Saturday Racing Tips: Kevin Blake likes a youngster and a veteran at Sandown

Sandown the feature meeting on ITV Racing

Authorised Speed looks a worthy fav in Tolworth

Ballyandy to relish conditions in Veterans' Chase

After the madness of Christmas and New Year comes the relative calm of January which is without doubt one of the slower months in the National Hunt season in terms of high-class action.

Most of the top Irish horses are being prepared for the Dublin Racing Festival and the British horses are mostly having additional layers of cotton wool applied by their connections as they count down to the Cheltenham Festival...

I jest, I jest! However, pockets of high-class battle still break out in January and there are still winners to be found every weekend on ITV Racing.

Authorised has the Speed to win Tolworth

The feature race of Saturday is the Unibet Tolworth Novices' Hurdle (14:25) at Sandown. This race has produced some exciting winners in the recent past, most notably Constitution Hill last year, and this year's renewal looks to play host to a few with a great amount of potential.

The ground is likely to be particularly testing and one that should suit is the Gary Moore-trained Authorised Speed.

The six-year-old was a high-class performer in bumpers, winning at Newbury and running well in a series of Listed and Graded events, including when fifth in the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival.

The six-year-old has made a relatively smooth transition to hurdles, winning a maiden at Lingfield in fine style and a novice over this course and distance in relatively straightforward style bar a blunder at the final flight when well in control.

He appeals as the type that will be better in a stronger race and he seems well equipped to deal with the testing conditions. He has some less exposed rivals in opposition, but they will have to be smart to lower his colours.

Testing ground to help Ballyandy in Veterans' Chase

My main betting interest of the day comes in the Unibet Veterans' Handicap Chase (15:00).

This is the final of a series of veterans' handicap chases that was created a few years ago and it really was a great idea. It gives an array of wonderful horses a realistic big pot to aim at and the organisers have been rewarded with a huge field of runners for the final.

While plenty of these are likely to have had this race as their main target of the season, one that I suspect has been trained with this race solely in mind for quite some time is the Nigel Twiston-Davies-trained Ballyandy.

The 12-year-old has been a magnificent horse over the years, winning the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival back in 2016 and adding a couple of other high-profile successes to his name since then.

Despite being 12, Ballyandy has only had seven runs over fences, a product of his jumping not being the best when he initially tried them as a novice.

However, he belatedly returned to chasing in his last two starts and his jumping held up quite well, allowing him to run very well in a veterans chase at Perth prior to finding the drop to two-and-a-half miles to be too sharp for him on his latest start at Cheltenham.

The combination of the return to this longer trip and more testing ground will both play to his strengths. This is likely to have his target for quite some time and it wouldn't surprise if he ran a very big race.

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