Victoria is the go-to gal
Ian Harrison applauds the Pendleton pluck
May is here….yippee. I’ve been waiting six dreary months for this moment. It rained from October to April. Solid…every day and you just don’t bet when the going is heavy. You must admire the groundsmen who kept the courses fit to race on over this period. So I have been relying on the All Weather which isn’t my favourite surface but I came through with a profit.
Racing has suffered severely in the media and is rarely mentioned now.Victoria Pendleton has sparked a small revival of interest and we need more like her to make that interest grow.Maybe ITV will reinvent the scene and make it take off again.
Just maybe they will include a Big Mac character.They need to put a‘character’in there.Somebody outrageous.Tracy Emin, the artist, once asked a tutor at art school how she could succeed in the world of art. ‘Do something outrageous,’ he said.Well, she did that didn’t she? Piles of bricks got the headlines too. You can see why Big Mac got the headlines and ITV should consider this point. We need to bring some fun back to racing.
The Cheltenham Festival gave the bookmakers a bloody nose but I didn’t have a bet there. I wish I had but sadly horses die there and as a retired eventer who owned and rode his own horses I won’t touch it. Six dead this year followed by four more at Aintree. The races are so competitive that the horses get tired and are overfaced. Forced to take jumps that they can’t get over.
May sees me launching a new method. The TIARA method served me well a number of years ago. The original TIARA was meant for non handicaps only but the non handicaps have gone thanks to the bookies reps on the BHA.Where have all those Plate races gone. I suppose the Platers that we used to follow are now all on the AllWeather.The original TIARA was a money spinner but you had to be patient. A strike rate of 75% and an average price of 7/4.You sure weren’t going to get rich quick but it gave solid results.I had to stop it when the non handicaps went for a walk.
I have now given the TIARA a tweak and have got it working very well in handicaps and the far higher prices mean that the handicap TIARA is showing far better profits than the non handicap version.See the advert.
I end this article by wishing Victoria Pendleton well and hoping that you find dozens of winners this year.That would hit the headlines. A second Tony McCoy? Now that would be a very good target to aim for. You’ve got the necessary stickability. Go for it gal.
Ian Harrison has managed Goldcrest since 1985. His booklet ‘Advice to Backers’ is available free by e mail or send a large sae. He has written two methods.The Race Reading Method which has had very good feedback and the newly launchedTIARA method.