Andy Holding's Wednesday Horse Racing Tips

Tom Symonds has hit a nice little bit of form of late and his decent run looks set to continue courtesy of recent recruit BOBO MAC (best price 4-1). Despite several solid placed efforts for previous handler Michael Hourigan, the son of Whitmore’s Conn failed to win a race in 11 start back in his native land, but based on some of the names he’s been up against of late, he must have some sort of chance of being competitive here. When last seen, the six-year-old was asked to give the Willie Mullins-trained Bravissimo a 20 length head start in what turned out to be a well-run contest at Limerick and although he couldn’t quite reel in that highly-regarded performance, he did actually manage to cover the last circuit 2.4 seconds quicker than the winner based on their respective positions going past the winning line. Although he could probably do with further in time, he has got plenty of useful form over the minimum trip (Third to Woods Well and Bon Papa over 2m reads well) and this looks a decent starting point for the grey gelding on his UK debut.

Although SKIPTHECUDDLES (best price 4-1) visually made heavy weather of getting off the mark over hurdles last time out at Wetherby, in mitigation, the ground was pretty wretched at the Yorkshire venue and he was probably dossing a bit whilst in front, so it would be harsh to crib him too much in the cold light of day. Prior to that well-deserved victory, Graeme McPherson’s inmate had caught the eye with his performance behind subsequent Sidney Banks hero Keepers Hill at Hereford and based on that effort alone he doesn’t look too harshly treated on handicap debut off a mark of 128.

ALABASTER (NAP) (best price 11-8) unfortunately didn’t read the script when sent off a well-backed favourite at Chelmsford the other night, but he certainly did more than enough in the latter stages to suggest those that got their fingers burnt that evening wouldn’t be too long in gaining compensation. Promising on debut at Lingfield three weeks earlier, Sir Mark Prescott’s inmate was expected to make bold strides off that initial run in a race that didn’t look massively strong on paper, but missing the break put the Archipenko gelding on the back foot from an early stage and he never really recovered. That said, the fact that he whittled the losing margin down significantly in the last two furlongs suggest he probably would have won with a clean break and he’s given another chance to put matters right over a trip that should play into his strengths.