ANOTHER 4-1 WINNER FOR DAQMAN: After 4-1 and 9-2 (twice) winners, Daqman scored again with O Crotaigh (WON 4-1) yesterday.
Goodbye bankers. I’ve had enough. Yesterday was the last straw. A Henderson, drifting like a dog on a raft to 12.0 at one stage, drew clear from my banker odds-on favourite in the first at Towcester.
One other odds-on shot was last of four and the only one of three to win was 5-2 on. There’s no way any staking plan can cope with that, never mind my 20 points level stakes.
It ruined a winning day (otherwise 6.60 in profit thanks to O Crotaigh, won 4-1) and, unfortunately, these results are also ruining my lays.
You would think that, with so many losing odds-on favourites, finding lays would be easy. It doesn’t work like that. Would you have laid Bygones Sovereign when the Henderson was drifting out to the betting weir?
Of course, it’s well known that backing short-priced favourites works infinitely better in July, granted a consistent sound surface, than it does on heavy ground in January.
But I think there is a noticeable change in racing results, and I’m putting my anorak on to research it.
I shall take him back to the days of The Man With The Plastic Bag who would go around the tracks (in the 1980s) with a supermarket carrier stuffed with £20 notes and offload it onto odds-on favourites. He once had 11 in a row.
These days, he’d have to wait for a Sea The Stars or a Frankel to be sure of a return. In other words, there isn’t the reliability any more: gone are the days when Mark Prescott set up sequences on the northern tracks; maybe he can’t afford the petrol these days.
More likely is that, for the same money, animals with the potential to improve are much, mjch harder to find in the modern cash-strapped era.
I’m convinced it’s all about quality. I always do well at weekends, when better-quality horses are running. And thereby hangs a tale.
With so many poor-quality races (class 5 to class 7, not even counting sellers and claimers), the old question arises almost every time.
Is this winning horse running again at this low level because it is easy to pick up the prize or is it there because it’s unlikely to put back-to-back wins together and, or, has not improved an ounce – probably gone backwards – at home.
Increasingly it’s the latter. Below class 3, it’s a rare thing these days to be able to call a horse ‘an improver’. Generally speaking, the gap has widened massively between the raising-their-game quality and the stagnant dross.
At the same time, handicaps at the higher level have narrowed to a few pounds; prizemoney generally is poor except at the highest level; and the average trainer is finding it increasingly difficult to take prizemoney away from the winner-factories of Nicholls, Henderson and Co.
What can the average stable do? In these days when the Stewards are blipping their fingers through their bottom lip and counting whip strokes like accountants count beans, trainers are making ends meet with ‘the old-fashioned coup’ and the ‘sudden unaccountable improvement’.
Only the other day, I rejected two horses with absolutely no current form and whose stables had gone 177 days without a winner and 756 days with no win on the course in question. Both horses won. No inquiry in either case.
All is not lost. While my anoraks are doing their research, I have come up with a plan to help the punter, thanks to an idea suggested by Ascot.
Before I publish statistics to show market trends in black and white, punters who wear a jacket and tie will be allowed into the parade ring at every race meeting, hunting for Green and Orange horses.
Stewards will give them Green spots to stick on horses from yards that land coups and Orange spots for horses with connections showing the most losing odds-on favourites.
Then, when the stewards have red faces over yet another farcical scheme, the bookies can give the punters their money back (At least give me good marks for trying!)
Meanwhile, let’s go back to the green and orange of Betdaq offers, avoiding odds-on favouurites, and removing that obsolescent word ‘banker’ from our dictionaries. As Sir Alan Sugar might say: ‘It ain’t happening no more.’
DAQMAN’S BET
BET 2pts win double CUCUMBER RUN (2.45 Wetherby) and ASHBRITTLE (3.15 Wetherby)
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