Lingfield each-way tip: Luna Queen fancied to defy outsider odds

20:15 Lingfield: Tips For Every Race at raceday-ready.com Handicap (7 furlongs)

It’s no surprise to find that the early betting is dominated by Buy The Dip and Mbappe, both of whom won last time out within the last month at Brighton and at this venue respectively.

However, Buy The Dip still has questions to answer over this trip, having only ever won over a mile, while  Mbappe has caught the eagle eye of the handicapper with a four-pound rise.

Both have serious claims, of course, but hold little value if they’re the one to miss out at such short odds, and with some high-profile bookmakers paying out on three places for this seven-runner handicap, this might just be a race that sees one of their five better-priced rivals squeeze their way into the reckoning.

Luna Queen has won twice on this venue’s all-weather track, and also visited Yarmouth’s winner’s enclosure 11 months ago, when she made a nonsense of her 11/1 price tag, seeing off half a dozen rivals with room to spare in a similarly graded handicap over this distance.

Suggested bet: Luna Queen each-way in the 20:15 at Lingfield

On the downside, she now has to overcome an eight-month layoff, but that also involved a switch to the Lewes-based stables of Sheena West, who is accomplished at re-energising new recruits, and whose relatively small string has yielded three winners and three runner-up from their last 15 appearances.

Luna Queen’s reins will be in the capable hands of Jack Gilligan, who has steered 13 of his last 17 rides into the first three places. They included five runner-up near misses and three winners, one of which was 40/1 outsider Prague in a 13-runner maiden at Sandown a fortnight ago.

Whether they can produce a similar shock result here remains to be seen, of course, but the buzz in the Tipstrr camp is that, in a race such as this, they certainly merit a cautious each-way play. 

• Tip advised by SmallField Punting on Tipstrr