4 poor meetings today

with Catterick off, we are left with four poor cards today and as the 3 all-weather tracks offer very little of interest, we shall concentrate on the jumps card at Chepstow, although the very heavy going will make it difficult for horses and riders and tricky for punters. The best thing of the day is Sail by the Sea (David Pipe/ Tom Scudamore) in the novice chase at 14.50 CET. He showed decent form over hurdles and made a good chasing debut when thitrd to two smatrt types at Plumpton. He actually started favourite for that race, and there is nothing in today´s field that should bother him unduly, though he will be a very short price. In the opening novice hurdle at 14.20, we like Royal Redemption (Charlie Mann/ Noel Fehily), runner-up on both his starts so far, while the best betting race is the handicap hurdle at 16.30 with 15 runners. Our eye is caught by two very lightly-raced types, Queen´s Star (Andrew Balding/ Tom O´Brien) and Albert d´Olivate (Robert Walford/ Daryl Jacob), and they could well turn out to be better than this grade, but Garde Fou (Paul Henderson/ Nick Scholfield) is arguably the form choice, having run well here before. Coolmore-owned Bandit Country (Jonjo O´Neill/ AP McCoy) has been placed on his last 5 outings, but was always well beaten and may not enjoy going as heavy as this. McCoy´s best chance is possibly German-bred Amber Gambler, from a good Auenquelle family, in the bumper at 17.35 for Rebecca Curtis. Fourovakind (Hugh Whittington/ Michael Byrne) has a good record here and could be the answer to the handicap chase at 17.05.