Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
Ah, racehorses. Always a new way to cost you money, a new way to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.
On this occasion, I’m thinking of What’s The Scoop and his astonishing attempt to exit stage left on the run-in at Sandown last season. As he loped over the last seconds earlier, some poor mug will have been thinking: “Thank the Lord, I’ve picked my first winner since Victoria’s coronation...”
Barry Geraghty reckoned What’s The Scoop behaved as he did because he was just “a big baby” on his third start. Today, he makes his chasing debut having had only one more run since Sandown. What can go wrong?
Did I mention What’s The Scoop is a half-brother to Harchibald. He’s a half-brother to Harchibald! What can go wrong?
On the whole, I’m inclined to look elsewhere in Newbury’s Fulke Walwyn Trophy. Remiluc (1.05) will do for me at 7-1, even if this is a major step up on the contest in which he hacked up at Fontwell last time.
A Paul Nicholls cast-off, he was turned into quite a useful novice hurdler by Chris Gordon before requiring 18 months off. Whatever ailed him didn’t kill his ability, as he travelled really strongly on his way to winning an alleged handicap hurdle by 12 lengths a fortnight ago.
He gets to run here off the same mark as he makes his chasing debut, which is too good an opportunity for me to pass up. I’ve caught a whiff of favourable reports from this one’s connections, so here’s hoping he copes well with the bigger obstacles.
In a later handicap chase on the card, I’m going with Evan Williams, who is hot, hot, hot after 11 winners in the past fortnight. Two more than that and he’d be Nicholls.
Williams runs Aerlite Supreme (2.45), an ex-Irish horse who didn’t achieve much in his first season in Wales but is ready to kick on, judged by his Wetherby reappearance a fortnight ago. He went three lengths clear on the run-in that day and basically won his race but then chucked it by idling and got run down by Wells De Lune.
In unrelated news, cheekpieces are now fitted. It might be that he’s just a bit fitter this time and I’ll happily take 8-1 against eight rivals, some of whom seem like known quantities.
In the Pertemps qualifier, Behind Time is odds-on to follow up his Cheltenham success but 6-1 makes some appeal about Solomn Grundy (3.20) who chased him home last time. I’m not sure this one quite got home after failing to settle that day, so the hope is that he’ll race more professionally on this second run of the season, with Noel Fehily taking over from a less experienced rider.
