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...
- 1.50 Ffos Las
- 3.25 Ffos Las
- 5.15 Hamilton
- 6.30 Leopardstown
- 8.50 Chelmsford
...from which, we're off to the Speedway in Essex for the 8.50 Chelmsford, a 10-runner, Class 5, 3yo+ fillies' A/W handicap over a left-handed 7f on standard going polytrack...
My initial reaction was that this might well be a three-horse race between (alphabetically at this stage, of course!) Anificas Beauty, Bell Song and Invested, but let's see if the data we have at our disposal backs up or disproves my gut feeling.
The last named of my trio is the only LTO winner in the field and has two wins and a place from her last three outings, as does my first-named Anificas Beauty, Miss Sarajevo was a winner five starts ago, but the remainder are winless in at least five or even eleven in the case of maiden Topo Chico.
Lightly raced Bell Song has been third in each of her last two starts and as one of five (plus Invested, Miss Sarjevo, Kynsa & Topo Chico) three year olds in the race, she'll get a useful 10lb weight allowance here. All bar Exigency (who drops down a class) ran at this level last time out, so they should now know what to expect, but it is a first handicap run for both Bell Song & Kynsa and just a second for Invested after scoring on hcp debut just over five weeks ago and she now wears cheekpieces for the first time.
Anificas Beauty and Miss Sarajevo have both won over course and distance, whilst the only other two previous course winners are also the only other 7f winners with Nikki's Girl wining over 6f here and then over 7f at Leicester and Lingfield (AW), whilst Invested also won here over 6f and was a 7f winner at Yarmouth last time out.
The afore-mentioned Nikki's Girl might well need the run here as she turns out for the first time since mid-October, but all her rivals have been seen in the last six weeks.
Feature of the day Instant Expert shows two of my chosen trio in a very good light, but Bell Song is a three-race maiden, despite making the frame twice in April, so her win line is all red, as it is for half of the field...
That might initially ring a few alarm bells, notably for Kodias Sangarius (class), Nikki's Girl (class), Hot Chesnut (class/distance) and Topo Chico (class/distance), but Anificas Beauty & Invested do catch the eye, as does Miss Sarajevo in fairness. The place stats will undoubtedly show some of these in a better light, because i already know that bottom-weight Topo Chico is better than her win stats might suggest with six places from her nine A/W starts...
...from which, I'd only really be interested in the following...
Those numbers speak for themselves and I won't patronise you by going through them here. Interestingly, we have two low drawn runners in Invested and Topo Chico plus the four widest/highest drawn of all, so i need to dig out the draw stats to see if any of the half-dozen might be afforded an advantage from the off...
But that's not as clear cut as it might at first seem, because if we isolate the individual stalls...
...the stats for stall 2 are an anomaly in my opinion and without them in the data, the bias is far less pronounced and it's really the pace aspect of this race that will decide the winner in my opinion. Chelmsford is now well known as a front-runners paradise and when we look at the pace profiles of the horses that won those races above in the draw analyisis...
...the win percentages rise almost exponentially, the further forward your horse runs. Hold-up horses fare really badly from both win and place perspectives, mid-division runners win almost twice as often as them and prominent runners slightly more than twice the rate of the mid-divs with leaders scoring almost twice as often as the prominent runners themselves. At other tracks, an IV of 1.41 scored here by the prominent runners would be enough for top ranking, but such is the low strike rate further back, that's not the case here.
So, who might lead them out? Well, according to the field's last few runs...
...I'd say that Anifica's Beauty may try to make all, chased by Invested...
, whilst there's not much between the other four of the shortlisted six...
Summary
I started with three runners who I thought would be the main protagonists ie Anificas Beauty, Bell Song and Invested and of those, Anificas Beauty and Invested have both been very strong throughout the various stages of analysis and with their pace profiles in particular, they're going to be my 1-2.
Bell Song is probably the best of the other shortlisted horses, but you could easily make a case for the other three to steal third spot from the inexperienced 3yr old. Of my 1-2, I'm still along the lines of 'pace wins the race' and so it's Anificas Beauty over Invested here for me.
Sadly (or reassuringly, depending on the state of your glass) the bookies agree with me and have my trio of Anificas Beauty, Bell Song and Invested at 4/1, 4/1 and 7/2 respectively with no other runner shorter than 11/1! So I'll take Anificas Beauty over Invested as my 1-2. Bell Song should complete the tricast/trifecta, but for an E/W option, Topo Chico certainly makes the frame on a regualr basis, she receives weight all round and has a 3lb claimer on board, which makes her a very interesting option at 14/1 E/W with Bet365, as of 5.05pm.
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
