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...
- 2.35 Navan
- 3.35 Navan
- 5.06 Bath
- 5.30 Stratford
- 7.45 Newcastle
...and of the three UK races, the one with the most Instant Expert data to work with is also the highest rated of the trio. It's race 26 of the Racing League, aka the 7.45 Newcastle, a 13-runner, Class 3, 3yo+ A/W handicap over a left-handed 1m2f on standard tapeta...
New Dayrell won last time out to open his account at the seventh attempt, whilst Painters Palette also won, taking his 2023 record to 3 wins from 7. Storm Catcher has also won 3 of his last 7, as has Bashful, whilst Blue Yonder has won twice. Onesmoothoperator, Carolus Magnus, Wind Your Neck In and Cap Francais have lost their last 15, 10, 8 & 9 races repsectively.
Only Onesmoothoperator, Carolus Magnus and Roaring Gallagher ran at this Class 3 level last time out and the laatter now runs in a handicap for just the second time. Of the ten class movers, only Storm Catcher drops down from Class 2 with the other nine all up a level.
Onesmoothoperator is clearly on the cold list, but like Bashful, he at least won over this course and distance with only Miami Thunder of the others to have won on this track (over a mile two starts ago), but Storm Catcher, New Dayrell and Blue Yonder have won over this trip elsewhere.
The latter of those 1m2f winners, Blue Yonder has been off track the longest, but he really shouldn't have got rusty after just 54 days' rest with his rivals all having raced in the last five weeks.
Instant Expert has all the above course/distance wins logged and instantly highlights the poor record of top-weight Onesmoothoperator...
It's not the most inspiring set of numbers to base a bet (or not) on, but there's some green titbits to work with and some areas of concern like the records of Wind Your Neck In & Cap Francais at this trip, but I've a feeling that we'd be better off focusing on All-Weather place data...
...which somewhat remarkably shows Onesmoothoperator in a whole new light and on the A/W over trips of 1m2f to 1m4.5f, his ten runs have finished 1329222122. The 9th place was the only non-tapeta run and his Newcastle placings from that series are 1322, which is interesting to say the least. A few others are of interest and a this point, the ones I think I'd want to be working with are...
...who are drawn in stalls 2, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 & 10, so I suppose I'm hoping that the extreme low & high stalls are generally unsuccessful over this track/trip, so let's check the data from our draw analyser...
...which does tend to suggest that I'm better off avoiding those drawn in the first four stalls, whilst the PRB3 data also says that those drawn 7 to 10 have gone well in the past...
That said, it's not all about the draw when you're racing over a mile and a quarter, as there should be adequate time to overcome a supposedly-poor draw, if you get the race tactics right and according to our pace analyser, those races above have firmly favoured the prominent runner who stalks the leader(s)...
..and I suspect off the basis of the field's last four (and more) outings that it might well be LTO winner and Tapeta-debutant New Dayrell who sets the fractions here...
...and our pace/draw heat map based on the data presented so far looks like this...
Summary
Miami Thunder is the one for me here. He's the best positioned on the pace/draw heat map, he's in good form with a win and a runner-up finish from his last two run, both here at Newcastle. He rarely runs a bad race on the A/W, having finished 232512 in his six efforts and at 13/2, he's almost in E/W territory, but I'll back him to win.
Most of the above tells me to avoid Onesmoothoperator, but as a believer in the old "Horses for Courses" adage, I keep coming back to him, purely on his place form here at Newcastle and on Tapeta in general and I think there's still every chance that he'll outrun his 16/1 to 20/1 price tickets. Most firms are paying four places, but with SkyBet paying five, I'd be taking a small E/W punt here at 16's.
Elsewhere, I'd expect the likes of Storm Catcher to finish somewhere between that pair above and as he's priced at 8/1 generally, he'd also be a good E/W chance with those 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
