Dave Nevison: horse racing tips for the jumps on Thursday
Our resident website tipster Dave Nevison is keen on the claims of a handicap debutant and two more runners on Thursday's jumps cards. Enjoy all the action from Warwick, Taunton, Limerick and Naas live on Racing TV.
2.25 Warwick: Boys Of Wexford
He has a lot going for him here.
Boys Of Wexford looks set to get the lead and, if he can get comfortable out in front, his sound jumping should have most of these blunderers in trouble from some way out.
He might not be the quickest and showed virtually nothing in novice hurdles but has managed to exploit very low marks over fences, winning one and being placed in his only other two starts. Boys Of Wexford has made the running in all three runs over fences and if his jumping does prove an asset over the long run of fences down the back straight here he should be able to hold off challengers in the short Warwick straight.
Trainer Henry Oliver has his string in very good form at present.
3.00 Warwick: Stellar Stream
Katy Woollacott’s lightly-raced six-year-old definitely looks the one on the up here.
This point-to-point winner demonstrated stamina is his strong suit when winning a weak novices’ event at Hereford last time and, despite that being a weak four-runner event, I don’t see many novice winners starting off on a mark of 106 and he looks to have been let in lightly.
It looks a smart move to send him handicapping rather than trying to defy a penalty, and jockey Ben Godfrey – who rides most of Woollacott’s horses - gets on well with Stellar Stream and claims a useful 3lb.
The main rival here looks to be top-weight Blade Runner, who looks to have done well to win three chases and might be off too high a mark for the drop back to hurdles. He has never won over the smaller obstacles and the rest look real slowcoaches.
3.20 Hexham: Houston Texas
He is racing in the lowest grade he has contested for a very long time and might find this a much easier test.
Hopes were high after this nine-year-old ran up a hat-trick spanning the back-end of last season and the start of this term and there was even talk of him making up into a Grand National type. I am not aware that there has been a problem with Houston Texas, but his backers have certainly had one since he won in good style at Carlisle in the autumn. He’s been well beaten in four starts since, but he ran much better than a tailed off 7th-place suggests in the Eider last time where he simply failed to stay after being prominent and looking comfortable for much of the way.
Hopefully he might enjoy himself and he could be an interesting horse for Ayr and Perth that are coming up.
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