Free horse racing tips: Dave Nevison's best bets for Thursday

I don’t usually look at handicaps for three-year-olds until a bit later in the season, but I am hosting the Racing TV Club Day at Redcar on Thursday afternoon and the meeting is very much focused on talent for the future, so I have had a look at a couple of competitive races on the card. Best of luck.

I have to ignore his last run in 2021 when he ran poorly having been sent off a well-backed 5-2 chance, but Rich King has not been seen since that disappointing effort and has had the unkindest cut of all in the interim, so hopefully will be more focused this season.

The form of his second start when narrowly beaten into third place would make him well handicapped here as a few rivals in the race have progressed to be rated higher than Rich King starts this season, so the form looks useful.

He was still green on that occasion and might well have won had he been more experienced. He has been very well backed on all his outings, so is clearly well thought of, and his talented trainer has begun this season in excellent form.

He has got a good draw in stall three and hopefully the market will indicate a degree of confidence.

This four-year-old maiden is definitely running out of chances, but things didn’t go well for him when I tipped him up in this column last week as he had to wait for a gap, which didn’t come until it was too late, and he simply didn’t have the gears to take advantage.

I am hoping over this slightly longer trip – he was second twice last season over 1m1f - he will be ridden a bit more forcefully at a track where front runners go well, and hopefully he can grind out a win at last. There probably won’t be a next time for him to carry my cash, either.

A mile may not prove to be the ideal trip for this stoutly bred three-year-old, but certainly the sprint distances he ran over as a two-year-old can be discounted as they were purely educational and designed to get him a handicap mark.

Audit did show a glimmer of promise in his races and was certainly not knocked about in any way, so the handicapper couldn’t really rate him any higher than the rating of 59 he starts off on here.

Trainer Michael Dods has been in excellent form this spring, largely in association with Conor Beasley who knows this horse well already. This looks a very uncompetitive race and those below Audit in the weights have either been very well hidden or have little in the way of ability.