12.10pm Leicester’s Thursday card falls victim to weather
Tony Paley: The wet weather continues to have an impact on the National Hunt season and the jumps meeting at Leicester on Thursday has been abandoned due to a waterlogged track.
Clerk of the course Jimmy Stevenson had no option but to make an early call as parts of both the chase and hurdles track were found to be unfit for racing at an 8am inspection on Tuesday. There is also more rain, and the possibility of snow and sleet showers, to come.
Stevenson said: “There was a slight improvement overnight, but we’ve still got some false patches of ground - and that’s the big problem.”
Today’s best bets, by Chris Cook
Ludlow today is one of those fixtures that lure you into imagining you might just possibly go through the card if you took particular care and everything fell right and your version of Pinocchio’s blue fairy was watching. How frustrating, then, to find this morning that I’ve landed on a non-runner in the last and so such dreams are dispelled even before they’ve opened the gates.
Going through the card is a ridiculous thing to be aiming at and, if it happened, it probably just means that you picked all the obvious ones on a weak day’s racing. But I am slightly haunted by the idea since the day I got six out of seven at Taunton and missed the other winner on the nod in this photograph.
Can you even identify the loser in that photo? Tsk. Comically unlucky, someone said to me at the time. But, on dusting off the photo this morning, I find that it was almost three years ago, so it might be time to let go and move on...
I probably dished my chances at Ludlow anyway by picking Romeo Is Bleeding (3.30), a drifter in the market, though I still think he’s interesting at 10-1. An ex-Irish horse who had a lot of time off, he’s with the sharp David Rees these days and had a spin around this track in the spring.
On his old form, he’d be quite well treated and today’s deep going gives him a better chance than the good ground he raced on in May. In Ciaran Gethings, he has one of the better conditional jockeys taking part in this contest, which is a weak affair.
Garde La Victoire ought to extend his unbeaten run over fences earlier on the card, though I don’t make him a betting proposition at long odds-on. Take The Mick (2.00) is marginally more like it at 11-10, having finished strongly into second in a similar slog at Bangor last time. There are significant question-marks about his two main rivals in a five-runner field.
Tipping competition, day two
Our winners so far:
Monday
Little Stampy 2-1
Searchlight 10-1
Invectus Hero 100-30
And our leaders are …
Onion_Terror +1.33
Harrytheactor +1.33
Goldkid999 +1.33
stanflashman +1.33
jakesnake1 +1.33
yasmin11 +1.33
Which may possibly be the worst leading score in the whole six-year history of Talking Horses. Clearly, these folk are the ones who tipped Invectus Hero. Ten others are on +0 after somehow digging out Little Stampy. No one looked at Searchlight, though there were tips in his race for horses at twice his odds.
Today, we’d like your tips, please, for these races: 3.10 Lingfield, 3.30 Ludlow, 3.40 Lingfield.
This week’s prize is three pairs of premier enclosure tickets to Ascot a week on Saturday (23 Jan) for Clarence House Chase day, which may feature a clash between Un De Sceaux and Sire De Grugy if we all keep our fingers crossed. Two pairs of tickets for this week’s prize have come from web sports betting community OLBG (here’s a link to their website) and one pair from Ascot themselves. “With a prize fund of £125,000 the race is a vital stepping-stone to the Champion Chase at the Cheltenham Festival,” Ascot’s website explains. You can read more and buy tickets here.
As ever, our champion will be the tipster who returns the best profit to notional level stakes of £1 at starting price on our nominated races, of which there will be three each day up until Friday. Non-runners count as losers. If you have not joined in so far this week, you are welcome to do so today, but you will start on -3.
In the event of a tie at the end of the week, the winner will be the tipster who, from among those tied on the highest score, posted their tips earliest on the final day.
Good luck!
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And post your tips or racing-related comments below.
