Three to follow from the weekend: 1st, 2nd & 3rd December…
Weather hitting the National Hunt game hard at the minute… 🌨️❄️🌧️
But serious fair play to Newbury last weekend, a hell of a lot of work took place once Friday’s card was done and dusted to make sure their Saturday card took place… so all credit to everyone involved in that, great stuff 👌
Despite the weather taking it’s toll over the past few days I still managed to pull together a solid 8-pages of Weekend Notes for full NTF Members… and here are ‘Three to follow…‘ from those NTF Weekend Notes…
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Three to follow from the weekend: 1st, 2nd & 3rd December…
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SAIL AWAY (D Skelton)
5th in a Class 2 Handicap Chase – 2.25 Newbury (Friday 1st)
Dan Skelton’s 7yo will have needed this run as he’s now 0/5 off breaks of 121+ days and I suspect this was nothing more than a run to get him going for the season, before looking to step him back up to his favoured trip…
Over 3m+ trips he holds form of 1123 (2/4, 2p) compared to form of 62592 (0/5, 0p) over trips shorter than 3m (this run was over 2m4f)…
This was also his first run back off a wind-op and the Skelton’s do seem to be giving their wind-op runners a ‘letting the horse know it can breathe better run’ first, before fully gunning them on their following starts (they used to gun them for a win straight off a wind-op).
SAIL AWAY should come on plenty for this outing and he’ll be of more interest when stepped back up to 3m+ trips…
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JOE DADANCER (B Pauling)
4th in a Class 4 Novices’ Handicap Chase – 2.06 Doncaster (Saturday 2nd)
I think this 6yo should make up into a better chaser than he was a hurdler, but he can’t be judged on this effort as only SIX of the FIFTEEN fences were jumped here and with ALL of the fences in the home-straight omitted it became a fitness/stamina test more than anything else, and it was no massive surprise that one of the horses that already had a run that season (2-runs in fact) ended up prevailing.
JOE DADANCER only gave way at where 2-out would normally have been and I think this was a much better effort than the bare distance he ended up beaten suggests (he was beaten 27L in 4th) and he’ll hopefully be opening his chase account before too long.
He was dropped 2lbs to OR 115 for this effort and I’d be disappointed if he’s not a fair bit better than that mark…
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CAP DU NORD (C Williams)
6th in a Class 2 Handicap Chase – 12.30 Newbury (Saturday 2nd)
I do think they are planning something with this 10yo as this was his 6th start since the 13th of October and 3rd start in the last 14-days. His handicap mark is tumbling as a result – he went down 2lbs for this effort to OR 121, meaning he’s gone down 7lbs since that run on the 13th of October – and he’s now looking like an extremely well-handicapped horse for connections to go to war with.
He is qualified for the Veterans Final at Sandown at the start of January and that could be a potential plan for them…
He could, obviously, just be on a steep downward curve aged 10 and after 52-career starts…
But the fact they keep running him quickly, however, is just a suggestion that they have something in the pipe-line for him… one last throw of the dice sort of thing…
I have Prime Conditions for him as…
Handicap Chases | 2m5f+ | Good-G/S | Nov-Mar | OR 133 or less
…where he has form of…
612513115111 (7/12, 2p – all 7 chase wins)
…although, as I’ve said many times in the past, when horses run in those Veterans races their Prime Conditions (PC) can become wildly more flexible and it’s best not to pin them too strongly to their previous PC (when running in Veterans Races)… this lad could be so well-handicapped by the time his target comes around (whatever that target may be) that he’ll likely be able to overcome less than ideal conditions anyway…
The week ahead…
Becher Chase day at Aintree…
Tingle Creek day at Sandown… featuring the rescheduled Fighting Fifth Hurdle and possibly CONSTITUTION HILL V SHISHKIN… maybe… 🤨
The Welsh National Trial Chase at Chepstow…
Peterborough Chase day at Huntingdon on Sunday…
So PLENTY for us National Hunt fans to get stuck into this weekend coming..
And I’ll be covering a chunk of the action on the NTF Members Service this coming week… and all the way through to the 2024 Punchestown Festival…
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And remember you can head to the Blog menu page HERE and flick through previous free NTF Blog posts 👍
Assuming all of the weekend action survives the weather (🤞🤞🤞) then next week’s copy of NTF Weekend Notes should be a jam-packed edition… giving me plenty to choose from for the next ‘Three to follow…’ post…
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As for today’s music clip to close the blog out with… I could have gone with Sail Away by Styx… but… you know… that’s song’s sh!t 😶… so here’s a live clip of Sly & The Family Stone doing ‘Dance To The Music‘… I’m sure Joe Dadancer would approve…
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Brilliant video clip Ben . Looks like it’s straight out of the Soul Train archives!! That’s right in the sweet spot of my music taste and of course I am a “Dad dancer”!!!
😆😆 Glad you enjoyed it Vince… I really didn’t want to have to post up Sail Away by Styx 😐 so glad my brain found it’s way to Sly & The Family Stone 😀🕺
Cheers – Ben (NTF)
Christian Williams has pictures of the handicapper I am pretty sure.
I thought same of Cap too albeit has like 2 quid in case they slipped that one in…
‘Christian Williams has pictures of the handicapper…’ Love it!! 🤣🤣🤣
I’m relatively confident they are priming Cap DN for something… the quick runs back suggest they are just getting all their ducks in a row before striking… maybe…
Cheers – Ben (NTF)
There was some decent racing over the weekend, but I don’t know what to make of the “Hennessey” result (other than I wish I’d done a forecast instead of a couple of EW’s on the 1st-2). The pace of the race didn’t seem quick enough for good-to-soft ground. One I’m keeping an eye on is Killer Kane who ran 3rd at Newbury – all his wins have come when going right-handed, and he looks to be on a fair mark.
Hi Ian
Have to say I’m also a little in two-minds about the race as well… the ‘right’ sort of horses filled the 1st 3 spots… but Eldorado Allen, Cloudy Glen and Shakem Up’Arry in 4th, 5th & 6th kind of makes me question it a little…
On the ground front, the times for the day were consistent with Good to Soft ground, so think the going was pretty much on the button…
Killer Kane also on my radar… a solid effort on Saturday and he’ll be ticking along nicely for a return right-handed… also peaks in Feb-April (all his wins) but he’s yet to run in January so I’d probably extend his prime months to Jan-Apr… he’ll be ready to score soon… maybe another run to shuttle him down the handicap a little to get him spot on…
Cheers – Ben (NTF)
Hi Ben, Just looking through Saturdays results, and I’m gutted that I wasn’t on the 9/1 winner of a 4-runner race in Not So Sleepy in the Fighting Fifth Hurdle – the horse went into the race with tremendous winning form on heavy ground and was last seen running a cracker in the Cesarewitch. I’m writing this mainly to give myself a kicking for not going back to look at races which have non-runners.
To be honest it’s easy to miss such things when it’s a busy day’s racing like a Saturday, especially last Saturday when there were plenty decent races/betting opportunities to get stuck into… I had already decided to ignore the race (from a punting perspective) when the Henderson duo were entered… you need to cut down the work load somehow and in truth it was an easy one to sidestep when Con Hill was still in it…
It’s tricky to keep track of everything that’s going on so I just accept that there will be opportunities that you miss… especially when it comes to non-runners… you’d drive yourself to an early grave trying to keep up with it all!! 😵💫😵💫😵💫
Ben (NTF)