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Cheltenham November Meeting - Saturday 13th November

The National Hunt season is in full swing now and the horses at the head of the antepost lists for March are appearing virtually every day. The Cheltenham November meeting has been a great meeting in terms of finding Festival winners (as highlighted previously here) and this year should be no different with the meeting full of horses with huge ability. However, they may not all be at their peak this weekend and quite often it is the beaten horses, while running well, that feature in March. It was clear for all to see that Easysland falls into that bracket. He was obviously hindered by the race conditions but he ran a race that screamed of a prep and I imagine he will be very hard to beat come the Festival despite being beaten yesterday. Does He Know was very impressive in the Ballymore Novices Hurdle trial but I don't think he will trouble some of the Irish contingent currently heading that market.

Looking at today's card and we have a high quality juvenile hurdle as well as possibly the best novice chase of the season so far. The latter in particular, is worth noting, as it can often have an impact on the top novice races for the remainder of the season and featured the winner of the Arkle at the Festival last year (actually turning out to be her final run before the Festival). Fusil Raffles has done nothing wrong so far but is too short in such a quality race at this stage of the season. The feature race is the Paddy Power Handicap chase and the first big handicap of the season. I thought for a long time that the race was all about the front three in the market as I felt they had a class edge and more potential for improvement. However, the more I looked at them in a process of elimination, the more I saw potential weaknesses that could bring others into play. Saint Sonnet could be the fly in the ointment as I would be surprised if he is not better than his current mark of 147. It is testament to the horses ability that he was still there going to the second last in the Marsh at the Festival as he made a number of errors. I am sure Paul Nicholls will have spent a lot of time working on that but this promises to be as frantic as that Grade 1 and at his price I am willing to let him go. 


One horse I am not willing to let go today is Salsaretta in the feature Handicap Chase at Punchestown at 12.50, the highlight of a cracking card there. She may not have been the choice of Paul Townend but there is little to choose between the Mullins' horses on many occasions, particularly in the better quality races and I think she can beat stablemate Tornado Flyer, who is admittedly a major threat to the selection. He goes very well fresh and has won on his reappearance on each of the last two years as well as winning on his racecourse debut the year before. I just feel that this mare could be better than her current mark as she has not yet come out of second gear over fences and until she is beaten I am taking the view that she could be high class in this discipline. She beat Galvin 8 lengths over course and distance on her debut over the larger obstacles less than a year ago and while he has undoubtedly improved markedly since, there is nothing to say that this mare will not improve. He had the benefit of a couple of previous attempts over fences and while he may have been given a "considerate" ride, I don't think he would have beaten the mare. The others in behind give substance to that performance and she has won each of her three subsequent starts just as easily. She will love the ground and she might just expose the apparent limitations of the favourite when coming up against quality opposition. 


1pt win Salsaretta (5/1 General) Punchestown 12.50 *use BOG firms

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