Friday's Horse Racing Tips: James Boyle's Best Bets At Ascot

For today's horse racing tips, our analyst James Boyle looks at the flat racing at Ascot, with three selections now online.

As always, you’ll find the most up-to-date odds at the best horse racing betting sites, but our tipster’s predictions are researched early in the day and those prices could soon change. Odds stated are correct at the time of publishing.

13:50 Ascot – Queen Tamara – 1pt @ 9/1

It’s impossible to know where Queen Tamara lies regarding fitness and the yard have been quiet. However, she’s drifting all the time and her price has become too tempting to ignore.

She was a gradual improver across her four runs last term, shaping with promise on debut in June at Newmarket when tackling 6f before finishing second at Doncaster, winning at Chepstow and placing second again back at Newmarket, all of those runs coming over 7f.

I like the way she travels through her races and although she somewhat threw away that final start when making her handicap debut, the winner closed off the season with another handicap win and landed a Listed contest too, whilst the third won a couple of Group races in Italy.

There’s no chance that a mark of 83 is the limit of what Queen Tamara is capable of and how she gets on today will come down to fitness as much as anything else. Some of the others may be on good marks as well but if she has been readied for this, she’s a player.

15:25 Ascot – Betsen – 1pt @ 9/1

Betsen is an interesting contender on his second turf start for Tony Carroll. The first couldn’t have gone much worse as he was almost brought down at Leicester a couple of weeks ago.

He wouldn’t have been in contention for win purposes but shaped like he was in the process of running a good race and I hope he’ll get the chance to take a step forward this time around.

The interesting angle with him is getting onto Ascot’s track. He had plenty of turf form in Ireland but really took to the All-Weather first time up for this yard when scoring at 40/1 around Southwell.

Tackling smaller fields didn’t help on a few of his subsequent outings and prior to Leicester, he wasn’t helped by racing around Lingfield. On the plus side, he’s back to the same mark as his last win and, to return to my original point, All-Weather abilities often transfer well to Ascot.

Anyone backing him will need to hope there’s a good gallop and that luck mid-race is forthcoming this time around, but I think he’s a fair price to make a rare Ascot trip for his trainer worthwhile.

16:00 Ascot – Secret Santa – 0.50pts @ 9/1

We’re creeping up towards a year since Secret Santa has been seen on the track and I can only presume he had an issue after he was beaten at odds-on in a Bath maiden.

That was a disappointing performance, no doubt, but his two runs previous were promising and he looks capable of finding improvement as a three-year-old, assuming all is well.

He finished fourth behind Havana Hurricane on debut at Goodwood, needing the experience and not overly helped by where he raced, then ran third to Humidity and Title Role at Newbury. That was a fine effort in a race that worked out really well (eight next time out winners).

Whether the same ability remains will be interesting to find out but he’s into a handicap from a mark of 81 and that’s not his ceiling if all is well. This is viciously competitive for a 0-80, many others being open to improvement, but I’ll play 9/1 for small stakes in order to see how he gets on.