Dave Nevison's New Year's Day tips: Get 2021 off to a flyer with Sebastopol

I wish all of my readers a happy 2021 and hopefully I will see some of you in a betting ring on the track sooner rather than later. Looking at the P&L, I am reasonably happy with how things have gone with the tips this last year and don’t anticipate changing an awful lot - essentially concentrating mainly on the handicaps.

I like to have a body of form to look at rather than tall reputations, although I'll occasionally make exceptions for juvenile hurdles and the odd two-year-old that I have seen with my own eyes - but obviously there weren’t many of those last year!

My ambition (rather than my resolution) remains to try and get a yankee up with my four Saturday selections so I have a clean slate and 52 attempts ahead. Hopefully these three will at least set us off with a winner.

There are other previous winners in this juvenile event, but nothing was anything like as impressive as this ex-Mark Johnston runner on her debut. She beat a previous winner by more than 20 lengths and may have Triumph hurdle prospects for the North if she dispatches these rivals in the manner I would expect.

She was by far the highest-rated of these on the Flat, jumped really impressively for a debutante, and her sex allowance keeps the weight carried low. Some of the unraced rivals look as though they are really going to struggle to get the trip over hurdles and hopefully we should start 2021 with a winner, albeit a short-priced one.

Tom Lacey's charge has been fairly lightly campaigned, but might just be an improver for the step up in trip in what is a tight, useful-looking handicap. He definitely looked as though he needed the race at Newbury behind Floressa but has been dropped down 2lb for that run and is dropped from a 0-155 to 0-140 here. His trainer Tom Lacey has ended the year in good form and Sebastopol has scored here before, so it looks as though this race may have been a target.

If this horse had carried the 6lb more he has been given for this race, I have little doubt he would still have won his latest race at Chepstow just as comfortably and I don’t think I am alone in that view.

He put in a very measured performance for a novice making his debut over fences and won comfortably, going away from his rivals after the last. He is a winning pointer and looks like he will have a solid future over staying trips over fences and should have no problem with conditions or the stiff finish here.