November Schedule

1/11/22

So we enter a new era for the website as, after seven years, I am now solely concentrating on jumps racing going forward bar references to sport and the flat in the Thought of the Day and the monthly blogs. I would like to thank all members for your continued support in signing up once again (and the newbies for checking it out for the first time) as we embark on the season and attack the next six months.

This weekend will be the third that I will cover for this jumps season. We didn’t have the luckiest of opening weekends (frustrating that my two fancies for the two big handicap chases of the Old Roan Chase and Munster National were both touched off in tight finishes) but last week went well with the star being Our Power, a 7/1 recommendation in Ante-Post Focus. In tomorrow’s edition of that column I will principally be looking ahead to the Paddy Power Gold Cup.

As for this weekend’s race previews, we are not totally done with the flat yet as I’ll be overseeing the best of The Breeders’ Cup action from Keeneland, Kentucky, so thankfully not a 1.00 a.m. early-morning-finish job, in addition to Wincanton, Aintree and Down Royal.

The Grand Sefton Chase over the Grand National fences has been brought forward a month to beef up the Aintree card on Saturday. Interesting to see my 25/1 Coral Gold Cup recommendation, Gericault Roque, entered for the Pertemps Qualifier on that card as David Pipe ran Remastered in it last year as a prep for Newbury where he looked to be going best before falling four out. He is also entered for the same qualifier.

And then the jumps coverage ramps up as the following weekend sees the beginning of a six-week run of also covering Friday’s racing in addition to the usual columns starting with three-day Cheltenham November Meeting right through until Christmas.

The first of my 29 Cheltenham Festival columns was uploaded last week giving my starting positions on the six championship races. Week 2 will start to incorporate some of the other races and will be uploaded on Tuesday, November 15^th after the Cheltenham November Meeting but I may add an ante-post festival recommendation within the race previews before then, dependent on what is declared, in which case I would highlight that at the top of the column.

Andy Richmond’s first jumps-based Beating The Bias column was uploaded yesterday and that will be a weekly article running through the season. After seven years of providing us with flat-racing columns I am pleased to see Andy now committing to the proper racing!

This week sees the Champions League group stages come to a conclusion. There is virtually nothing to play for in five of the eight of the eight groups, the main exception being Group D where all four of Tottenham, Sporting Lisbon, Eintracht Frankfurt or Marseille could finish first or last.

Unless Napoli lose by four goals at Liverpool tonight, my pre-tournament group stage recommendations will have made a nice profit having put them up at 13/2 to win Group A. As I’ve mentioned in today’s TOTD, Napoli have impressed me most of the 32 teams so far so I couldn’t resist a little punt on them in the outright market for which they are 16/1 in places.

I’ve not properly got into this stop-start T20 Cricket World Cup yet with so many games being washed out but now that we’re getting down to the nitty gritty I am starting to fill my mornings by watching some of the action. South Africa and England look like they are peaking at the right time to me. I’ll take the Proteas to finally shake their tag of being chokers in the big tournaments.

Of course the FIFA World Cup starts this month hosted by that footballing hot bed of Qatar. I’ve backed France to retain their title to small stakes but was disappointed to read yesterday that Paul Pogba is out of the tournament. He may have been next to useless for Manchester United but is a different proposition when he pulls on a French shirt. I’ll be covering the tournament in the Thought of the Day on the home page throughout the four weeks.