Theatre Guide to Land Veterans Chase for Tizzard

Veteran Chase races offer us the chance to see horses we have grown to love towards the end of their career. These horses are probably not quite as good as they used to be and by running against each other in races like this one, they get a fair chance of winning something. They also provide an attractive betting proposition as you can usually find horses who are still performing at a high level in them, and those are the runners you should be looking at. On Friday in the Veterans Chase at Chepstow, Theatre Guide is one of those horses and he is the one to follow in this contest as far as I am concerned.

He comes here having his first run of the season but at the end of last season he finished second on two occasions in decent races to show there is still plenty of life in him yet. Those two races were veteran races just like this one, showing he is thereabouts when it comes to winning a race like this.

He has a rise in the weights to deal with here from last season, he’s gone up 5lb for his second at Newbury on his final start. That was a good run, and he would more than likely have won the race was it not for a really bad error at the final fence, so although the rise is big, it is because he pretty much won a race off a lower mark, so more than deserved.

One thing that those two runs at the end of last season had in common was that they came after a short break. This shows that the horse goes well after one, and should put to bed any fears due to him having his first run of the season, that shouldn’t matter too much to him.

We have seen trainer Colin Tizzard do very well with his older staying chasers and Theatre Guide is exactly the kind of horse that he manages to keep getting wins out of, even when they are coming towards the end of their careers.

Having brought the horse back as a 12 year old, he must feel there are more wins in this horse and I have to agree with him. Plenty looks in place for a big run here on seasonal debut and I rate Threate Guide as the best bet on the Chepstow card on Friday.

We will be covering Chepstow on both Friday and Saturday so head over to our horse racing tips page to see what else we fancy on those days.