BACK-TO-BACK NAPS FOR DAQMAN: The punter’s super trooper, Daqman landed yet another nap yesterday and edged another profit, taking him just short of 150 points in 11 days. He’s finished in front on nine of them.
♦️ Nine winning days out of 11
♦️ Total profit (all stakes) 149pts
♦️ Six naps up out of 11 (55%)
♦️ Winners at 18-1, 14-1 and 9-1
WON 11-10 DARK TROOPER (Wednesday nap)
WON 8-11 LIMERICK LACE (Tuesday supernap)
CHELTENHAM TRIALS: The Grade-2 Cotswold Chase and the cross-country come under Daqman’s scrutiny for Cheltenham Trial day on Saturday.
SATURDAY TRIALS PREVIEW
⭕ 12.40 Cheltenham, Saturday (cross-country) A lucky race for me through Balthazar King and Josies Orders (two wins each).
Last year’s winner, Back On The Lash, goes for the double just a pound higher.
But the race could see the revival of Snow Leopardess, who has struggled since winning the Becher (2021).
The cross-country discipline has revitalised such as Tiger Roll, as Gordon Elliott well knows.
He set his hero against the younger Delta Work in the Cheltenham Festival cross-country, and they produced a memorable one-two.
Delta Work tried to emulate his stablemate by winning the National but was held from the last, third to Noble Yeats, who could be seen on Saturday in the Cotswold Chase.
⭕ 2.25 Cheltenham (Cotswold Chase) This Grade 2 over 3m 1.5f is shaping up to be an absolute cracker.
It has been a past primer for stars like Many Clouds, Frodon and Native River, and Frodon could be back for more on Saturday.
But the market suggests a match of Protektorat (rated 170) and Noble Yeats (167), with the one Gold Cup bound and the other step by step to a second Grand National triumph.
Also Aintree bound is Corach Rambler; 2-2 at Cheltenham including the Ultima, he would not be out of place in the frame on Saturday.
TEA UP! BIG BREAK FOR DAVY
⭕ 2.15 Gowran Park, today (Galmoy Hurdle) Graded winners have a 75% strike rate, which leaves Longhouse Poet lost for words and My Design off the drawing board!
You’d assume that Longhouse Poet is here to keep his Grand National mark intact but he didn’t do too badly moonlighting at Limerick on Boxing Day, showing improvement in his hurdles form.
The winner should not be a double-figure age (none have been in the decade) if he is to be upwardly mobile.
That improver epithet belongs already to Teahupoo, who completed a hat-trick in Grades 2 and 3, then was found wanting in the champion hurdles of Cheltenham and Punchestown.
But, after a long break, he won the Hattons Grace in December, first run back, beating the Punchestown Champion Stayer, Klassical Dream and dual-Champion-Hurdler Honeysuckle.
He can now give Davy Russell a comeback Graded winner, raised in trip to 3m and become Stayers’ Hurdle favourite, with the race currently wide open.
I’LL TAKE MULLINS SELECTED
⭕ 2.50 Gowran Park (Thyestes Chase) Longhouse Poet won this Thyestes last year, with runner-up Franco De Port (see my preview earlier in the week).
I hoped to see the race’s winningmost trainer – Willie Mullins, of course – put the underrated Franco De Port back on the map in this.
But, significantly, he is saving him for the Irish Gold Cup at Leopardstown on Saturday week.
1: Carefully Selected The Mullins player this afternoon, with Paul Townend up, is Carefully Selected in Franco’s place!
There is a precedent for his chance, despite his 11 years: Total Recall won this for Willie at the same age.
Very lightly raced, it’s only nine races back – though we are talking March, 2018 – that he was placed in the Cheltenham Champion Bumper.
His chase career is just five races old, and he’d won three of them before coming unstuck in the NH Chase at Cheltenham (third after three out, unseated last).
We’ve seen him just once in nearly three years since that day, weakening only on the run-in for the big chase at Leopardstown over Christmas.
2: Punitive Jordan Gainford won the Porterstown on Punitive when his stablemate Fakiera, the gamble of the race, failed to close him down from the last.
This drop by half a mile to 3m 1f would have put me off if I hadn’t seen him lead twice during a race at Cheltenham over today’s trip in November, and Gordon Elliott has deliberately kept the Gainford partnership intact.
The Press are calling his stablemate Escaria Ten ‘the class act’. He should be thereabouts as NH Chase third but is only 1-9 over fences and has a lot of weight in the mud.
3 Donkey Years is the apple of his trainer’s eye, a really good traveler, a winner at the Punchestown Festival and lately third in the Munster National to The Big Dog.
Betdaq Betting Exchange 7.4 Carefully Selected, 12.5 Punitive, 13 Donkey Years
25.0 ABOUT HIDDEN HORSE
⭕ 2.10 Southwell Haziym, one of only three four-year-olds in the field, was in the frame for Pascal Bary at Grade-3 and Listed level in France.
By a French Derby winner out of a Pivotal mare, who goes back to dual Derby winner, Harzand. If not today, another day soon, so don’t take your eyes off him.
BETDAQ value 25.0 Haziym
⭕ 2.45 Southwell Charles Hills is 4-9. Among those winners was our mutual 18-1 strike with May Sonic, ridden by Kieran Shoemark, who takes the mount on Midnightattheoasis here.
Sole runner for Hills, sole ride for Shoemark, Midnightattheoasis is related to winners in the yard, and did well to finish second from a bad draw at Chelmsford.
The Oasis Dream colt got across and made most. His reward is the one stall at Southwell! Around even money this morning.
DAQMAN’S BETS
2.10 Southwell (win 30 total)
BET 1pt win and place HAZIYM
2.45 Southwell (win 12 nap)
BET 12pts win MIDNIGHTATTHEOASIS
2.50 Gowran Park (win-50 bull’s-eye bets)
BET 7.75pts win CAREFULLY SELECTED
BET 4.25pts win PUNITIVE
BET 4pts win DONKEY YEARS
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