WITH a plethora of front-runners engaged in Newbury's £100,000 Vodafone Gold Cup, the logical betting ploy is to stick with a hold-up horse, such as Hand Inn Hand (3.15).

Known tearaway Venn Ottery, having his first run for Martin Pipe, is bound to set a lunatic gallop, so spare a thought for brave Tom Scudamore, set for the ultimate white-knuckle ride aboard the hard-pulling 10-1 shot.

Others who like to be up with the pace are hot-favourite, Buckby Lane, plus Chauvinist, Supreme Prince, Turgeonev and French raider First Gold. But while that little lot are scrapping it out at the head of affairs, hopefully Hand Inn Hand will be conserving vital energy waiting patiently to the rear of the field.

"He ran a very good race at Lingfield the other day on ground which was too quick for him,and an early pace that was too slow," said his regular rider, Mark Bradburne.

Interesting comments from Mark, who knows that for once he'll be able to adopt his preferred waiting tactics, because there's guaranteed to be one almighty bun-fight for the lead throughout the first couple of miles.

Any punters looking for a really huge-priced outsider to support could do worse than have a minor each-way interest on Simply Gifted.

Jonjo O'Neill has gone to the trouble of booking triple Gold Cup-winning jockey Jim Culloty to partner his lowly-weighted raider, who is relatively unexposed at two-and-a-half-miles and remains at the right end of the handicap.

* Dancing Pearl repeated her victory of 12 months ago with a resolute display in the South Yorkshire Mares' Only Handicap Hurdle at Doncaster yesterday.

The Cecil Price-trained 5-2 favourite, again ridden by Wayne Hutchinson, looked to be making heavy weather of pegging back front-running Norma Hill but eventually won by two and a half lengths.

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