SUPERNAP REALLY WAS DYNAMITE! Amid the vagaries of current jumps form, Daqman settled on finding a strong supernap yesterday, and landed Dynamite Dollars (WON 10-11) an 11-lengths winner at Exeter.
DAQMAN PLANS BIG-ODDS STRIKES: Today he reveals his first list of Jumps horses to follow, as he tries to spot enormous ante-post winners like his 43-1 NH Chase success at Cheltenham and his 50-1 Grand National winner of 2016.
BILLY THE KID FOR HANDICAP KILLING
What have these horses in common? Enable and Cause Of Causes. Answer: I ‘found’ them for this column when they were unknowns.
I backed Enable ante-post on BETDAQ at 25.0 for this year’s Epsom Oaks and followed her through three further Oaks wins, and on to the King George and then the Arc.
I backed Cause Of Causes at 44.0 on BETDAQ for the 2015 NH Chase at Cheltenham and he won the race at 8-1 SP. We were then able to win again with him at 10-1 when he landed the Kim Muir back at the festival last season and, again, in the Cross-Country there at 4-1 this year.
What’s my big one for the 2017-18 Jumps? The answer this time is that he (or she) is hidden among horses I pick up by watching the races, playing back the videos and, most important, starting lists of horses to follow.
If you do that, you will find that something will ‘jump out at you’ after a while and become your personal soldier among the great army of horses that you can’t hope to study en masse.
Get to know an individual horse and, if he is a hit for you, or fires your imagination, be on his side and plan ante-post money when you are near enough a race to know that you have enormous value.
Here are five potential ‘finds’ that could contain a soldier. Each week until the New Year, I’ll be listing a few more. Once we get closer to Cheltenham, a selection of them will become Fortune Cookies for the festival or big ante-post tilts.
AINCHEA (Colin Tizzard) A 155,000-euros buy for Alan Potts, bred in the Jumping purple, by Flemensfirth out of a Beneficial mare, whose line goes back to the immortal One Man.
Could pick up almost any bumper, after a narrow defeat in a big field at Cheltenham in October, but the trainer is eager to get him out over hurdles.
BRAQUEUR D’OR (Paul Nicholls): ‘Got beat’ on Saturday when I thought he’d win the autumn gold cup chase at Ascot but, with hindsight, ran extremely well to be third in a big field. He’s only six and that race was a Grade 3.
If the ground remains decent this winter, he will be winning; but I’m not too bothered, because he’s just the type to do his growing up during bad-weather months, and emerge in the Spring as a young pretender for Cheltenham or Aintree.
JERRYSBACK (Philip Hobbs): J P McManus Irish Point winner for the legendary Derek O’Connor, impressed with back-to-back hurdles success from Sussex to Yorkshire, justifying racereaders’ expressions of ‘cruised clear’ and ‘hard held’, and leaving them with that all encompassing ‘could be anything’ label.
A mountain of expectation for a horse that was originally only 11,000 euros. The dam’s breeding alone has your head buried in old form-books: by Bob Back out of a half-sister to Celtic Shot.
PALLASATOR (Gordon Elliott): ‘A likeable rogue’ and ‘a tricky customer’ on the Flat and I assure you that describes the horse, not the then trainer, Sir Mark Prescott.
But I hear tell this former Doncaster Cup winner who had 16 Group races on the Flat has taken to hurdles like the proverbial duck to water at his new home in the County Meath set-up of Gordon Elliott’s. It might iron him out. Either that or he’ll iron out a few of the hurdles! We’ll see.
WILLIAM H BONNEY (Alan King): Kingy is having a great time, Flat and Jumps, and has confidently earmarked this one for the Greatwood Hurdle at Cheltenham in less than two weeks’ time. William H Bonney was Billy The Kid.
FASTEN ON TO BUCKLED
12.45 Musselburgh The Scottish venue have the best ground of today’s turf cards (good, good to firm in places) and that quicker surface should suit Buckled in the opening handicap hurdle.
His three career wins have come on good ground or quicker and he looks capable of defying a 5lb penalty for one of those wins last time out at Kelso where he kept on well to beat Too Many Chiefs over a similar trip.
On his last visit to Musselburgh he was a five length winner over today’s trip and today’s pilot Rachel McDonald was also riding.
Most of his rivals are out of form, the exception being Waltz Darling who continues to knock at the door but isn’t getting much respite from the handicapper.
His last win came in a handicap chase at Doncaster in 2015 on good to soft ground and although he runs well here at Musselburgh he still looks a little high in the weights to me.
2.35 Chepstow As we head south the ground changes. It’s soft at Chepstow.
The most interesting race on the card looks to be the 16 runner maiden hurdle at 2.35 – a race jam-packed with horses with potential including four first time out winners under the PTP code.
The Paul Nicholls trained Western Honour should relish the ground. Chepstow ‘soft’ is usually heavy elsewhere and he won on heavy ground in a PTP at Farmaclaffley in the style of a good horse.
Preference though is for the Jonjo O’Neill trained Plus One who did well on hurdles debut to chase home the odds on Jerrysback (horse to follow above) at Wetherby. The front three pulled well clear that day and with Jonjo’s horses running well that experience could well prove vital.
5.10 Kempton Bubble And Squeak can make it third time lucky under Oisin Murphy. She has finished second on both starts to date over seven furlongs and certainly gave the impression at Lingfield last time out that the mile trip here will prove ideal.
She is preferred to the John Gosden trained Heather Lark who didn’t seem to take to the all-weather at Chelmsford.
There are a couple of interesting debutants but Bubble And Squeak sets the bar at a fair level for them to aim at.
DAQMAN’S BETS (all staked to win 20 points)
BET 9.3pts win (nap) BUCKLED (12.45 Musselburgh)
BET 4.1pts win PLUS ONE (2.35 Chepstow)
BET 7.8pts win BUBBLE AND SQUEAK (5.10 Kempton)
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