Racing Insights

Racing Insights, Tuesday 08/08/23

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.

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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...

...with one of more obvious immediate interest than the other, 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...

  • 4.35 Catterick
  • 6.00 Roscommon
  • 6.30 Roscommon
  • 8.20 Chelmsford

...from which I think I'll check out Temper trap in the 6.10 Ripon, as Sea Appeal looks mighty short in a 4-runner contest! The 6.10 Ripon is a 7-runner, Class 6, 4yo+ flat handicap for apprentice jockeys over a right-handed mile on soft ground...

Featured horse Temper Trap is second widest drawn and top weight of the eight runners and after winning this race last year is the only course and distance winner in the field. None of the others have won at Ripon before, but all bar Extinction (2nd run in a handicap today), Antagonize and Jewel of Kabeir have all won over today's trip elsewhere.

How Bizarre and fast finisher Chagall both come here off the back of wins, whilst Temper Trap comes in search of a quick-fire hat-trick inside 12 days, for which he's penalised 5lbs. Of the other four runners, only Bay Dream Beleiver has win in his most recent form line.

None of the field should be too rusty, as Grangeclare View's 8-week break is the longest any of these have been off the track since their last run and Temper Trap won at Hamilton as recently as Saturday evening! Extinction, Grangeclare View and Bay Dream believer all drop a class, which is useful especially for the latter who was a runner-up last time out.

It's an apprentice jockeys' race with five of the riders using claims of 3 to 10lbs, but both Temper Trap and Chagall will be ridden by non-claimers with a bit more experience, which might be vital here.

Temper Trap comes from The Shortlist, so you'd be well within your rights to expect him to score well on Instant Expert...

...and he certainly doesn't disappoint. He looks head and shoulders above the field here, despite a 5lb rise in weight. Mind you Chagall is some 10lbs higher than his last flat win almost three years ago, although he is only 3lbs higher than when winning on the A/W at Lingfield three weeks ago and he's got good place stats, especially on soft ground as does How Bizarre whose place form looks solid if unspectacular, although it's Antagonize's place numbers that look second best to Temper Trap.

One of the form horses, Bay Dream Believer has bagged stall number 1, whilst our featured runner, Temper Trap is out in box 7 and if previous similar past contests are anything to go by, then the former might have an advantage over the latter...



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...as the lower half of the draw seems to have much better results. The above races tended to be won by those runners racing most prominently with prominent/leaders winning 50% more often than mid-div/hold-up types, which based on the field's most recent efforts doesn't look such good news for Bay Dream Believer...

Summary

It's not a great race, really, but it's difficult to look beyond Temper Trap. The problem is, that he looks an obvious pick and the bookies are onto it and he's 7/4 across the board. I think he wins this again here, but I'm not going gung-ho at those odds, I thought he might have been a bit longer.

Chagall (9/2), Bay Dream Believer (5/1) and How Bizarre (11/2) all come here in good nick, but fall down in different areas and I wouldn't see any of them beating the fav. All three are too short for an E/W punt, but you can get 17/2 about Antagonize and if he runs like he did last time out, then he could well make the frame if the form horses don't fire.

 

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