We're down to the final week of the ICC Champions Trophy and fingers crossed that Paul Smith's 40/1 recommendation, Shikhar Dhawan, can hold on in the Top Runscorer market. At the end of India's defeat of South Africa he sits 48 runs clear of Tamim, 59 ahead of Root and 90 ahead of Rohit. India will also play Bangladesh so he's as short as 4/9 on Betfair now. Like I say, fingers crossed that we can bag yet another recent big priced winner.
Going back to my office wall and a framed photo of Soba is already up there being my first big-priced winner (10p at 18/1 to win the Stewards’ Cup as a 12-year-old) so it was with sadness hearing the news of the passing of Dandy Nicholls last week who rode the filly to her biggest successes.
I do think that it is important that we keep our heads up and confidence high throughout the inevitable poor runs so, to that end, a visual constant reminder of our biggest wins can have a positive effect. We often hear of professional sports people admitting to watching videos of their greatest achievements over and over again to instil the self-belief that they can do it all over again when going through a rough time, so this is my way of attempting to do likewise. If you believe that you are unlucky then that is what you will become. It’s a self-fulfilling prophecy true in any facet of life. To that end I have reminders on my office wall of my most memorable punting successes from Soba to the Austrian drag queen who won the Eurovision Song Contest, Rule The World to Jelle Klaasen (after he won BDO World Championships) and Corbiere to Darren Clarke (after he won The Open). One day I’ll fill it!
Finally, good luck this afternoon if you followed Carl Redden in with his 14/1 pre-tournament recommendation, Stan Wawrinka, in the French Open. It’ll be a tough ask trying to stop Rafa Nadal winning for the tenth time at Roland Garros but Stan is 3-3 in grand slam finals so he’s unlikely to roll over. Carl will return to cover Queens (outright preview only) and then Wimbledon fortnight on a round-by-round basis.
