Stat of the Day, 21st December 2012

Stat of the Day 21/12/12

Stat of the Day, 21st December 2012

My personal drought continued yesterday as our selection failed to complete the race. He weakened very quickly after the fourth to last fence, jumped one more and was then pulled up before the penultimate obstacle.

We’re looking to an old SotD friend to help us out of the small hole we’re sat in, so we’re off to the Black Country for a class 6 Fillies’ Maiden. It’s not the highlight of the card by any means, but there’ll still be a winner, which hopefully we can find! The trip today is just 6 yards short of six furlongs and we expect seven runners to contest the.…

3.50 Wolverhampton

Regular readers of this column will know that Roger Varian is one of my favourites, but I’d only put one of his horses forward if the stats merited the selection. As it is, Roger’s record at Wolverhampton is excellent with eleven winners from thirty races (36.67%) for 25pts (83.33%) profit and a total of twenty-two place finishes (73.33%) from that thirty giving E/W backers a profit of some 37.5pts (+62.5%)

Those figures alone are impressive enough to grab my interest, however we need to look at the record when isolated to non-handicap events, as many trainers’ figures are skewed towards handicap events after having used these non-handicap races as a testing ground to get a handicap mark!

Yet even still, Mr Varian’s record stands up to scrutiny over these races, too. His record at Wolverhampton in non-handicap contests is actually very similar to his overall record here, showing a good level of consistency. His horses have contested nineteen such events, of which he has been victorious on seven occasions (36.84%) and a grand total of sixteen from nineteen have been placed: an amazing place strike rate of 84.21%.

Therefore, I’m immediately on alert when I see that Roger has only one horse declared to run today and that the horse in question (Sherrin) is entered in a non-handicap contest at Wolverhampton.

Sherrin is making only her third appearance today and she showed signs of decent ability when second in a Newmarket 6f maiden in the summer, she was then away from the track for four months, before returning to finish seventh in a maiden at Kempton just 16 days ago. She will have come on for that pipe-opener as she looked like she needed the run that day.

She did wander about a little on that occasion and ran out of steam somewhat as she ran into some traffic problems. She’ll be wearing a hood today and if that has the desired effect, her debut run and her breeding (from Refuse To Bend) suggest she should be on the premises.

I’m not concerned about the fitting of the hood so early in her career, Mr Varian has resorted to this tactic here at Wolverhampton in these maiden races twice in the past, with both Havin A Good Time and Afraah going on to win their races.

I’m also not unduly worried about this being Sherrin‘s first venture onto the Dunstall Park track either: Roger’s record with Wolverhampton first-timers is eight wins from twenty-four (33.33%) with a total of 18 of them making the frame (75%).

All the stats point to a decent performance today and barring the world ending at 11.11 this morning 😀 , I’d hope to be collecting some money at around 4pm. As you’d expect, the world is pretty wise to Roger Varian’s Wolverhampton exploits, so we’re never going to rich off his runners, but Stan James’ 3/1 BOG looks very inviting indeed, so the play is a simple 1pt win bet on Sherrin at 3/1 BOG with Stan James, but for all the other odds elsewhere…

Click here for the latest betting on the 3.50 Wolverhampton