The Wine Tipster has recently joined a racing syndicate and has already seen one of his horse Final Choice deliver an impressive winning performance at Newbury in December.

He is one of the members of The Jockey Club Ownership Syndicate – Cheltenham and South West, which offers members a share in four year-old Final Choice, trained by Warren Greatrex, and five-year-olds The Last But One and Timeforwest, trained by Paul Nicholls and Jonjo O’Neill respectively.

Membership of the Syndicate costs £2,590 for two years and includes organised stable visits, along with full membership benefits of Cheltenham including The Festival, where members can enjoy an exclusive facility; as well as membership of Warwick, Wincanton and Exeter racecourses, the four racecourses within the south west region of The Jockey Club.

He was lucky to visit Warren Greatrex’s yard for a morning on the gallops with Lucy Wheeler, who runs the syndicate and Ed Chamberlin ITV Racing’s presenter. He also enjoyed a catch up with Dan Thompson Head of Exeter Racecourse whose Super Sunday meeting on February 12th promises to be a great day out.

Final Choice trained by Warren Greatrex will most likely been seen in a couple of weeks time and with a good run will be hopefully seen at The Cheltenham Festival in March which is very exciting. He is some cool dude winning impressively at Newbury in December, however he disappointed last time out when he resented the tongue tie.

Warren is based at Fred Winter’s old yard so you can see plaques with many famous names including Bula, Pendil and Derring Rose. He has an impressive 31% strike rate with his bumper horses for this season, 18% over hurdles and 11% over jumps. Keep an eye out for World Hurdle winner Cole Harden, who ran very well on Saturday when finishing second in the Cleeve Hurdle, Western Ryder, the stable favourite Paint The Clouds and Missed Approach at The Cheltenham Festival.

Over the festive season, there was plenty of exciting racing to enjoy. The 32Red Kempton Park Winter Festival on Boxing Day and 27th December featured in the King George VI Chase the Thistlecrack v Cue Card contest, who were both trained by Colin Tizzard, in the most hotly anticipated jump-racing encounter of the season so far. The crowds turned out to see the fascinating contest with Thistlecrack taking breathtaking leaps, which was reminiscent of the mighty Desert Orchid, to secure victory. Tom Scudamore, Thistlecrack’s jockey, enjoyed a spectacular ride to his first victory in the feature event of the Christmas racing programme, a race his grandfather Michael won as a jockey in 1956 but always eluded his father Peter. As a result, Thistlecrack is now a very short priced 4-5 favourite for Cheltenham Gold Cup in just 2 months’ time, with the next in the market another Colin Tizzard horse Native River at 8/1. There was also a good performance by Yanworth in the Christmas Hurdle and it will be interesting to see if Yanworth runs in the Champion Hurdle at the Cheltenham Festival for which is currently priced at 5/1. As well as marking the card The Wine Tipster was presenting top wines from the Jockey Club wine list with Sancerre Les Chasseignes, Domaine Fouassier, Macôn Rouge, Domaine Dupré and Nyetimber Classic Cuvée NV proving very popular at this particular meeting.

At Warwick on New Year’s Eve a massive crowd of over 6,000 people came racing and General Manager, Andre Klein and his team are doing a top job here with more exciting plans for the future. The Wine Tipster had great fun on the mic marking the card as well as seeing lots of familiar faces in the 1707 and Kingmaker Restaurants. The winning wines here were Catena Appellation Vista Flores Malbec, Voltolino Gavi and Château Léoube Rosé de Léoube. Look out for bumper winner Marten trained by Ben Pauling.

Despite the bad weather Cheltenham welcomed over 30,000 on the gate on New Year’s Day, with the victory of Whisper the most eye-catching performance of the day. This also marked the first day of coverage by ITV where Ed Chamberlin and the team came straight out of the gates with pace, passion, diversity, banter, humour and important horse racing education, which really set a really nice tone. Everyone did a top job and most importantly, horseracing welcomed lots of new fans who will be back next Saturday on ITV 4 for The Morning Show and the afternoon coverage from a cracking card at Sandown and Wincanton.

With four winners out of seven on Saturday, The Wine Tipster is on winning form. He successfully backed Gentleman Jon (9/1 backed at 14/1) who won the feature Badger Ales Trophy at Wincanton, Thomas Brown, Growl and Un Temps Pour Tout in his On The Box column on Saturday. This sparkling form follows on from his successful tips in recent weeks with Rosie Briar tipped up at Doncaster at 20/1 and Antony in the competitive Sodexo Gold Cup Handicap Chase at 11/1 (backed at 14/1).

This weekend, he will be presenting at The Open at Cheltenham where he will be combining his key passions, talking racing, wine and food. The Open provides three days of adrenalin-packed action with the highlight of the first half of the Jump season, the BetVictor Gold Cup.

Racing also takes place on Sunday (the only Sunday racing that takes place at Cheltenham throughout the year) with entertainment for the whole family to enjoy as well as six races on the card including feature race, The Greatwood Hurdle. Greatwood is the fantastic horse welfare charity who care for retired racehorses and educate disadvantaged children and young adults with special educational needs.
Look out for The Wine Tipster’s selections in On The Box in Racing Plus on Saturday with the BetVictor Gold Cup at Cheltenham the main race of the day.

Neil Phillips, racing pundit, twitter tipster, wine connoisseur, Champagne & Sparkling expert and wine performer can be followed @thewinetipster and also at www.thewinetipster.co.uk