Monday’s Racing Tips – Heathcliff will enjoy the return to 7f and land a fourth career win

It's safe to say they were not really bothered about winning on chasing debut for Springtime Promise as she went from being favourite the night before, to as big as 13/2 at the time of racing. She jumped okay for the most part, but even the way the jockey approached fences, you could tell it wasn't the day for that one.

Hand Over Fist tried making the running in the Cork National and jumped well throughout until he got to the final circuit where his jumping started to fall apart. He was quite keen throughout so it's not a great surprise that his jumping deteriorated as he was evidently knackered, which saw him fade away quickly when turning for home.

Yellow Star 9/4 – Plumpton 3.05

Plumpton is the place for jumps racing on Monday with the better quality coming at this course than Hereford. This Class 3 0-140 is an interesting race for the start of the week and I thought Yellow Star was an interesting runner over 2m 4f.

Gary & Josh Moore's runner is lightly raced and completely unexposed over today's trip, and is without a doubt on a good handicap mark of 118. His form towards the end of the season last year in the Sandown Class 2 Championship Final was a brilliant effort. He returned to racing with a good fourth-placed effort at Chepstow around three weeks ago, where he tried to make the running but was headed towards the end before running on strongly again at the finish.

His run at Chepstow was a good start to the new season and has clearly given connections something to build on as they have deemed it to be the next step by stepping this horse up in trip. The form of that race at Chepstow will be boosted as the next few months go along as it was a decent renewal, and we've already seen the winner run a corker at Cheltenham a week ago.

Heathcliff 6/4 (2pt) – Kempton 1.50

Heathcliff is a horse who has improved a great amount since moving into handicaps for the James Fanshawe stable. At the start of the year, he was rated 69 and now he is rated 85 and looks to be on a very workable mark and now going back up to 7f, today's race looks like an ideal spot for him to keep progressing and to grab a fourth career win.

Since moving into handicaps he has won three times and been in the places on the other two occasions. Last time out he ran in a £36k Sprint series final handicap at this track over 6f, and he recorded an RPR of 94. The time before that he managed to win at Newcastle in a Racing League handicap, which is always competitive, so I think that shows the level of horse we're dealing with, and that's one who is still a fair bit ahead of the handicapper.

Today he runs off a low weight of 8st 8lbs and I think the step up to 7f can only be seen as a positive as he stays on nicely over 6f, but can also run out of track. This is yet another competitive race, but he is drawn in Stall 3, which should allow Billy Loughnane to get into a lovely position for him to extend and hit top gear in the final straight without finding much traffic.

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