THE BETTING STRATEGY

Year to date: +99.77 points

Sunday 26 December 2021

On Wednesday, Smarty Wild ran a reasonable sort of race but in all honesty never looked like winning and had to settle for 3^rd place. I’m sure there’s a race to be won with him but when and where, is the question.

A fairly busy day for us today, with four selections.

LOSS OF 3.00 pointS

All Selections are settled to Betfair SP

1.00 Wetherby

Twotwothree               2 points win

1.20 Kempton

Danny Kirwan              1 point win     

2.20 Leopardstown

Riviere D’etel               2 points win

15.32 Huntingdon

Poets Corner                 1.5 points ew

Analysis

1.0    Wetherby

Trainer Oliver Greenall Won this race with Twotwothree last year and there is every reason to believe he can do so again. Although the race last season produced a catalogue of disasters, our selection still won by 11 lengths and a recent pipe opener over hurdles at Bangor should have him spot on for this.

1.20 Kempton

It’ hard to find the winner coming out of the first three in the betting here and although I respect both Bothwell Bridge and Mister Coffey my preference is for the Paul Nicholls trained Danny Kirwan. The selection was second on his chase debut at Cheltenham in October and I think he can build on that here. The first, fourth and fifth from that race, all won next time out suggesting that it was a hot contest so with minimum improvement Danny Kirwan can strike here.

2.20 Leopardstown

Ferny Hollow looks like starting favourite here and there’s no doubt he’s a class act  but it’s hard to get away from Riviere D’etal who has hardly put a foot wrong in winning all three chase starts this term. The daughter of Martaline was particularly impressive when destroying Cape Gentleman in a Grade 2 at Punchestown last month and again jumped well from the front when following up in a Grade 3 at Navan. Gordon Elliot’s mare will take some pegging back.

3.32 Huntingdon

We have backed Poet’s Corner on both his previous outings and there’s no way I’m letting him run at a huge price without us doing so again, even though I suspect Neil King may be preparing him for a race over timber, but we shall see. After running a reasonable race on his debut at Southwell I thought he was a bit disappointing last time out at Chepstow. I note as well that his trainer has started entering him for hurdles, but hey ho, sometimes you have to take a little risk.

Statistics

2021

All the figures above are based on Betfair Starting Price.

Regards

Karl