Ayr tips for Thursday: Dave Nevison has three bets

I am looking forward enormously to the Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup Festival this week which has long been one of my favourite meetings of the season. 

I will be hosting the Racing TV Club Day on Thursday afternoon and I am very much hoping that these three selections run well in some competitive handicaps. Best of luck, and if you're not heading to Ayr, you can enjoy all the action live on Racing TV.

Ed Bethell couldn’t be in better form and had a double at Redcar on Tuesday, but Oviedo is his only runner on the first day of the Virgin Bet Ayr Gold Cup Festival, which is possibly surprising. 

Oviedo carries top weight in this high-class handicap but has actually dropped down below the mark of his best recent run which was an excellent second at last year’s Ebor meeting. 

Since then, things have not gone too well for Oviedo. He came closest to winning when beaten just over a length in the Cambridgeshire last year when first home on the wrong side. 

He has subsequently not enjoyed the best of runs or got the tactics right in three starts, but doesn’t look to have lost his form. I am taking it as a positive move that connections are reaching for double headgear for the first time, and a decent draw in stall five suggests all is teed up for a good run here.

This southern raider has been declared for this race from three entries over the next few days and I expect Roger Varian’s lightly-raced three-year-old to go off pretty short in the betting. 

Never Better is bred to be a champion but, despite winning a maiden, by a short head, at Kempton he hasn’t lived up to his pedigree as yet. 

However, he is described as possessing plenty of physical scope and he looks as though he might yet improve based upon his recent third at Newbury. 

That was his first outing after five months off the track, and a gelding operation, in a race at least as competitive as this one, so if he progresses from that fitness-wise, he has a great chance off the same rating.

The case against King’s Crown winning this competitive handicap is that he has not won a race since 2022 but, looking back at his form, he was first tried in Group Two races, which were too strong for him, and then he was fashioned to be a high-grade sprint handicapper, which also failed. 

His handicap mark has dropped considerably and he is now running over seven furlongs which, looking at his recent efforts, including here at Ayr, appears to be a distance he can win over. 

Things may have fallen right for him in this race with the draw looking favourable in stall three, and if he runs as well as he did at Newcastle on the all-weather last time out, he should go pretty close.