It's day one of the Craven Meeting on Tuesday and our man has two selections to consider on the card, including a race-fit northern raider.
- The Value Bet is designed to generate long-term profit by searching for overpriced horses in the feature weekend races and at the big Festivals in the UK and Ireland.
- Following all of Matt’s tips to advertised stakes/odds since he took over from Ben Linfoot in June 2020 would have produced over 105pts profit.
- Last year's winners included Noble Yeats at 50/1, Desert Crown in the Derby at 25/1 and this year he's tipped Aucunrisque at 14/1, Maskada at 25/1, Stage Star at 11/1 and Tiger Jet at 16/1.
Value Bet tips: Tuesday, April 18
1pt win Rebel Territory in 2.25 Newmarket at 7/1 (General)
1pt win Empirestateofmind in 3.00 Newmarket at 8/1 (General)
Newmarket’s 2023 season begins with the three-day midweek Craven Meeting and it’s typically one at which to take a bit of a pull in terms of strong betting opinions. However, I've got a couple very much on the radar at current prices.
The weather is set reasonably fair after a wet couple of months has left no shortage of juice in the ground although at least that’s likely to have allowed trainers to get plenty of grass-work into their horses in recent weeks, so I don’t expect many will be short of a gallop even if making their seasonal debuts.
That leads me to the seven-furlong National Stud Handicap, race two on the ITV4 schedule, in which five of the nine have run within the past couple of months. REBEL TERRITORY - one of those who has not - makes plenty of appeal first time out for the year.
A sizeable son of Territories who remarkably managed to win twice as a juvenile including here on the Rowley Mile in the autumn of 2021, his pedigree suggests he’d probably be better over middle distances in time but this drop back in trip and first attempt at seven furlongs promises to really suit based on what we’ve actually seen of him on the track to this point.
He’s a such a strong-travelling horse and, looking back with the benefit of hindsight, it was probably just his significant class edge that got him home when winning a nine-furlong nursery at Goodwood’s ‘Glorious’ fixture during the aforementioned two-year-old campaign a couple of years ago.
He took his form to another level when scoring on his seasonal return back at a mile at Sandown last May (replay below), and although far from disgraced in four subsequent starts during 2022, he’s now able to run off the same mark (93) as when successful in Esher.
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Rebel Territory has often raced freely well off the pace in the past but Jim Crowley had him in a more prominent position when fifth here on his final start last term and, given there isn’t much obvious early speed signed on here, I certainly don’t expect to see him anchored out the back over this shorter distance.
All ground comes alike to this horse - he’s won on both good and soft going - and he's drawn close to favourite New Kingdom (William Buick) who seems likely to take them along, so there’s enough to justify a bet at the odds.
One relatively race-fit runner I'm keen to back on Tuesday is EMPIRESTATEOFMIND in the Close Brothers Handicap.
John Quinn’s horses have been getting better and better with age in recent years and while I wasn’t sure if the handicapper might have fully caught up with Empirestateofmind going into his five-year-old debut in the Lincoln earlier this month, I came away from Doncaster pretty much convinced there’s still some wriggle-room in his current mark of 99.
Having started his winning off a lowly rating of 62 in August 2021, the son of Starspangledbanner has obviously come a long way already, but he ran loads of consistently solid races in valuable handicaps last year and his comeback run just looked to be needed on the heavy ground in South Yorkshire.
He travelled powerfully towards the head of affairs before just sticking on at the one pace on Town Moor and I reckon he’ll come on a ton for that.
He won second time out on soft ground last year, incidentally, and he could be hard to peg back here if getting first run, with Jason Hart back in the saddle in place of claiming rider Taylor Fisher. Take the 10/1 (bet365) if you can but the general 8/1 is perfectly palatable too and that's what I'll be setting at if the northern challenger delivers as hoped.
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Published at 1300 BST on 17/04/23
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