21st-Mar-2020

Sizing Pottsie is a worthy favourite here.  Jessica Harrington’s horse has won his last two, and he was impressive in beating Cut The Mustard at Navan last time.  However, I think that Zero Ten has the potential to be very good over fences, and he is over-priced for this in my book at 4/1.

Emmet Mullins’ horse was a progressive novice hurdler.  He goes well at Galway, he is owned by the Mees, who love to have winners at Galway, but he is not just a Galway specialist, as he proved when he won the valuable Red Mills Auction Hurdle Series Final at Punchestown in May last year.

Impressive in winning his beginners’ chase at the Galway Festival last year, he was injured there, but he returned with a fine performance to finish second to Cash Back at Naas in January.  He only finished three lengths ahead of Dunvegan that day, but he was the only one who chased Cash Back, he did well to keep on as well as he did to retain second place.  If Cash Back hadn’t been in the race, he probably would have run out an impressive winner.

As well as that, he jumped a bit to his right, he should be better today on a right-handed course.  And it was his first run since the summer, so it should bring him on.

He did run since, he ran at Punchestown last month, when he fell at the fourth last when just starting to make inroads into Yaha Fizz’s lead.  He should be none the worse for that though, it wasn’t a hard fall.  Actually, it appeared that he jumped the fence well.  He just seemed to lose his landing gear in mid-air.

He is not the finished article yet in terms of his jumping, but the Thurles fences should help him in that regard.  He has achieved a rating of 143 already over fences, he is the highest rated chaser in the line-up, and he has the potential to go higher than that.

This is a good race, Cut The Mustard is not out of it, and Capuccimix is progressive, and Dallas Des Pictons would be a danger if he could put it all together.  But Zero Ten could prove to be the best of them.

ZERO TEN WON (ADV 4/1, SP 3/1)