Double Dutch, 28th January 2014

Double Dutch

Double Dutch, 28th January 2014

Yesterday started well enough with a 1-2 finish up at Ayr which netted us a 7/4 winner (and a 3.6/1 forecast) to take to the later race at Wolverhampton after Final Assault had beaten the favourite McLovin by a good ten lengths.

Unfortunately, we didn’t find the winner of the second contest, with a three lengths defeat for Persian Patriot being the best we could muster. The Blue Dog was a further seven lengths back on her bid for a four-timer, after being sent up a blind alley when going well.

Her jockey thought he could sneak up the inside and got badly hampered and the race was gone with less than two furlongs to go, there wasn’t time to recover from being snatched up.

Yesterday’s results were as follows:

Final Assault: won at 7/4 (adv 6/4)
McLovin: 2nd at 6/4  (adv 13/8)
(The forecast paid £4.61 here)
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Persian Patriot: 2nd at 13/8 (adv 85/40)
The Blue Dog: 4th at 2/1 (adv 2/1)

Results to date:
129 winning selections from 459 = 28.10%
41 winning doubles in 123 days = 33.33%

Stakes: 244.00pts
Returns: 248.04pts

P/L : +4.04pts (+1.66% ROI)

Another grim day ahead of us, I’m afraid. Poor racing in difficult conditions is making it tough to defend our dwindling profits, but the show must go on! Two for today come from:

3.10 Taunton

Milosam failed to even make the frame in any of his first seven races, but just over 11 weeks ago, he was sent here to Taunton for the first time to compete in a Class 5 chase over course and distance. He took to the course well and just about got his nose in front and held on to win by a short head. He has since followed that up with 2 more C&D wins, including a step up to Class 4 last time out on heavy ground.

Track, trip, going are all in his favour, but he is of course rising up the weights. A 4lb rise for his last win is probably fair and despite that putting him some 16lbs higher than before he started winning, there’s still scope for improvement and he’s still clearly bottom weight here, receiving between 6 and 26 pounds from his rivals. The 11/4 BOG available from Stan James looks quite generous all things considered.

You can make a case for several of his rivals as a Plan B, but the one I’m siding with is Venetia Williams’ Mentalist. He is proven on both soft and heavy ground, winning on both and his record on heavy ground reads 23312. He has a win and two seconds from his last five outings and goes well under Aidan Coleman. These smaller fields tend to suit his style and there could well be some value in the 7/2 BOG on offer from Hills today.

*

4.20 Southwell:

Stun Gun looks to have been favourably treated with an opening handicap mark of 60 and looks well set to follow up his maiden win over this course and distance a month ago. He’s by far the least exposed of this field, as today is only his third start and I wouldn’t have any improvement upon that last run would be needed to take what looks a poor contest on paper. I would, however, hope and expect to see some progression from him and this should make the 6/4 BOG from BetVictor a relatively straightforward bet.

Yet, we all know things don’t always pan out as we’d like and so, we need a backup and I’m going to take a tilt at De Lesseps here. We’ve mentioned several times here at geegeez about the USA-bred runners performing well at Southwell and this one is the proof in the pudding. He failed to beat any of the 55 rivals he faced in 6 outings on turf and was 8 lengths behind the winner when 5th of 11 at Wolverhampton, before being sent here four weeks ago.

He was dropped in trip to compete over today’s course and distance and despite a slow start, he stayed on well to win by 1.5 lengths at decent odds of 12/1. The same 7lb claimer is on board today and if they can get away quicker this time, it could be an interesting race. We’re not getting that 12/1 he raced at LTO, but 7/1 BOG (BetVictor) is still an attractive proposition.

4 x 0.5pt BOG doubles as follows:

Milosam / Stun Gun @ 7.91/1 (11/4 & 11/8, Stan James)
Milosam / De Lesseps @ 27/1 (5/2 & 7/1, BetVictor)
Mentalist / Stun Gun @ 9.30/1 (10/3 & 11/8, Coral & Stan James)
Mentalist / De Lesseps @ 32.75/1 (7/2 & 13/2, Hills)