Racing Insights, Tuesday 21/05/24
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.
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.
[Please refer to our User Guide for further information] and here is Tuesday's Shortlist...
...with Mole Court of the most obvious interest. As ever, the daily feature is complemented by a selection of fully functional racecards opened up to all readers and for this Tuesday they cover the following...
- 2.58 Punchestown
- 3.10 Nottingham
- 7.40 Huntingdon
- 7.58 Hexham
- 8.20 Cork
- 8.40 Huntingdon
So I suppose it makes sense to have a look at Mole Court and Ballintubber Boy from The Shortlist, as they run in one of our 'free' races, the 7.40 Huntingdon, an 8-runner (fingers crossed!), Class 3, 4yo+ handicap hurdle over a right-handed 3m 1f 10y on good ground...
My initial thoughts here are that we're possibly looking at a three-horse race between (in card order) featured runner Mole Court, Planet Legend and Ubetya, but only Mole Court won last time out and he has actually won five of his last six outings.
None of the other five won last time out either; Planet Legend was a runner-up beaten by just a neck at Ludlow (with Ubetya six lengths and two places further back), but the rest of the field failed to make the frame with both Edison Kent and Petrastar not completing their races. All runners have won at least one of their last seven outings, though.
Only Petrastar ran at this grade last time out with all of his rivals here bar Back On the Lash and Edison Kent (who both drop down from Class 2) stepping up a class today. Unusually, though, we've no yard or handicap debutants, nor any new headgear being worn or any return from wind surgery/gelding and most of the field ran just 25-27 days ago.
Back On The Lash has had almost eight weeks off, but that shouldn't be an issue here, but Edison Kent hasn't raced for almost four months and hasn't completed a race for over five months, whilst Ballintubber Boy's last race was a week shy of six months ago.
Ballintubber Boy is, however, the only runner in this field to have won over course and distance, which he achieved two starts/seven months ago. Midnight Reflection and featured runner Mole Court are the other two runners to have won at a similar trip, whilst only Back On The Lash, Edison Kent and Ubetya are yet to win here at Huntingdon. Mind you, only the 0 from 3 Edison Kent of that trio has actually raced here...
My immediate takeaways from Instant Expert are that Midnight Reflection's better efforts have come over shorter trips than this and that Mole Court's +24lbs from his last win can't be right, so I'll check.
Ah, so his mark today of 116 is technically 24lbs higher than his last hurdles win fifteen months ago, but has since won five of six over fences off marks of up to 120 last time out, so he's actually 4lbs lower than his last win, whereas Petrastar runs off 108 here, the same as his chasing mark and is now 14lbs below his last hurdles win, but that was in August 2020 and his hurdle form since then reads 776P2367 (mainly in 7-runner races, too), so it's unsurprising to see his mark falling.
Planet Legend has the showing on place stats, whilst Ubetya is unexposed under these conditions. Ballintubber Boy's numbers are a little skewed by his successes in the earlier part of the two-year period, whilst Edison Kent would probably want a bit more cut in the ground.
There doesn't appear to be much of a pace bias here at Huntingdon when you get beyond three miles...
...but there has been a slight advantage the further forward you have raced, which probably partially explains why Ballintubber Boy and Mole Court have been successful here in the past, if there recent efforts are anything to go by...
Summary
From the outset, I thought that featured runner Mole Court, Planet Legend and Ubetya were the best runners in the race and there's not been any evidence shown above to sway me from that thought. There's not a huge pace bias, but those running furthest forward have fared better and my three are expected to race in that same Mole Court, Planet Legend and Ubetya order, so that's how I'll arrange my 1-2-3 today.
The early (4pm Monday) Bet365 market agrees with my 1-2 and has Mole Court and Planet Legend at 9/4 and 3/1 respectively, but they go 10's about Ubetya and that looks like a decent E/W offer to me.