Waiting for the weekend

The 425th edition of the Wayward Lad blog.

No selections for the blog yesterday, and there is just an uninspiring meeting over the jumps at Leicester, plus a couple of All-Weather meetings at Kempton and Southwell.

One from my alert list for the 2010-11 jumps season – CESIUM – runs over hurdles at Leicester in the 2:05, and he could be interesting. Today's trip and going should suit him and I thought he had the potential to be a lot better than OR94 as a chaser, so off todays hurdle rating today of OR86 he could well build on his LTO 2nd at Southwell last week. Later, in the chase at 3:40, RATE OF KNOTS reappears. I was on him LTO at Plumpton when he had the race at his mercy as every other horse of merit had already fallen – unfortunately, he chose to fall at the fence in front of the stands before the final circuit of the Sussex National. I've not been able to have a good look at the form as I write this, so I'll be having a better look when I get the time after noon today. CESIUM is 5/1 (William Hill) and RATE OF KNOTS is 15/2 (Bet365) and 7/1 Betfred & Totesport) as I write, and I do like the look of the both of them. If I am going to make a firm selection of either (or both) then I will post them on my monitoring websites at Betting League and Tip Exchange.

Looking towards the weekend, we have a great day's racing in prospect on Saturday. It seems to be a great shame nowadays that nearly all the best racing is on a Saturday afternoon as you can end up with potentially 4 or 5 wagers that you want to place after a week of nothing. Personally, I think it makes life for the punter very difficult as you can end up having wagers on mid-week racing that you would normally avoid (like I did yesterday) and the quality of horse's racing in mid-week isn't reliable enough.

The Argento Chase at Cheltenham looks like being a cracker, and if GRANDS CRUS is as good as he looks then current odds of 9/4 (yesterday's quotes of 5/2 are long gone) may not be unreasonable. But for me, the 11/2 offered by Victor Chandler on DIAMOND HARRY looks very tempting. There should be plenty of scope in the race for a long odds 3rd place in the race so don't ignore those currently at odds of 16/1 or longer.

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