Racing Insights, Tuesday 20/08/24
Tuesday's free offering from the GOLD service is the The Shortlist feature, a simple – and usually brief – report highlighting those horses with a largely ‘green’ profile in the Instant Expert Report each day. It covers win or place stats, and can be viewed for both today’s and tomorrow’s racing.
GREEN is good (33% or better win rate) – worth 3 points
AMBER is quite good (16-32% win rate) – worth 1 point
RED is not so good (0-15% win rate) – worth -1 points
GREY means there is no available data for that factor - worth 0 points
The final column, ‘Score’, is the sum of the previous five ‘colour’ columns, with 15 being an all green profile, and 9 being the lowest score appearing on this report.
HINT: The best bets are not necessarily the highest scores. Rather, they are often the biggest difference between a Shortlist horse and the ‘best of the rest’ in that race.
N.B. Shortlist selections are unlikely to make a profit, at SP at least, to blind backing. Our recommendation is – and has always been – that The Shortlist should be a starting point rather than an end in itself. That said, it continues to highlight horses whose chance is better than recent form - and its odds - imply. As ever, please refer to our User Guide for further information!
And this how The Shortlist looks for this Tuesday...
...plus we also have our daily list of 'free' racecards, which are as follows...
- 3.10 Kempton
- 5.40 Nottingham
- 5.50 Roscommon
- 6.10 Nottingham
And I think we'll take a look at Zero Carbon and the 4.45 Kempton, a 10-runner, Class 4, 4yo+ A/W handicap over a right-handed 7f on standard to slow polytrack...
Only Brasil Power managed to win last time out and that was his second win in his last five starts, whilst all bar Revolutionise and Follow Your Heart have won at least one of their last seven.
This pair have lost ten and nine on the bounce respectively, although the former was the only other runner in this field to make the frame last time out. This pair might struggle again here as they're both up in class, as is bottom weight Big R, but top weight Hieronymous is down a grade here, whilst Wallop wears a visor for the first time today.
Aljati hasn't raced for 81 days but all his rivals have had at least one run in the past 46 days with four of them being seen in the last week!
Pjanoo is the only runner without a previous course or distance win. Wallop and Big R have already won here over 6f, whilst Aljari and Society Lion have won over this trip elsewhere. Five of the field (Hieronymus, Zero Carbon, Brasil Power, Revolutionise & Follow Your Heart) are course and distance winners and Instant Expert looks like this...
...with Zero Carbon leading the way, as you'd expect. Revolutionise has struggled to win over this trip, Follow Your Heart looks weak on going/track, whilst Society Lion has yet to win at Class 4 on the A/W and having only made the frame once in those six defeats...
...is likely to struggle again, although Revolutionise's numbers now appear much better. If we then look at past similar races, our draw analyser says that whilst there's not a huge draw bias at play here, those drawn highest have had less success than the others...
...which isn't great news for Hieronymus, Brasil Power, Zero Carbon or Big R, but I'm not sure the draw alone would mean a horse couldn't win here if the correct tactics were employed and the best tactics here would be to hit the front as soon as you could and then stay there. Easier said than done of course, but here's how those 300+ races have panned out...
...which looks to be more conclusive than the draw stats and would indicate that Zero Carbon might well be in the box seat, if his last three runs are anything to go by...
Summary
I initially thought that LTO C&D winner Brasil Power would be the one to beat here, but he doesn't seem well suited by either pace nor draw. he's also up 5lbs here and that might well make him susceptible to Zero Carbon. He's the qualifier from the shortlist and caught the eye on Instant Expert. He's got the ideal pace profile to win this to add to his three previous course and distance wins.
Brasil Power looked a bit shot at 9/4 as of 5pm Monday, meaning that Zero Carbon's 7/1 ticket was very appealing and borderline for an E/W option.