Stat of the Day, 23rd June 2013

Stat of the Day

Stat of the Day, 23rd June 2013

I picked the wrong Barzalona ride yesterday I’m afraid. I toyed with going with his ride in the opener, due to the trainer’s good record with juveniles, but I felt that we’d a better chance later on. I hold my hands up, I was wrong!

As it was, Trojan Rocket didn’t run badly, but wasn’t close enough to the action to have a chance of landing a telling blow. He finished strongly, so it’d be interesting to see him ridden more prominently next time. The end result was a 5th place finish, a little over two lengths away from the winner, after being well backed from our 7/2 into 11/4 favouritism.

I’m going back to the hurdles today with one you’ll recognise in the….

5.20 Worcester

In Thursday’s SotD piece, I selected the in-form Man of Leisure, but he was subsequently withdrawn, possibly with a view to running today instead, so I’m going with him again!

This horse couldn’t be in better form, as he comes to the track hot on the heels of completing a five-day hat trick eleven days ago with wins at both Ffos Las and Stratford before completing the treble here at Worcester last time out.

Man Of Leisure has been an absolute revelation since his recent switch to the Honeyball yard, this nine-year old is no spring chicken but he’s having a new lease of life and currently stands at three from three for his new trainer after failing to win any of his other twenty races whilst with Nerys Dutfield. I’m not putting Nerys down, as she did guide the horse to a string of placed finishes but he was always the bridesmaid.

A change of approach and the fitting of a tongue tie seem to have done the trick with this one and even the rise in the weights shouldn’t be enough to stop him, especially when you consider that he has seemed to have plenty left in the tank at the end of all three recent wins under talented jockey Rachael Green, who is on board once again this evening. The yard have dropped him back in trip, which might be save him from over exerting himself with the penalty weight, but he has shown enough of a turn of foot in his previous outings to win over this shorter distance.

As you’re well aware, he’s trained by Anthony Honeyball, one of a small number of trainers out there who you can back blindly in handicap contests and still make a profit. He has a career strike rate of 21.5% in handicap contests and in the last few seasons his success has been phenomenal. Since the turn of 2010 he has saddled up twenty-nine winners of handicap races from just 112 entries: a strike rate of 25.9% giving rise to level stakes profits of some 91.1pts (+81.3% ROI) and that’s without any filters.

Those results aren’t skewed by a couple of big winners either. In SotD territory (6/1 or under) that record is 23 wins from 64 (35.9%) for profits of 48.7pts (+76.1%), which is pretty much in line with his general results.

Mr Honeyball also has a good record here at Worcester with 12 wins from 36 races since 2008 generating profits of 86.3pts (+239.7%) with eight of those winners coming from 17 handicap runners (3/6 in the last 3 seasons). Meanwhile today’s jockey Rachael Green has an even better record here at Worcester in that time with 12 wins from 27 (44.4% SR) and a stack (95.3pts to be exact!) of profit equating to some 353% of stakes and a record of 8/12 for 44.8pts profit in handicaps.

I’m out all day Sunday from very early (leaving home around 6am!), so I’m writing this at 10.30pm without the benefit of seeing a fully formed market, but I’d expect Man Of Leisure to be quite popular and go off at odds of 4/1 or shorter, so I’m pleased to take the 11/2 BOG on offer from BetVictor. This looks a very good price, but as I always, the recommendation is that you should….

Click here for the latest betting on the 5.20 Worcester

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