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
17/4/16
After Rule The World at 50/1 last week, we followed up with Vicente recommended at 16/1 in the Scottish Grand National yesterday alongside some other nice results in the Saturday preview. Unfortunately, there are no more Nationals now until the Kerry version at Listowel in September. Summer jumping is not for me I’m afraid. Paul Nicholls now leads the Trainers’ Championship by £33K from Willie Mullins who plans to send Vroum Vroum Mag to Sandown and surely now Un De Sceaux.
I might not have much of a clue when it comes to big-field 5f handicaps but I’ve long stated that staying chasers is where I have been strongest down the years so fingers crossed we can complete the hat-trick in the Bet365 Gold Cup on Saturday, which I will cover initially in Big Race Focus on Wednesday. Then it’s the Punchestown Festival the following week which closes the Jumps Season Service where hopefully Don Cossack, Cue Card and Vautour will all meet again as they did in the King George, all having enhanced their reputation since Boxing Day. Talking of Punchestown, I will be covering the leading races from a trends perspective on the Attheraces website which is set to go live on Friday.
We’ve also got off to a good start in the World Snooker Championships, the preview for which was uploaded on Friday. Ali Carter (best price 7/5) edging past Stuart Bingham in the final-frame decider after he looked punch drunk with no more to give when 9-8 down was pleasing and Alan McManus leads Stephen Maguire 6-3 so it will be disappointing if he can’t land the recommended Evens with a +2.5 frames head start when they reconvene this afternoon. Once the First Round is out of the way, I’ll take a look at further betting opportunities for the rest of the tournament.
I didn’t get my planned week away last week in the end due to a family illness so spent much of my time watching the Craven Meeting on my mobile phone so I’ll revisit that meeting properly over the next couple of days to cover in the first edition of Horses To Follow which will be uploaded weekly on Thursdays throughout the Flat season starting this week.
The menu on the right hand side of the Home Page will be tinkered with over the coming weeks starting next week where I will be introducing specific sections for Royal Ascot and Eurovision, the next two major events I will be covering after Punchestown. The first of the six weekly Royal Ascot ante-post columns starts on May 9th. It is likely that all the sports will also be separated individually rather than coming under one umbrella as is currently the case.
In addition to the blog, also uploaded today was Andy Richmond's look back on Aintree in Guest Contributions and Adam Hewson's latest blog on the US Presidential race in Sport (part reason why I think the sport section needs to be split up). Carl Redden will be covering the clay events from Barcelona and Munich this week. Mike Henderson continued with another winning week in the Premier League Darts on Thursday with both recommeded bets proving successful. I've also had an early look at the Ryder Cup in the Sport section.
