Tips

Herefordshire trainer Tom Symonds has his string in fine form with four winners from his last eight runners for a strike rate of 50 per cent over the past fortnight. Even his supposed no-hoper Gaelic Saint comfortably outran her odds at Warwick yesterday when second at 50-1 in a mares’ novices’ hurdle. Tomorrow one of Symonds’s stable stars NAVAJO INDY will try to keep up the good work for the yard at Haydock when he contests the Betfair Stayers’ Handicap Hurdle (2.25 p.m.) in search of a first prize to winning connections of nearly £57,000. At six years old, this progressive and consistent hurdler should be reaching his peak and Navajo Indy shapes as though this three-mile trip, which

Trainer Jack Channon knows what it takes to win Newmarket’s bet365 Cambridgeshire (tomorrow, 3.40 p.m.) having been assistant to his father, Mick, when the stable won the race three years ago with Majestic. Majestic, now seven and still in the yard that Channon took over from his dad at the start of last year, was 25-1 when he landed the race in 2022 and this is a race that throws up plenty of shocks. Two of the last five winners of the race returned odds of 40-1, one at 25-1 (Majestic) and another at 20-1. Those statistics suggest that, although the two horses at the top of the market, Treble

The death this week of film legend Robert Redford reminded me of my favourite quotation relating to gambling. It was uttered by his fellow actor Paul Newman, who was Redford’s co-star in two of their greatest films: The Sting and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. When Newman played the part of ‘Fast Eddie’ Felson in yet another film, The Color of Money, he said: ‘Money won is twice as sweet as money earned.’ I have this quote framed on the wall of my office and read it regularly as an inspiration to finding winners. Moving on to the task in hand: trying to find a weekend winner. I usually

Ascot’s Shergar Cup meeting tomorrow is a fun event but, in terms of good bets, it is York’s Ebor meeting later this month that excites me more. The four-day event starts in less than two weeks and, unless there is a drastic change in the weather, racing looks likely to take place on fast ground. The most likely winner of the Sky Bet Ebor, Europe’s richest flat handicap, on 23 August is Hipop De Loire, who was desperately unlucky in running in this race a year ago when fifth to another Irish raider Magical Zoe. Willie Mullins’s eight-year-old gelding showed he is in good form when winning easily over hurdles

Astute Scottish trainer Jim Goldie cannot hide his admiration for his five-year-old sprinter AMERICAN AFFAIR, who runs at Haydock tomorrow in the Group 2 Betfred Temple Stakes (3.30 p.m.). Goldie knows a thing or two about decent speedsters having trained the likes of Jack Dexter and Hawkeyethenoo in recent years – the former, in fact, finished second in the Temple Stakes a decade ago. The veteran handler said this week that American Affair was ‘very exciting’ and up there with the best sprinters he had trained which is why Goldie has given his stable star an entry in the King Charles III Stakes at Royal Ascot next month. American Affair