valuable race at Kempton this evening

easily the best race of the day, and the most valuable, is the 1 mile 3 furlongs handicap at 19.20 CET this evening at Kempton, which is worth more than most German group races. This is the final race of a long qualifying series, which means that most of these runners have met before and most of them are CD winners, which does not make it any easier to find the winner. A low draw is a big advantage here, so we shall try to make things simpler by eliminating all runners drawn 10 or higher - which includes last year´s winner I´m Fraam Govan, owned by Sir Alex Ferguson, and the two Godolphin runners, Solidarity and Anglophile. All-weather specialist Grendisar (Marco Botti/ Martin Harley) has to come on the short list; he has top-weight here but has an excellent record at this track and won a listed race here in the autumn with Rydan (Robert Mills/ Tom Queally) a close third. Bancnuanaheireann was a narrow winner here last week, but is held on earlier CD form by Rebellious Guest (George Margarson/ Martin Lane), who does not run often on the all-weather, but when he does, usually runs a strong race. Double Discount (Tom Dascombe/ Jim Crowley) was runner-up to Solidarity last time and not only meets him on better terms now, but is much better drawn. This is a really tricky race, but we hope that one of the above-mentioned wins.

The two jumps cards this afternoon are very weak, with small fields in almost every race, and the conditions at Hexham will be most unpleasant, with heavy ground and gale force winds. One who seems to enjoy these conditions is course specialist Samson Collonges (Rebecca Menzies/ Henry Brooke) in the handicap chase at 15.50, who runs his best races here when the mud is flying.

The best race at Leicester is the concluding handicap hurdle at 16.10 in which there are two ex-German runners, Dawn Twister (Lucy Wadham/ Leighton Aspell) and Cafe au Lait (Tony Middleton/ Sean Quinlkan). The latter was runner-up in the Austrian Derby for Christian von der Recke, while the former was a listed winner at Baden-Baden for Jens Hirschberger. Dawn Twister has not really lived up to expectations over hurdles, and is coming off a long break, but he runs well fresh and we shall give him another chance.

Betting forecast:
1. Race: Spinning Cobblers - Copper Cavalier - Seven Lucky Seven
2. Race: China Club - Waaleef - Mecado
3. Race: Kyrenia Castle - Percella - Born To Be Bad
4. Race: Mr Singh - Stay Strong - Assagher
5. Race: Sighora - Squire - My Red Devil
6. Race: Grendisar - Solidarity - Rydan
7. Race: Ridgeway Storm - Snowy Dawn - Charlie Wells