Newbury´ s abandoned card repeated today

Today´s card at Newbury is basically the same as last Saturday´s , when racing had to be abandoned after the first race following the sudden deaths of two horses in the paddock through electrocution. However prize-money has had to be reduced and the fields are now slightly different. The main events remain the Grade Two Aon Chase over 3 miles at 13.45 CET and the Grade Two Game Spirit Chase over 2 miles 1 furlong half an hour later.

Paul Nicholls holds a strong hand with two runners in each race. In the former, he can take the first two places with What a Friend (Harry Skelton), owned by football manager Sir Alex Ferguson, and Noland (Tony McCoy). German-bred Fair Along (Philip Hobbs/ Rhys Flint) would have a chance on ratings, but he is much better over hurdles and has not run over fences for more than 2 years. In the latter, Nicholls is represented by Tchico Polos (McCoy) and Take the Breeze (Skelton), but this is quite a tricky event. We do not believe that the smart Cornas can give weight to these rivals and hope to see bottom-weight I´msingingtheblues (David Pipe/ Tom Scudamore) put some poor recent performances behind him.

The big betting race remains the Totesport Trophy, a handicap hurdle over 2 miles at 14.50, but now only worth half the original value and with only 15 runners instead of the 22 declared last week. Nicky Henderson and Alan King, with 3 runners each could well dominate here. King´s best chances are Salden Licht (Wayne Hutchinson), with a good German pedigree but a lot of weight, and Walkon (Robert Thornton), the subject of very positive vibes end the likely favourite. He was a good runner-up a month ago in a similar race at Ascot, with several of these behind, including Henderson´ s Soldatino, the choice of stable jockey Barry Geraghty. We also like Sweet My Lord (Willie Mullins/ Paul Townend), now the only Irish-trained runner left in the field.