It's nice when your on a horse who has been very well supported in the market and you are on a much bigger price. That was the case on Monday if you were on Ellerton from the night before.
The Monday fancy was backed in from 10/3 to the EVS favourite. Despite the money being in our favour, I was not confident during the race.
Ellerton was being urged along a lot sooner than every horse that surrounded him turning for home, but he is clearly a quirky animal as when he got to the front he put the brakes on when jumping the last and he nearly chucked the race away. Thankfully, the horse was ahead of the handicapper, and the poor quality horses around him weren't up to the task to task advantage of a small mishap at the final hurdle.
Rizzel's tips
Ip Up 4/1 – Fakenham 4.20
In small field races like this, I like to take on the short-priced favourites, as I think they are massively overhyped in the market. For this race, I thought Busy Being Busy was the deserving favourite, but he is definitely too short, and I thought Ip Up was a worthy opponent and definitely worth a punt.
My fancy is on a decent handicap mark on previous form, and if he does improve for today's trip, he can return to form and get a win, defeating the short-priced favourite.
Jedd O'Keefe is a trainer who tends to keep his horses to the north, mainly in the Yorkshire tracks where he resides. He has a very good record when travelling to Fakenham, with two wins from five runners at this track in the last five seasons, with a further three inside the top three. That stat alone suggests that he comes to this track with horses who have solid chances, and Ip Up has been at this track three times, which has yielded one win as well as a second and third-placed finish. He has predominantly raced over two miles in his career to date, and it has worked out quite nicely with three wins and six placed effort from 14 runs, but he has always looked like a horse who could run over further, so it's nice to see they are willing to experiment over 2m 4f on a track he has won at before and the trainer does well at.
He is in decent form, with a third placed effort last time out, running on at the finish over two miles. His runner-up finish in 2024 over 2m behind Tapley reads as good form, and that was off a mark of 120 (6lb higher than today's rating), with the same staying on comments being applied to him that day.
He is versatile on any ground, so today's quick ground will not be a problem, and I think he is the chief problem for the favourite, with 4/1 being a solid price.
GambleAware