Welsh National today

Following yesterday´s rain, sleet and snow, the going will be very soft and testing everywhere, especially at Chepstow where the big betting race of the day is the Welsh Grand National over a gruelling 3 miles 5 furlongs at 15.35 CET. Topweight Shotgun Paddy (Emma Lavelle/ Leighton Aspell) has been the favourite for this ever since betting opened, but this will be really tough for the horses with big weights and we prefer to look lower down. This is a race for specialists and we hope the find the winner from last year´s race which was won by Mountainous (Richard Lee/ Paul Moloney) from Hawke´s Point (Paul Nicholls/ Sean Bowen) with One In a Milan (Evan Williams/ Conor Ring) 4th and Amigo (David Pipe/ Conor O´Farrell) seventh; all have clearly been aimed at the race again and at the revised weights we just prefer the Nicholls runner with this good young claimer aboard. Obviously Monbeg Dude (Michael and Tom Scudamore), who won 2 years ago, must also be considered, but he is not so well handicapped now. Main supporting feature is the 3yo hurdle at 14.55, which sees some of the better juveniles, including German-bred Golden Doyen (Philip Hobbs/ Tom O´Brien), who won well at Cheltenham last time, Karezak (Alan King/ Aidan Coleman), who just beat him here in October, and Old Guard (Nicholls/ Sam T-D) who beat Karezak last time but is worse off now.

Talking of 3yo hurdlers there is also an interesting race which opens the card at Kempton at 13.40. A number of good German 3yo´s have been sold to go hurdling and one of them is Agenor (Jamie Snowden( Conor Shoemark), last seen winning the big sales race at the Hamburg Derby meeting. This is a pretty tough race to start off with, but we hope he runs well.

The best racing of the day is in Ireland, where there are two Grade One races at Leopardstown. Nichols Canyon (Willie Mullins/ Ruby Walsh) can continue the stable´s good run in the novice hurdle at 14.50, while AP McCoy flies over from England to partner Alan King´s Uxizandre in the Dial-a-Bet Chase half an hour earlier. Silver Concorde (Dermot Weld/ Davy Russell), the Cheltenhem bumper winner last March, makes his hurdling debut here at 13.50 and it will be a big surprise if he cannot win at the first time of asking.