Newbury best bet (1440): Conditions look tailor-made for bold bid from Galahad Quest

14:40 Newbury: Get Best Odds Guaranteed at BetVictor Handicap Chase (2½ miles)

The short-priced favourite, Heltenham, would definitely have preferred a softer surface than this, and his connections won’t be happy with the drying forecast.

His trainer, Dan Skelton, has previously said that slow ground is very important to his seven-year-old, who races off another new career-high mark today, so he looks a bit short in the market under the circumstances.

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The potential value created elsewhere very much brings in Galahad Quest, for whom this set of conditions looks ideal.

His two wins over fences have both been achieved over 20 furlongs on left-handed tracks, including at Haydock, which is another flat galloping track with big fences.

Those wins came about on both soft and good ground and another of his career-best efforts, which is worthy of a mention in the context of this race, is his placed finish in a Listed handicap over 19.5 furlongs at Wetherby (another flat, galloping left-handed track) and that run came on good-soft, so he will have that combination of conditions replicated today.

That run came earlier in his career, but he ran off 135 that day and missed second place by just half a length behind the winning favourite, Good Boy Bobby, a subsequent Grade 3 Rowland Meyrick winner at that same course just a few weeks later.

Suggested best bet: Galahad Quest each-way in the 14:40 at Newbury

Beaten only two lengths in that much stronger event, anything like a similar performance from Galahad Quest in this Class 2, which he contests off 5lbs lower, will give him an excellent chance.

He looks primed to peak again today, on his third run back from a 296-day break and following an encouraging return to form at Ludlow last time.

He enjoys these smaller-field contests and if he gets into a good jumping rhythm, as he did when winning by 7.5 lengths at Warwick at a similar stage of last season (20 furlongs on good), a race in which he easily beat Iron Bridge (third in the recent Grade 3 Grand National Trial at Haydock), and he will take some beating off only three pounds higher.

• Tips and analysis provided by Steve Jones who runs CD Systems Daily Bargain on Tipstrr

 

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