MUST BE TIME FOR PRAYERS
Punters put their faith in Gordon’s star novice
Mark Howarth, Director of Racing at William Hill IT’S certainly an interesting opening day of the three-day November Meeting at Cheltenham, where every race looks wide open — highlighted by the fact that we haven’t got one shortpriced favourite.
In the opening conditional jockeys’ handicap hurdle (1.10), we’re giving punters plenty of chances as we’re paying six places and there are a whole host in here that have solid claims.
The word is that the in-form David Pipe has a wellhandicapped horse in ASTIGAR and we’ve priced him up accordingly towards the head of the betting.
We wouldn’t be surprised if there was a good amount of support for him in the build-up.
The other who has to be respected is Gavin Cromwell’s SWEET WILL.
He ran very well at Fairyhouse on Tuesday and a seven-pound penalty might not stop him going in again.
Cromwell’s record on these shores speaks for itself, and it’s unlikely he’ll be sending this one over for the sake of it.
In the two-mile handicap chase (1.45), we’re keen to take on THE GLANCING QUEEN. She performs well against her own sex, but off this mark we think she might struggle against a few of these.
Alan King’s mare is the favourite on the day that we’re most keen to lay.
The novices’ handicap chase (2.20) looks very tough to call with the form of the Irish raiders hard to weigh up and the British horses all looking closely matched. We’ve seen support for Chris Gordon’s UNANSWERED PRAYERS and he’s likely to strip much fitter for his run over hurdles at Chepstow.
The Veterans’ Chase (2.55) pits some old favourites against each other and KAUTO RIKO is the one we’re very fearful of. The race looks like it might set up really well for him and the early prices of around 6-1 looked too big.
Brian Hughes brought up his 100th winner of the season this week and he looks to have a very good chance of adding to that here.
There are some interesting types on paper in the Ballymore Novices’ Hurdle (3.30) and the market will be very interesting here. The Irish horses look fairly exposed but, as ever, you can never rule them out, particularly given they are trained by Willie Mullins and Gordon Elliott respectively.
Weveallbeencaught has had the form of his bumper win franked, so he has to have a chance, but we’d probably just side with HERMES ALLEN from the Paul Nicholls yard.
It’s hard to know what he beat at Stratford, but he did it impressively and the market will tell us how strongly he’s fancied.