Newbury Placepot: Wednesday December 19

Keith Melrose
19 December 2012

Today's Placepot comes from Newbury

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Something of a festive treat today, with Newbury hosting a strong midweek card. Here Keith Melrose tackles the Placepot.

"Sustainability has some strong hurdling form from last spring to his name, on which he’d look very well handicapped over fences, to the extent that a slightly substandard round of jumping in a better race at Sandown last time can be forgiven."

12:15 - Plenty of guesswork required in the opening juvenile, none of those with experience having achieved anything to speak of and a couple of the newcomers not exactly admirable types on the Flat. We're going to take the other hurdling debutants, namely Amoralist and Swynmor, both having achieved at least a fair level on the Flat and since having joined very capable jumps trainers. Like the current market, I'd give a narrow preference to Swynmor, but not so much as to exclude Amoralist.

12:50 - With Honest John out, we're left with just eight. Handy Andy is a shoo-in, his evident suitability to this course and his clearly being well handicapped overshadowing the fact that his yard hasn't been going terribly well in recent weeks. That concern is enough to warrant a backup, however, and we're going with the unexposed Balbriggan, who has taken a step forward on both starts over fences for his current yard.

13:20 - Snake Eyes and Fair Trade stand out on form in this big field and are very much the two we want to be on, for all Poet is a fascinating recruit from the Flat. Neither of our selections are the doughtiest of stayers, but the manner in which they travelled through their respective hurdling debuts (both over this trip on soft ground) suggests both should be up to doing enough.

13:50 - Sustainability has some strong hurdling form from last spring to his name, on which he'd look very well handicapped over fences, to the extent that a slightly substandard round of jumping in a better race at Sandown last time can be forgiven. Second in is Double Dash, who could be very well treated and shaped as though retaining plenty of his old ability on his return from a lengthy absence over C&D last month.

14:25 - Although strictly the best-quality race on today's card, this graduation chase is a tricky leg as you can't really hang your hat on any of them. As such, the in-form Rose of The Moon gets the benefit of the doubt, even though he's a bit all-or-nothing and therefore far from an ideal Placepot suggestion. With us needing a banker, temptation to include Tullamore Dew is resisted, but there's a chance this smaller field could take the pressure off his suspect jumping.

15:00 - Should we get this far, the combination of Brassick and Uxizandre is likely to be enough to get us through the last. Brassick is in a warmer race than his successful hurdling debut, but should find this more testing ground and galloping track in his favour, while he's open to improvement overall. Uxizandre failed to win on his first start in Britain, but he shaped better than the result and was heavily supported in the market, so improvement I expected today.

Selections:

12:15 - 1, 6
12:50 - 4, 5
13:20 - 6, 13
13:50 - 2, 6
14:25 - 1
15:00 - 1, 12
= 32 lines

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