A disappointing afternoon, on which neither of today’s selections covered themselves with glory…
I was right to take on the 2 ‘sexy’ market leaders in the novice handicap chase as neither finished in the first 3 - but I picked the wrong horse to do it with.
When I was writing up my rationale last night and I said that it wouldn’t surprise me if any of the 6 won, it did occur to me that maybe I should be tipping one of the two outsiders (that would be my normal stance in such a situation).
However, I fancied Balzaccio least of the 6 runners – and it would have been difficult to tip Made in Time, when he had unseated on his 2 previous outings.
I suspect the smaller field helped him today and he showed no obvious jumping frailties and won well.
Vino Griego ran a reasonable enough race – but it wasn’t difficult to see why he has never won a chase. He looked a tricky customer – and whilst the ability is undoubtedly there, harnessing it is not so easy.
I suspect he will be best suited by a big field and a strong gallop. In those circumstance’s I could easily see him running well in better company than he met today – though whether he could actually win, will always be a different matter…
Solitary Palm travelled much better today than he did last time out. Starting down the back straight on the second circuit, I still felt he had a fair chance.
However, he made a mistake at one of the fences: came off the bridle and was pulled up almost immediately.
You have to draw the conclusion that he has breathing issues. However, the tongue tie didn’t seem to do the trick last time – yet he struggled without it today.
In the circumstances, you would have to leave him alone from this point. He may come back to form – or he may be operated on – but either way, I would have to guess about his state of health and there are enough variables when trying to assess a race, without adding in another of that significance !
As I tweeted earlier, there will be no tips tomorrow. There is just the one NH card at Leicester and non of the races really grab my attention.
I have to admit that I am really struggling for time at the moment and consequently may be forced to cut back on the tipping and write ups.
I expected to have plenty of free time at this point in the year (which is why I embarked on this ‘project’) but it is just not working out that way.
I hoped that with Christmas out of the way, things would get easier for me. Instead, I have a backlog to deal with – and more things appearing on the horizon.
I won’t go as far as stopping tipping/blogging altogether – but I will be cutting back on the volume – for the next couple of weeks at least.
It takes me a lot of time to produce the blog –and even longer to find suitable tips to put up – and I’m currently struggling to justify the level of effort.
Hopefully this will just be a temporary thing – I certainly want to be back on top of things before Cheltenham. However, to be fair to everyone, I feel I need to ease off for a little while…
TVB.
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