A Heritage Handicap contest over the flying five furlongs, this is a real blink and you’ll miss it affair. If recent results are anything to go by anything can and frequently does happen here. The past 10 years alone have seen winners returned at odds of 16/1, 20/1, 25/1, 28,1 and 50/1 in a race that has been a real graveyard for favourite backers. Trying to pick the outright winner looks tough but we think we have unearthed a good value each way bet in this exciting race. When trying to unravel these tough to solve sprint contests, it pays to have as much in your favour as possible. We like to use the recent trends of the race in an attempt to whittle down the field to a shortlist of likely candidates. The main statistic to jump out from the list of previous winners is that only once in the past ten years has the prize gone to horse older than six. Ruling out the eight runners aged seven or older in this year’s field provides us with a useful starting point. Overall trends at the track suggests that high drawn runners are at a slight disadvantage. Whilst that hasn’t really been borne out in this particular race, we are happy to go with the larger sample size of all races at the track and stick with those drawn low to middle. Using this criteria, we have now reduced a field of 17 down to a shortlist of five horse most advantaged by their age and the draw. Of the remaining runners top weight Caspian Prince and Boom The Groom are ruled out by virtue of their trainers form. Tony Carroll has had no winners and just five placed horses from his last 31 runners. That just leaves us with Demora, Perfect Pasture and See The Sun. Demora won this race last year for Michael Appleby and returns to defend his crown. He looks set to go close off just a two pound higher mark but life could be tougher this year. Four of his five career turf victories have come on ground good or softer, we look set for good to firm conditions on Saturday. Trained by the two Easterby’s Michael and Tim, the claims of Perfect Pasture and See The Sun are relatively equal on form. The jockey bookings look interesting though. Duran Fentiman is a regular rider for Tim but takes the ride aboard Michael’s Perfect Pasture. This one is a very in and out performer but there is every chance he has this as his main target for the season. He ran a strange race last time out at York, being held up and never getting involved but comes here just 1lb above his last winning mark. The stable form makes for encouraging reading with Michael Easterby boasting six winners from his previous twenty runners at the time of writing. Available to back at around the 26.0 mark, he’s the one to be on each way.
Author: Paul Harrison
Find more at Betadvisor Horse Racing
No comments: