Ascot today

Another strong card at Ascot today, but unfortunately small fields in the two top races. Only 5 go to post in the Grade One Long Walk Hurdle over 3 miles at 15.25 CET, which looks between At Fishers Cross (Rebecca Curtis/ Tony McCoy) and Reve de Sivola )(Nick Williams/ Richard Johnson), who won this last year. They met 3 weeks ago at Nrwbury, when Reve de Sivola finished third and At Fishers Cross, who ruined his chances by poor jumping, fourth behind Celestial Halo, a non-runner today. At Fishers Cross is expected to run much better this time, especially with McCoy back in the saddle, but at the likely odds we much prefer Reve de Sivola. Salubrious (Paul Nicholls/ Daryl Jacob) ran well at Cheltenham a week ago and will probably make the running again, while Time For Rupert (Paul Webber/ Denis O´Regan) once gave Big Bucks a proper race - but that was 4 years ago and he has not run over hurdles since.

Curtis and McCoy team up again with O´Faolaoins´s Boy in the graduation chase at 14.15; he has not run since his fourth place at the Cheltenham Festival, but that form gives him an obvious chance, with Easter Day (Nicholls/ Jacob), who has taken well to chasing, the big danger.

The big betting race here is the Ladbroke Hurdle over 2 miles at 16.35. which looks wide open with all 20 runners holding a chance. The situation is complicated by the fact that some trainers have several runners., notably David Pipe with 5, including Dan Breen (Conor O´Farrell), last year´s third, and German-bred Dell´Arca (Tom Scudamore), winner of the Greatwell Hurdle at Cheltenham last time with Flaxen Flare (Gordon Elliott/ Richard Johnson) 4th and Pine Creek (John Ferguson/ Denis O´Regan) sixth after being hampered. We think that Dell´Arca would do better on faster going and despite the betting prefer front-runner Shotavodka (Mikey Ennis) of the Pipe runners. There are quite a few 4yo´s in the field, including the two top-weights P´tit Zig (Nicholls/ Jacob) and Rolling Star (Henderson/ Geraghty) but they would have to be championship contenders to win off these weights. We prefer hemnderson´s otzjher runner Chatterbox (David Bass), but the best-handicapped horse in the field has to be Totalize (Brian Ellison/ Wayne Hutchinson), fifth in the Fred Winter, who meets the winner Flaxen Flare and third-placed P´tit Zig on much better terms today and has also run well on the flat this autumn.

At Haydock we like Loch Ba (Mick Channon/ Harry Bannister) in the handicap chase over 3 miles at 15.05 and Cross Kennon (Jennie Candlish/ Conor Ring) over the same trip over hurdles at 16.15.

There is also a iisted race on the all-weather at Lingfield, over 10 furlongs at 15.35. With John Gosden in such fantastic form, we expect both his runners to be involved in the finish - Dick Doughtywylie (Rab Havlin) and Gatewood, the choice of stable jockey William Buick. Tales of Grimm (Richard Fahey/ Tony Hamilton) is the obvious danger.