Crackers
Five-time Naps Table champ Moorestyle’s best bets…
IF EVER there is a cast-iron stayer worth following this season it is GENERAL PRINCIPLE (4.20) and Gordon Elliott’s charge can once again come up trumps in the Grand National Trial Handicap Chase at Punchestown today.
The 2018 Irish Grand National hero has run three times since that success but each time over three miles, which is way too sharp for him.
On each occasion his race reading description reads “one pace” and that is simply because he needs a bottomless test of stamina which he will get over an extended three- and-a-half miles on soft going.
The nap recently finished fifth in the Thyestes Chase, a race in which the well-backed Some Neck fell at the eighth fence, and granted a clear run the grey son of Yeats looks the biggest danger.
RIDERS ONTHE STORM simply found the two-and-a-half miles on soft ground in a Grade One novice chase at Limerick too hot to handle and the drop back to the minimum trip looks made to measure.
But by far the most interesting bet today comes in the three-mile handicap hurdle when LOAD UP TIME (3.20) races over this distance for the first time.
He has been a huge eye-catcher twice this season, coming from a long way back over two miles at Clonmel in January and finishing third over an extra half mile nine days later.
Only 2lbs higher in the weights here, I suspect we will see the real Load Up Time today and he could be absolutely thrown in at the weights now that he gets the test he has really been crying out for.
The opening cross country chase has some familiar old friends in the entry and the evergreen JOSIES ORDERS (1.45) will have his ground conditions once again and should be hard to beat before going to the Cheltenham Festival for the big one.
ANTE-POST
In the hope that racing will be in full swing by then I have placed a juicy ante-post wager on BEWARE THE BEAR the Eider Chase at Newcastle on February 23.
Winner of this lung busting stamina test in December 2017, the nine-year-old only finds himself 6lbs higher in the weights following an impressive success at Cheltenham and is worth an each-way interest at around the 14-1 mark.