Freebets brand ambassador Tom Bellamy heads up to Scotland on Saturday for three rides on Scottish National day, including one in the feature race plus a runner in the Grade Two novice chase for trainer Emma Lavelle.
Tom runs through the chances of his two rides in the two big races, exclusively for Freebets!
Kicking off, I have my first ride in the 3:00pm, which is the Grade Two Future Champion Novices’ Chase, and it looks to be a good field going to post. I ride Hang In There, and he’s been a revelation this season. He’s only about 15.2, he’s very small, you wouldn’t have said he was a textbook chaser, but has done nothing but improve for a fence.
He won some minor races through last summer, Emma was brilliant and landed a few pots with him by finding some great opportunities and then he finished off his summer campaign with a lovely Grade Two win at Wincanton, in the Rising Stars Novice Chase.
He has a penalty, meaning he’s top weight and there’s some good horses in this race that are rated higher than mine, and he’s got to give them weight. He loves quick ground, so the less water they put on the track the better for him. This is the start of a summer campaign, it’s his last go as a novice, so we will see where he is at, and I’m looking forward to riding him.
Next up is the 3:35pm, the feature race of the day, the Scottish Grand National, where I ride the Rebecca Curtis trained Ruthless Article. He’s a horse with plenty of big handicap experience under his belt, and ran well in the Summer Cup, but of course the Scottish National is a different calibre again.
He had a good comeback run at Ascot a couple of weeks ago, but ended up finishing quite tired and took a blow, so will have come on for that.
He’s off what you would call a competitive handicap mark, without being well handicapped, so it’s a case of giving it our best shot, and if we can finish in the first five or six then that would be brilliant.
One thing is for sure, I think his experience will stand him in good stead here.
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