Dave Nevison's four free tips for Saturday's racing at Haydock Park

I am hoping that Ballygeary will come good again soon and that I am not throwing good money after bad after unlucky runs on his two latest starts. To my eyes I should have collected (on the extra places) last time out as he definitely got squeezed up on the inside as he tried to get into contention in the big Morebattle Handicap at Kelso and the time before at Musselburgh he made up his ground far too quickly after an early mistake and just got run out of fourth place.

Peter Kavanagh is back on board this afternoon and the 3lb-claiming conditional has ridden him to his last two wins previously. He has gone down a couple of pounds in the weights for his last two runs and the ground and track should suit so he is definitely worth a final roll of the dice for me. 

Numitor made an early mistake at Aintree last season and after being pulled up in the Topham wasn’t seen again for 350 days before he reappeared at Exeter recently. Since his wind operation the Liverpool run has been his only disappointment and the handicapper looks for my money to have been pretty generous in dropping him to below his last winning mark here.

This is a veterans' chase and at 10 years old Numitor is fully entitled to take his chance, but he is much more lightly-raced than many, having had had only 15 runs over fences, winning four of them. Aintree excepted, Heather Main’s gelding has only run one other bad race and he was given the wind operation after that so that is excused. I think he looks something to bet on here and only the fact that the yard is not having lots of winners so far in 2024 is a negative. Hopefully Numitor will be the first of many for his stable in the coming weeks. 

Inflexible is 6lb better off with No Hubs No Hoobs on their running at Wincanton and that may be enough given he was only beaten three and a half lengths and his rival has not yet won a race away from the Somerset venue (or even been asked to jump fences on a left-handed track). 

The issue with Inflexible is his jumping. Touch wood he always gets round but he is often clumsy along the way. Hopefully he can get his act together to take this.

Keable has been put in at a very big price and the outsider of this field at the time of writing but I feel there may be reasons to side with him in this relatively low grade handicap for a Saturday card. 

Keable has only had four runs over hurdles and has only really taken part in one of them when he was second at Ffos Las early in 2023. He got a mark of 112 for that effort (winner now rated 121 and third who was well beaten rated 100, so it was a fair mark) and has been dropped 4lb for his two runs since. Those runs came either side of a 12-month absence but although he ended up very well beaten in both those runs neither were without promise and I am hopeful he will come on for his recent effort at Taunton.

A hood is tried for the first time and the jockey booking is interesting. Ben Sutton is a really promising 7lb-claiming conditional whose allowance takes Keable’s weight down even further and I think the 7yo could outrun his odds.