Bet Of The Day

Was Broxbourne previously mentioned at the cunting Shergar Cup on sufferance? Won today, but more importantly...

Declaration of War wins the Juddmonte and for some fucking reason everyone is surprised. Yeah, I wasn't, that's why I took the 10s. Farhh would be such a fucking weapon this season were he fit...

Whozthecat could have had me on a cruise ship somewhere but finished down the field, no excuses (dropped his whip but that means fuck all, no matter who notes it)

Cheviot is well drawn in the Beverley Bullet (2.30) today. Has a bit to find at the weights but I'd not put anyone off at 25s or so for EW money - you can give anything away except ground.

Two regulars today have their best chance of the season of dropping together

Es Que Love 255 Ches
Star Lahib 330 Ches

Usual singles and quarter stakes double. Both are a money back EW price.

Wouldn't put anyone off New Fforest in the first either. Plum draw, goes with the pace and that's worth 3 lengths over 5f at Chester.

New Fforest gets stuck behind everything and runs on to be second. Pointless having the draw onside if you're going to spunk it away with a pisspoor start

Fuck me, Cheviot gets out and then holds the fucking door open for everyone to go past. You have speed to burn, what the fuck are you doing? Es Que Love is the fucking Peter Elliott of flat racing.

 

Have been a bit quiet lately in that I haven't been playing rather than have been getting quietly slaughtered.

Let's see how we go today...

Remember my citing Cheviot's win at Haydock in a sharp time?  Well forget Cheviot, it doesn't run but the race it won in 2012 is today and I can remember Sierra Vista winning it in the same way as Cheviot.

On that premise, my first selection in a race where you can get out and try and make all is Rocky Ground 2.05 Hay.  Back a furlong from its reappearance where it made a lot of running on the "wrong" bit of the track, today could and should pan out different.

Second selection on a similar premise isn't difficult to find.  Lethal Force 3.50 Hay is potentially the best sprinter in Europe and will have to be caught to lose.  I'll take 3/1 it isn't.

Nanton is a fucking old goat who is massively infuriating in that if he were a person, he'd be the bloke who turns up at the flicks twenty minutes after it starts and makes everyone stand up to let him get to the seat, and when he's a seat a way from sitting down, his phone goes and then he has to leave, the way he came, and in this melee you've missed the bit where Jenny Agutter gets them out.

Anyway, Nanton.  Hold up performer, useful over anything from 1m 1f to 2m 2f and spectacular in all spheres because no matter what the distance, his run is almost always one to three seconds too fucking late.  I maintain, however, that within those distance extremes, he does have a best trip (i.e. where he is least likely to fuck it up).  It's 1m 6f.  I think the 3.15 Haydock is ideal although with the standard rejoinder that the horse is as game as a pebble but the jockey instructions must be like the Principia Mathematica.  So Nanton 3.15 Hay

Loving Spirit is a standing dish on these pages and runs in the London Series Final at Kempton today despite there being a decent option at his preferred Ascot.  Can't desert (dish, desert, see what I did there?  Fuck off then...) him now, live runner anyway, discount the fucking awful ride he got at Goodwood last up which was a better run than it reads.

Democretes 1.55 Asc is another where if you discount the last run, his chances look a lot better.  Saw it, willing to do that, has a jockey on board today instead of a 7lb claimer.  Previous form stands up to scrutiny IMO.

Elhaame is one of two in the race that look a potential blot on the handicap.  I think Filthy's is less considered so but I think that might be an error in consideration.

The six, for interest, are
Rocky Ground 2.05 Hay NR
Lethal Force 3.50 Hay Unpl - poor show
Nanton 3.15 Hay Tailed off last - too much use made of him
Loving Spirit 2.55 Kemp 3rd
Democretes 1.55 Asc Never put in the race
Elhaame 3.30 Asc 2nd

Make up your own bet(s).  The two for singles and e/w double usually up for me are Rocky Ground and, amazingly, Nanton

There is little that pisses me off more than putting a bet on within a half hour of the start of racing only to find it a non-runner subsequent to that.

Aljamaaheer fits that bill today. 6/1 and only beaten this season by some stellar sorts (Declaration of War and Farhh for two) it was in a fucking egg and spoon race by comparison today. Pulled out afterwards, the fucking cunts.

Global Village 6.05 Dnc on ability and ground should fucking piss up today. I will however merely accept a win and place.

Global Village just lost by I reckon around half a furlong. Unreal

Aside from being on Educate for the Cambridgeshire, I'm giving a last tilt at Cheviot. Ran well and quickly for a long way at Ayr, back to a flying five at Haydock today on quicker ground.

Cheviot 3.30 Hay
Educate 3.50 Nmk

E/w singles, quarter stake double. Find wherever is doing the best for the Cambs as well (anything up to six places)

Fuck me, Cheviot is beaten out of the blocks by Demora, comes across half the track, finds trouble in running and finishes out of the places because of it, and unlucky-looking 8th or 9th.

Demora leads from pillar to fucking post. You really couldn't make it up.

Yowza yowza yowza  

Could be a handy bet on the "Autumn Treble" thread

Soul 315 Asc
Loving Spirit 350 Asc

Around 6s and 10s, usual stipulations, expecting big runs today, feeling sanguine

NotBert wrote:

NotBert wrote:Farhh 350 Nby The Lockinge was one of the farmed wins of wonderhorse Frankel last season.  Farhh, like Excelebration, was one of the horses that frequently got to see Frankel's arse while picking up runners up money (at Goodwood and York),  He was beaten in 5 G1s by 1. So You Think (top class) and Carlton House (decent but excuses in running) 2. Nathaniel (top class) 3. & 4. Frankel (outstanding) and 5. Moonlight Cloud (top class over sprints distances, over 7f when Farhh is essentially a 10f horse).  The Lockinge is over a mile.  Although I think Farhh is better over further, if they run this race 5 times he wins at least 2, IMO, so 4/1 is massive.

Fucking skated up - one to keep onside, possible champion in its division this year although IMO it didn't beat much, it did twat them.

The rest sucked big dicks

Farhh won the Champion Stakes yesterday after an injury layoff. Declaration of War, which it twatted at Newbury and has won and won big twice since (noted on these pages), is in with a squeak at the Breeder's Cup.

I don't say this lightly but maintain that Farhh is, IMO, Europe's top horse over 10f, possibly the best in the world. Not bad for a former Thirsk handicapper

NotBert wrote:Was Broxbourne previously mentioned at the cunting Shergar Cup on sufferance?  Won today, but more importantly...

Declaration of War wins the Juddmonte and for some fucking reason everyone is surprised.  Yeah, I wasn't, that's why I took the 10s.  Farhh would be such a fucking weapon this season were he fit...

Whozthecat could have had me on a cruise ship somewhere but finished down the field, no excuses (dropped his whip but that means fuck all, no matter who notes it)

This. Farhh was on the sick list when I typed this.

Declaration of War has just missed out winning the Breeder's Cup Classic, the $5m biggest race in the American calendar, by a neck.

Farrh is now retired but what a fucking horse he was and he would have been if sound. A world beater

Had a lesser fancy for Levitate today which has just won, having won the Lincoln in March over course and distance with cut in the ground.  Consequently, my two for today have a chance for a bumper payout in fancy multiples.

Jack Dexter 2.25 Dnc
Conduct 3.35 Dnc

Group horse in listed race, found its mojo again, and a lightly raced horse by Selkirk which I predict will not be in the slightest bit inconvenienced by the cut as his dad was a hero and even more so with juice in the ground (which seems to pass on to his progeny).

Usual single and quarter stakes EW double

And that's how you sign off the season.

Jack Dexter 10/3, took 4s
Conduct 8s, took 8s.

Levitate, took 8s won 6s as well. I've had a fucking handsome day. If Grandad's Horse had been handier at Sandown, I'd be seriously minted for what was a throwaway EW Lucky 15 as well.

 

All three of them could be called a long way out as well, Tone. It's a great feeling to watch the last of the three in particular swinging on the bit with three quarters of a mile to go and think "I'm pretty fucking confident I'm on the winner here".

I'll miss the flat now. I always do.

I wish I had a pound for every time in years past that I've watched my jockey tucked in with a double handful two out only to see the cunt hitting it with a cricket bat and getting no response in the final few hundred yards.

Nobby Cheese wrote:I wish I had a pound for every time in years past that I've watched my jockey tucked in with a double handful two out only to see the cunt hitting it with a cricket bat and getting no response in the final few hundred yards.

Watch the finish here, Tone, 8:35 onwards - Mr Frisk's National



Durham Edition was lobbing in comparison to the still-travelling well Mr Frisk.  Chris Grant goes for his whip at and around the last, Marcus Armytage doesn't.  He slaps him twice after The Elbow and then as I recall him saying at the time 'gathered him back together and rode him out hands and heels' and letting him focus on galloping while balanced.  He actually starts to go away again at that point.

There's a lot to be said for not twatting a horse that's travelling well but may be at his last reserves of energy.  The three yesterday weren't travelling well for the jockey, they were travelling well within themselves and far, far better than anything else in the field and were like horny dogs on leashes approaching a bitch pheromone factory.  My bigger concern was them not getting a run (which was looking a possible with Jack Dexter) until too late, and that's my biggest fucking bugbear.  You don't buy a raffle ticket to throw away before the draw.

A classic National.
Can't believe it was over 23 years ago!!
 

Run in record time as well (beating Red Rum's record 9.01 by nearly 14 seconds), and unlikely to ever be beaten given the propensity to water now.

The same forecast came up two weeks later at the Whitbread as well over a mile shorter.

You can see the dust gathering on this thread. Fucking fat hedgehoppers until March...

There's sentiment as well as other reasoning behind this.

You saw my antepost for the National go up in smoke last year with injury.  Perversely, that might do me a favour tomorrow as the National winner is invariably weighted to the hilt afterwards.  I am a great believer in "big race" horses, in that some horses simply perform consistently better in the tougher spheres.  You've seen me tout Prince Of Johanne on the flat in the big event because he's a shade better than average and in the white hot big money shows, he performs better than the in and outers.

Well, a former in-an-outer come good in his twilight years leads the field tomorrow.  Tidal Bay is of course a Whitbread winner, Hennessy runner-up behind a Gold Cup winner he gave weight to, Lexus winner, basically a big event horse.  A bit of a goat but at the same time, if any horse can defy 11st 12lb on a heavy Chepstow over 3m5f, it's him.  Because he's a goat who'd say "yeah, just fucking watch me".

He could of course choose not to run a step.  I think Nicholls has somehow shaken that out of him, though.  He's now 12, it'd be a fitting story and I think he could still get to Aintree at 13 and put up a show.

But I have another personal element.  On 28 December 2012, he won the Lexus in Ireland.  I was too ill to get out and do anything about it until it was too late and I only got up in the end that day because it was my old man's birthday, he was in hospital having gone in on Christmas night and I couldn't not see him.  We both cursed our luck at missing it and it furthered our resolve that he was our National horse after the Hennessy.  Sadly, he took a turn for the worse the next night.  He passed away two nights later, the 30th.

This has been the first Christmas without him and he'd have been eighty tomorrow, the 28th.  And trust me, he'd be on him.  I fancy I'll have a bit of a crack tomorrow and like to think he'll be looking in, biting his nails to the quick.  He was a good bloke, my old man.  If there is an afterlife, he'll have put in a bid for this...