Saturday’s UK Horse Racing Tips: Young trainer can make his mark at Wolverhampton

Will you try to enhance your Cheltenham Festival ‘bank’ or just watch the action from Sandown, Wolverhampton and Ayr without a vested interest? That’s the key question that punters are posed with this weekend.

Saturday’s racing rather pales into insignificance when you compare it to next week’s fare down in the Cotswolds, and therefore I’ll be taking a quieter approach. However, it would be foolish to bypass a couple of tasty-looking bets at decent prices. A winner is a winner, right?

The feature race is the ultra competitive Imperial Cup (2.25 Sandown) and, although I won’t be having a wager, I’ll be interested to see how Playful Saint gets on for Dan and Harry Skelton.

His presence in this line-up feels like a typical Skelton Saturday plot, and the form of his penultimate second has received plenty of boosts with subsequent victories for the third, fifth and sixth respectively. Love Envoi, who won the race, isn’t half bad either! 

Playful Saint didn’t beat much last time, but he seemed to relish the heavy ground and long homestraight at Leicester and will have similar conditions here. A mark of 135 seems fair on what he’s achieved, though I’d be worried about the number of lively rivals against him. It’s far from a one-horse affair.

As a result I have looked elsewhere for my bets, the first of which I hope will follow up Mabre’s big-priced success on the all-weather last week. Ingra Tor is the horse in question, and he makes his seasonal reappearance in the 6f handicap (1.30) early on Wolverhampton’s card.

This big-framed sprinter quickly developed into a talented performer when last seen by winning two of his first three races - a novice event at Southwell and a Newmarket handicap. The latter was a wildly impressive two-and-three-quarter-length success over the Clive Cox-trained Harry Three, who then rose up the handicap from a mark of 89 to 109 after a string of improved efforts.

Ingra Tor was hit with a 9lb penalty for that win, but I don’t think that was the reason for some pretty dismal efforts that ended his campaign. He clearly didn’t handle York on his next outing when he finished just 11th of 19, and I’m not all that sure the Newmarket July course suited him either. He ran there on his final four starts, three of which also came in unsuitably small fields.

Then there’s the argument that Ingra Tor came to hand early in the season and wasn’t firing on all cylinders by mid-summer. I’m willing to put a line through those displays in the hope that he’ll be ready to go first time up again this year, and I see no reason why that wouldn’t be the case given rookie trainer Jack Channon is bidding to make his mark early in the season.

Ingra Tor has been allocated a great draw in stall three; has the in-form Andrea Atzeni booked, and gets in off bottomweight. Expect him to stalk the leaders and flash home. Anything above 4-1 seems fair.

I’ll also chuck a few quid at Ginger Mail, who runs in the 2m handicap hurdle (3.20) at Ayr. Nick Alexander’s seven-year-old beat three subsequent winners when he was successful over this course and distance at the start of this season, and, much like Ingra Tor, he can be excused for his more recent displays.

Following his aforementioned strike, Ginger Mail was upped in trip to two-and-a-half miles at Musselburgh and Haydock and seemingly failed to stay on both occasions. His last race turned into a sprint and he didn’t have the pace to stick with the heavily punted favourite, Dancewiththewind. Nevertheless, he ran very admirably in defeat and that gives me hope that another win is just around the corner.

His main dangers are Traprain Law and Maimie’s Magic, but he’s already beaten the former this campaign and the latter could be vulnerable under a 5lb penalty for her last-time-out success. Once this race is over, it’s full steam ahead towards the Cheltenham festival (US racing aside!).

Saturday’s UK Horse Racing Tips

Ingra Tor (1.30 Wolverhampton) @ 7.2
Ginger Mail (3.20 Ayr) @ 5.4