Tuesday’s best bets, by Chris Cook
ITV Racing is hoping to benefit from sports-hungry viewers next month when the first blank day of the World Cup comes around on Friday 29 June. ITV4 is to screen that evening’s racing from Newcastle, when the track stages a useful card on the eve of the Northumberland Plate, and ITV staff hope for another success to follow its coverage of Brigadier Gerard night at Sandown last month.
From a racing fan’s perspective, it’s interesting and encouraging to see a broadcaster trying something new with the sport, rather than relying purely on the tried and tested regime of Saturday afternoons. (Full disclosure: I did a very little bit of work for ITV Racing last year.)
The hope, I gather, is that this new evening’s coverage will get a mention or two on ITV the previous night, when that channel is screening England’s last group game against Belgium.
“ITV4 are thrilled with the racing and the coverage it’s given them,” Paul Cooper, ITV’s deputy racing editor told me. “They very kindly supported us when we wanted to do Sandown. That went well, so we wanted to try a Friday night and this Newcastle card was the strongest one on a Friday evening in the near future.
“We’re at Newcastle anyway for the Plate the next day, so it made perfect sense. I know from my previous job [as a producer with At The Races] that Friday night racing has a place on television and of course it’s the first dark day of the World Cup.”
Newcastle’s card that night includes a Group Three race for fillies which was won by Covert Love on her way to landing the Irish Oaks a couple of years ago. The big betting race is the Gosforth Park Cup, a class two sprint handicap won last year by Line Of Reason.
Cooper made a point of thanking Newcastle for being prepared to bring forward their race-times on Plate day, Saturday 30 June, so the racing can be screened on the main ITV channel before kick-off for the first World Cup knockout game that afternoon. This year’s Plate will be run at 2.05pm, 85 minutes earlier than last year. If it turns out that ITV also has the rights to that first knockout game, then the racing can hope for a good audience as the warm-up act.
As it happens, today’s nap is also at Newcastle. You can get 3-1 about Weather Front (7.15), who goes well here and won over this course and distance in March, having been pipped on his previous visit.
He ran respectably on turf last time, when the mile and a half might have been a bit far, and can be winning again back on the Tapeta. He comes from the bang-in-form Karen McLintock yard that has had five winners since the start of May from 17 runners.
The rest of today’s action is over jumps. As Fergal O’Brien has noted on Twitter, three jumps cards in one day is better than we managed for most of the winter...
At Bangor, there appears plenty of interest in Twojayslad (4.00), down to 9-2 from an opening 7-1. From the excellent Ian Williams yard, which has been winning under both codes lately, this one has come down 10lb for just four runs over the past year and now gets all the aids, a first-time tongue tie and the return of cheekpieces which were also on for the best of his runs in the past 18 months.
Bangor 2.00 Potterman 2.30 Fair Mountain
3.00 Captiva Island 3.30 Craigmor
4.00 Twojayslad 4.30 Hello Fellas
Fontwell 2.15 Westerbee 2.45 Our Three Sons 3.15 Peculiar Places 3.45 Innocent Girl
4.15 Mogestic 4.45 Chantara Rose 5.15 Little Jack
Southwell 6.05 Sizing Scorpion 6.35 Desertmore View 7.05 Haul Away 7.35 Weightfordave (nb) 8.05 Kentford Heiress 8.35 Symphony Of Angels 9.05 Sunrise Ruby
Newcastle 6.15 Red Hut Red 6.45 Ravenswood 7.15 Weather Front (nap) 7.45 Stoney Broke
8.15 Pouvoir Magique 8.45 Windforpower
Tips by Chris Cook.
