Racing Insights, Tuesday 30/07/24

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.

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 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.

My fairly restrictive settings (you get to choose your own) for The Shortlist have generated the following qualifiers..

...and as ever, the daily feature is complemented by a selection of fully functional racecards opened up to all readers and for Tuesday they cover the following...

• 3.00 Goodwood
• 3.10 Yarmouth
• 5.55 Goodwood
• 6.35 Ffos Las
• 8.15 Galway

The logical place to start would be with 15-scoring Kinross in the 3.00 Goodwood from our 'free' list, of course and whilst other writers here on Geegeez are probably better qualified to write about this race, it's a useful exercise to see how the toolkit can be applied to a top-class race like this 8-runner, Group 2, 3yo+ flat contest over a right-handed 7f on good ground...

Tiber Flow fell two starts ago when clipping heels at York, but came back to win at Haydock last time out. English Oak has gone one better and comes here on a hat-trick after handicap wins at Haydock and Ascot, whilst Noble Dynasty has won his last four including a Group 3 success last time out.

English Oak will find this tougher, stepping up in class as the only runner in the field who didn't race at Class 1 last time around and all eight horses have raced at least once in the last 17 (Kinross) to 52 (Tiber Flow) days, so we should have no fitness issues.

Audience, Art Power, Kinross and Chicago Critic have all won two of their last seven (six for the latter), but Pogo is on a run of eight defeats since a Group 2 success back in October 2022. Art Power and Chicago Critic have yet to win over today's trip, whilst only Kinross has won here at Goodwood in the past, scoring over course and distance twice when winning this very race in 2021 and 2023. Instant Expert says that his Class 1 record is the best on show today over the last two years...

...and it is he and Noble Dynasty that catch the eye here. Pogo and Tiber Flow have poor win ratios at Class 1 and the former has also struggled to score over this trip. Kinross is lightly raced on good ground, but over the last two years has four wins and a place from six efforts on good to firm or good to soft.

After looking at the two-year place stats...

...I'm ready to dismiss Art Power, Pogo and Tiber Flow as I head to see whether there's anything to be had from the draw and it looks like 'low is go!'...

...which is a tad unfortunate as I've just dismissed the runners in stalls 1 and 3! As for the pace of those races above, those setting the fractions appear to have done best of all, but hold-up types also have a good record as shown below on both the pace stats and the pace/draw heat map...

So, the ideal make-up is a low or high draw for front runners or for a hold-up horse from a low draw and based on this field's last few runs...

...Pogo is becoming a bit of a fly in the ointment with his low draw and front-running style! The stats say he could well make the frame, but form suggests otherwise for me. Noble Dynasty ticks the high-drawn leader box for us here whilst Chicago Critic might have a squeak of a chance from the back of the field, seeing as I'm already against Tiber Flow!

Summary

It has to be Noble Dynasty and Kinross for me and probably in that order and I'm not in the least surprised to see them as the 10/3 joint favs at 4pm on Monday. As for the others, they're all in with a chance of nicking a place, I suppose.

Only Chicago Critic (16/1), Art Power (25/1) and Pogo (25/1) were priced higher than my usual 8/1 E/W cut-off price and if I had to choose one of those three to outrun the odds, it would probably be Chicago Critic, but he'll need a career best effort. That said, he is well in at the weights, carrying 12lbs less than the highest-rated runner Audience who is supposedly 11lbs better than him.

Other Recent Posts by This Author:

• Tix Picks, Saturday 14/09/24
• Tix Picks, Friday 13/09/24
• Tix Picks, Thursday 12/09/24
• Tix Picks, 11th September 2024
• Tix Picks, Monday 9th September 2024