William Hill offer NRMB (Non runner money back) for the Randox Grand National – EW to 5 places. At 100/1 I think Hill Sixteen is 3 or 4 times the price he should be. He has yet to be seen this season, but that is a deliberate tactic from his trainer Sandy Thomson, who specialises in staying chasers.
A few weeks ago Sandy said:
Last season we got him out of Nigel Twiston-Davies’s stable and on only his second run for us he put up a career-best effort when a nose second behind Snow Leopardess in the Becher Chase, and that was followed by a good fourth in the Listed Sky Bet Chase at Doncaster. This season I thought the Grand National Trial at Haydock would be ideal, but as it falls the weekend before the National weights are announced he will not be going there. I have no intention of running him before the Aintree weights are out so he will go for either the Premier Chase or the Eider. This fellow is a proper stayer.
Hill Sixteen is 10. Aside from that nose defeat in the 2021 Becher Chase (over the National fences), he was 7th of 22 in the 2022 running. Currently on an official rating of 143 he ought to get into the final field, especially this year with such a reduced entry.
I strongly recommend a fiver EW on him, and you can have some fun by putting him in some small multiple bets with some of your Cheltenham fancies.
Good luck
My usual warning. Anything I put up as a tip here is for ‘fun money’ – stakes you can afford to lose almost without even thinking about it. There’s just as much fun to be had with small stakes.
Steeplechasing 