Racing Insights, Wednesday 15/02/23

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In addition to the free daily feature, we always open up a number of racecards to non-Gold subscribers and for Wednesday, they are...

• 2.50 Dundalk
• 3.00 Hereford
• 4.35 Dundalk
• 7.00 Kempton

My own personal settings for the TS report...

...have generated the following runners for me to consider...

And I think I'll see how course 5-year specialist Paul Nicholls gets on with his 5yo Pleasant Man in our 'free' jumps race, the 3.00 Hereford, an 11-runner, Class 4, 4yo+ handicap hurdle over a right handed 2m4f on good ground...

My initial thoughts are that this would be a three-horse race between our featured runner Pleasant Man, Bashers Reflection and Cabrakan and in a race with no LTO winners, their runner-up finishes are the best result on offer, whilst Bucks Dream was third LTO. Bashers Reflection and Cabrakan both won two starts ago and of the rest, only Toronto has win in their card-visible form line.

Pleasant Man is up one class here, as are the bottom two on the card, Bucks Dream and Beannaigh Do with the latter making just a second handicap appearance, whilst Highland Frolic and Cabrakan are on handicap debuts. Top weight Forecast is the only previous course winner, having landed a 2m3½f contest here, whilst Bashers Reflection won over 2m3f at Warwick. Elsewhere not much to write home about with regards to course/distance form. All eleven have raced in the past seven weeks or so, with Pleasant Man seen most recently when going down by half a length at Taunton last Tuesday.

Instant Expert backs up this lack of relevant course/distance form and actually paints a pretty dismal picture of how this field has performed under these conditions...

Not good at all, bar Toronto's going/class form, but thankfully the place stats do at least give me something to work with...

At this point, I need to be pretty ruthless and get rid of some of these runners, so I'm going rule out Forecast (class), Astrophysicist (going/class) and Beannaigh Do (generally!), giving me eight to choose from and their recent pace profiles are as follows...

...suggesting Cabrakan as the likely pace-maker with Malaita and probably Highland Frolic tucked in behind. Bashers Reflection does have a 4, but he also has a 1 and he does generally run in mid-division or further back. Vengeance and Toronto look like being our held-up back markers in a race where unusually for an NH contest, there's no great pace bias...

Yes, mid-div runners have fared worse than the others, but had one more of the 41 runners won, they'd also have a win % of  9.76% so I'm not entirely convinced that any running style is that much better than the others here.

Summary

Not all races can be worked out to a degree of clarity using the toolbox and when that happens, like here, you've two choices. One is to just walk away and look at the next race, the other is to go off recent form and your 'gut feeling'.

Walking away is probably the best option/advice here, but if I was to see the process out to a conclusion and abet, I'd have little choice but to go back to my original trio of  featured runner Pleasant Man, Bashers Reflection and Cabrakan, whilst having a second look at Toronto, due to his Instant Expert numbers.

Pleasant Man has finished 322 in three starts this year and is up 2lbs after recent runner-up defeats by a shirt head and half a length, but he is up in class here. Bashers Reflection won by half a length on New Year's Eve and was hit by a 9lb rise. He has since been a 5.5 length runner-up and is up another 2lbs, whilst Cabrakan has finished 212 in his three starts over hurdles with a LCass 2win and a pair of Class 4 runner-up finishes, but he was beaten by 15 lengths last time, racing 3f further than he's gone before and certainly hasn't been treated leniently by the handicapper off an opening mark of 106, just 1lb lower than Pleasant Man and a pound heavier than Basher's Reflection.

Based on that, I'd have to agree with the bookies by saying that I think the 11/4 Pleasant Man should win here ahead of Cabrakan (generally 3/1) and Basher's Reflection who is as big as 6/1 with PP. If he drifts any, he could be a live E/W play.

As for Toronto, he's available at 25's with bet365 (3 places0 and 22's with Skybet for four places but on recent form, that would be a bit of a stretch. He won over 1m7f and over 2m½f on his first and third efforts over hurdles, but since that second win in May he has struggled going down by 19L, 30L, 34L and 28L off decreasing marks of 123, 117, 113 and 109 LTO. He's down another 4lbs here and if regaining last summer's form, could get involved, but he's also another yet to travel beyond 2m1f.

If you want an E/W punt on Toronto, please don't throw too much money at him!