Race In Focus - The Ladbroke Hurdle - Ascot - Saturday 22nd December

[Bathtime For Rupert]

Not sure if there has been talk of this in any of the other threads but is well worth a thread of its own in my opinion. Just been looking at it myself and these are my thoughts (I was researching whilst writing this so apologies if it's full of waffle!): I put up It's A Gimme as one of my horses to follow in a piece elsewhere and he's got to have a good shout. The ground would be my main concern. A strongly-run two miles is what he wants and was narrowly beaten by a good horse in Raya Star last time. Even though he's up 5lbs that was his first run of the season and it came when Jonjo's horses were a bit out of sorts (not that they're flying now). Should get a run for your money as he's an honest type and all three wins have come on good to soft but there's a big difference between that and heavy. Is my idea of a bet at the moment but just got that nagging doubt and 10/1 isn't huge (even if he's likely to go off shorter). However, he fits the trends (right age, in-form, classy, second-season hurdler, unexposed, second run of season) and although Balder Succes has strong form, 4 year olds have placed on eight occasions from 41 runners with no wins. Having said that, Unioniste proved last week that age isn't everything! Tricky race but the trends are pretty strong (8 out of last 9 winners have had less than 5 handicap hurdle runs) so if you take them literally you can rule the race down quite markedly. I'm not particularly keen to remove the 4yos but if you do, as well as those who look exposed, you're left with 8 horses, of which some don't look good enough (low in the weights - another statistical negative) and the shortlist reads: Cash And Go @ 7/1 Rattan @ 20/1 Double Ross @ 16/1 It's A Gimme @ 10/1 Like I say, I'm not a massive trends person (i.e. I find them useful at times but wouldn't totally put me off a horse) so I couldn't write off a lot of these but it's certainly nice to know that a horse I'm interested in does have history on his side, and that's why I'm becoming more inclined to side with the McManus horse.