UK Horse Racing Tips

Guess who’s number one?

If you’re here, we no doubt have one thing in common – you love a flutter. A ‘flutter’ of course is a bet, be that on the races, football or any sport really. But much like a fingerprint we each have our own approaching t0 betting that is very particular to us. Some of us simply can’t go long without having a win (be it due to the need to keep motivated, or to feel things are going your way). Others though are more geared towards value bets, and so are less inclined to go for short odds selections and more likely to opt for outsiders.

Of course even in opting for outsiders this can be a broad area. Some look for value bets that are a little beyond the rest of the field (say 15-1 to 20-1 kind of range) whereas others are looking for that one memorable win where they spot something that other punters simply don’t (say 100-1 selection). The same is true of the other side of the odds spectrum where some bettors frequently opt for short priced selections from say even money to 3-1, whereas others want win after win and so are no strangers to odds on shots.

Such a strategy (opting for odds-on shots) is of course a risk because you’ll need a very high hit rate. Any disappointment will mean that your betting bank takes a hit, whereas on the other end of the scale if you opt for outsiders your success rate is certainly going to be lower, but when you do have a win your betting bank will receive a significant boost. It’s important also to remember that there are a great many horse racing bookmakers and so you’re often able to ‘shop around’ for the best betting odds (or even get involved in arbitrage betting). Of course not all punters go for an either / or approach, with some spotting value in both big and short odds selections. There are as many approaches as there are gamblers, and if your approach to betting works for you, then that really is the sole factor of importance.

Unfortunately, the result of the 1981 Derby will forever be overshadowed by events at Ballmany Stud, Co. Kildare on February 8, 1983. However, while the winner, Shergar, was subsequently spirited away, in the dead of night, by a gang of masked gunmen and never seen alive again, his performance at Epsom still stirs the blood of many in the racing fraternity.

Having won the Sandown Classic Trial by ten lengths and the Chester Vase by twelve lengths, much lie someone aceing the highest payout online casino games, Shergar was sent off at 10/11 favourite at Epsom. In the absence of the Dante winner, Beldale Flutter, who had beaten Shergar in what is now the Vertem Futurity Trophy as a juvenile, the pick of the opposition was the Dante Stakes runner-up, Shotgun, ridden by Lester Piggott. However, once the race was underway, the opposition, which looked weak on paper beforehand, became almost irrelevant.

Rounding Tattenham Corner – the sharp, downhill bend that leads runners into the home straight at Epsom – Shergar easily moved upsides the leaders, Riberetto and Silver Season and as soon as he took up the running, with three furlongs to run, the race was all but over. Approaching the furlong marker, BBC Radio commentator Peter Bromley exclaimed, ‘There’s only one horse in it. You need a telescope to see the rest!”

Shergar sauntered home in splendid isolation, with jockey Walter Swinburn looking around for non-existent dangers, to win, eased down, by ten lengths. In fact, such was his margin of victory – still the widest in the history of the Derby – that John Matthias, who rode the second horse, Derby Italiano winner Glint Of Gold, actually that his horse has won. We can only hope luck would go the same way for us in a  newzealandcasinos environment. The race was later described by Timeform as ‘arguably the most one-sided Derby of modern times’; Shergar was awarded a Timeform Annual Rating of 140, placing him co-eighth in the all-time list of the Timeform era, alongside Dancing Brave and Sea The Stars, among others.

In his heyday in the early Eighties, Dermot Browne was an accomplished amateur National Hunt jockey. Much like someone adapt at best online casino games, he twice became Irish champion amateur and famously won the Supreme Novices’ Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival and the Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle on Browne’s Gazette in 1984. At the end of his riding career, Browne followed in the footsteps of his father, Liam, by becoming a trainer in Lambourn, Berkshire.

However, his new career was short-lived because, in October, 1992, he was found guilty of six breaches of the Rules of Racing, including passing ‘inside’ information to a bookmaker for financial reward, by the Jockey Club Disciplinary Committee and ‘warned off’ for ten years. His original ban – which precluded him for entering any racecourse, being employed in any racing stable or dealing, in any capacity, with racehorses – was due to expire in October, 2002.

However, by that stage, Browne had gained even greater notoriety after claiming, in a television documentary, that he had coordinated the administration of the fast-acting tranquilliser acetylpromazine, or ACP for short, to 23 horses between August and September, 1990. Quite a scene, and a worldaway from  casino sur internet . One of the horses involved was Bravefoot, who finished last of five, when 11/8 favourite, in the Champagne Stakes at Doncaster.

Browne apparently administered the drug at the behest of Brian Wright, who was, himself, warned off for twenty years by the Jockey Club Disciplinary Committee in 2002, while still a fugitive from justice. In 2005, Wright, nicknamed ‘The Milkman’, was arrested on an International Arrest Warrant in Spain and subsequently tried, convicted and sentenced to thirty years’ imprisonment for masterminding a multi-million pound international cocaine smuggling operation. Browne, for his part, was warned off for a further twenty years and only escaped being banned for life by virtue of a letter, exposing further corruption, which he left with the Disciplinary Committee.