GAMBLE LOST AS THE SHARK IS LEFT ‘TREADING WATER’: Daqman gets ‘heavy’ about the ground conditions and the gamble, Great White Shark, that was ‘treading water’ at Gowran Park. But perhaps the simple answer is to lay the favourites, Daqman! Here’s his version of events and a promise to debate trainer form.
IMPROVER RATES THE NAP AT DONCASTER: Daqman’s nap today is a horse with a future, a Venetia Williams improver at Doncaster, with five meetings on: as well as Doncaster, there’s Lingfield and Wolverhampton, plus Navan and Dundalk in Ireland.
TRIALS DAY VERDICT: Cheltenham is off tomorrow. The Trials Day card has succumbed to waterlogging meaning Cheltenham have lost both their January fixtures.
Headlines:
🔹 ‘HEAVY’ IS OWN GOAL FOR PUNTERS
🔹 A BREATHER IN THE EDGAR WALLACE
🔹 RIDICULOUS QUOTES ABOUT IBLEO
🔹 ARABESCO BEST LINGFIELD BET
‘HEAVY’ IS OWN GOAL FOR PUNTERS
Look away now if you don’t want to know the score. Trainers don’t run horses for the public. Follow the form book on heavy ground and you might as well give your money away. Ask what the ground is like, and you’ll get that word (‘heavy’) which describes anything from a kickback of clods to a quagmire.
The Thyestes Chase at Gowran Park yesterday was run almost a minute slow and half the field (nine of them) pulled up!
The first two home were both maidens over fences; that they carried 10st 4lb and 10st 6lb told their story. The winner, Coko Beach, had raced over 3m only once before, and fell.
How many horses didn’t or couldn’t run to form behind them we will know only when they meet again under different conditions.
And how many of the heavy-ground winners this winter can go on from success, including at Gowran yesterday, is also guesswork. Best guess is: when the ground is ’heavy’ again.
So it is that Cheltenham may be such a lottery this year that my taking 29.0 on BETDAQ about the potential of a runner yesterday is currently the only worthwhile area of the market. At least we have 27 more chances at level stakes if we keep looking.
The horse in question ran in the Galmoy and the result was similar ‘shocks all round’, this time in a race 1min 48secs slow.
Great White Shark’s performance was, wryly I thought, described in the analysis as ‘treading water turning in.’
But that’s not analysis; that’s race-reading. Nothing else is said anywhere after the race about a mare who was the medium of a gamble by those trusting souls – myself among them – who believed the form and that she was able do her best to represent it in the conditions. Yet it’s all put down to ‘heavy’ ground.
Today the Racing Post is telling us: ‘Let trainer form influence your betting and you’ll end up in a cardboard box.’
That’s a bit heavy. I’ll be telling you the does and don’ts about trainer form next week.
A BREATHER IN THE EDGAR WALLACE
Deteriorating Doncaster. What’s this? Doncaster going ‘soft’ but with ’showers’ forecast. Best guess, then, on the morning of the meeting is to expect it to go soft-heavy after the showers and after the racing on it.
The story of Gowran Park, Doncaster this afternoon and most every racetrack these days, is to watch the racing and decide for yourself what kind of ground it is.
You might – or might not – get the time of the last race to help your judgment; you might get a going ‘change’ (soft to heavy, say); what you won’t get is revision of the going stick.
I’ve been arguing for years now for ‘the stick’ to be used between races and on different ‘courses’ of the same track, so that we get a constant review. This is a job for racing TV.
Let’s see these TV ‘personalities’ going round with the guys who rebuild the fences after every race and reporting: ’The new stick reading is…and it’s now a quagmire not a sponge cake.’ What else have they got their wellies on for!
⭕ 1.32 Doncaster I’m locked down away from London or I could drown my punting sorrows in The Edgar Wallace, one of my favourite pubs off The Strand near the Inns Of Court.
The horse, The Edgar Wallace, could improve for a tongue-tie, dropped a grade from a fair first run over hurdles at Ascot, where trainer Kim Bailey recently had his first Grade 1 of this racing lifetime with First Flow.
Sam Barton was BF at Hereford and Road Senam is with out-of-form Colin Tizzard (0-17) but beware of the Racing Post’s cardboard-box warning, whatever that means.
Most of them lack fluency in this race. That doesn’t apply to The Edgar Wallace; he just needs a good supply of oxygen at the business end of the race.
I hope it’s still ‘only’ soft. Backing horses on heavy ground with known breathing problems sounds like a punting error.
On the other hand, The Edgar Wallace may be sound enough and equipping him with a lifeline, as Bailey has done here, could make the difference between winning and defeat.
RIDICULOUS QUOTES ABOUT IBLEO
⭕ 2.05 Doncaster Venetia Williams’ horses love it soft-heavy, they say (there’s trainer form for you!)
Can her improver Ibleo give weight away all round? He’s placed at Ascot, Cheltenham and Sandown (won), which makes him a gladiator in this company on this track, and deserves to be 2.26 on the BETDAQ BETTING EXCHANGE.
Ibleo is being quoted by bookmakers for the Champion Chase (as short as 25-1) and the Ryanair (33-1) but 100-1 for each is more realistic. You can get 260.0 in the BETDAQ orange ante-post.
The Big Bite could try to outrun him. He has left Tom George but won first time, making all at Aintree, for Henry Oliver.
Little Light is marked for first-time visor but she has already worn blinkers. Whoshotthesheriff beat nothing well at Carlisle.
ARABESCO BEST LINGFIELD BET
⭕ 4.05 Lingfield Arabescato (BETDAQ 4.2) is 221 at Lingfield, his success on the last day giving Nick Littmoden 2-2 on the course in handicaps at this trip.
His nearest rival in the market this morning is the maiden Three Dragons. That’s pretty good form for a Thyestes.
DAQMAN’S BETS
1.32 Doncaster (win 10)
BET 6pts win THE EDGAR WALLACE
2.05 Doncaster (win 10 nap)
BET 7.5pts win IBLEO
4.05 Lingfield (win 10)
BET 3.25pts win ARABESCATO
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