Having spent the last few months concentrating on building up a football index portfolio (highly recommend if you haven't checked it out already) it's about time attention turned to the festival!
Just had a look through all the threads and most people far more knowledgeable than me, some great shouts already. I was waiting for nrnb to get most of my book on, but can't resist having a few on early.
I'm trying to be more controlled this year and two races i'm willing to leave alone completely are the supreme and rsa (I say this now but bet i get dragged in). The supreme has been poor for me the last couple of years and looks open again, the rsa there must be value with santini too short but there are so many quality novice chasers that go jlt/rsa that i'm happy to wait on those races til we see some horses out.
The ones that jump out at me for this year are samcro for the arkle, apples jade for the stayers, tiger roll for the cross country.
I've got Samcro to win the arkle now in multiple doubles so that's by far my biggest ante post gamble. They bought him to be a chaser, everything about him screams chaser, all comments from previous years indicate he will go chasing. I would be pretty surprised if they now made the decision to keep him hurdling, it would have a detrimental effect on his chasing career to keep him over hurdles for another season, agewise as much as anything else. It's not as if the champion hurdle is a penalty kick in any way - Laurina could be anything, and I expect a sharper Buveur D'air this year. Samcro would have to be some horse to outpace Buveur D'air over 2m hurdles given all previous comments are about him being a chaser in the making and a potential gold cup horse. If Samcro goes chasing then the most winnable race is also the most prestigious race. If Elliot thinks he has the pace for a champion hurdle then why would they go further than 2m over fences in his first season, especially when that race looks the most winnable at this stage. If he runs in the arkle i'd be almost 100% confident he wins it, if he runs in the champion hurdle no more than 50%.
I just get the feeling Apples Jade will have a pop at the stayers this year. With Willie likely sending one of his big guns for the mares hurdle I think connections may as well train her for the stayers. If they do so it could eke out some improvement, not that much is needed anyway on a line through Supasundae.
Tiger Roll is just the bet of the festival for me, odds of 5/1 entirely fair. Trained for this race as a priority, kept fresh, i don't think we'll see him as big as 5/1 at any point now before the off
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