Spectator Life

You don’t need to be a genius to know that if you are training for HM The King and HM The Queen, then it would be a shrewd career move to land a Royal Ascot winner for them later this month. This is, of course, the first time that the King and Queen will be having runners at the famous meeting under their new titles. Their trainers know that if they can engineer a winner for the royal duo at Ascot’s five-day event, it will generate hugely positive headlines all over the news and sports pages. I think the King and Queen have at least two first-rate chances of a winner at the meeting and I am backing one of those horses now ante-post and keeping a watching brief on the other one. The one to back is SAGA, who has to be one of the unluckiest horses in training.

It is usually the Grand National at Aintree that throws up a delightful human interest story for the media to relish. Think Devon Loch throwing away the race when poised to win for the Queen Mother in 1956, Foinavon’s 100-1 victory in 1967, Red Rum winning his third National in 1977 and former crock Aldaniti and cancer-suffering jockey Bob Champion’s triumph in 1981. I could go on and on…but I won’t. Tomorrow I am hoping that it is the turn of the Betfred Derby (Epsom 1.30 p.m.) to produce a story to tug at the heartstrings when two horses, which I believe represent the best bets in the race, would each lead to a first-rate news story if they won.

It’s unnerving being surrounded by a crowd in the woods. You can hear people but only glimpse their limbs or faces through the leaves. It triggers something primordial, similar to the feeling of being watched. Ideally, someone with a big strimmer would have given Cooper’s Hill a good going over before the cheese rolling. But cheese rollers don’t concern themselves with ideals.  My friends were shocked by the brutal pitch of the hill. Could someone really hurl themselves down that? On the last Monday of May, and for reasons lost to time, a wheel of Double Gloucester is thrown down the hill and a group of runners throw themselves after it. The first to reach the bottom gets the cheese.

James Tate is an accomplished young trainer who has won several top races in his time but landing a Group 1 contest is still missing from his CV. That will undoubtedly change at some point and the horse currently in his care most likely to achieve it for him is ROYAL ACCLAIM. Aged four, this likeable filly has only had five races in her career, which means there is still plenty of scope for improvement – particularly as the Newmarket handler has been patient with her to date. Tomorrow (Haydock 3.30 p.m.) Royal Acclaim will line up for the competitive Group 2 Betfred Temple Stakes. I am usually loath to tip horses which have not run this season but I will make an exception for this filly.

All-weather racing is usually not for me: it too often serves up poor quality fare featuring either horses past their prime or horses who are simply never going to have a prime worth mentioning. However, the one all-weather race that I do study in depth each year is the Jenningsbet Northumberland Plate and that is because, with prize money of more than £80,000 for the winner, it attracts entries from some of the best staying handicappers. As a result of scrutinising the entries that came out this week, I am having my first antepost bet of the flat season on a horse I am convinced is overpriced in in the race.

Lambourn trainer Dominic Ffrench Davis has started the Flat season in fine form with nine winners from just 37 runners for a winning per cent to races of 24 per cent. This year he has undoubtedly benefitted from an influx of more than 20 horses from high-spending owners, Amo Racing, but he is a trainer I have always liked because he gets the best out of his horses. I hope he lands his biggest pot of the season to date later today when he runs CALL MY BLUFF in the Tote Chester Cup (3.15pm). This six-year-old gelding has been with Ffrench Davis since he was a two-year-old winning four of his 14 races on turf and creeping up the ratings as a result. Last season Call My Bluff ran some good races but without winning any of his six contests.

Master trainer Aidan O’Brien provides a quandary for punters by sending over two very different horses from Ireland to contest tomorrow’s Qipco 2000 Guineas Stakes. Little Big Bear is officially the highest rated horse in the race (Newmarket 4.40 p.m.) after four impressive wins last season but he has never raced over further than six and a half furlongs. He may well not stay the one-mile distance of tomorrow’s contest over Newmarket’s demanding straight course. Auguste Rodin, on the other hand, is already tried and tested over a mile with two of his three wins last season coming over that trip, one on soft ground and the other on heavy. However, all the signs are that he will be better suited by a longer trip and he is already being talked about as the stable’s likely No.

The bet365 Gold Cup, that’s the former Whitbread Gold Cup, remains one of my favourite big race handicaps of the jumps season and I am pleased to say that I have a good tipping record in the race. A quick, slick jumper who stays well is required as the fences come thick and fast on this right-handed track with an uphill finish. I have already put up one horse in the race and that is Annsam each way at 16-1. I think Evan Williams’ talented gelding will be perfectly suited to this track given his tendency to jump right at several fences and I will be very disappointed if he does not run a big race. The 16-1 has long gone but the 10-1, six places, is still more than fair. There is no doubt that Kitty’s Light is the best handicapped horse in the race (Sandown, tomorrow 2.

Scottish trainer Lucinda Russell has her string in such fine form that she might win a race at Ayr this weekend if she entered the stable cat. From her five runners at Aintree last weekend, she ended up with two wins, two seconds and a sixth – quite an achievement. Pride of place went, of course, to Corach Rambler who landed the Randox Grand National. No tipster rightly gets many plaudits for putting up the favourite in a big race but I am pleased to say that loyal Spectator Life readers were put on him before Christmas – three and a half months before the race – at 20-1.

My late father, who was the kindest man I have ever encountered, introduced me to horse racing when I was a small boy. Although he died all of 33 years ago, I still remember his advice to me when betting on the world’s most famous horse race: ‘The best form for the Grand National is… the Grand National.’ He was convinced that very few horses were capable of both jumping the unique Aintree brush fences and truly staying the marathon trip, which is now 4 miles 2 and a half furlongs. So he concentrated his bets on horses that had done well in the race the year before. A few trainers seem to share my father’s thinking because the first three home a year ago all return once again tomorrow (5.15 p.m.

Fans of long-form sport, rejoice. April is here, and it is our month. Not only does it see the first four-day matches of the county cricket season, it’s also when snooker stages its world championship. Long-form sport is always the best. A four-day cricket match (five for Tests) has way more scope for drama than a T20. And the snooker at the Crucible Theatre in Sheffield, where even the shortest match is the best of 19 frames, gives space for the twists and turns that characterise true sporting excitement. Both games have sought to recruit new fans in recent years by offering shortened versions. Cricket has gone from 50-over games to 20 and now ten (with the 100-ball version in there as well).

The new flat season and the Pertemps Network Lincoln at Doncaster (tomorrow 3.35 p.m.) will dominate the racing pages this weekend, and rightly so. The bookmakers have the correct horses at the head of the market for the Lincoln: two improving four-year-olds, Al Mubhir and Awaal, but both at cramped odds. I largely stay clear of betting on the flat for the first month of the season because it is hard to know which horses are fit and which are not after their winter break. If I was forced to have a bet, it would be an each-way play, many places, on Charlie Fellowes’s Atrium, another four-year-old improver who has won his last two races and will love the soft ground. A course and distance winner, Atrium is priced at around 12-1 which looks fair.

One of the keys to successful ante-post betting it to choose horses whose trainers are skilled at targeting big races. If you lead a horse to the well too many times, the well will eventually run dry. The trainers who pick up the biggest prizes season after season know that they can only get any one horse to peak form for two, perhaps three, big races in any given calendar year. It is for this reason that I have huge admiration for the talents of two men who share a trainer’s licence for the first time this season. That respect is not simply built on the fact that last week Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero provided me with a winning tip at the Cheltenham Festival: Iroko put up at 9-1 to win the last race on the final day.

If it feels like this column is appearing far more regularly than usual, that’s because it is. Normally a Friday-only offering, there have been four daily previews for the Cheltenham Festival and now this one to make it five columns in as many days. It’s been tough going finding winners this week but we got there in the end (Iroko tipped at 9-1 in the 5.30pm today). Today we return to a more standard weekend fare, and I have a strong fancy for the big race of the weekend. I put up two horses last week for the Boulton Group Midlands Grand National at Uttoxeter (3pm) last weekend and they have both been declared and are now trading much shorter than seven days ago.

Boodles Cheltenham Gold Cup day is almost upon us and the rain-softened ground means the distance of 3 miles 2 furlongs plus will not be for the faint of heart or for those horses whose stamina is in doubt. In the Grade 1 feature race tomorrow (3.30pm), the favourite Galopin Des Champs oozes class but he is not guaranteed to stay the trip, especially in these conditions. In contrast, both Noble Yeats, last year’s Grand National winner, and Stattler, last year’s winner of the National Hunt Challenge Cup, will relish a stamina test but may not have the class required to win this championship contest. I put up two horses for the race all of two months ago.

The rain continues to fall at Cheltenham and so it is vital to look for horses that like soft ground on day three of the Festival tomorrow. Equine talent that needs the ground similar to the terrain of the M25 to show their best form might as well stay in their stables. One horse that could not have it wet enough is DASHEL DRASHER in the Grade 1 Paddy Power Stayers’ Hurdle (3.30pm). At first glance, his chances look easy to dismiss: he is ten years old and from an unfashionable Somerset yard with a little-known jockey taking on the biggest stables in Britain and Ireland. However, if Dashel Drasher, trained by the capable Jeremy Scott and ridden by the improving Rex Dingle, can get into a nice rhythm at the front of the field, he could definitely outrun his odds.