Spectator Life

There are two competitive big races to look forward to on day three of the Cheltenham Festival: the Grade 1 Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle (3.30 p.m.) and the Grade 2 Ryanair Chase (2.50 p.m.) The former race is for experienced staying hurdlers over a trip of three miles and I am happy to have already taken on the warm favourite, Teahupoo, with a horse at a big price. I put up Home By The Lee at 28-1 before Christmas and he will line up much shorter today. At half time, it’s pretty much honours shared with the old enemy, the bookmakers I remain optimistic about his each way chances, especially as connections have reached for first-time blinkers. If Home By The Lee does not win, I would love to see Fergal O’Brien land his first-ever Festival winner with Crambo.

The Betway Queen Mother Champion Chase (3.30 p.m.) is the highlight of day two of the Cheltenham Festival and – despite Jonbon’s defection this morning – it provides an intriguing seven-runner contest over two miles. There are various arguments to be made for the top two in the market – El Fabiolo and Edwardstone – each winning this £225,000 pot. However, both potential frailties too: El Fabiolo has not always convinced with his jumping and Edwardstone’s runs have lacked consistency this season. The Cheltenham Festival is a marathon not a sprint and there is plenty to look forward to I would rather dabble each way on Henry de Bromhead’s gelding CAPTAIN GUINNESS, who is an old favourite of mine and a regular here at the Festival.

Lucinda Russell is a trainer that I love to have on my side for the Cheltenham Festival. It’s not simply that she has got to be one of the nicest people in racing but, more importantly from the viewpoint of a gambler, she knows exactly how to prime one of her best horses for a big target. I have been wanting to put up APPLE AWAY for this meeting for some time but Russell, who has trained three Festival winners to date, made this difficult by initially entering her seven-year-old mare in four Cheltenham races over as many days. The Unibet Champion Hurdle is, of course, the traditional highlight of day one of the Festival We now know, finally, Apple Away’s one and only target: today’s Grade 2 Maureen Mullins National Hunt Challenge Cup Amateur Jockeys’ Novices’ Chase (5.

For as long as anyone can remember, Tottenham Hotspur have offered half price season tickets for pensioners. No longer. This has been scrapped from the beginning of next season. Those already enjoying the 50 per cent concession in the vain hope they will live long enough to see the team win a trophy again will see their annual discount reduced, in phases, to 25 per cent. And only if they sit in certain allocated sections of the ground. For those of us approaching our golden years, we don’t even get that. The discount has been discontinued. Older fans are being pushed to one side by a club that seems hell bent on appealing to a younger market The price of a standard season ticket is going up too, by 6 per cent.

It may come as a surprise that, even though we are just four days away from a certain major racing Festival in the Cotswolds, today’s betting column will be a no go area when it comes to putting up tips for Cheltenham next week. There are three reasons, all hopefully logical, for this approach. First, I (possibly even we if you follow my tips) already have eight horses in the ante-post portfolio from the past four months. Secondly, the value has gone in the current ante-post lists and, particularly for the big-race handicaps, it is now better to wait until after the 48-hour declarations when there will be more each-way places on offer from almost all bookies.

BENSON did this column a massive favour a year ago when landing the bet365 Morebattle Hurdle after being put up at 16-1 (he went off at a starting price of 11/1). In truth, he faces a stiffer task in the same race tomorrow because he is both one year older and running off the top weight of 12 stone in a fiercely-completive 18-runner handicap. However, with more rain forecast between now and the off, along with his trainer Sandy Thomson in fine form (six winners from his last 15 runners for a 40 per cent strike rate over the past 14 days), I am happy to stay loyal to this battle-hardened warrior on his 26th visit to the racetrack.

Tomorrow’s Bet Eider Handicap Chase at Newcastle is just the sort of marathon contest in which I usually like to have a bet but, with so many of the 13 runners out of form and the going likely to be very soft, I am happy to give it a miss this time around. Instead, I am going to turn my attention to the Cheltenham Festival, which is less than three weeks away. Unusually for me, as I tend to like the value odds often offered by horses from the smaller yards, I am going to put up two horses from the two most successful stables in Britain that have gone slightly under the radar.

The run-up to the Cheltenham Festival is a quiet time for many punters with some of the best horses in the land effectively wrapped-up in cotton wool so as not to sustain an injury that would keep them out of their big-race targets next month. However, there is plenty of competitive racing on offer at Ascot, Haydock and Wincanton tomorrow. The Thoroughbred Industry Employee Awards Handicap Hurdle (Ascot, 2.25 p.m.) has certainly attracted a decent field of 16 runners, all hoping to land a pot of more than £26,000 for the winner. My preference is for BAD from the in-form Ben Pauling yard. This is a horse that, 11 months ago, was backed into odds of just 5-1 for the fiercely-competitive Boodles Juvenile Handicap Hurdle at the Festival.

Football is becoming a testing ground for every madcap idea the supposed guardians of the sport can come up with. The latest is the blue card, a stopgap between the yellow and red cards for bookings and sendings off, designed to send players to a sin bin for ten minutes should they commit one of two offences: dissent or cynical fouls to prevent a goalscoring opportunity. It’s clearly designed to jazz up the game for a global television audience Sure, it works in rugby and ice hockey and something called roller derby where a brief period of numerical advantage can make a big difference. But as any football fan knows, this is less certain in the beautiful game.

The heavy rain of the past 48 hours is good news for two horses that I fancy for the ultra-competitive Betfair Hurdle tomorrow (Newbury, 3.15 p.m.). The ground is now ‘heavy, soft in places’ and more rain forecast later today. I put up BRENTFORD HOPE at 14-1 for the race four weeks ago and his best form on the Flat means that he is well weighted over hurdles, particularly now that he has his favoured cut in the ground. His trainer, Harry Derham, is in sparkling from with three winners from 11 runners in the past fortnight, for a 27 per cent strike rate. I still like his price of 14-1, now seven places, and so I am, unusually, going to back him again with a further one point each way bet with William Hill at those odds.

Vince McMahon is the godfather of modern wrestling, an American entrepreneur and media magnate worth a cool $2.8 billion. He was raised in a trailer park in North Carolina but went on to turn the World Wrestling Federation (now known as WWE) into a global phenomenon. McMahon is responsible for creating superstars like Hulk Hogan and Dwayne ‘The Rock’ Johnson. He also became a character in his own right, going from a commentator to an in-ring villain, ordering wrestlers around and shouting his Trump-esque catchphrase ‘You’re fired!

The two-day Dublin Racing Festival this weekend will – just as Cheltenham Trials Day did a week ago – provide a host of clues to which horses might win the big races at the Cheltenham Festival in mid-March. I covered tomorrow’s Grade1 Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle (Leopardstown, 1.20 p.m.) in my column two weeks ago. I still fancy Jetara to see off her five rivals, all from the yards of Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott. Sadly, the odds of 10-1 for Jessica Harrington’s talented mare and the three places that were available a fortnight ago have both long gone. There are plenty of other fascinating races and an array of talent on show in Ireland but there are no more bets there for me.

Most England managers lose their jobs over bad results: Roy Hodgson was sacked after being humiliated by Iceland, Graham Taylor for losing a must-win qualifier against Holland, Kevin Keegan quit after a bitter home defeat to Germany. There have been exceptions, though: Sam Allardyce went for bragging to an undercover reporter how he could do certain favours for a hefty fee, Fabio Capello after a row with the FA over John Terry’s captaincy when accused of racism, Don Revie defected to take UAE oil money.  The episode seems to have foretold an imminent shift in our culture But Glenn Hoddle remains unique among England managers – possibly among any football manager anywhere ever  – for having been sacked over a theological issue. This strange episode unfolded 25 years ago.

If a glittering eight-race card at Cheltenham tomorrow doesn’t whet the appetite for the Festival in less than two months’ time, then nothing will. Plenty of reputations will go on the line at Festival Trials Day and there will be an abundance of clues to which horses might be winning huge prizes between 12 March and 15 March inclusive. Unsurprisingly, there are plenty of Cheltenham regulars in the Paddy Power Cheltenham Countdown Podcast Handicap Chase (Cheltenham 1.15 p.m.) headed by Il Ridoto. Paul Nicholls’s seven-year-old gelding has run no less than six of his seven most recent races at the course, including winning this race last year. However, that was off an official mark of 138 and he will race tomorrow off a mark of 148.

Golf has always felt like the embarrassing uncle of the sporting world, from those garish check slacks and snobby clubhouse rules to the desperate middle-managers sucking up to the boss at the 18th hole. Like many non-golfers I could never understand the appeal. Surely only a masochist would find pleasure whacking tiny balls into tiny holes. For me, real sport involved sweaty blokes dashing round a playing field injuring each other. Golf had neither sweat nor injury unless you count a nasty chill from standing out in the rain all day. Tiger Woods may have briefly sexed-up the game back in the 2000s but it was never really considered cool to be into golf. Or so I thought.

The former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson has terminal cancer, he says he expects to be dead before the year is out. In an age when such grim diagnoses are usually kept private until their morbid predictions have come to pass, it was characteristically candid of the 75-year-old Swede to go public like this, even though doing so inevitably invited a fresh round of media scrutiny of a life that has already been scrutinised intensively over many years.  He treated players as grown-ups, even though they often weren’t Any England football manager gets attention – it comes with the territory.

With tomorrow’s cards at Ascot and Haydock both victims of the cold snap, and Lingfield’s Sunday meeting under threat, it makes sense to look ahead with some ante-post bets, for once on both sides of the Irish Sea. I like to back horses in the Randox Grand National a long way ahead of the race in order to get the best odds It’s not often that I gamble on races in Ireland but I like the look of JETARA at double figure odds in the Nathaniel Lacy & Partners Solicitors Novice Hurdle at the Dublin Racing Festival on 3 February. This race at Leopardstown is highly likely to be dominated by geldings from the Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott yards but it is an improving six-year-old mare trained by Jessica Harrington who could surprise her rivals.

Due to my rather efficacious dabbling in semaglutides last summer, I’m currently on the mailing list of several online pharmacies, and the other day I received an email making me aware of the existence of ‘fit notes’ – ‘formerly known as sick notes’ – following ‘an appropriate online consultation with one of our GPs’. The consultation alone would cost me £14.95 and should I receive validation as an invalid, a ‘fit note’ would then be offered to me for £19.95, so that’s the best part of £35 quid in order to pull a sickie.

Most racehorse trainers are creatures of habit and they love to target races which they have won in previous years. Alan King consistently hopes to win the Wigley Group Classic Handicap with one of his best staying chasers. He has enjoyed regular success in the race, winning it no less than three times, in 2008, 2011 and 2021. It’s only a matter of time before Derham lands a major prize with one of his talented string This year’s contest (Warwick 3 p.m., tomorrow), run over three miles five furlongs, has long been the target for King’s talented chaser, MAJOR DUNDEE, and the Wiltshire-based handler would like his nine-year old gelding to win the race in good style for two main reasons.

At 8 a.m. this morning, my column was done, the ‘i’s were dotted, the ‘t’s crossed. I had even suggested a headline, ‘Three mudlarks for Sandown tomorrow’.  Within half an hour, I would be pressing the send button on my weekly email to my friends at Spectator Life. Sadly, just 20 minutes later, the whole column was redundant. My three fancies that loved heavy ground would not have the chance to lark around in the mud: tomorrow’s Sandown card, the highlight of which was due to be the final of the Unibet Veterans’ Handicap Chase, was abandoned due to waterlogging.