1.35 Lingfield

There is one bet for us today so far.

1.35 Lingfield - Glencalvie (available at 12/1 with Tote, Stan James, Betfred & Hills, 11/1 Bet365, generally 10/1)

We were keen to get involved in this race as we feel that the favourite is likely to be overbet and underpriced. Whilst it comes from a powerful yard and has top connections, the form it has shown to date is nothing special and on its first attempt at the course and more importantly the surface, we feel that at 2/1 this has to be opposed. The horse we both like is Glencalvie and whilst it is unlikely to be improving at the age of 9, it has dropped to its lowest mark since 2004 and has won over C&D off higher marks of 71 and 72 in the past, with the former being as recently as June last year. The key to this horse seems to be the way that it is ridden and all of its best runs have coincided with when the horse has been ridden prominently and/or made the running and from stall 2 we expect it to get to the front or just behind the pace and hopefully get the run of the race. It's record over C&D from a mark upto 6lb higher than today's is 33171 and there were valid reasons for the unplaced effort as it was held up on that occasion. There are other possible prominent runners such as April Fool, however this is drawn in 12 and will have to be rushed up to get the lead. We don't believe that Glencalvie needs to lead, it just needs to be prominent and with a whole host of hold up horses in the race it could just play into the selections hands. Of the rest Sew 'N' So Character has some decent form if you go back far enough, Phai Mai Blue is quite interesting and Pension Policy has bits and pieces of form to put it in the shake up, although the trainers AW record hardly inspires. Aggravation looks plenty short enough for a horse yet to win off this mark round here and the rest look much of a muchness. I think we can ignore Glencalvie's last few runs which have been at Kempton (a track where it has only finished placed once from 6 starts) and back on todays course with a positive jockey booking (1 from 4 with one placed for trainer over C & D) then at double figure prices this is worth a small stakes bet.

There were a couple of favourites which we were keen to oppose but we couldn't find anything solid enough against them. We have put these up in trading places on the righthand side of the blog and may look to take a few quid out of them later on.

Good Luck!