No way Jayjay

Since the weather warmed up we've had a bit of a frustrating time of it, not least when Jayjay Valentine rooted himself to the spot at the start of the 4.20 at Wincanton today. More on that in a moment.

Let's start yesterday where we had:

TIME COURSE SELECTION 1pt/2pt win Bookmaker(s) / Price(s)

2.10 Sandown Martys Mission 1pt 5/1+generally inc. 11/2 Totesport/VC/Betfred
4.25 Sandown Parsnip Pete 1pt 9/2+generally inc. 5/1 Totesport/Betfred/SportingBet

Martys Misson was nicely supported into 3/1f and ran well, touching 1.5 in running at one point as he came to mount his challenge, but he couldn't quite see it out on his first run for more than a year, finishing second, beaten five lengths. He looks well handicapped at the moment for Paul Nicholls and surely is a winner in waiting.

Parsnip Pete's jumping let him down really. He made a couple of mistakes that knocked him off his stride, in particular as he was beginning to mount a bit of a challenge as the pace quickened. He soon weakened and was pulled up, after going off 6/1.

Today we had three go for us (or we were meant to have three go for us):

TIME COURSE SELECTION 1pt/2pt win Bookmaker(s) / Price(s)

2.25 Ascot Viking Blond 1pt 7/1+ generally inc. 15/2 Lads&others 8/1 Hills/Bet365/PaddyPower
3.10 Wincanton Coup Royale 1pt 10/1+generally inc. 11/1 Totesport/SkyBet/Betfred/SportingBet
4.20 Wincanton Jayjay Valentine 1pt 8/1+generally inc. 9/1 Coral/Totesport&others 10/1 SportingBet

It's rare that a Pricewise pick is also a selection for us, but today Viking Blond ticked the boxes and we got the price as he went off at 6/1. He raced prominently for a good while, not getting the lead as he would perhaps have wanted, and he dropped away some way from home.

Coup Royale was also disappointing. Going off at 12/1 he never really showed up and ending up getting pulled up.

So then we turned to Jayjay Valentine to give us a late afternoon boost. Up from Cornwall with trainer Jackie De Plessis, who's had some good results down the years and just turned "professional", he had been extremely well supported It was fairly clear that we had problems though when he started to plant himself at the start, refusing to even walk around with the field. The exchange layers got stuck in massively, so much so that he went off at 69.19BSP! (Normal SP was 11/2). When the flag went up there was James Best doing his best to get him going but it wasn't to be and our race was over before it began. It's not losing a point that's annoying with this really, that happens, it's just the feeling that we perhaps lost out on a nice return. There was lots of support for this 9yo and it will be interesting to see what price he's put up by the layers next time. Whether he'll be backed like he was today however is of course pretty doubtful given what happened today!

Friday 17th February 2012

Martys Mission, 2nd/13, 5/1 --- 3/1

Parsnip Pete, PU/16, 9/2 --- 6/1

Saturday 18th February 2012

Viking Blond, 5th/12, 8/1 --- 6/1

Coup Royale, PU/10, 11/1 --- 12/1

Jayjay Valentine, RR/11, 9/1 --- 11/2

So a frustrating couple of days and we'll be looking for better tomorrow.

Every now and then we make tweaks to our staking, ours is and and always will be an evolving service. So with that in mind, from tomorrow, we will be introducing 0.5pt win singles to our armoury. Going forward, this will slightly increase our bet volume, although the majority of our selections will still be 1pt picks, with, as is currently the case, some 2pt selections aimed at our strongest bigger priced runners.