Aintree Festival 2023 betting tips: Trends suggest Novices' Hurdle glory for Luccia
- Andrew of Fiosrach
- 13 April 2023
Day two of the Aintree Festival offers plenty of betting opportunities, and our racing pundit Andrew of Fiosrach has put his trend analysis to narrow the field down in the Top Novices’ Hurdle (14:55).
14.55 Aintree 2m½f (2m103y) Poundland Top Novices' Hurdle (Grade 1)
This is a fantastic novice hurdle, deserving of its Grade 1 status and has some super horses entered, which will undoubtedly be some of the top hurdlers for the next few years.
Last year's renewal saw Jonbon get the better of El Fabiolo, who went on to win both the Irish and the English versions of the Arkle this year, so the bar is set high for the top performers here.
As usual I have used a number of key trends to try and narrow the field down to a handful of runners.
Half of the field was ruled out with the very first statistic and after going through the trends I was left with a shortlist of just five runners.
Our famous five are No Looking Back, Rare Edition, Strong Leader, Tahmuras and Luccia.
I quickly ruled out
No Looking Back as Irish trainers have a poor record in this race with only two winners this century.
Rare Edition is best watched as he pulled up in the Supreme Novices' Hurdle at Cheltenham and was struggling incredibly early in the race. His form before that was strong with three back-to-back wins before finishing second over a longer trip in a Listed contest. However, he does lack graded form, so I have ruled him out.
Strong Leader and
Tahmuras both went into the Supreme Novices' Hurdle with high hopes, but ultimately disappointed, finishing ninth and tenth respectively and a considerable distance behind the winner.
Better ground should help, but I would like to see them bounce back to form before backing. Of the two,
Tahmuras is the more likely to challenge here, as he has already won at Grade 1 level.
This leaves
Luccia, the Nicky Henderson-trained mare who receives seven pounds from the males in the race.
Henderson has a superb record in this race (six wins in the last 12 runnings) and would have had plenty of potential runners for this race, but has opted for Luccia, whom we recommend as a win bet.
