CLASSIC COUNTDOWN: We’ve finally made it! After a false start to the Flat, we had the Leopardstown Classic trials yesterday and Wednesday sees the start of the Newmarket Craven meeting, stepping-stone to the Guineas. But what should we be looking for from results past and present?
THE FASCINATION OF BETDAQ: Daqman opens a two-day inquiry into the Guineas and Derby scene, and broadens it in scope tomorrow to the whole question of finding value winners and exploring the fascinating market place that is BETDAQ.
1: Classic countdown: the Guineas Where does the Guineas winner come from? Well, one each from the two-year-old ‘classics’, the Coventry, the National Stakes and the Dewhurst in the last decade.
Since Dawn Approach won all three, you could say he is a valid hot favourite for Newmarket on May 4, and the market agrees that nothing can touch him.
However, going way back, such precocious and dominating two-year-olds have a poor record in the Classics. They had been ‘used up’ as juveniles.
I say ‘going way back’ because you won’t find many modern Dawn Approachs, and that is the big debate: have we yet another ‘freak’ on our hands, another Frankel? Or will he go the way of all horseflesh who get false hype?
The Racing Post Trophy, the Beresford Stakes, the Prix Djebel and the Washington Singer Stakes are also juvenile stepping-stones to the first colts’ Classic.
But note that the big juvenile races feature just once each in the winners’ CVs this entire decade, not repeatedly as some would have you think in their previews of 2013.
2: Classic countdown: the Derby In the last decade, the Racing Post Trophy (3) and the Dewhurst (2) have been the two-year-old races to follow to find the Derby winner.
But note that the scores for each race are only 30% and 20% so better you get confirmation in their early second season that the horse is, indeed, a genuine Derby contender.
And, for that, the 2,000 Guineas and Dante are supreme: winner and second in the first colts’ Classic at Newmarket has produced four winners at Epsom, so has Dante winner and second.
However, again note that the one-two in each over a decade brings 20 colts into play, so the strike rate that’s important for an individual bet is their 40% not the 80% within the race result.
3: Classic blunder In general, regarding second-season animals, the rule is: last year was last year, this year is this.
In other words, individual two-year-old form does not necessarily apply to three-year-old races, and collateral form hardly ever: to say that Joe’s Boy beat Hardy Legend two lengths and Hardy Legend later beat Frankly A Freak five, so ‘Joe’ is therefore seven lengths superior, is not going to wash. It will be rubbish most times.
One of those three fictional horses may have grown really well over the winter, one may have ‘stood still’, another may not train on at all or, as I’ve already mentioned, may not survive his or her intense two-year-old career (for which we use words like ‘exposed’ and ‘not trained on’), a point pertaining particularly to precocious youngsters who set up a sequence (try saying that munching a packet of peanuts).
Just don’t trust juvenile form. In fact, don’t even trust three-year-old form until it has settled down.
For instance, how do you know that the early winners were not taking advantage, as ones who ‘go well fresh’ over horses being given time to develop?
How do you know which ones had good training-ground conditions over the winter, which ones were brought in early or have only just returned to the yard after the winter holiday?
Some stables will be out of form; many trainers will make mistakes and see their geese as swans, or swans as geese, unable to relate their home work to what they do on the track, until they (and you) see it with your own eyes.
4: Three-year-old handicaps I remember that the much celebrated pro-punter Alec Bird would caution: ‘Don’t back a three-year-old until after the Derby.’
I would add to that: ‘Definitely not in three-year-old handicaps.’ They are the punters’ curse, an absolute labyrinth of misleading facts and spurious figures.
5: The Daqman Manifesto What are we going to do about the Classic dilemma; in fact, all the anomalies of racing that create losing bets instead of winners?
Well, tomorrow I will outline some plans, what to avoid and how to get an edge, in an overall strategy, not just exclusive to second-season animals, whether they are Classics or handicaps.
But we’ve got to get to grips with them, if only because – wait for it – those three-year-olds will be taking on older horses in the second half of the season!
DAQMAN’S BETS
BET 7.4pts win DESTINY BLUE (3.40 Redcar)
BET 12.5pts win (nap) PORTMONARCH (4.20 Windsor)
BET 6.6pts win OPEN LETTER (5.10 Redcar)
Daqman’s bets are all backed to win 20 points today
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