19th November - Race reviews

I was out of the house for the majority of the day yesterday and so didn’t see any of the afternoon’s races live. However, I managed to find an hour yesterday evening to catch up on the events of a busy days racing…

I must firstly mention how good it was to see both Kauto Star and Master Minded bounce back to form with stirring victories.
In truth, I was surprised by neither result (just the prices – of Master Minded in particular !). As the old adage goes, class in permanent and there could have been little doubt, that if Paul Nicholls had the 2 of them ripe, they were going to take some beating.
There really haven’t been many horses over the past few decades that could get near these 2 superstars, when they are on their game…
Nicholls clearly knew that yesterday could provide Kauto with his best chance of a final glorious victory. Long Run was unlikely to be cherry ripe and the rest of the opposition still hadn’t proved themselves out of the very top draw.
Long Run did look rusty to me – and he made a number of jumping errors – it was therefore to his enormous credit that he got as close to Kauto as he did.
To my mind, his reputation was enhanced yesterday, not dented…
That said, I still believe he will have his work cut out to beat Mater Minded in the King George – assuming Nicholls had still left something to work on yesterday…
When on form, Master Minded is the most efficient jumper of a fence I think I have ever seen (Best Mate would run him close though – and was the more consistent).
He wasn’t at his brilliant best over the obstacles yesterday – and the ground was as quick as he would have liked.
Therefore, assuming he is at his peak for Kempton and there is a little more juice in the ground, I think Long Run will have to put in a performance even better than he did when winning the Gold Cup, to win the King George.
Clearly a race to look forward to…

Anyway, enough of my ramblings on the days showcase races – and onto the important things, the performances of the tips !!


Horse: Indian Daudaie
Price Advised: 6/1
ISP: 5/2
BSP: 4
Position: Unplaced

Indian Daudaie managed to steal the title of ‘most disappointing performance from a tip’, previously held by Backfromthecongo !
As I said yesterday, I was pretty confident that I had found one with him – and the significant market support, only increased my confidence.
It was therefore massively disappointing to see him come under pressure on the home turn and find absolutely nothing.
The RP reviewer suggested that something must have gone wrong with the horse – and that was clearly a possibility. There was an expectation that he would put in a career best performance yesterday – and whilst that obviously didn’t happen, he didn’t even run that close to the level of form he had shown himself capable of last season.
All in all, very disappointing.
Just a quick mention for the winner, Any Given Day, who put in a tremendous performance under top weight on his seasonal debut.
He is a really likeable horse though I do fear he might now struggle this season; I’m not convinced that he is top class – but handicaps are likely to be a thing of the past for him, for a little while at least…


Horse: Sa Suffit
Price Advised: 16/1
ISP: 14/1
BSP: 23.8
Position: Unplaced

Horse: Kayf Aramis
Price Advised: 33/1
ISP: 22/1
BSP: 32
Position: Unplaced

In truth, neither Kayf Aramis nor Sa Suffit would have been a tip a week ago.
They fell into the marginal area, which I have chosen to include in the tipping.
I clearly need to be a bit careful with horses like this – simply because competitive 20 runner handicaps are never going to be easy to solve and I didn’t feel that strongly about either runner (unlike with Olofi last Sunday).
As it turned out, Dynaste was a total blot on the handicap and the rest of the runners may as well not bothered to turn up !
It will be interesting to see how far he can progress this season.
Of the tips; Kayf Aramis is clearly in decline and can only be watched at present; whilst Sa Suffit will doubtless benefit from a return to fences and softer ground.


Horse: Rileyev
Price Advised: 16/1
ISP: 16/1
BSP: 21
Position: 2nd

Although Rileyev finished second and therefore produced a profit, it was still a bit of a frustrating race to watch…
I chose him ahead of Imsingingtheblues because I felt he would make the greater improvement from their meeting at Cheltenham, last week and was available at double the price. I was right in that he did make the greater improvement – but it wasn’t sufficient to close the gap completely…
If Rileyev had jumped a little more fluently, the result may have been different – and I would back him to beat Imsingingtheblues if they met again next week under the same terms – but it was yesterday that counted and Imsingingtheblues still held a decisive edge.
Maybe I was just trying to be a little bit too clever – I missed an 8/1 winner even though I picked up on the right formline.
Part of the issue with being an early bird bettor is that you have to make snap decisions before the market moves. With a little more time, I might have weighed up the pros and cons slightly differently.
All academic now however –and it was a profit on the race, I guess…

As you’ve probably figured by now, there will be no tips today !
Hopefully, normally service will be resumed this evening – provided I can make a little free time to check out tomorrow’s cards…