after the navan hurdles win for andy duf gordon elliot said " he is a big weak horse and still not the finished article ,he could drop back to 2m no problem . mark said he showed an awful lot of pace and he thought he was going too slow,thought he was  just hacking ,i stepped him up to 2 and a half as he was just a bit sleepy at home ...taken from the ..irish racing site , a good site and well worth a visit if ya havent yet .

gordon did say he dont think he gave his true running post race , what i did note on sunday morning on his ambassadors blog thing on here " andy duffrese my best chance of a winner i suppose " didnt strike me as full of confidence for a 2/5 shot and to me  he knew it would be no walk in the park facing a graded performer and some promising types on his 2nd run stepped up in class . also in those quotes  he said after andys bumper win "he would be as good as any bumper horse we have sent out this season "  envoi included ? so in my book he has the 2 of them very close . the upside is you can get a decent price  now for andy  if you keep the faith .

It’s amazing how often and how quickly a piece of wisdom takes on a life of its own as soon as it becomes public property. To the extent that it very quickly gets imprinted as fact not opinion. I think the two sports this happens most often is football and racing and in both cases a few data points very quickly turn into indisputable fact and otherwise bright and thoughtful people find themselves unwittingly joining the herd almost without thinking.

Very quickly the view that Irish novice hurdlers were way better than those on the other side of the sea I think got quickly institutionalised as indisputable fact. There has been very little mention of ANY novice hurdler that is not Irish. Andy Dufresne got a rpr of 141 for his navan win. The big breakaway got 137 for his Chepstow win. A week ago AD was a THIRD of the price (apologies if this is aftertiming).  I suspect there were still many that believed AD was still better value than TBB. Has the market overreacted and is public been swept along without taking rational stock.

FWIW I couldn’t care less which side of the sea a horse is trained. I simply try and look for horses that I believe have a better chance of winning than their price suggests. Apologies but I haven’t checked the RPRs but one owner has 4 horses in the supreme two for wpm one for hendo and one for mr Hobbs. Is the difference in the ability of these horses accurately reflected in their price or have the markets overreacted to popular wisdom? Unsurprisingly the two wpm horses are significantly shorter. Yes there can be debate over which race they will run in e.t.c but has the Irish novice card been overplayed and as with all markets is  a correction is on its way?

Horses like sporting john, chantry house, TBB , ribble valley have been of interest to me now for many weeks one reason being that few people are talking about them and therefore could easily represent value.

Do I think the Irish novice hurdlers are good. Yes absolutely I do. Have we overreacted imo yes we have. If the position was reversed I would be looking for irish novice hurdlers for value (though I do think the ED/LP form is undervalued).

Anyway just a few thoughts

might be apt we are now lokoing for redemption .....shaw it  will be !

took some 34 for the supreme on here only buttons but will chip away at anything over 20 ,think its the race for him.

The three 5yo from last years AB commander of fleet, birchdale and Allaho. Will we see COF this season/again. Birchdale ran shockingly the other week and Allaho had a delay (hopefully minor). Three very promising prospects....... not for me if you value the horses future

already have one bootfull ,will start filling the other ! cheers guttie

elliot has a few others entered, abracadabras, easywork,and dufresne  1 or possibly 2 run i would say ,hopefully ad is one of them .

my thoughts also regarding abra

Yep,I would say there's value out there for sure,fair few unexposed novices that could be anything.

Agree Duffy I provided my views on MC in the supreme thread. Take a look and see what you think.... am too lazy to type again.

i suspect he is not the only overlooked novice. The Irish novices look good but nearly all the focus and attention has been on them so value could well exist elsewhere. Nearly all supreme winners have at least 3 hurdle races before Cheltenham . I think horses like MC Shishkin and Chantry have tons of ability but they need runs imo. Shishkin has a couple of entries but he fell at second on his hurdle debut. MC is a big winner for me and if he is entered soon I will go in again but time is running out to get the necessary experience and the trainer is notoriously easy on his novice hurdlers.

dont know what to make of that ! struggled to beat captain guiness  who is prob a decent prospect ,jumped well and at least showed he can battle and not fold .both should improve .

Well that provides a little context. BTW she is some rider

Yeah, could have done with Blackbow winning by half the track, the 2nd today was also a big price on debut which also suggests he isn't anything that decent. Despite dropping in trip AD pulled for the first part of the race quite a bit, perhaps they crawled, perhaps he didn't like taking a lead, on the plus side he knucklied down well enough, but all in all it was another less than positive day. As the pieces are falling into place it is looking more and more that he is not going to be, (certainly as I and others had hoped) that special, not over hurdles at any rate.

test

Andy Dufresne looks about right at 14/1, has won in a big field and will improve when getting good to soft and a quicker pace on pedigree. He was workmanlike last week, but showed he can get the job done when eyeballing another horse in the run in.

not entered in supreme ,ballymore ,or spuds

You could have boiled an egg by the time I posted mine disappointing news though, obviously can't be happy with him.