Time constraints have caught up with Chris at the end of a busy week, but he throws a couple of darts at Aintree and Sandown on Saturday.
Forgive the lack of brevity this week, but the clock has rolled on by at an alarming rate this afternoon.
I won’t be getting involved in the feature race on Saturday, the Tingle Creek Chase at Sandown, which has been blighted by withdrawals and is now a very average contest for the grade.
Sprinter Sacre was ruled out a little while ago, tomorrow deemed to be soon after his Cheltenham renaissance, while current Champion Chase favourite Un De Sceaux went by the wayside in the week, trainer Willie Mullins feeling he was “a little flat”.
Simonsig has proved the latest eleventh-hour casualty having being found lame this evening, and I am uninspired by the current shape of the race. Special Tiara might just stretch them all from the front, but Vibrato Valtat looked an improved horse at Exeter and I expect him to win. He won’t be carrying any of my cash at 2/1, though.
However, I will be backing his stable companion Rocky Creek in the Grand Sefton at Aintree.
He was bitterly disappointing in the Grand National this season, but he finished fifth in the 2014 renewal of the great race and he jumped the idiosyncratic fences with aplomb on that occasion.
He races off a mark of 160 tomorrow and has to give plenty of weight away, but he absolutely shredded a decent field of handicappers off 154 at Kempton last season and I don’t think this mark is beyond him.
I suspect he will be well-primed for this as his stamina for extreme tests in the spring is far from assured on the evidence of the last two seasons. Indeed, I think a well-run two miles five on easy ground could well be close to his optimum and given he made a pleasing comeback at Down Royal and plenty of Nicholls’ horses have needed their first run, the 6/1 on offer is appealing.
I can’t find an angle into the Becher Chase earlier on the card and will simply enjoy the spectacle, but over at Sandown Godsmejudge is worth a small each-way play in the closing London National.
He’s gone to pot in the last 18 months and might simply be a shadow of his former self, but I thought he shaped a bit better than the bare result on his comeback at Cheltenham, which was his first start for David Dennis.
The nine-year-old finished second in a Scottish National and third in the Bet365 Gold Cup off a 10lb higher mark in the spring of 2014. He doesn't mind it here and his best form has come on decent ground, so he might just outrun his current price of 20/1.
Have a good one!
Chris.