Prestige Novices Hurdle betting and odds preview

Events / Editor / 20 October 2007 / Leave a Comment

A race that attracts some of the best staying hurdlers in the business, the Grade 2 Prestige Novices Hurdle, run in late-February at Haydock, is a hot betting heat that normally attracts a short-odds market leader for the betting public to get stuck into.

Neptune Collonges was long odds-on when scoring in 2006, but in 2007 Chief Dan George sprang a betting surprise at odds of 9/1, before going on to prove himself top class with a Grade 1 success at Aintree later in the season.

Trainer Howard Johnson seems to particularly target this race with his best stayers and has landed plenty of bets in recent years with Mephisto (2005) and Royal Rosa (2004), both of whom were sent off at odds of 9/4.

The ante-post betting lists can be affected for the World Hurdle following the Prestige Hurdle, but the race has failed to throw up any Cheltenham winners, horses winning here seeming to be better suited to the Aintree Festival, where the racetrack is not dissimilar to Haydock.