3.00pm Newbury Tips & Betting Preview 24/10/2015

Race Time: 3.00pm Meeting: Newbury Day: Saturday 24th October
Distance: 1m 2f 6yds  Full Race Name:  Bathwick Tyres Handicap Class Two

With a full field likely this complex handicap will take some solving and it may make a bit of sense to at least start with a race profile just in case that offers up any clues? Just one double figure winner in the last ten years suggests fancied horses hold sway, while six three year olds have merged triumphant so for once we have no real reason to discount the chances of the younger brigade. Not one trainer has doubled up in the last decade, nor jockey so no real clues there, and it may well be sensible to at least start with course and distance winners with victories on the predicted good to soft going – after all, we know they can handle the conditions.

Up near the top of the weights, we need to start with What About Carlo (8/1), trained by the superb Eve Johnson Houghton and looking most likely to be ridden by Jimmy Fortune, one of the strongest jockeys we know. His best form all seems to be with cut in the ground and he did win here two races ago off a rating five pounds lower than the 101 he is set to carry today, with recent evidence in a fourth at Salisbury suggesting that maybe the handicapper has him in his grasp.

Kastini (7/1) also fits the bill and looks slightly better treated even with his five pounds weights rise, which seems pretty generous after his recent two length win over this course and distance last month. He looked to have plenty up his sleeve that day under Oisin Murphy who looks likely to be reunited with the five year old gelding this afternoon and off a sensible weight assuming those above him stand their ground, he looks an interesting option if nothing else, though at his age how much more improvement he has to come is difficult to gauge.

Six-year-old David Livingston (14/1) is of a great deal of interest for trainer Roger Charlton and may well have “bounced” last time out at York when last of eight to Chancery. His return to action at Goodwood when third to Battalion was too good to be true after over twenty months off the track, even if he was beaten along way, but another run less than three weeks later was too much for him and can be sensibly ignored in our professional view. He may yet prove to be a shadow of his former self but has a win over Telescope in a Group Two to his name and plenty of soft ground form as well, and off his new rating of 99 he is absolutely thrown in  – at his best of course.

Although Marco Botti needs a few more winners before we can be confident in the form of the stable, Latin Charm (9/1) looked as if he was close to his best last time out when runner up to Lanceur at Chelmsford back in April – but why haven’t we seen him since? As we head to the end of the turf flat season there is that nagging doubt that this is little more than a prep race for a winter all-weather campaign? If that is correct he will not be fit enough to get involved here by any stretch of the imagination, but if not, he has bits and pieces of form that would give him chances if the rains came, and we will keep him up our sleeve just in case that happens.

Lastly, it does seem pretty unlikely that even Brian Meehan can get Faithful Creek (20/1) back to his peak, but if he can, he is a shoe in at the weights. Some well beaten runs in much better races saw him rated as highly as 110 which rather cooked his goose and made even handicaps close to an impossibility but the handicapper is slowly relenting and he runs off of 99 this afternoon, and as he isn’t up against Hootenanny, New Bay, or Time Test here, he ought to have a better chance of success.