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“Some might say Pendil was all speed, but he almost won a Cheltenham Gold Cup!”
He idled that day, Ian. Pitman still blames himself, as he does for the 1973 National.
Richard Pitman has always seemed a really nice bloke to me, and very self deprecating too (a bit like Luke Harvey), but he wouldn’t be the best jockey Fred Winter ever employed, as I suspect he’d readily attest himself.
He certainly got the leg up on some fantastic horses.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Let me put my argument a dif way , Kauto was perfect for the KG , Denman more the Hennessy , two different horses , dif strengths yet both great GC horses , even if Ah Senor does get around I just don’t see him having the gears for this , I also expect him to hit at least 2 or 3 , good luck Joe , always good to see someone make a big price shout
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
Maybe Lucinda Russell has a cunning plan. Run him in the King George and Gold Cup and anything in between if she wants, get well beat, drop to a handy h’cap mark, then win the Scottish National ;o)
“And I don’t see a ‘rain every day’ forecast for next week on the weather website I am looking at.”
Currently “Soft, Heavy in places”
The ChezzaWeatha app cannot be beaten.
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Didnt rain every day did it ;o)
“Currently “Soft, Heavy in places”
Not yet. Soft atm. Depends how much more rain falls.
Looks a good bit of rain to come on the 25th and 26th looking at the radar
Drying day tomorrow
As a BMG backer this isn’t ideal, he wants it to be as much of a speed test as possible
Lhomme presse will love it but I’m not sure about him going right handed in this level of race. He jumps to his left consistently so kempton won’t be his ideal track.
Royale pagaille will also like it but he’s surely too slow for a king george
Met Office update:
A few showers Monday morn. If the weather forecast proves correct, then current ground description will likely prevail.
For Jumpers, i’d say ” no excuse”.
I’m expecting to see Lucinda heading towards the stewards room 15 mins before the off
Lucinda ” low sun sir , we need to miss some fences out ”
Steward ” how many fences ”
Lucinda ” all of them ”
Pick 3 on Saturday champion 2025/2026
I just want to say any of us can put up a favourite, but it takes balls of steel to put up an outsider, so good luck to Joe with Ahoy Senor.
He’s already correctly called the Kimble Point winner coming here instead of going to Wetherby and, if Ahoy Senor wins or even places, it will be a fantastic Yuletide call from Mr Scoop6, a bet I once was lucky enough to win and then bottled going for original logical form book 6/1 Lady Gortmerron (9lb better off for two lengths with the 7/4 favourite for a 3m4f Chase in deep mud) at Haydock the following week – that gutless decision cost Chezza a LOT of chocolate hob-bobs!
Anyway, bonne chance, Steeplechasing!
I am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"LHomme Presse will be a strong favourite if the going remains soft or gets any worse
I’ve had a go on Envoi Allen, though.. He took his time to get going when switching from the Elliot yard to Henry’s. Started fav in last years John Durkan ahead of Allaho such was his reputation and was never going to beat Energumene over 2 miles. He looked much more happier at Down Royal and could still be the class horse in the race.Gaelic Warrior Gold Cup Winner 2026
Rather boringly, now Protektorat has been taken out, it’s L’Homme Presse for me.
The way some people talk about Kempton Park you’d think it was a downhill 3m piste.
3m is 3m, it can get pretty Soft there and I’ve seen many attritional King Georges these past 40+ years.
This progressive 7yo, rising eight, merits his OR of 170 and I think there’s more to come, as there so often is with progressive chasers of his age and profile.
Envoi Allen is a horse of unfulfilled potential – when he won the Ballymore he looked like he might be not only Grade 1, but exceptional Grade 1.
He’s had his ups and downs since, but he looks on an upward curve again now and if before the Turners you’d been told he was this price for the 2022 King George NRNB some might well have grabbed it fast.
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"Ian, your kind words are much appreciated. And congratulations on your scoop6 win – I’m glad you got something from it; the tote couldn’t even run to a bottle of wine for me. Never mind, I have a better pool bet in development, which I intend to try to earn something from!
Good luck to you all with your King George bets; were Ahoy Senor not there (he is still a daft price, I think at 20s) I’be for L’Homme Presse.
Happy Christmas
JoeJoe, I read your IMO great (and I use that word rarely) posting on Ben’s thread in the Lounge and I was not only blown away by your courageous honesty, but recognised, hence empathised with, so much of what you said about your career experiences, for it entirely mirrored so much of what I and many of my friends have seen elsewhere.
The Scoop6 was a work of genius (another word I seldom use) – a gripping bet, a Jackpot with one Hell of a twist.
I was on The Independent On Sunday racing desk the day in question, I’d woken up at home in the Docklands where I lived nearby, phoned in my selection (after much agonising), didn’t tell anyone about any of it and quietly watched the race on the sports desk TV, cursed my weakness in getting off the 6/1 winner and onto the 7/4 runner up, rolled my eyes when I worked out how much I’d have won had I provided that one extra winning ticket, then reflected that I had still had a decent win the previous Saturday, I still had a job that indulged my passion, I still had my health and all that had happened is I hadn’t trousered a substantial extra amount I didn’t actually need.
I had previously won a Lingfield Jackpot carry over from the Cheltenham Festival in 1989, so it’s not as if Lady Luck had never ever given me a break.
Anyway, I have you to thank for making such a roller coaster, thrilling, experience possible.
Good luck with your new project.
Merry Christmas
IanI am "The Horse Racing Punter" on Facebook
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It's the "Millwall FC" of Point broadcasts: "No One Likes Us - We Don't Care"You did well, Ian, to keep that bonus selection to yourself. Had they stuck with my original version of scoop6, there would have been no 7th selection; that was an idea from CH4 executive Andrew Franklin, which tote chairman, Peter Jones latched onto. I thought it was a bloody cheek asking someone who’d picked 6 winners on a Saturday afternoon to pick one more. When I joined the tote in 1998, I sat in on a meeting with a ‘marketing group’ who’d been working on the elusive Superbet. I learned the tote had spent 1/3rd of a million already funding ‘innovators’ to come up with a superbet.
I sat in the pub with a pint of Guinness on my own one evening, and ran things through in my head. The most successful tote bet by a million miles was the place pot, (still the same), so that was my starting point; it was easily doing £500,000 pools at the festival, so the demand was there. On the empty table next to me was a William Hill Greyhound Slip special bet. I cannot recall exactly what it was, but it featured 3 chances for the punter and I thought that was an excellent tempter.
So, what I came up with was, effectively an EW jackpot, but spread over the best races on a Saturday, rather than one meeting. 90% of the pool would be split evenly win and place (making for some pretty substantial place payouts, but plus a few quid if you did get 6 winners). The remaining 10% of the pool was to be rolled over until won by a single winner (eg, nobody else won that week: you did not need to share the pool), with a guarantee from the outset of a minimum of £100,000 extra – that’s what made it a triple offer, and I still believe that had they gone with it, the place aspect would have made it a very attractive bet in the long term.Scoop6 has now been relegated in the punters’ mind to a shadow of what to was.
Anyway, onward and upward. The tote’s under new management as you know and I am talking to them in the early stages of the new bet. I’ll keep you all up to date.
As to Ben, I just hope he is all right. My generation ought to spend half an hour each morning counting its blessings: plenty jobs when we were young, cheap property, the NHS at its best, no wars, good pensions – we baby boomers are, perhaps, the luckiest generation in history. I feel for Ben and for every one of that generation who is struggling.
As to mental health, I do what I can to talk about it openly; it’s been stigmatised for way too long. Margy, my wife, has been classified disabled since 2010 with mental health problems. There are millions of folk out there afraid to admit it troubles them, or to attend their GP. I see the genius/idiot Elon Musk has just cancelled Twitter’s mental health help facility.
That’ll do me, I think. I’m very conscious of not derailing this thread, so that Ahoy Senor gets full credit when he wins on Monday!
A happy and peaceful Christmas to you and yours
Joe
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