There are predominantly small fields on the Flat at Pontefract and Bath and over the Sticks at Exeter and an AW Fixture too.

 

There are better Flat Turf prospects tomorrow, especially at Gowran Park and then it's off the Aintree from Thursday.

 

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The Irish National delivered a 150/1 winner and left I would suspect 99% of the Tipping, Trends; Systems and Punting fraternity scratching their heads. If you have a kid called Dylan or have "Blood on The Tracks" a very apt Title, in your vinyl collection, you may have a few quid in your Betting account this morning thinking how easy this game is.

 

We make no excuses. We always start at the bottom of any Betting Market and work up, hence a liberal spread of big priced placed horses and enough bigger priced winners usually to keep Members happy, although as you'll know a strategy prone to losing runs.

 

The post mortem with us is usually always from a base point of "why didn't we find it" as opposed to blaming lucky winners, bad ground and bad rides etc. Very occasionally a ride is so poor it merits a comment but then again we usually steer clear of poor jockeys (as we rightly did with Heskin at the weekend - awful again!). 

 

So why didn't we find Freewheelin Dylan??

 

There was form there at the trip and on Good ground but it looked like a Summer Jumping horse out of it's depth on Yielding ground in a field of far better animals. Rather than try to explain why it wasn't any of those things I personally think it's more factual to say that that assessment is 100% correct. It is a good ground summer jumping horse who was in reality out of its depth. 

 

Why did it win then?

 

Firstly it was given an outstanding and sympathetic ride from the front by a jockey who let the horse run to its merits and didn't do anything but allow it to get into a nice comfortable rhythm. Secondly I don't think the ground was Yielding, it had dried somewhat and what we don't really know is the impact of the wind on both the Track surface and the pace angles of the race. The horse may have been ridden well into a head wind and benefitted from a tailwind at key parts of the race. It will be very interesting to see if that data emerges.

 

The remainder of the field with a few exceptions, and runner up RUN FED RUN had every chance and may have won but for sloppy jumps at the last 2 fences, never got into the race. Some ran below form, some may have bottomed out in winter mud and others just didn't seem to want to let themselves down on the ground. 

 

Knowing what we know now would we read the race differently today, definitely we would, knowing what we knew at this time yesterday, would we have read the race the same today, definitely we would have and we'd have not picked the winner in a month of Sundays.

 

That's racing, our credit goes to winning connections on an outstanding win, our post mortem gives us another bit of useful information to be stored in the memory banks and there is one vital string to our bow that means that won't be lost. That is that we do ALWAYS start at the bottom of a market and work up, and we aren't scared to pick 100/1 + shots (remember the 2018 1000 Guineas), we did point one out yesterday as an example (Snugsborough Benny), the hope is that next time we are on the right one. 

 

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Back tomorrow with Jonathon in the chair.