Newbury today

Newbury has the best British card today, featuring two Grade Two races and some hot handicaps. Both the Denman Chase over 3 miles at 15.25 CET and the Game Spirit Chase over 2 miles 1 furlong at 16.00 have attracted runners who are still hoping for success at the Cheltenham Festival. This applies expecially to the former race, in which Paul Nicholls (who of course trained Denman) saddles his main Gold Cup hope Silviniaco Conti (Ruby Walsh). Although the trainer has warned that his charge might need the race, we expect him to win comfortably today; he has done nothing wrong in his two starts this season and clearly holds most of the others.

German-bred The Giant Bolster, who finished 7 lengths behind him át Haydock, might be second best here, he was after all runner-up in the Gold Cup last year. Ex-French Mail de Bievre (Tom George/ Paddy Brennan) has never run in Britain and is an unknown quantity, but we cannot see him winning this.

The Game Spirit at 16.00 has a disappointing turnout after Simonsig misses the race and there are two non-runners as well. Wishfull Thinking (Philip Hobbs/ Richard Johnson) is top-rated here and is running over his ideal trip; French Opera (Nicky Henderson/ Barrry Geraghty) however is our choice; he won this in 2011 and was runner-up to Sprinter Sacre last year.

Talking of previous winners, Knock a Hand (Richard Lee/ Johnson) won the 3 mile handicap hurdle at 14.50 and has a decent chance of scoring again in an extremely difficult race. Much more difficult however is the betfair Hurdle at 16.35, always one of the biggest betting races of the entire year. 21 runners and almost any of them can win, with top trainers Nicky Henderson represented by 6 runners and Paul Nicholls by 3. Their best hopes according to the betting and to the choice of jockey are My Tent or Yours (Tony McCoy) and Pearl Swan (Walsh) respectively but anything could happen here.