General / Robin Keck / 26 October 2009 / 1 Comments Free £25 Bet

Robin Keck concedes that reaching his target of £1,000 profit by Christmas is now unlikely but he's still showing a decent profit. Plus an update on who's in and who's out from his stable.

There was one small step for man this week when I had my first horse riding lesson (okay pony if you want to be picky). No more will I castigate jockeys for not asking for a big one at the last when I'm fumbling just to make a horse walk left or right. I have a dream that one day AP McCoy, Paul Nicholls and Ruby Walsh will be ridiculing me on 'The Morning Line' about some opinion or other before one of them slips into my trap and utters that annoying cliché "I'd like to see Robin Keck ride a horse before he starts waxing lyrical about jockeys who ...blah blah blah". At that precise moment I will gallop past the window in the background waving gaily (but safely) to you dear reader. I hope they don't say anything too soon though as I'm a little way off the galloping stage.

A remarkably quiet week for this column with only 11 runners emerging from my new autumn string of six hot trainers and all of them missed the target. James Fanshawe was responsible for seven and I'm going to cut him as I seem to have missed that particular boat. The other five can remain and I'm happy to have their recent good runs of form faded in punters' memories. I was reminded this morning why I'm so keen to ignore hot or cold form from the leading trainers who are not 'below the radar' of the average punters vista. Paul Nicholls only had two winners at the weekend and there is already a nice piece by Alan Lee in The Times mentioning it. I suspect any value for the layers will quickly vanish although in this case I'm not convinced this is more than a numerical cluster of poor performances rather than anything amiss.

The only addition to my stable this week is Sarah Humphrey who trains down the road from me in West Wratting, Cambridgeshire. Whilst she only has a small string of horses, she has already demonstrated her ability to improve horses picked up from other stables. Toby Jug completed a hat-trick for her yesterday and Zorro De La Vega will do the same when he next runs. Following handicappers that have improved after a change of stable is my second favourite betting system (ooohh I'm a tease) and Toby Jug's Wincanton victory brought a much needed boost to the Keck coffers.

After two consecutive losing weeks I'm running out of time for this column to reach its £1,000 New Year target. I'm focusing on one "late, last, lunge" to see me home.

Total Starting Bank = £250.00
Closing Bank after Week 21 = £613.57
Week 22 Result = - £55.00
Closing Bank = £558.57

Tags: aul Nicholls, betting strategies, horseracing tips, racing bets, racing odds