WITH the November meeting at Cheltenham this weekend, it seems an appropriate time to look at which stables are firing and which aren’t, or more appropriately, which may be overbet in the coming days and weeks and which could still provide value.

Paul Nicholls was the headliner here with a four-timer at his local track Wincanton on Saturday, and the easy conclusion is that he’s hit top gear after a relatively slow start.

I would advise caution, however, as Nicholls always tends to do particularly well at that Wincanton meeting and had odds-on favourites in both Grade 2 contests on the card. Since then, the Ditcheat handler has had a dozen runners, with one bumper favourite scrambling home at odds-on and the other 11 failing to make the placings.

Several of those have stopped quickly, notably Inca de la Fayette at Huntingdon on Tuesday, and there are signs that some of the run-of-the-mill runners may be under the weather.

It’s worth bearing in mind that the top stables don’t mix their horses together willy-nilly and Nicholls likes to keep his better horses in the top yard at Ditcheat where they are monitored closely.

I tend to take the view that even if a cough is running through a yard, the best horses tend to be unaffected, but backing Nicholls’ runners blind over the next few weeks may not be the road to riches that some were suggesting last weekend.

Of course, he will get winners, but as punters, it’s the profit and loss account and not the trainer’s trophies that count at the end of the day.

Top gear

To a similar extent, Dan Skelton hasn’t really hit top gear in the way he was doing 12 months ago when he had a series of big-race winners on consecutive weekends. Using the market as a guide, Skelton ought to have had 16 winners from 94 runners in the last month, but has had to make do with nine, and while a 10% strike-rate isn’t a reason to avoid the stable, it’s a reminder not to take under the odds based on expectations.

I should throw Gary Moore and Jonjo O’Neill into the mix as powerful stables hitting the target much less regularly than anticipated in recent weeks.

Of course, some of those stables - Skelton in particular – tend to come to life at this particular meeting, so a revival isn’t discounted, but it’s again important for bettors to sort the wheat from the chaff, rather than follow stables with impunity.

Of those outperforming expectations, I’ve already covered the Venetia Williams renaissance in a previous column, and a good mention of Kerry Lee from a month back should also get a nudge, while Nigel Twiston-Davies is typically ahead of the game for the time of year, that fact won’t go unnoticed.

Of the yards who are expected to be punter friendly at Cheltenham and beyond, I would single out Joe Tizzard, Sam Thomas and the Oliver Greenall/Josh Guerriero partnership.

Williams, for what it’s worth has a remarkable record of 10 wins from 22 handicap runners in the last three weeks alone, although I seem to have backed more than my share of the losers. Joe Tizzard is a stable of definite interest at present, and there is one particular angle I’d suggest which will help his figures, and that’s the old breathing-operation bump.

Wind surgery

Colin Tizzard was not a trainer who was as keen as others to utilise wind surgery, tending to set more store by the use of tongue ties, but Joe has begun to change that policy, with positive results.

Quite a few of the inmates at Spurles Farm have had corrective surgery in recent months, and of 13 runners in 2023 to return from such a procedure, five have won at odds of 11/1, 7/1, 9/2, 13/2 and 9/2 respectively.

Backing all such runners would have produced a profit of £255 to a tenner at SP, and a strike-rate of 38% in the past 12 months is better than the likes of Nicholls and Henderson are managing with the same approach.

Sam Thomas, as I’ve said before, is very much a boutique trainer, with big Saturday prizes his aim, and although having fewer runners than most of the big yards, he is maintaining a very high win/place strike-rate, with 30% winning and a remarkable 75% being placed.

Angels Breath and Good Risk At All are best kept on side, and Iwilldoit ran a cracking trial for the Welsh Grand National at Aintree last weekend and makes plenty of ante-post appeal for Chepstow.

I’ve mentioned how impressed I’ve been with Iroko, and the Greenall and Guerriero combination is going from strength to strength. Handicappers from the yard are nine from 29 over the last 30 days, with Toby Wynne and Henry Brooke sharing the success fairly evenly.

Oliver Greenall is steeped in racing, being the son of former champion amateur and Aintree chairman Lord Daresbury, and he has taken full advantage of that privilege, with the sourcing and placing of the stable’s horses clinical.

Built on firm foundations, the Malpas yard will be a growing force in the UK and further afield.

I’M delighted that it worked out for Brian Ellison, but the decision to switch the Doncaster card lost to the weather to Newcastle last week was a fairly pointless exercise, particularly in regard to the big handicap itself, which became an utterly anonymous affair on an alien surface.

The appeal of the November Handicap – now that the big handicaps are not huge ante-post betting events as they were half a century ago – is that it brings down the curtain on the turf flat season and gives one last hurrah before we can all focus our attention on the jumps proper. Given that racing still continues on the flat all year round with a plethora of fixtures on artificial surfaces, there is no need of a final curtain if that final meeting isn’t on turf.

The November Handicap effectively wasn’t run this year for all it will appear in the record books, and neither of the listed contests which were also due to be run at Doncaster were of any great import, and therefore not worthy of restaging.

With apologies to connections of the winners of those events, sometimes less is more.