The Talking Horses Podcast

Send us Fan Mail After a cracking weekend at HQ for the October meeting, the season is in full flow and this weekend always feels like the one where the season's big guns really start to fire on both sides of the Irish Sea. We preview four compelling handicaps from Ascot as well as the big Graded races at Wetherby and Down Royal, including the Charlie Hall Chase and the Ladbrokes Champion Cha...

Send us Fan Mail I think we can now legitimately say that the jumps are officially back, and we mark that particular piece of good news with a deeper look at the season's curtain-raiser at Cheltenham - it's the Showcase Meeting, and it's shaping up to be 2 pretty solid days of early season racing. In our new format for this season, we whizz through the card for both Friday and Satur...

Send us Fan Mail New season, new format...new music! We are back after our flat racing-induced hibernation, almost 6 months to the day since we signed off series 3.  This time round we are freshening things up, not least with an epic new bit of intro music which should get the blood pumping before we share with you our 3 horses to follow for the upcoming jumps season, and this time we've each...

Send us Fan Mail Every year it's the same.  October and the Persian War at Chepstow rolls around and the buzz for the new NH Racing season is audible!  We're selecting our horses to follow.  We have the first HQ meeting.  The Grade 1s start rolling by late November and before we know it we're staring down the barrel of the manic Christmas schedule!  The Challow marks the end of the...

Send us Fan Mail We're back for day 2 and 3 of the Grand National meeting after landing a 4/1 NAP on the Thursday! We get stuck in to a load more Grade 1s and some competitive handicaps, not least the big one - the GRAND NATIONAL itself, in which our mutual antepost pick at 25/1 is sitting pretty (still at 16/1 in places!) after receiving a verbal boost from her major owner on ITV today!  Hop...

Send us Fan Mail This week we are getting stuck into the GRAND NATIONAL MEETING.  Bloody hell that felt like an age to wait after Cheltenham, didn't it? In this episode we go through an amazing Thursday card at Aintree (including FOUR Grade 1s!) with selections for each race including a 7/2 and 4/1 NAP. We'll be back on Friday morning with our Friday and Saturday selections. Enjoy the ra...

Send us Fan Mail OK so everyone (it seems) has been banging on (far too negatively for the most part) about the Festival over the last couple of weeks but, within all of that, there is certainly a meaningful conversation to be had about positive change.  This week, we compare notes on which races can be canned from our sport's flagship meeting to improve the quality of the races that remain o...

Send us Fan Mail Well that was fun wasn't it!  Another Cheltenham Festival in the can.  We hope it went well for you!  Bruno and I had a great time (and are broken now!). This week, we share a couple of brief reflections on our sport's biggest week both from a racegoer experience and a punting perspective.  Spoiler alert - we're not winging!! Following that we look ahead to the spor...

Send us Fan Mail Can you smell the Prestbury Park turf yet?   Are you seeing Cleeve Hill in your dreams?  Is everything you see starting to look like a pint of Guinness?   Oh yes ladies and gentlemen, the week that's better than Christmas for all National Hunt racing fans is finally upon us!   Is there a better feeling in the world?   In this episode, we fly through all 28 races bringing you...

Send us Fan Mail After covering the Tuesday and Wednesday Festival handicaps in last week's episode, we're back this week to go through the remainder across days 3 and 4. We look at some of the angles that can often help to find the winner of each race and provide a shortlist for each of the five races, including some stronger fancies for the Plate and the County Hurdle, plus there'...

Send us Fan Mail With less than 3 weeks to go until the Festival and the handicap entries out this week, the handicap markets are about to go into silly season so this week we attempt to get you ahead of the curve with the horses to consider backing now before they shorten and indeed those that are already too short and there to be taken on.   We also discuss which races have a good antepost shape...

Send us Fan Mail This week we tuck into the discipline of jumps racing that doesn't require any jumping, National Hunt Flat Races, otherwise known as BUMPERS. We recap on why a lot of people (including us) feel there are far too many of them, and why the sport would be better off addressing that, before we then turn our attentions to the Champion Bumper at the Cheltenham Festival, which somew...

Send us Fan Mail WOW...what a weekend in Dublin. How do we come back from that, especially after putting up 7/1, 16/1 and 20/1 winners! Well by crunching through ALL of the Cheltenham Festival novice chase antepost markets - that's how!  We identify a banker for the Turners and a couple at nice prices in the Arkle, which is now wide open after Marine National bombed out last weekend, and the...

Send us Fan Mail I mean Trials Day was one of the best in recent memory so just imagine a world in which the following weekend is EVEN BETTER.  Well let us tell you, we're living that reality.  It's Dublin Racing Festival Time! This week we go through each of the 15 races across the two days at Leopardstown in a bid to count the number of WP Mullins and JP McManus winners and hopefully m...

Send us Fan Mail Wow!  WHAT  day we have ahead of us at HQ on Saturday.  This looks to be the best Trials Day card in years and it's a cracker from both a quality and a punting perspective.  So much to look forward to! We crack through all 8 races and share our selections for each, including some bullish ones at good prices in the handicaps. Enjoy, let's hopefully find some winners and m...

Send us Fan Mail Bruno got really annoyed last weekend after Firefox got beaten in the Lawlor's of Naas that this season's novice hurdler maybe just weren't that good.  It got us thinking.  How good a bunch (or not) are they and how can we tell?  We take a dive into how you can compare groups of horses across seasons and discuss why it matters to punters to know as much as possible...

Send us Fan Mail Well bugger all happened last weekend didn't it.  Ah early January.... To fill the void, we look this week at ideas that could really move our sport forward in 2024, including crating a qualification structure for the Cheltenham Festival races and hanging awnings in space to deal with fences being "dolled off" at Aintree due to low sun.  Then in the second of our 20...

Send us Fan Mail Happy new year! Wow what a 2 weeks we've been treated to on the racecourses of the UK and Ireland.  You'll be please to know however that this isn't yet ANOTHER review episode and, instead, we're tackling something we think is altogether more interesting in this week's deep ground.  Cheltenham Festival winners of recent years have either started their care...

Send us Fan Mail Every year, we're left feeling dazed and bewildered by New Year's eve as we try to keep up with and digest the barrage of Christmas racing.  This year...this year it can and will be different and the Talking Horses Podcast is here to help! In this special preview episode, we try to break down the insane amount of racing, particularly on Boxing Day and the 27th Dec, to gu...

Send us Fan Mail What's this?  An episode on a Tuesday?  YES.  This is the second part of our double episode and this time we're looking at the best novice chasers of the season so far, and there have been some very good performances already!  Spoiler...one stands out for us both...but who is it? We'll be back with you on Thursday this week for a bumper Christmas racing preview! Enj...

Send us Fan Mail This week we are excited to bring you a double episode, the first of which (this one) is a review of the novice hurdling division so far and which horses have stood out as the cream of the crop.  The second will follow early next week where we look at the novice chasers that have taken the eye so far. We also have a look ahead to two fine days of racing at Prestbury Park with one...

Send us Fan Mail Bruno is back from his week in NYC and thankfully he still has a show to come back to after my solo effort last week. Probably because I tipped a 5/2 and a 7/1 winner on Saturday at Newbury!  Remember, this is not a tipping podcast.  Or is it....... This week, we review the status of our horses to follow as we near the busy Christmas period before getting stuck into this week&apos...

Send us Fan Mail This week Bruno has been summoned to NYC of all places with work and so I'm going solo with an attempt to find some winners for us across the Friday and Saturday at Newbury! Hopefully I don't lose all of our listeners and Bruno has a podcast to come back. Enjoy a great weekend of racing and fingers crossed for some profit! Cheers, Ben x Please rate and review the Talking...

Send us Fan Mail This week we look at what can be done to ensure races don't get swamped with declarations from a single yard after 15 of the 22 runners in last weekend's Troytown Handicap Chase hailed from Gordon Elliott's Cullentra yard.  We look at why that ain't the best thing for racing and a solution that could make a big difference to race competitiveness and the balance...

Send us Fan Mail This week we dispense with our usual Deep Ground and Antepost Angle features and dive head-first into the forthcoming 3 glorious days at HQ.   We take a look at the races that are likely to have the greatest bearing on the rest of the season, in particular at the Festival in March, and highlight one or two horses to keep an eye on this weekend including a Grade 1 horse surely masq...