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...
- 3.55 Wetherby
- 5.50 Clonmel
- 7.30 Southwell
- 8.00 Southwell
...and I suspect that of the races above, we'll get more Instant Expert data from the 8.00 Southwell, a 10-runner, Class 4, 4yo+ A/W handicap over a left-handed 6f on standard tapeta...
Our sole LTO winner, Glamorous Express has won three of his last seven and comes here on a hat-trick after wins at both Kempton and Newcastle this month. Westmorian and Digital both had top three finishes last time around and were winners two and three races ago respectively, whilst One More Dream has two wins and two runner-up finishes from his last five runs. Conversely High Velocity, Temple Bruer and Em Jay Kay are winless in 7, 8 and 11 races respectively.
Temple Bruer's bid to break his losing run might be helped by dropping down a class and sole mare in the race, Miss Bella Brand is down two levels today. hat-trick seeker Glamorous Express moves the opposite way and steps up two classes, whilst Westmorian, Dandy's Derriere and out-of-form bottom-weight Em Jay Kay are all up one class.
Six of the fiedl have raced in the last three weeks, but Em Jay Kay has been away for two months and Miss Bella Brand for three months. It's 19 weeks since Digital last raced, during which time he has moved from Karl Burke to Ruth Carr and the longest lay off of all is the near five month absence of out-of-form Temple Bruer.
All ten runners have won at least once over today's trip and only three (Temple Bruer, Glamorous Express and Dandy's Derriere are yet to land a race here at Southwell. Admittedly that's off just 1, 0 and 3 previous visits respectively. Of the seven former Southwell winners, only three (Mountain Warrior, Miss Bella Brand and Em Jay Kay) have scored over course and distance at the same time and our two-year Instant Expert form overview looks like this...
...where Mountain Warrior looks the best suited from recent races. We're a bit shy on Class 4 wins across the board (4 from 30), if truth be told with Miss Bella Brand struggling the most at this grade. Overall Em Jay Kay looks the most vulnerable at 2 from 14 on standard going and 1 from 9 at 6f and that's from a career record of just 2 wins from 20, all on the A/W. He's still 2lbs higher than his last win, despite 11 consecutive defeats and I suspect that will become 12 today. He has however made the frame in half of his six course appearances including one win according to the place data from that above graphic...
In almost 60 similar races since the switch to tapeta here at Southwell, horses drawn higher have seemed to have been at a disadvantage, with those drawn beyond stall bearing the brunt as I suppose you'd expect with that left-hand turn...
That, of course doesn't mean that hat-trick seeker Glamorous Express can't win from stall 9, but his race tactics are going to have to be spot on from so wide out and in those 50-odd races above, it has paid to get out quickly...
and the more prominent a horse has raced, the better the chances of winning have been with hold-up horses faring really badly. So, i suppose the last thing you'd want is a highly-drawn hold-up horses, unless he was a really fast finisher who didn't mind a bit of traffic. The pace/draw heat map is pretty clear about what has and hasn't worked in those races above...
The fact that high drawn leaders have been the most successful would appear to flip the draw stats around and what that says to me is that the pace of the race holds greater value than the draw without saying we should ignore the draw of course. So, we now need to look at how this field normally races to make an informed decision about how we think they might run here...
...and it looks like Digital might well set the pace ahead of One More Dream with hat-trick seeking Glamorous Express and Temple Bruer closer to the rear of the field. If we re-arrange that pace chart into draw order, we get this...
Summary
Glamorous Express will be popular after two wins already this month, but he's up two classes, carries a penalty and seems badly suited by the pace/draw stats. Westmorian, Digital and One More Dream also come here in decent form. Digital and One More Dream both scored well on the place aspect of Instant Expert, but it was top-weight Mountain Warrior who was the IE pick of the pack.
The pace/draw stats pointed to Digital, Miss Bella Brand, Dandy's Derriere, One More Dream, Westmorian and Mountain Warrior having the best chances and on the basis of who's ticking the most boxes it's the names of Digital and One More Dream who feature most followed by Mountain Warrior and Westmorian.
I'd expect One More Dream to fare better here than Digital, so he'd be my pick today.
I looked at he market at 4pm, but no prices were available and having looked at a few tissues, I expected the market to look something like...
Westmorian 10/3-7/2
Glamorous Express 4/1-9/2
One More Dream 5/1
Mountain Warrior 17/2
Dandys Derriere 19/2
Digital 19/2
Temple Bruer 12/1
Em Jay Kay 16/1
Miss Bella Brand 17/1
High Velocity 18/1
...and I was going to suggest One More Dream at 5's as my pick with E/W options from Mountain Warrior and Digital with Westmorian being too short.
However, Bet365 went 'live' just before I did and here are their prices as of 4.10pm...
...which are pretty close to the estimates, so I stick with my decision(s).