2012 Scottish National Preview and Betting Tips
- By A.J. Ryder on April 17, 2012 16:00 GMT
The Scottish National is featuring a number of last week's Grand National contestants with the likes of West End Rocker, Junior and Vic Ventauri all remaining competitive in the ante post markets. The race itself looks to be significantly less testing than the 4m4f iteration at Aintree and it will be interesting to see how well these three came out of that contest.
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Their ability to face off against fresh horses pointed at this race for some time will make for a fascinating plot line.
As it currently stands, Harry The Viking is trading as the betting favourite to win the 2012 Scottish National and you'll find him priced at around 5/1 with a few bookmakers continuing to offer him up at a 6/1 listing.
The Paul Nicholls-trained seven-year-old is part-owned by Sir Alex Ferguson and managed a solid second-place finish at Cheltenham in the Diamond Jubilee National Hunt Chase for Amateur Riders behind Teaforthree. Sent off at 7/1 that day, he wasn't able to reproduce the heroics he displayed by winning at Doncaster in back to back races in December. He managed to conquer a few contestants who will be lining up for this one so you can expect him to take some significant money on the day.
One of the horses that Harry The Viking disposed of at Doncaster was the talented Ikorodu Road and he himself comes into the race with a significant amount of form. He was a beaten second by 1/4 of a length in his next race out and then improved to topple Junior at Doncaster by a short head and then smashed a ten-strong field at Newbury by 4 1/2 lengths.
You'll find Ikorodu Road priced at 10/1 across the board.
Merigo and Portrait King are both looking competitive with 8/1 listings while Junior has some bookmakers listing him as low as 9/1. He fell at just the second fence at Aintree and will still be relatively fresh for this one. West End Rocker also went down at the second and should be in decent enough nick as well. He's spotted as high as 14/1.
