3 poor meetings today

This is a quiet time of year for the racing industry and today´s 3 meetings, a N.H. card on heavy ground at Plumpton and all-weather flat racing at Lingfield and Wolverhampton, are all very low level. At Plumpton we expect two trainers to dominate proceedings - Venetia Williams, with her stable jockey Aidan Coleman, and Jeremy Scott with Nick Scholfield. Williams can take the opening novice hurdle at 14.00 with the penalised Uhlan Bute - Scott´s Daveron the main danger- as well as the novice hurdle over a longer distance at 15.30 with Toubeela and the handicap chase half an hour later with Saroque, who is upped 8 lbs for winning a Newbury a fortnight ago but can score again with the ground still in his favour. Scott can counter with CD specialist Glenwood Prince, top-weight in the stayers handicap chase at 15.00, and the much-improved Night of Passion in the final handicap hurdle over 3+ miles; this one has been put up 21 lbs and is up in grade following her two easy wins in December, including this CD, but seems to be capable of better still. Williams has the main danger here in Rocky Bender, a 9yo maiden (!) who is really just a plodder but probably capable of winning a small race.

Today´s all-weather racing is as usual very uninspiring and there are again some small fields. The "best" race is the 8 1/2 furlongs handicap at 15.40 at Wolverhampton; our first instinct was to select Dixies Dream (Willie Jarvis/ Graham Lee) here, whose trainer has a good strike-rate at this track, but the outside draw could be a problem, so we prefer Yojojo (Gay Kelleway/ David Probert), who won 6 races in 2013, including this CD twice and may not be finished yet.