From Newmarket to Newbury

Looking back to Monday’s Racing Post and the Today’s Trainers feature shows J H M Gosden’s Wins-Placed-Runs figures as 0-2-6, plus another two losers at Windsor in the afternoon. If only we knew then that his runners were about to catch fire, before going on to bag six winners on Wednesday and Thursday – but that’s what so unpredictable about racing, no research or software can predict when a trainer is about to hit form.

I mentioned the Hannon/Hills yards as ones to watch but both drew a blank, including Prime Defender for the latter, who shaped well at Doncaster but received another bad draw this week – he could still be one to track at a big price with a draw.

A few of Gosden’s victors were very gettable in the races from the book, especially the Nell Gwyn, along with several others over the two days and I hope some of you found the winners. For what it’s worth, I came out levels from Newmarket following a good first day and it could have been a tidy profit had Assertive (12-1) held on in the Abernant. I got that race down to five runners – from 20 sprinters – using the trends and the first three home were all on the short-list, only I didn’t back Zidane!
But overall, I was pleased with how the research from the book worked out at Newmarket and throughout the season so far. Without wanting to upset the rhythm, there haven’t been too many shock winners from races in the book in the past week with SP’s of 5/1, 13/2, 15/8F, 7/2F, 9/2, 17/2, 9/4, 8/1 and I hope that theme continues.
I mentioned in an earlier blog that there are good and bad trends years, and it helps if fancied runners do well in the right races – outsiders have their place and are welcome in events like the Britannia at Royal Ascot!
I hope some of you also used the Future Pointers section of the chart to swerve Smokey Oakey from the Lincoln in the Earl of Sefton, and Aahayson from the Cammidge in the Abernant – I personally don’t get involved with laying horses on the exchanges but this section lends itself very well to that area.
Don’t forget that the book has all last year’s juvenile pointers towards this year’s Classics where horses like Raven’s Pass from the Solario Stakes at Sandown last August was given the thumbs down in the 2,000 Guineas.

Moving over to my Top Of The Form column in the Racing and Football Outlook and we are currently looking at the possibility of flagging up all the runners from the Top 20 in the week’s entries section so they become more tractable. At the moment, I am cherry-picking the best bets in the column from the entries up to Friday – from which there was a 4/1 winner and a loser on Tuesday – but it should be a lot easier to keep note of these in-form runners if the entries are flagged up. They will also include the weekend runners too, which I’m currently unable to mention, so hopefully there will be some developments in the coming weeks.

Good luck with the trends at Newbury.