Stat of the Day, 1st January 2013

Stat of the Day 01/01/13

Stat of the Day, 1st January 2013

Happy New Year to one and all and welcome to my first SotD missive of the year! We’re off to Haldon Hill in “Sunny” Devon today for a Class 4 Beginners’ Chase over 2 miles, 3.5 furlongs (3900m to the metric brigade who seem intent on getting their way this year!). The ground is quite predictably testing and we’ve got eight runners lined up for the…

1.30 Exeter

Colin Tizzard has a pretty good record here at Exeter, with a more than respectable eight winners from thirty-five (22.9%) in the last two years alone and a further six of those horses made the frame to give a place strike rate of exactly 40%.

Yet, he/we can refine those figures further by isolating his chasers from the rest of his string. In fact, his record in Exeter chase events over the last two years have shown us some excellent results. 2011 was decent enough with two winners from eight, with one other horse being placed, but 2012 was very good indeed.

Colin’s record here in chases over the whole of 2012 read 3131171P, four winners from eight =50% strike rate generating 15.9pts profit at SP (+198.75%) and E/W backers were rewarded  on five out of seven occasions to the tune of 22.2pts (+158.6% ROI).

Colin actually sends four horses on the relatively short 60-odd mile journey South West to Exeter today from his Dorset base at Milborne Port, but three are set to compete in the day’s opening two races, a couple of 2m 3f hurdle contests. This leaves both Mr Tizzard and ourselves just the one chaser to consider: Theatrical Star.

Theatrical Star has been a consistent sort in his fairly short career, without actually ripping up any trees. After an indifferent spell (636 record) in bumpers, he has since made the frame on five occasions from nine attempts, with a maiden win coming on his hurdling debut. His overall hurdling form was pretty decent (147353) before being sent chasing, where he looked an even better prospect here at Exeter on his chase debut finishing third. He ran well again in his subsequent outing at Ascot, where he was a very creditable second to the impressive Minella Class at Ascot, just over five weeks ago, finishing ahead of Restless Harry who has gone on to win since.

Theatrical Star was admittedly disappointing at Taunton last time out, but he got bumped about a bit that day and seemed to lose all fluency. Hopefully he can stay out of trouble today and get back into some decent form again. Both his own record and that of his trainer in Exeter chases suggest that an E/W bet would be the safe and prudent option today and the presence of an odds-on favourite will serve to give us a price we can work with. At 10.50am 10/1 BOG was quite widely available, so my play today is 0.5pts E/W on Theatrical Star at 10/1 BOG with bet365, but you can always see what your favoured bookie is offering by taking the opportunity to…

Click here for the latest betting on the 1.30 Exeter

For a full review of SotD’s 2012 performance, just click here and the month by month breakdown since we started back in November 2011 is right here.