34 POINTS PROFIT IN FIRST WEEK: Daqman’s first week with his new staking plan, which included four winning days in a row, finished with 34 points profit at Betdaq-value offers.
WIN-20 STAKES TODAY: He starts a new week today, with his stakes back to the level where each bet is intended to win 20 points. He usually tells you in his column what offers he took but, with the staking plan, it’s easy to work backwards. Obviously, if you divide the declared stake into 20, you get the price he bet at.
History made and history in the making. While Aidan O’Brien was landing the Irish Derby 1-2-3 for the fourth time in 10 years yesterday, The Curragh’s prestigious two-year-old test went to England.
The Railway Stakes has been just as much an Irish preserve as the Derby, the very best test of an Irish juvenile from Nijinsky to Rock Of Gibraltar.
But yesterday the usual suspects from Ballydoyle were only fourth and fifth of five, as Richard Hannon raided the Irish cabbage patch with the virtually unknown Lilbourne Lad. And won it.
It’s too early to say what this means for our two-year-olds and for next year’s Classics, but what’s growing in the garden so far suggests that big fat juicy English tomatoes are coming through on the vine.
The Racing Post returns on Lilbourne Lad’s six-lengths Naas win had him ‘visually flatterered’. Not a bit of it, with hindsight; he not only proved he could travel in the race but that he could travel to Ireland with no ill effects.
So travel again he did yesterday and lambasted the Irish on their own territory, paying in the process – through his Newmarket second to B Fifty Two in May – a handsome tribute to Power, winner of the Coventry, when B Fifty two was sixth.
Now is the time to go spotting. You should be plotting all this collateral form among the two-year-olds and, when the big juvenile races come later in the season, from the July meeting onwards, and when Classic prices are offered for next year, you will be ahead of the game.
You will also pick up some betting nuggets along the way for smaller races, following, for instance, Royal Ascot juvenile-race losers. The whiteboard in my office says: Friday Sandown: Jack Who’s Me (eighth in the Coventry).
It is also obvious, but sometimes overlooked, that such as Richard Hannon will have quality in depth among the two-year-olds.
Imagine if you will how many sitting-room tables R Hannon and his entries secretary needs to spread out and assess the stable’s collateral juvenile form, also collateral to the home gallops.
It was his job to know that Lilbourne Lad was the tops, or one of them, from the 104 two-year-olds he has so far this season run in 192 races (and won 30). With such depth, ‘Lilbourne’ must be quality indeed. And to take the Railway? Everleigh will be rubbing that one in for years!
I note that his juvenile fillies aren’t bad either. And he’s raiding Ireland, with another prestigious target: he has three entered, including the Salisbury winner last week, Pink Sapphire, for the Moyglare, regarded as Ireland’s two-year-old fillies classic.
That’s your second line of collateral attack: look for horses that have run behind top-targeted two-year-olds: if Pink Sapphire is thought to be that good, what about those that ran behind her at Salisbury? And so on.
The handicapper is not keen to rate young horses on one or two runs but you can. In addition to form as it happens, check out past results of races: what would be a valid rating for that race? What did past winners go on to achieve in terms of official ratings on their next start?
I try to build two-year-old charts from all this relative form in the hope that I spot something that others don’t: it’s the only way to bet, because that spot you made might be bigger odds than it should be, if others haven’t made the connection.
Meanwhile, a ray of hope for those Carlton House fans; the stable was out of form. The last time Sir Michael Stoute had a winner was when Entitled won at York 16 days ago.
Entitled, by Pivotal – so probably needs some cut in the ground – is badly drawn at Pontefract today. It was only a class-4 she won on the Knavesmire, so she is up a grade here.
I prefer David Barron’s Amitola (3.45), who acts on any ground, and won a class-2 at Newmarket in the autumn, beating one or two of these, and is now dropped from Listed runs (again a good effort at Newmarket), the reappearance race probably needed.
Which would you rather have, the 3.4 Entitled with the three, maybe four black marks against her, or the 11.0 Amitola? No contest for me.
DAQMAN’S BETS
BET 2pts win and place AMITOLA (3.45 Pontefract)
BET 4.1pts win SANDWITH (7.25 Musselburgh)
BET 6pts win GLENLUJI (8.55 Musselburgh)
