Royal Ascot tips: Dave Nevison's best bets for Friday
By Dave Nevison
Last Updated: Tue 5 Dec 2023
Hopefully, I’ve found three big-priced runners with live chances in just about the most competitive handicaps I have ever looked at for Royal Ascot on Friday. I will be happy enough if one comes home in front!
Dave Nevison
Finished: 10thSP: 50/1
The handicaps at Ascot this week are not getting any easier and this may be the tightest yet. Lucander is just the type to run well at a big price in a race such as this and rates an each-way play.
Trainer George Baker has his string in the best of form and has already had a 66/1 placed runner at this meeting and hopefully this one can go close at a very big price, too.
Lucander is an old stager but does not seem to be deteriorating and has already won a (Local) Group Two in Bahrain this season.
He was a good third at Epsom last time and would have been second in another stride. As usual, he came from the rear of the field.
He is ideally suited by a strongly run race, which seems a certainty here, and hopefully he won’t get a clear run in the straight.
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Dave Nevison
Finished: 14thSP: 8/1
May be a well-named filly with Hollie Doyle riding for the Gosdens. She teams up well with some of the yard’s lightly weighted runners.
Doyle is riding this meeting brilliantly and the “Hollie” factor goes some way to making Marksman Queen my selection.
As with some of the best of the Gosden fillies, this one was introduced at the backend of last season. She won her first two races six months apart before running well in defeat last time in her first handicap.
She has raced exclusively on the all-weather but Ascot seems to be a course where the crossover to turf is not often a problem. The way she stayed on last time suggests she will be suited by the stiff Ascot mile.
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Dave Nevison
Finished: 12thSP: 5/1
Has certainly improved since he came over from Ireland to the David Barron yard and the booking of Colin Keane, Ireland’s champion jockey, will certainly do him no harm in this wide-open sprint.
He won nicely at Southwell and Musselburgh but last time out the draw and the heavy ground caught him out at Chester. He would have had another win by his name on a different day.
He runs off his new handicap mark in this, which is a 11lb higher, but he can prove equal to the task.
His high draw in stall 28 looks to put him on the right side of things here and we should certainly get a run for our money.
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