Matt Brocklebank wants to get a northern-trained runner on side at 20/1 ahead of the Randox Topham Handicap Chase at Aintree.
2022 Aintree antepost tips
1pt win Gaelik Coast in Topham Handicap Chase at 20/1 (Sky Bet, William Hill, bet365, Coral, Ladbrokes)
Donald McCain looks like launching a strong challenge on Aintree’s Grand National Festival early next month and chief among the team will be GAELIK COAST, who looks well worth a bet at 20/1 in the Randox Topham Handicap Chase.
A winner of two of his three starts over hurdles a couple of seasons ago, connections wasted no time switching the point-to-point winner to fences and he’s progressed nicely through the ranks since the start of the 2020/21 campaign.
He landed a couple of novice events en route to this meeting last April, but dropping back to two miles for the Red Rum Handicap Chase may have just caught him out as he made a bad mistake when still going well three fences from the finish, which effectively ended his chance (lost a shoe in the process).
This season started on a positive footing with a head second back up to two and a half miles at Wetherby before an easy win from a mark of 137 at Musselburgh at the end of October.
He featured in this column when disappointing at Newbury’s Winter Carnival the following month but Brian Hughes reported the horse slipped badly right at the start of the race and was never travelling with much fluency from that point.
The eight-year-old had another relatively luckless run when again spreading a plate back at Musselburgh on New Year’s Day, but a breathing issue may also have been identified that day as he was booked in for wind surgery soon after and he’s only run once since.
That yielded a highly encouraging fourth at Cheltenham’s Trials Day at the end of January, cruising through the race and jumping efficiently before apparently running out of steam up the final climb to the line (replay below).
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He ended up fourth behind Torn And Frayed but shaped better than that and the form looks solid with Galahad Quest and Spiritofthegames running really well since and fifth home Jacamar winning at Leicester. Coole Cody was back in seventh and he went on to win the Plate at the Festival so dropping Gaelik Coast back to a mark of 137 strikes me as particularly generous.
Second time out after the wind operation can often be a great time to catch one and the McCain representative is proven on decent, spring-like ground as well as soft so won’t mind what the Merseyside weather is like over the next fortnight.
There is a lot to recommend the horse, who should sneak in near the foot of the weights, and I’d expect him to go off half the price if lining up here as hoped.
Elsewhere, Nicky Henderson's Mister Coffey heads the market currently but he's gone up 4lb for his Kim Muir second and is clearly becoming hard to win with, while Willie Mullins - who has saddled the past two winners - could run Blackbow though he'll have a big weight to shoulder and would need a good ease underfoot to be seen at his very best.
Henry De Bromhead's Spyglass Hill was kicked into touch by Blackbow in a conditions event at Clonmel last time but he'll no doubt be getting more than 6lb on this occasion if the pair line up and it's worth noting he was going well and just hit the front before over-jumping and unseating rider at the Canal Turn in the Grand Sefton here earlier in the campaign. At 16/1 he's hardly being missed in the betting, though.
Published at 1300 BST on 27/03/22
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