Thursday's free feature, the Instant Expert racecard tab is one of Geegeez readers' most popular tools because it has the unique ability to condense the entire form profile of every runner in the race into a single, easily digestible, view covering the form in terms of wins (or places), runs, and win (or place) percentage for each of going, class, course, distance, and field size.
It also compares today’s official rating with the horse’s last winning official rating. The display is colour coded: green for a higher percentage rate, amber for a middling percentage, and red for a low percentage. Horses with no form under a certain condition have grey figures.
IMPORTANT NOTE: Where a horse has no UK/Irish form – i.e. it is having its first run in Britain or Ireland under Rules – it will not show up on Instant Expert at all.
We make this feature freely available to ALL readers EVERY Thursday for ALL races, including, naturally, our selection of 'free' races as follows...
- 1.58 Market Rasen
- 5.15 Catterick
- 6.25 Limerick
- 6.55 Limerick
- 7.37 Sandown
...but I think I'll ignore for various reasons (never bet on races that don't appeal) and look at whatever might be the day's highest-rated/most-valuable handicap. That actually turns out to be the 8.42 Sandown, a 12-runner, Class 3 (£9020 to the winner), 4yo+ flat handicap over a right-handed mile on good to soft ground...
Crack Shot and Hiromichi both won last time and they have both won three of their last six outings, whilst Navagio, Regheeb and Dragon Icon have all won twice in six or less. Excel Power is the only one without a win in seven starts, having suffered ten defeats on the bounce.
Three of the top four in the weights (Alzahir, Navagio and Dual Identity) drop in class here, as does bottom-weight Magic Memories who runs for the first time since the Moores changed the licence naming.
Classic might well need a run here today, as at 268 days since his last run, he's the only one without a run since the start of April, but he is one of just previous course winners, having won here over 7f last July. Dual Identity won a 1m2f handicap at a higher level here last September.
This pair of course winners are, however, amongst five (Alzahir, Regheeb & Al Rufaa being the others) yet to win over today's trip...
Feature of the day, Instant Expert, doesn't have masses of past relevant runs for this field, but does suggest that Classic, Crack Shot and Hiromichi might be best suited to the conditions. That said, there are few alarm bells ringing here, other than maybe Dual Identity's failure to win at the going and trip and Navagio's UK mark being much higher than his last win over in Ireland. If we then consider the place stats from those races above, it becomes more apparent about Dual Identity's dislike of this trip...
...which is unfortunate, because the other columns show he has ability, He's better at 1m2f where he has four wins and five further places from just thirteen starts, but it seems a mile is just on the sharp side for him. At this point, I'd probably remove a few of these from my calculations and just take the following runners forward...
I've arranged them in draw order, as I'm now going to see if any of them might be handed any kind of advantage from their stalls position, but our draw analyser says there's not a great deal in it, although those in stalls 5 and above have done slightly better for themselves...
Our pace analyser also says there's not a great deal in it pace-wise too, but that hold-up horses have fared worst of all...
...and that the optimum pace/draw combinations would be low-drawn runners in mid-division or leaders drawn centrally with high-drawn leaders also doing well...
We already know the draw, but from a pace perspective, here's how the field have approached their most recent races...
...and if they go that way today, then Crack Shot fulfils the role of low-drawn mid-division runner and Regheeb would be the high drawn leader.
Summary
For me, the best two horses in this race are Crack Shot and Hiromichi. Both are in good form, both won last time out, both scored well on Instant Expert. Hiromichi appears to be better drawn, but Crack Shot seems to have the better pace/draw make-up and just about shades it for me.
Crack Shot is the current (5pm Wednesday) 7/2 favourite with Bet365 and whilst I think he might just prevail, I must say there's not a great deal of value in those odds and a 9/1 E/W bet about Hiromichi might be a more viable option.
Regheeb also looked good on the pace/draw heatmap and this unexposed 4 yr old was only a length behind Hiromichi last time out, despite not having raced for over five months. He's entitled to come on for that run and he's 2lbs better off today, so he could push Hiromichi again today, making him also of E/W interest at 11/1, especially with most firms paying four places.
Other Recent Posts by This Author:
- Tix Picks, Saturday 04/01/25
- Tix Picks, Friday 03/01/25
- Tix Picks, Thursday 02/01/25
- Tix Picks, Tuesday 31/12/24
- Tix Picks, Monday 30/12/24
