Spectator Life

Kelso’s hurdles course is a specialist track – left-handed, sharp and undulating. Some horses handle it well, others do not. Cracking Rhapsody most definitely falls into the former category because tomorrow he will try to win the bet365 Morebattle Hurdle (2.55 p.m.) for the third year in a row. His form this season is modest but Ewan Whillans looks to have trained him to peak tomorrow and he can race off an official mark of just 4 lbs higher than his winning rating from last year. He has every chance of landing the hat-trick but he is likely to go off at around 5-1 favourite so he is not for me at those odds.

The last two winners of the Virgin Bet Daily Extra Places Eider Handicap will try to win the race for a second time at Newcastle tomorrow (2:43 p.m.). Knockanore, who has showed little since his win twelve months ago, and Anglers Crag, who has switched stables since his win in 2024, both have strong chances of victory if running up to their best form. This marathon contest of nearly 4 miles 2 furlongs is not for the faint of heart although this year Newcastle seems to have missed the worst of the rain as the going is currently 'good to soft'. This race is often run on 'soft' or 'heavy' ground with the runners well strung on by the winning post.

My family skied a lot. We did it home-style, with packed lunches and Mars Bars on the lifts, my brother and me following my expert Milan-raised father down terrifying drops of ice in the twilight. We took our chances on low or no visibility, scraping round mountainous moguls and – my least favourite – careering through the root, stone and tree-stuffed terrain of the arboreal American off-piste. We wore the least trendy gear imaginable: huge foam-rimmed goggles already years old in the Nineties and never any hint of a helmet. Nobody but over-protective, scaredy-cat dorks wore helmets then. This background gave me two things.

There are at least three runners at Haydock tomorrow hoping to win the William Hill Half A Mill Grand National Trial Handicap Chase (3.15 p.m.) because victory would mean they have a much better chance of getting into the Randox Grand National on April 11. I am sweet on the chances of trainer Jamie Snowden’s LA CONQUIERE That’s because the weights for the big Aintree spectacular will be announced this coming week and the handicapper can assess all the runners on their performances up to and including tomorrow. An official rating of around 145 will almost certainly be needed in order to get into the 34-strong field.

With more rain to come, the ground at Newbury tomorrow is going to be really testing for the William Hill Handicap Hurdle (3.20 p.m.). That will make the result more of a lottery because several of the horses at the top of the market would not ideally want it looking like a bog. Those preferring a sounder surface may include my long-term tip for the race, Dance and Glance, put up each way at 20-1. He does have form on soft ground but Newbury 'heavy' is a different kettle of fish altogether. Hot Fuss did this column a good turn, winning at a double-figure price at Windsor three weeks ago and he is capable of defying a 5 lbs penalty tomorrow.

With two of the big races on Cheltenham Trials Day tomorrow attracting four runners, I am looking at the lower-profile contests for my suggested bets. Without each-way betting, I have no desire to take on odds-on shots Grey Dawning in the Grade 2 Betfair Cotswold Chase (2.25 p.m.) or Sir Gino in the Unibet Hurdle (3 p.m.). If Jagwar is as good as connections think he is – the horse’s ultimate aim is the Grade 1 Ryanair Chase at the Cheltenham Festival – then he will need to win tomorrow’s Betfair Exchange Handicap Chase (1.15 p.m.) off an official mark of 149. He’s probably the right favourite on form and expectation but his joint trainers Oliver Greenall and Josh Guerriero have still not peaked with their horses this season and I would prefer to look elsewhere.

There is a short video on the internet in which the late football commentator Hugh Johns reminisces about what the game had in the 1970s that made it great. He starts making a list – ‘skill, entertainment, cut-throat football’ – and then pauses for a disparaging comment about what came after. The disparagement is mild, though; this is a genial, nostalgic soliloquy, not a rant. Then the list, delivered in a soft Welsh accent, restarts: ‘There were characters, there were elegant players, and there was fun.’ Everything you could want, as far as Hugh Johns was concerned. Johns died in 2007, but I can’t imagine there have been any developments in football since then that would have caused him to knock the Seventies off the perch he built for them.

Lambourn trainer Jamie Snowden continues to enjoy a stellar season in which he has landed some big-race prizes. His general statistics are impressive too: 62 winners from just 218 runners for a strike rate of 28 per cent. Snowden has plenty of interesting runners at Ascot and Windsor this weekend and I would be surprised if he did not have a winner or two over the next three days. One of his Ascot runners tomorrow, in the in the BetMGM Holloway’s Handicap Hurdle (2.53 p.m.), is MARCHE D’ALIGRE who looks overpriced even though this is a competitive contest. This five-year-old gelding was backed into favouritism last month for a handicap hurdle at Sandown and, although he was only second that day, his run can be upgraded given he made a terrible hash of the third obstacle.

With the cold snap likely to play havoc with the weekend race cards in Britain, it seems more sensible for me to take an early look at the Cheltenham Festival from an ante-post point of view. It is stating the obvious but the number one rule of ante-post betting is to do all you can to back a horse that is going to run in your chosen race – in this case one of the contests at the Cotswolds racecourse in two months’ time. For me that rules out most of the high-class novice hurdles and novice chasers in which Irish trainer Willie Mullins and other top yards like to shuffle their pack with different horses being allocated to different races of different distances right up to the 48-hour declaration stages. I will look elsewhere for two ante-post bets.

After so much superb racing over the festive period, it is disappointing to see such small fields at Sandown for tomorrow’s main card in Britain. Between five and 11 runners are due to take part in the seven races at the Esher course. The quicker-than-usual ground conditions for the time of year partly account for the small turn-outs. The Unibet Veterans’ Handicap Chase final (3.05 p.m.), over three miles, sees Dorset trainer Anthony Honeyball field one third of the nine runners. One of his horses, Gustavian, has been aimed at this race for some time as has Dan Skelton’s runner Le Milos, despite some indifferent form this season.

The Gloucestershire yard of Ben Pauling has gone from strength to strength in recent seasons and today could see it reach a new high when the trainer sends his stable star to Kempton to compete in the Ladbrokes King George VI Chase (2.30 p.m.). THE JUKEBOX MAN will face seven talented rivals, including two hot-pots from the yard of Irish maestro Willie Mullins, when he runs in the Grade 1 contest over a distance of three miles. The Jukebox Man has plenty to find on official ratings with almost all his rivals but Pauling remains quietly confident that this lightly-raced seven-year-old gelding, owned by former football manager Harry Redknapp, is up to the task. Unusually, Mullins has brought over not one but two of his best staying chasers for this race.

Jockey James Best rode into the history books yesterday when he partnered Britain’s longest-priced winner, courtesy of 300-1 shot Blowers, who landed the first race at Exeter in attritional conditions. The horse was named after retired cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who is nicknamed 'Blowers'. Tomorrow, I am hoping the same jockey can ride arguably his favourite horse to victory at more conventional odds when he partners My Silver Lining in Haydock’s Betfred Tommy Whittle Handicap Chase (2.05 p.m.). This nine-year-old grey mare gave Best, who hopefully would not be offended at being described as a 'journeyman jockey', his career highlight when the pair won the Wigley Group Classic Chase at Warwick in January last year.

Back in the early 1990s, I was a teenage visitor to an array of dilapidated Victorian cow sheds masquerading as third and fourth division football grounds as I supported my team, Wrexham FC, on their travels. There were still many pre-Hillsborough fences in place, some of which (most notably in the away end at Crewe Alexandra’s Gresty Road ground) successfully blocked around 90 per cent of the view of the pitch for visiting fans. The catering usually only extended to ‘botulism in a bap’ burger vans and it was always, always cold. But what I remember most clearly from those far-off days was the voice register of the fans when things went wrong.

Strong course form is always a major plus for horses contesting races at Cheltenham, whether it is at the Festival in March or any other meeting at the track. The trouble when evaluating the merits of the runners in the tomorrow’s big race, The Support the Hunt Family Fund December Gold Cup Handicap Chase, (1.50 p.m.), is that all three horses vying for favouritism have run big races at Cheltenham. So, too, have several of the others in the race so it is difficult to rule out many of the 11 runners. Jagwar, Hoe Joly Smoke and Vincenzo are at the top of the market and of the three the first mentioned has the most potential to become a graded horse. However, the poor form of his yard means I would not want to take odds of 7-2 on Jagwar.