Spectator Life

Cheltenham’s three-day November meeting, starting today, will take place on much faster ground that normal and so anticipate plenty of non-runners if, as expected, there is very little rain over the weekend. This is usually a meeting at which soft-ground horses have their preferred conditions but that’s definitely not the case this time. The big race tomorrow is the Paddy Power Gold Cup (2.20 p.m.), a handicap chase over two miles four furlongs that has attracted a field of 15 runners. I had expected to put up Ga Law who I backed at tasty prices to win this very race two years ago. However, his odds have contracted all week and a current top price of 13-2 seems short for such a competitive race even though he is guaranteed to love this quick surface.

The unusually dry autumn means it makes sense to favour horses with a preference for good ground when it comes to the racing at Wincanton and Aintree tomorrow. Field sizes continue to be smaller than usual because many trainers do not want to risk injuring their charges on quick ground at the start of the season. ALL THE GLORY is a likeable sort who will get her favoured conditions when she makes her seasonal debut in the BetMGM Richard Barber Memorial Mares' Handicap Hurdle at Wincanton (1.45 p.m.). She was impressive when she destroyed a decent 17-runner field at Newbury in March and, although her three subsequent runs were moderate, she may by then have paid the price for her busy season. Tomorrow’s trip of just over 2 miles and 5 furlongs should be perfect for her.

Dashel Drasher is just the sort of jump horse that I love to watch. A front runner who wears his heart on his sleeve, he will tomorrow embark on his eighth competitive season for his astute Somerset handler Jeremy Scott. Aged 11, Dashel Drasher will make his seasonal debut in the Grade 2 bet365 Hurdle – better known as The West Yorkshire Hurdle – at Wetherby (2.22 p.m.), going off at likely odds of around 4-1. However, there are plenty of negatives for the horse tomorrow notably that the ground is good and he prefers a much softer surface. He also has to give 6 lbs or more to all of his six rivals. It’s impossible to rule him out of the contest but I prefer to look elsewhere for the winner.

I would normally stay tipping on the flat for a couple more weeks but this weekend’s Newbury and Doncaster cards make no appeal, gambling wise, while the return of a Saturday jump card at Cheltenham is hugely welcome. On balance, I prefer betting on national hunt racing because it’s easier to get attached to the horses that are racing year after year – and to get to know their preferences, their dislikes and their quirks. I always bet with caution in the early weeks of a new season because it is impossible to know which horses are fit and which are not However, I always bet with caution in the early weeks of a new season because it is impossible to know which horses are fit and which are not, especially when they are making their seasonal debuts.

Foreign-trained horses are often overpriced when they come on raids to Britain, particularly when they are housed with the smaller stables. This may well be the case again tomorrow when I expect horses from the other side of the English Channel to make their mark on Champions Day at Ascot. Several French handlers will be looking for revenge from two weekends ago when the home trainers went down by eight wins to three against their British and Irish counterparts in feature races over ‘Arc weekend’ at Longchamp. The more rain that falls tomorrow, the better for the Jerome Reynier-trained FACTEUR CHEVAL in the Group 1 Qipco Queen Elizabeth II Stakes over a mile (Ascot, 3.15 p.m.).

After a week of rain, the official ground conditions for tomorrow’s cards at Newmarket and Haydock both have ‘heavy’ in the description, with a little more of the wet stuff forecast too. If I have learnt only one thing from my decades as a punter, it is to bet with caution when the ground turns into a quagmire. Yes, of course, it is best to back horses that have won or run well on ground described as ‘heavy’ but it is not as simple as that, or even those with a basic knowledge of the form book would soon be rich. When the ground is really, really soft and the mud is flying, it is often accompanied by a series of unpredictable results.

It’s been all of 49 years since a horse trained in Scotland won the Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup, one of the classiest sprint handicaps of the season. However, I am hoping that trend ends tomorrow and that a horse in the care of genial Jim Goldie lands the winning pot of more than £92,000. Goldie, who trains in Uplawmoor, East Renfrewshire, and who loves to plunder big races in his native Scotland, has two excellent chances of winning the race (Ayr, 3.35 p.m.) that has attracted its usual maximum field of 25 runners. Jordan Electrics is a typical Goldie runner in that he is a veteran, at eight years old, and yet somehow the canny handler has got staggering improvement from the horse. Jordan Electrics started the season in April off a modest official rating of 72.

Only seven runners are due to line up for the final Classic of the flat season, the Group 1 Betfred St Leger. Unsurprisingly, the small field at Doncaster tomorrow (3.40 p.m.) is dominated by runners trained in Ireland by Co Tipperary maestro Aidan O’Brien. I had not expected to bet in the race but the sponsors are paying three places and so I can’t resist an each way dabble Of O’Brien’s three runners, Illinois is top rated and has a favourite’s chance because we know, from his Royal Ascot win in the Group 2 Queen’s Vase in June, that he will stay tomorrow’s trip of more than one mile and six furlongs.

My favourite flat handicap of the season is the Club Godolphin Cesarewitch at Newmarket on 12 October. I have a good betting record in the race but this year the ante-post market is complicated by the fact that the brilliant Irish trainer Willie Mullins has entered no less than ten horses in the race. As always, the Irish runners, particularly those from the Mullins yard, are likely to have a big say in the outcome of this marathon contest which is run over two miles and two furlongs, and which therefore attracts lots of dual-purpose horses with decent hurdling form. The main problem is that Mullins keeps his cards close to his chest on his race plans and some of his best staying handicappers will go for the more valuable Friends of the Curragh Irish Cesarewitch two weekends earlier.

Tamfana is just the sort of short-priced favourite that I love to take on. Yes, of course she might win tomorrow’s Sky Bet Atalanta Stakes (Sandown, 2.25 p.m.). After all, she was fourth in the Qipco 1000 Guineas at Newmarket in May and, with more luck in running, she would probably have won that day. However, her two runs since then have been more moderate and her French handler David Menuisier, who trains in West Sussex, seems unsure what is his three-year-old filly’s best distance. Last time she failed to stay a mile and a half on soft ground at Longchamp and so tomorrow she reverts to the Guineas trip of a mile. All in all, her current odds of around even money are terribly skinny for a horse that has yet to win this season from four starts.

The former England football manager Sven-Goran Eriksson died today. He had terminal cancer and said he expected to be dead before the year was 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 76-year-old Swede, even though doing so 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.

Like most fathers, I occasionally offer words of advice to my children even if they choose not to take them. Over the years, I have often told my two (now grown-up) daughters: ‘judge a person on how he or she accepts bad news’. My thinking is that pretty much anyone can be charming and generous-spirited when they receive good news, but it takes a really strong, admirable character to be equally magnanimous and upbeat when they have to deal with really unwelcome news. Trainer Ed Bethell recently passed this quirky little test of mine in glowing style. He had to inform the press that Mickley, his first and only Royal Ascot winner – incidentally tipped in this column when he won in June – would continue his career in Hong Kong.

The new Premiership season kicked off this weekend and, with all the usual hype, will come novelties. There are the gamely optimistic new arrivals and returnees, no doubt a breakout star or two, some eyebrow-raising new hairstyles (Mo Salah) and some ingeniously tweaked – and therefore ‘must-have’ – revenue-gouging strips. As ever, there will be new rules, including yet further tinkering with VAR. But what interests me, as an English teacher and student of socio-linguistics, will be any novelties in the figurative language which the players, fans and journalists use to describe the game. Over nearly 50 years of watching football, it has been fascinating to hear the football lexicon evolve in ways that can be quite culturally revealing.

The William Hill Great St Wilfrid Handicap at Ripon tomorrow (3.20 p.m.) is always a difficult puzzle for punters to unravel. Run over six furlongs for a first prize of more than £50,000, a field of 19 runners has been declared. With its unusual undulations on the sprint course, Ripon is a specialist track which means that it is an advantage to have strong course and distance form. The trouble is that so many of these experienced sprinters have just that so it does not narrow the field down by that much.  Northern trainers have a superb record in the race too but, once again, they are extremely well represented in the race tomorrow and so this fact is not a huge help either in the search to find the winner.

It’s become a regular occurrence: a friend or a friend-of-a-friend is visiting London, wants to go to a football game and messages asking for help getting tickets. My standard response is: no chance. The most recent of these was from New Zealand-based Spectator contributor David Cohen, whose son will be in London in the autumn. I’d love to be able to help him but know I almost certainly can’t. The sad reality is that I’m struggling to get tickets myself these days, let alone able to assist others. The clubs themselves are too greedy to do anything other than continue to wring as much out of the fans as they can When I first started going to football, to West Ham games in the late eighties, it used to be easy getting in. You just turned up.

As a confirmed critic of modern tattoos, who sounded off in these very pages about the ugly plague of body tats infesting our streets, I might be expected to disapprove of the latest manifestation of the fashion – the habit of many athletes taking part in the Paris Olympics to adorn themselves with the distinctive five interlocking rings of the Games’ logo: what I’m calling the ‘champ stamp’. In fact, the athletes have such beautiful bodies – young, toned and fit – and the rings themselves have such a pleasing symmetry that I can only approve and applaud the discreet addition of the logo to their rippling musculatures.