Jul 28 2007
Anatomy of a winner
I thought I just explain a little about yesterdays selections to give a little insight into my thought process.
My first selection was Laura’s Best in the 1.25 Thirsk race. This was a 14 runner 3yo plus Maiden. It had two horses at the head of the market with good form in the book and then quite a lot of dead wood with many runners priced up at over 50/1. The selection had finished 2nd in its first race and received favourable reports in doing so. It had then finished last in a listed race. The main reason the horse was priced around 11/2 was that the form was from last October and therefore the horse had a long absence to overcome. The form from the listed race could be overlooked as the horse was clearly out of its depth, also the horse had a top trainer in William Haggas who had also started to get a very good strike rate with the jockey, so with the form of the favourites open to questioning and with the possibility that this was a better horse based on its debut 2nd the 11/2 looked decent.
Laura’s Best didn’t turn out to be the best on this occasion though as it took an alarming drift in the betting to 9/1 before pulling very hard and running around before blowing up and finishing 10th. Something was clearly amiss with the horse on this occasion and this was possibly something that the on course market knew about as the it was friendless in the pre race market.
My next selection was probably a little more of an unknown but the market was kinder with only one horse with good form in the book. The selection was Sudden Impact in the 2.00 Thirsk, a 2yo Maiden over 5 furlongs. This race had a short priced favourite in Red Alert Day that had solid form that it looked likely to repeat but had been turned over at short odds already. Our horse again had good debut form from May but had then been tried in two top class races and beaten soundly in them. At 10/1 I was under the impression that the horse was being priced based on its failure at the top level which was probably unfair and that it would have been a lot shorter had it not had those races. Also, the Trainer Paul Green was yet to record a winner and this was also probably seen as a negative. The 2nd fav was a 5/1 shot that was unraced. I would personally always prefer a horse with form in the book over an unraced horse, no matter what the pedigree, so at twice the odds the choice of horse to take against the favourite was easy. Yes the trainer was yet to win a race but he had only ever had about 30 runners and I took the view that everyone has to start somewhere and that this looked like his best horse.
So Congratulations to Paul Green as the horse confirmed it’s debut promise by winning nicely at 9/1, in 2nd was an improver, Mey Blossom at 20/1, and the Fav gave the form a solid look in 3rd at 4/9. The well bred newcomer Le Toreador did little in 5th at 5/1.
I’ll be looking at the last couple of months results to work out what the results would look like to advised prices soon, so watch out for another update. I am relatively satisfied with the summers results at this point, given the amount of meetings that have been lost, the poor ground conditions across the country, and the fact that a lot of trainers haven’t even been able to give their charges a run it is nice to be showing a profit.
