SECOND SUPERNAP IN FOUR DAQMAN WINNERS: Daqman had nine horses placed yesterday from his selections at Doncaster and the Curragh on the day of two St Legers. Four of them won, including his supernap, back to back with Saturday supernap, Auguste Rodin (WON 11-10):
WON 5-1 ABOVE THE CURVE
WON 2-1 TRILLIUM
WON 5-4 HIGHFIELD PRINCESS
WON 8-11 KYPRIOS (supernap)
PUNTER WAS A LEGEND IN HIS OWN LUNCHTIME: Daqman delays his wrap on the weekend racing until a new Fortune Cookies list on Wednesday, which awaits the plans for sensational weekend winners like Al Riffa, Highfield Princess, Kyprios and Tahiyra. Today and tomorrow he tells a poignant and topical story in two parts, beginning with The Lady In A Headscarf.
TOMORROW: How did a ‘lunchtime punter’ win when he hardly ever read the form? Daqman reveals his secrets.
THE LADY IN A HEADSCARF HURRIED BY
How to win when you’ve no time to look at the form? In this week of national mourning in England, I also remember an old boy I knew when I first took an interest in racing.
He is long gone but some people live forever, and she who is in our thoughts this week, whose personality will also survive, would not mind I’m sure if I tell a racing story in which she played an unwitting role.
Gordon was not his name but he was known as ‘Gordon’ for banter on racetracks and in betting shops because he was a royalist and had cursed the jockey, Gordon Richards, for beating The Queen’s horse Aureole in Pinza’s Derby (perhaps he’d gone for a right royal touch!)
It was no good arguing that Aureole was a ‘monkey’ and got so agitated before the Epsom race that it’s a wonder he was even placed.
He was second again to Pinza in the King George V1 and Queen Elizabeth Stakes, a race named after the owner’s parents.
Aureole then became the first horse in history – in fact, the only one I know of – to be treated by a neurologist to try to improve his temperament!
‘Gordon’, the punter not the jockey, was always of very even temperament, and would brush aside the jests and jokes, except when G. Richards was listed to ride.
‘Gordon’ would be quick to point out in defence of his loathing of the many times champion jockey, who was knighted by Her Majesty, that G Richards had committed another cardinal sin – in his eyes anyway – on the old Birmingham racecourse.
Richards was riding a 33-1 ON shot in a two-horse race when inexplicably – perhaps tangled in the tape, as there were no stalls in those days – he fell off soon after the start.
You can imagine the scene a lifetime before the birth of BETDAQ, with Gordon the punter hopping mad that he couldn’t lay the 1-33 losing favourite ridden by Gordon the jockey!
One day Gordon the punter got a ‘real job,’ and his weekday racing was restricted to betting-shops, picking his winners in the lunch-hour.
You knew which shop he was in, because the racecard pages of the Sporting Life were pinned on the walls and ‘someone’ had put a pencil line through Gordon Richards’ mounts, and headed that particular page in black marker-ink: ‘Delete ‘non-runners’ and G Richards!’
Of course, Gordon, the great jockey, went on winning; but so did Gordon, the great punter. He won. He won. And he won some more.. until there were more than the pencil lines to trace his path through the shops.
There were the faces of many a disgruntled bookie, one of whom banned ’Gordon’s system’ after one wag thrust a pound note across the counter and muttered ‘Whatever Gordon’s backing..’
‘How do you do it, Gordon?’ another asked.
‘Delete nonners and Gordon Richards!’
‘No, come on!’ they said, ‘are you getting ‘information’ or do you have a genuine system, to which Gordon always replied, as if he were a syndicate ‘putter-onner’ on the track: ‘System doing well; send more money!’
In his dotage, unable to drive himself, I took him to Ascot, not a royal race-day; in fact, plenty of room to wander round.
Quite unexpectedly, a lady in a headscarf brushed purposefully past our party. She was alone, or seemed so (what, no bodyguard?), striding boldly along to take a position by the paddock and, just as quickly, after seeing what she wanted to see, was off again through the crowds.
By then a securityman was frantically trying to catch up, and clearly from the stands two men with binoculars had them judiciously trained her way, not towards the track.
Somehow we had produced the ultimate winner for Gordon. His eyes shone and we all recognised some stroke of destiny from the matrix that none of us are conscious of. RIP those who, whether regal or less so, never really leave us.
8.8 OFFERS AVAILABLE ON BETDAQ
⭕ 2.05 Worcester Global Citizen, the Grand Annual winner at Cheltenham last March, preps for the American Grand National on October 15.
LAYS LOGIC: It was heavy that day at Prestbury Park and the ‘good’ ground forecast for today and his having his first run back are both red flags. And there will be no hanging about with front-runner Bathiva in the field.
FORM: Bathiva, off his highest mark, is claimed off but may be at the end of his good run, while Clear The Runway is missing the cheekpieces applied for all six wins on his CV.
Leapaway won this race last year but Philip Hobbs hasn’t had a winner from 15 runners since the Spring.
So I’m having my pound on Not Available, an improver at autumn time last year. Has won when fresh and never been out of the first four. Trainer Matt Sheppard is 50% on the yard’s return to action, after a winner at Stratford 10 days ago.
Betdaq Betting Exchange 9.6 Not Available
PARAMETER MEASURES UP AT 9.0
⭕ 7.30 Kempton LAYS LOGIC: Sweet William is a Sea The Stars half-brother to Hurricane Lane, the Irish Derby and Doncaster St Leger winner, but the red flags are fluttering that he makes his debut on AW and in cheekpieces.
Golden Glance also wears them first time after modest public form but unraced Sweet William’s are presumably to concentrate the mind of one showing he’s difficult to control on the home gallops.
FORM: There’s a better indicator in the family history of Sir Michael Stoute’s Parameter (9.0 on BETDAQ): her dam was a Group-placed AW winner.
Sir Mark Prescott is missing strike. He’s had four consecutive seconds, three of them favourite and one of them a winner last time out, suggesting it might be a Prescott sequence horse but wasn’t.. Ouch!
It would still give me serious indigestion to avoid Pretending only to discover that he is capable of a sequence and wins today at a price (5.3 on BETDAQ this morning).
MARKET SPEAKS FOR CROACHILL
⭕ 8.30 Kempton Ryan Moore is on three for Sir Michael Stoute tonight. As well as Parameter, he rides beaten-favourite Picual in this fillies’ handicap.
Picual is 10lb better off, though she beat Dal Mallart at Nottingham in June, and was short of room on more than one occasion in her July defeat at Sandown.
But Croachill, from the St Leger winning stable of Roger Varian, was third at York to State Occasion and hat-trick winner Amanzoe (Good American fifth), and steps up a much-needed furlong here. The market speaks for her: BETDAQ 2.8 favourite.
DAQMAN’S BETS
2.05 Worcester (win 20)
BET 2.3pts win NOT AVAILABLE
7.30 Kempton (win 20, win 10)
BET 2.5pts win PARAMETER
BET 2.3pts win PRETENDING
8.30 Kempton (win 12, nap)
BET 6.5pts win CROACHILL
What are points? Points facilitate a staking plan, which is the secret to creating profit. One point is whatever you choose: a pound, a euro, or whatever ….
Start with a bank and decide how much you can afford to lose over a period of time, and determine the size of your bets accordingly. Daqman makes this variation every day.
Did you know? DAQMAN’s tips are posted each and every day so he’s always on hand to help with your horse racing betting.
