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Captain's Blog - 7th April 2011

Indian Jack was a well backed winner for us yesterday at 7/4. Not much of a price I know and he only scrambled home by a short head, but hey what the heck, we will take that and move on. Aintree is the place we are going to and I am delighted that we can bring you the whole of the Grand National Meeting live on this week. The meeting starts today with three shorties who could seal the fate of punters for the entire meeting.

I will keep it simple. I think Big Bucks will win, Denman is a dodgy betting proposition around Aintree and Zarkandar is one of the best juvenile hurdlers I have seen for a while and will win as well. As Meatloaf would say, two out of three ain't bad unless you have done a treble!

My opposition to Denman is based on the fact that the track is a bit sharp for him, he has after all always been a galloper and a strong stayer. Also he is increasingly becoming a horse who is best off a lay off. His run in the Hennessey this year came after a break as did his run in the Gold Cup, now he has only had twenty days to get over his Cheltenham exertions and given that he always brings everything to the party when he races he is a likely bounce candidate this afternoon. This scenario makes the price of 5/4 too short in my book. Of course some people may feel that he can run below par and still win given the standard of opposition, this is a reasonable stance to take but when horses bounce the result is usually catastrophic in form terms and even below par opposition can benefit. If he fails, the question of who will benefit is a tough one to answer. I believe that Punchestowns could be the one, I cannot really put forward a cogent formful reason for thinking this other than he has one big speed figure to his name over fences which if he can repeat will make him dangerous here. Whether he can jump well enough is an entirely different matter. I will not be having a bet, but would not put anyone off opposing Denman. Good luck with this one folks.

Many thanks to all those of you who emailed the show last night and coud I ask you to get involved once again this evening as Dave Nevison and I once again attempt to unlock a few winners at Kempton Park. Last night we again had our fair share of slowly run races and also a couple that were furiously run. I wonder if the jockeys who ride there are beginnig to latch onto the fact that a lot of easy lead horses are winning there and of course if they all work it out at the same time then suddenly they all try to get to the front and we will have races that are run at a pace that is overly aggressive and winners will come from off the pace. Who would be a punter eh!

I suggested to a friend yesterday that one day we should write a book called how to bet at Kempton, he felt that after 500 pages of analysis we would come to the conclusion that it was possibly better not to have a bet at all, thereby rendering the whole book useless! I am sure I have read books like that before! but perhaps I will not be putting this idea to the rottweilers on Dragons Den.

Enough already from yours truly for another day.

Always The Sun!

Today's Selection

3:55 Ripon - Polar Kite (SP)