3:30 gold cup

fav going to be tough to beat but this ground can throw up a result and he ran a few shockers as a hurdler in this ground. he is obviously a significantly better horse these days and over fences and he has plenty of wins in soft but if there is a reason he gets beat, it likely will be the ground. the gold cup he won last year was an awful race and they set it up for him by going very quick up front while he sat out the back and picked them off as they all pulled up and fell around him. he got back to his best the last day by making all and that will turn this in to a very different race for him than the one he won last year so tactics are going to be interesting.

i think this is a very good race so i'm more than happy to take him on and the one i landed on weeks ago was gerri colombe. i got some 11/1 and 12/1 win only but i would also be perfectly happy betting the 7/1 each way four places that is still available today. happy to almost throw out the run the last day, sometimes good horses run bad races for certain reasons and the fav has done that previously too. gerri colombe has always looked every bit a gold cup horse and was an unlucky loser in the rsa at the festival last year when flying up the hill behind the real whacker over two furlongs shorter. they didn't real care about the last day and although they were disappointed with the way he ran, this has been his target all season and he is kept fresh ready for this. he loves the mud and he stays well, i have zero question marks about this horse and i think he improves again for this test. i'm a huge fan. 

fastorslow can't win. he beat galopin at the back end of last year when galopin was coming off the back of a very gruelling gold cup and he clearly did not run his race then people convinced himself they were even remotely close ability wise when fastorslow beat him again in a 2m4f race that was run at a crawl of a pace for 2m. the last day really showed us who the better horse was in a comfortable win in a relatively slowly run 3m on a flat track. this is a very different race and for a horse that is much more about speed and has been flattered to be so close to galopin three times because of significantly beneficial circumstances, i just can not have this horse winning a competitive, well run gold cup over 3m2f in heavy ground.

l'homme presse is a nice horse and he looked smart when beating yesterday's winner protektorat at lingfield but he struggled at ascot the next day and has something to prove now. he won the rsa well a couple of years ago but i'm not certain this ort of dour test is up his street. talented individual but i think he finds at least one too good. corach rambler beat fastorslow here last year and is only on four pound worse terms but he has a different seasonal target in mind and i'm not sure they will want him to have too hard of a race here in this ground with the grand national only a month away. he certainly deserves to take his chance and he is going to stay better than pretty much every other runner so he is not without a chance. 

bravemansgame will be better suited by the way this race may be run. they went very fast from the front last year and he paid the price late on when galopin came to claim him but while there is still some pace in this renewal, i doubt they go quite as fast and he may well have a chance to hold on if he is prominent early again. i think he is probably past his best overall though.