Chris Hughes can’t wait for Betfair Super Saturday in his latest Sun Racing column
I couldn’t be happier – on Wednesday I played Judd Trump at snooker, yesterday my horse Annie Mc won and today Altior is back in action!
Betfair Super Saturday is always one of my favourite meetings, so let’s hope I’ve found some winners.
No prizes for two of my selections this week, but I can’t see past the short-priced classpots.
Altior won’t get beaten in the Betfair Exchange Chase.
He has such a good relationship with jockey Nico De Boinville and I expect him to bounce back from his defeat at the hands of Cyrname.
If I was going to have a punt in the race I’d be looking at Kalashnikov to find a bit of form back at Newbury.
However, for me it’s a race to enjoy and hopefully Altior will get a clear run round before having a crack at the Champion Chase at Cheltenham.
Later on the card, I’m going to have to side with another shorty in Native River.
This will be his last run before heading to the Cheltenham Gold Cup, and I reckon he definitely has a shout in the big one – so hopefully he can win this first!
It’ll be interesting to see how Jonjo O’Neill Jnr gets on with him. He’s a fantastic jockey and is as good as anyone on the circuit at the moment.
You can forget his claims – the guy is mustard! Native River clearly has the right man on board and you can’t look past him in this race.
He’ll get the job done.
My NAP of the day comes in the 1.50 at Newbury, where I’m a huge fan of THUNDERSTRUCK.
He’ll want every yard of the three miles and this step up in trip should help him eke out a fair bit more improvement.
He was second last time out to King Roland, who then went on to run a massive race behind a very smart horse called Harry Senior, so the form looks strong.
It’s an open enough race but I think my lad will take plenty of beating.