Tuesday's free offering from the GOLD service is the The Shortlist feature, a simple – and usually brief – report highlighting those horses with a largely ‘green’ profile in the Instant Expert Report each day. It covers win or place stats, and can be viewed for both today’s and tomorrow’s racing.
GREENis good (33% or better win rate) – worth 3 points
AMBERis quite good (16-32% win rate) – worth 1 point
REDis 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 is – and 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 - imply. As ever, please refer to our User Guide for further information!
And this how The Shortlist looks for this Tuesday...
And we do still also have our daily list of 'free' racecards, which are as follows...
- 4.25 Chepstow
- 4.35 Newcastle
- 6.00 Wetherby
- 7.15 Sandown
- 7.35 Killarney
- 7.55 Sligo
...and although it's not the best race of the day or even the best of the 'free' list, we really should marry the free feature with the free cards and take a quick look at Killane in the 4.35 Newcastle, an 11-runner, Class 5, 4yo+ handicap hurdle over a left-handed 2m1f on good ground...
Magic Mike and featured horse Killane both won last time out and aside from Artic Row's success four races ago, none of the others have won any of five starts with both Ebendi and Bebside Banter failing to complete twice in their last four outings.
The afore mentioned Ebendi makes just a second handicap appearance (fell at 2nd hurdle on hcp debut) and the recently out of sorts (pulled up in two of his last three) Bebside Banter is now fitted with first-time cheeekpieces, meaning that only Minella Youngy, Ebendi and Mactavish run without any headgear/apparatus.
Bebside Banter also drops down from Class 4 here, as do Irish Sovereign and Mactavish, but bottom weight Burnage Boy is up from Class 6 some three months after his last run.
Only Mactavish, who returns from six months off, has been away from the track longer than Burnage Boy, with the rest of the field having raced in April (plus a May outing for Bebside Banter).
As you'd expect from The Shortlist, Killane is a former course and distance winner and none of his rivals have won here before, but Artic Row, Ingleby Mackenzie and Magic Mike have all at least won over a similar trip.
Further conditions-related info courtesy of Instant Expert shows that just five of the field have a good ground NH win, but that half a dozen have won at Class 5. You can adjust the parameters yourself, of course to find the sole Class 4 win, but here are today's relevant win stats...
...where Killane aside, it's a pretty bleak picture. The areas I've most concerns about are Minella Youngy (class/distance), Artic Row (distance), Mactavish (time off/going/distance), Edmond Dantes (distance), Ingleby Mackenzie (class/distance), Magic Mike (going), Burnage Boy (class/distance), phew! Hopefully some of these will have better place records...
Hmmm, not much better to be honest. My next port of call is pace and if the field run like they have been running of late...
...then I'd expect Bebside Banter to be the one setting the tempo of the contest early doors with Mactavish and Minella Youngy the back markers. Featured runner Killane has raced prominently in two if his last four and does tend to run in an advanced position generally, which would seem to suit this race, based on past similar contests...
Summary
I wanted to marry up the free feature with the races of the day and that meant looking at Killane's chances here and the only possible negatives I have about him are that he's up 3lbs from his win a month ago and that we might not get a decent price when the book opens.
That said, he's only one pound higher than a win at Carlisle last year and he's back on good ground after winning on heavy last time out. Price-wise, 5/2 would be tolerable, but if I could get 3/1, I'd be much happier!
Others to note would be Magic Mike and Irish Sovereign with the latter hopefully a double digit-odds E/W option.