William Haggas sends a 14-1 shot on a 713-mile round trip to Musselburgh 🚛

William Haggas hasn’t been to Musselburgh with too much frequency so far this season. In fact, he’s only had one runner there so far. That’s about to change on Friday as he’s due to sends one runner on the 713-mile round trip from his Newmarket base. The horse in question goes in the £20,000 novice race and victory would more than justify the expensive journey. Check out our free tips page for daily content across British and Irish racing.

2.50 Musselburgh

Cover Point (14-1, bet365) is Haggas’ runner and he made his debut at Yarmouth last month. He never really looked dangerous that day and finished down the field in 10th. Always towards the rear, he made some headway over two furlongs out but got outpaced in the final furlong. Haggas’ charge was the well-fancied 4-1 favourite that day, which suggests more was expected on debut. It has to be said that he would have learnt plenty from the experience and improvement seems likely.

His pedigree indicates that this 5f trip is about right for him, as his dam won between five and six furlongs and his sire won a Group 2 over 5f. Charles Hills trains his half-brother Snuggle who won at Windsor over 6f back in May. This colt cost 57,000 guineas at the sales as a yearling and the first prize of £10,308 would go some way to recoup that.

William Haggas has had eight winners from just 19 runners at Musselburgh in the last five years, giving him a strike-rate of 42 per cent. It could also be significant that he’s operating at a strike-rate of 25 per cent in the last fortnight. One would assume that a performance is expected here, otherwise connections would probably have found a race closer to home.

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