Racing Insights, Tuesday 03/10/23
Greetings from Sunny Santorini, where the wifi seems to be fairly stable, so let's crack on before it goes down!
The Shortlist is Tuesday's free Geegeez GOLD feature and it's a simple (usually brief) report highlighting those horses with a largely ‘green’ profile in the Instant Expert Report each day and it covers win or place stats for both the current and the next day'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 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 might imply.
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Here are my qualifiers on Tuesday's Shortlist...
...where the first four named are of more obvious immediate interest than the others, whilst as ever, the daily feature is complemented by a selection of fully functional racecards opened up to all readers and for Tuesday they cover...
- 3.00 Galway
- 3.22 Ayr
- 4.05 Southwell
- 7.00 Wolverhampton
- 8.30 Wolverhampton
...with the 'best' (class/on paper) of them being the 3.22 Ayr, a 7-runner, Class 3, 3yo+ flat handicap over a left-handed 7f (plus 59yds) on soft ground...
Three of this field, Master Zoffany, Autumn Festival and William Dewhurst managed to win last time out, but the latter pait are up 1 and 2 classes respectively, whilst the former actually drops down from Class 2, as do Sirona, Abduction and On A Session for a race where all seven runners are class movers with Rock Melody also up one class. He was actually placed third last time out, but along with Sirona and On A Session, is winless in his recent formline.
All bar William Dewhurst have won over today's trip and by virtue of winning this race last year, Abduction is the sole course (course & distance) winner and all runners have had at least one outing in the past month.
Instant Expert says...
...that Autumn Festival loves the soft ground and has a great record over today's type of trip and that Abduction has a poor win record at this grade but loves it here at Ayr. On A Session looks vulnerable at the distance and no runner is below their last Flat winning mark; Sirona has yet to win a handicap, but does have good place form from an albeit limited number of qualifying runs...
...where Autumn Festival is again the eyecatcher, but good to see that three of these have gone well on soft ground in the past.
The Draw Analyser says...
...that there's not a great deal to be gained/lost from whichever stall a runner is allocated and this is backed up by the PRB3 stats...
...which would lead me to assume that the race is going be decided by tactics and how the race is approached.
And the Pace Analyser says...
...that horses racing prominently or leading go on to win 70.5% of the races, despite providing just 52.4% of the runners, with those who led easily faring best. This field's most recent outings have looked like this...
...with both Sirona snd On A Session both having three prominent runs from four, but no obvious pace maker here, although Autumn Festival ended a nine-race losing run by making all last time out and did win five on the bounce from the front from July to October last year. The return to front-running tactics heralded the end of the losing run and I can see him setting pace here.
Summary
Autumn Festival won last time out, making all and similar tactics here will be very helpful in his bid to follow up. He has the best soft ground form of this field and was the Instant Expert eyecatcher, so at 11/4 with Hills, he's my pick.
Master Zoffany also won last time out and drops in class, but a lack of early pace might well be his undoing. I expect him to come strongly late on, but he might just fail to get up.
Aside from those two, I've no real strong feelings about the race, although Sirona might well outrun her 12/1 odds if your bookie is paying three places, as many are.
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