US Horse Racing Tips: Three Extra Place Picks for 26 September

We skipped the column on Monday because there were no horses at 6/1 or longer that I felt strong enough about in our selected Extra Place Races and I don’t want to just throw up horses for the sake of it.

Last week ended on a fine run as we finished up with an outright win coupled with seven places from our 17 picks in total across the week. Happy days. 

As always, all of our selections are taken from Betfred’s Extra Place Races and we tip-up only horses priced up as not expected to finish in the top-three according to the Morning Line odds…

We start our week at Thistledown where in the first (17:50) we have a gaggle of horses who have continuously run against one another in sprint races at the track this summer-fall meet.

I’m going for the four-year-old filly Lady Abril, who has hit the board six times in her nine races so far in 2023, including three wins, two of them at this track back in May and June. Her record is the epitome of consistency following a lukewarm start to her career.

This daughter of the fine west coast based sprint horse Lord Nelson, who won four times at Graded Stakes level, broke her maiden second-time out but failed to place in the next four races. Following that, however, she has finished top three 11 times in 16 appearances on the track.

Nothing fancy here but a solid Morning Line price of 6/1 coupled with that Extra Place being paid out here at Betfred makes her a nice each-way play to kick us off.

Next up we go to New York State and the track at Finger Lakes, where we go the polar opposite of before and refute consistency for a feast or famine entry that we are looking to profit from.

In the 18:44, we see the four-year-old Dr. Cerfolio entered and boy this horse is a tough one to read. Here is his record so far in 2023, 1-1-6-5-5-1, so he’s either winning or going absolutely nowhere.

One of those poor results was when asked to go a mile rather than five-and-a-half furlongs, so we can kind of toss that one out but this selection feels like either an outright winner or we’ll get nothing. At 6/1 on the Morning Line, feels like a worthwhile play.

About an hour or so later in the 19:42, we have one of the more interesting entries on the day as four-year-old Convertible Freeze steps back onto the track following a layoff of nearly a year.

This son of Grade I winner Connect spent his three-year-old season racing in far better fields than what he’ll face tonight over on the NYRA Circuit, where he more than held his own, winning twice and placing on two other occasions in six outings. Those runs were at a mile or nine furlongs whereas he’s being asked to go just the six tonight.

The reason I’ve picked him out is quite simply, he’s the best horse in the race. Whether the distance will be too short for him is a very legitimate question but this feels like a soft landing spot to get back up to speed. Like the two other horses above, the odds on the Morning Line are 6/1 and that feels too good to turn down.