NAP! NAP! NAP! NAP! NOW IT’S FOUR: Daqman looked for another Oscar-winning performance from trainer Colin Tizzard yesterday and was rewarded with an 11-10 winning nap in the Tolworth Hurdle at Sandown, giving him four best bets out of five (122 points to 20-point stakes in the five days):
WON 6-4 Mixboy (Tuesday nap)
WON 9-4 Keeper Hill (Wednesday nap)
WON 9-4 Happy Diva (Friday nap)
WON 11-10 Finian’s Oscar (Saturday nap)
CHELTENHAM COUNTDOWN CONTINUES: Winners, chat, stats and facts are all in the Daqman column. TODAY: Daqman takes a tangental look at the new ITV racing coverage. TOMORROW: Another ratings view of a big race at Cheltenham.
NO OSCARS YET FOR ITV RACING
On the oche! I decided to channel hop terrestrial TV on Saturday lunchtime before my first look at the ITV Racing coverage. What to choose? The Lakeside darts or Judge Rinder: both about well-aimed barbs.
Football Focus droned through the same old story of the week: would the new manager make any difference to Hull City? The question was hardly relevant, since the club doesn’t have the money to buy players. It all gets spent on managers!
Amid all the trying to build up an FA Cup build-up, cheeky chappy Mark Lawrenson was good value in the space of only a few minutes. If he doesn’t hit the bull’s eye, he’s nearly always in the 25.
Why, thought I, as the racing finally dragged itself into the day, hadn’t Channel-4 realised that drollery and chummy-chumming has to be with some barbed wit and quick thinking, at least with an appearance of spontaneity; not tired old, same old, grinning old, scripted old…
Mark delivers deadpan or with a wicked smile. I’m not saying Luke Harvey didn’t try. And I know him as laugh a minute in the good old bad old days, second only to the ace wits and wags of that time, Steve Smith-Eccles (Ecky) and Graham Bradley (Ecky Thump). What a team they would make!
Maybe the Ch4/ITV ethic is to work with the slowest to build confidence. That (quote unquote L Harvey) was the training programme at Capt Tim Forster’s where he was senior work rider.
But it was Reg Akehurst (‘he had a string of Flat horses so would gallop his jumpers hard’) who gave cool-hands Luke his big break on Cool Ground.
Cool Ground’s faster Flat work companions would make him seem slow but it also made him the fittest horse around. He improved 33lb between his Welsh Grand National off 10st for Reg and Luke in 1990 and taking the Gold Cup for the late Toby Balding (1992).
Cool Ground had won the Kim Muir (1989) for County Clare trainer John Brassil, the Peter Cazalet at Sandown twice for Richard Mitchell and the Royal Artillery Gold Cup there aged 13 for David Elsworth. Some slow horse!
My team for ITV, if I can’t have Ecky and Bradders? Would that I could have Tobes and Elzie debating the form. Two trainers were never so different, never so entertaining, one by what he said and one by what he didn’t say.
Colin Tizzard reminded me of an Elzie riposte when Ed Chamberlin confronted him yesterday with a coy ‘isn’t it your birthday today?’
‘It’s in the paper,’ said Colin, with a hunch, then a shrug of his shoulders: ‘I’m 61. So I’ve got this far.’
I was hoping Ed would ask: ‘What’s the secret of your success?’ To which he might have replied in all truth ‘sheer hard work,’ but could well have used Elzie’s response when asked the same question many moons ago: ‘That’s what it is.. A secret!’ Next question.
The old ‘down in Dorset’ cliché came popping out, pointing up Tizzard as not your Berkshire or Cotswolds Etonian but a countryman, a farmer and a little bit waggish, as on the Sporting Life website the other day: Tizzard is from ‘deepest Dorset.’
Alliteration’s artful art is often blind to the truth. In fact, Milborne Port is in deepest Somerset, right on the Dorset border, which makes it high up in Dorset not deep down. In fact, David Elsworth’s old Whitcombe yard was more appropriately dubbed ‘in deepest Dorset.’
The distance as the crow flies from Milborne Port to Wincanton is seven miles, and from Wincanton to Paul Nicholls’ Ditcheat stables nine miles. The distance between Finian’s Oscar (Tizzard) and Capitaine (Nicholls) five lengths.
Now we’ve got the facts right, what about ITV racing? Well, I didn’t miss the formbabble from the chocolate man, nor he whose eyes might pop out (or nap shut) at any given moment. I missed only Nick Luck’s confident grasp of the scene.
Back to Tizzard, who smartly corrected Big Ed before the Finian’s Oscar Tolworth: ‘Just because he’s won a Point, doesn’t mean he’s a stayer.’ To which, in hindsight, we can now jest: ‘So he won’t be running in the Neptune, then, Colin?’
COME RUNNING HOME, KATIE!
1.20 and 1.50 Naas Sundays usually belong to Irish horses belonging to Willie Mullins. Both these two Grade-1 novices went his way last year.
Willie admits to giving tough assignments to American Tom (1.20) in the hurdle) and Augusta Kate (1.50) in the chase..
He seems most excited about Kate – ‘we think she’s open to a lot of improvement’ – getting the mare’s allowance, but a tasty 4.6 up against three-from-three Death Duty for Gordon Elliott and Gigginstown, already at short odds for the Albert Bartlett.
American Tom (1.20) is odds on for the chase, which may well be justified but, with winnings naps stacked up this week, I’m ready to take a chance if Willie is, and attack with Augusta Kate. The daughter of Yeats has at least seven lengths start on Death Duty at the weights.
8.2 ALBERT IS READY TO STRIKE
It’s heavy, man! Hurdles missed out; rails moved. But at least we’re racing in England, with a warning on the packet that, as yesterday, anything can happen in the mud.
2.30 Chepstow The first four races are lowly novice events, and should be marked: danger to your wallet, though at least this novice chase has plenty of career history to check out ability on the ground.
There’s only a neck between Albert d’Olivate (8.2 offers) and Ballyrock (drifter to 15.5) on their one-two over CD on heavy last Spring but Albert’s Robert Walford stable, which had a winner on ITV at Wincanton yesterday, is two out of three and Albert is surely an improver, aged only six, and with two runs under his belt.
Morning favourite in the BETDAQ orange, Krakatoa King, has won once (over hurdles) in 33 months’ racing. Bugsie Malone and Allchilledout both struggled on their chasing debut.
2.40 Fontwell This is a class 3, so we should be able to locate one or two decent animals here, though two of those immediately behind Caid Du Lin in the BETDAQ market this morning – Burrows Park and Walt – are maidens,.
Caid Du Lin has been kept to goodish ground in France which makes it even more difficult to know how he’ll go today, first run for Dr Richard Newland, with Richard Johnson booked.
Two are aged 11 (and we suppose there is no Pete The Feat lurking here) and horses without a win over here makes me inclined towards Royal Plaza.
Had Royal Plaza not unseated at odds on (out again too quickly at Wetherby after scoring easily at Warwick in November), he would be pretty short here, but I could get 6.0 this morning on BETDAQ.
DAQMAN’S BETS (staked to win 20 points)
BACK 5.5pts win (nap) AUGUSTA KATE (1.50 Naas)
BACK 2.75pts win and place ALBERT D’OLIVATE, and LAY to lose 10pts KRAKATOA KING (2.30 Chepstow)
BACK 4pts win ROYAL PLAZA (2.40 Fontwell)
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