Coral Scottish National Betting Preview – Chicago Grey heads the market for Ayr marathon
A week after the Aintree extravaganza, this Saturday the centre stage in terms of jump racing is Ayr where the Coral Scottish Grand National will be the biggest betting heat of the day.
Personally, I’m inclined to draw a line through horses that are turning out for this marathon that ran at either the Cheltenham Festival of the Aintree National meeting. Interestingly, only two of the last 10 winners of this valuable handicap ran at the Cheltenham Festival in the same season and both the horses in question (Take Control in 2002 and Joes Edge in 2005) were both pulled up at Prestbury Park.
In any case, it’s quite rare that a horse will turn out here after running at Aintree. Joes Edge actually landed a novices’ chase at that meeting seven days before landing this race, but he was certainly more of an exception than a rule. I am of the opinion that this is the sort of race won by horses whose trainers have mapped their campaign out with it as the main objective, rather than it being something of an after-though.
The first two in the betting for Saturday’s race, Chicago Grey and Beshabar, were first and second respectively in the National Hunt Challenge Cup at Cheltenham last month, while the third home in that race, Be There In Five, is also set to line up. It’s hard to ignore the claims of Chicago Grey, who was an authoritative winner at the Festival, and is undeniably well treated given that he’ll be racing off the same mark at Ayr.
If you sympathise with statistics, however, you wouldn’t touch Gordon Elliott’s charge with a barge pole given that, in the last 10 years, no favourite has emerged victorious in this contest, and just one horse, Ryalux in 2003, scored at a single-figure price. Chicago Grey is a sound jumper, possesses plenty of stamina and won’t mind the sound surface, so he may well go and win, but at a much bigger price I’m siding with OUZBECK at around the 16-1 mark.
The nine-year-old has been extremely well handled by Emma Lavelle and her team, and he tends to excel at this time of the year. He takes a couple of runs to come to the boil, as he demonstrated last season, but in the spring he returned to form, landing a competitive handicap at Cheltenham before going on to land a big pot over 3½m at Uttoxeter in June.
The selection ran a blinder when third to Midnight Chase on his reappearance at Cheltenham in October and, although below par at Wincanton next time, he was then tucked away for the best part of four months before having a spin over hurdles at Bangor in March, which should have put him spot-on for this assignment. It looks to me as though team Lavelle have mapped Ouzbeck’s campaign out with this race in mind and with conditions very much in his favour I reckon the ploy will pay off.