In the olden days I would take up a position on the mounting yard rail at least an hour before the race and then pick my best six to box up in a trifecta. I had occasional success. These days I’m struggling to walk too far and eight to ten thousand steps is the most I can manage. So now I confine myself to the horse stalls and parade ring with occasional forays up to the yard. And I’m taking seven in the trifecta. The best is of course Gold Trip who I find I have previously backed five times for the place at odds ranging from $2.10 to $6.00. That horse owes me nothing! The fittest horse is Without A Fight without a doubt, with magnificent poverty lines and once again asleep in the stall with a positive strapper. The Irish horses look good with the favourite Vauban looking interested with ears pricked and Absurde with a loving French strapper showering it with kisses. Soulcombe rounds out the top five, so I’m on the lookout for two roughies. I take Ashrun and Future History. An hour or so later I check the Maher/Eustace horses again and Future History is nodding. I put the pen through him straight away since I dislike stereotyped behaviour in the tie-ups. So there is room for one more roughie. I can’t have Sheraz as I have a negative attitude towards the horse after backing him when he let me down in the Bart Cummings a month or so ago. So I settle on Kalapour.
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- Without A Fight
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- Soulcombe
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- Sheraz
Without A Fight streets them with Soulcombe and Sheraz running on for the trifecta and Ashrun in fourth place. The trifecta paid $10,688 and the first four $332,291. I’m thinking next year I might take eight.
Keep up the comments, love to hear from ya… damn hard (and expensive) those trifectas, if you’re taking so many I was thinking first four… at least the payout is good… if you can flum it that is!
Dear Geoffrey,
I’m glad to see you managed a few visits to the racecourse in October & November!
The UK flat turf season is just under two months away here (starts the last week of March and ends in early November). There is still no final decision on affordability checks, for example the threshold above which more rigorous financial checks by bookmakers will take place on the person gambling. The UK racing authorities have introduced “premierisation” to encourage a greater focus on the “top products”. This means on a Saturday afternoon there will be no more than two main meetings coinciding (other race meetings can start later). The belief is that this will increase betting turnover and the amount paid back into racing.
I was mainly treading water (pardon the pun – see next sentence) last year. I was distracted by other things including volunteering to test the water quality of our local river and some of its watercourses! On the selection front I’m trying to balance what I observe on the racecourse with your scoring system which I use as a guide. Sometimes you come across a horse that looks just right but scores zero while one or two others in the same race have a positive score but they don’t give you the same feel. Perhaps I’m becoming more intuitive with my approach.
All the best Trevor