Stat of the Day, 31st August 2013

Stat of the Day

Stat of the Day, 31st August 2013

A bit of a head scratcher yesterday, as Legends stepped up from what looked an inadequate mile to ten furlongs. He ran well enough in the early to mid stages and led approaching the mile marker. At this point, I’d have hoped he would kick on, but he was soon headed and virtually went into reverse, quickly dropping back through the pack to finish back in 6th of the 7 runners some 19 lengths or so behind the winner.

The last few days have been a very disappointing end to a frustrating month, but I’m hoping to end it well in the…

2.30 Beverley

Trainer Rae Guest’s horses don’t venture out to Beverley all that often, he probably sends an average of 4, maybe 5 runners a season here at most. However, the ones that do come here seem to go really well. His career record here is 5 winners from 24 races with an overall place strike rate of 54.2% via 13 placers. The five winners have generated level stakes profits of 8.6pts, a reasonable return from blind backing of  35.7% ROI.

Rae never sent any runners here in 2011, but the record in 2012/13 reads 52121126, three winners from eight is a 37.5% strike rate for 6.97pts profit (+87.1% ROI), whilst E/W backers have seen a return on their money in 75% of those races.

And whilst the yard hasn’t picked as many winners up as they’d have liked to of late, their horses are running pretty well without actually taking the spoils. In the last two months alone, the yard has had 22 of its 48 runners ( 45.8%) make the frame, despite only nine (18.8%) of them going on to win.

Rae unusually runs two horses here today: Ningbo Express will no doubt have its chances and its followers in the 5.55 race, but I feel that he’s too short for me to back at odds of 2/1 or under in a very competitive contest and the greater value lies with my selection Minalisa.

This 4yr old bay filly only made her racing debut in June 2012, but has notched up a string of impressive performances in the last 14 months, winning four times and making the frame on a further four occasions from twelve runs. The one-in-three strike rate has generated level stakes profits of 14.6pts, a return of over 121% of stakes and E/W backers have also benefited to the tune of 16.94pts.

All four of her wins have come over 6 furlongs, but she was only narrowly defeated by Cincinnati Kit on her sole effort over today’s 5f trip. She comes here in good form (12122 in her last five outings) with two runner-up finishes in a row after stepping up to Listed races. She wasn’t beaten by far in either of those and but for a stumble, would have won last time out at Pontefract.

She’s still progressing and the pace of today’s race should play into her hands, as she drops down a furlong: it could well be argued that she hasn’t quite got the full 6f on her last two efforts, so this could well be ideal. The draw (stall 9) doesn’t look ideal, but there’s plenty of pace around her to drag her into the contest and the current odds of 11/1 BOG look very generous. In fact stall 9 has produced two winners and three placers from eight runnings, whilst the average SP of the winner has been 11/1!

At that kind of price, I’m taking the E/W route on Minalisa and these odds are available at Coral, Paddy Power and BetVictor, so to take your pick…

Click here for the latest betting on the 2.30 Beverley

***Don’t forget, we offer a full interactive racecard service
every day, just click here for more details.***