Stat of the Day, 15th August 2014

Stat of the Day

Stat of the Day, 15th August 2014

When you’re putting your head on the block on a daily basis, you have good days and bad days and as long as the good days pay for the bad days and leave a little jam left over, all is well with the world.

Yesterday wasn’t just a good day, it was quite possibly the best day I’ve had on SotD, since its inception way back in November 2011. Yes, I’ve picked longer priced winners and I’ve picked winners in better races than yesterday, but overall last night’s race at Chepstow was special.

Not only did the trainer stats bear fruit, but the weight for age allowance played its part and then the final piece of the jigsaw was taking on trust how the horse would cope with the ground, based purely on her relatives’ performances.

As it was, Last Echo was an easy winner under a good ride by Silvestre De Sousa and was returned at 11/4, less than half of our advised 6/1 BOG, which really was the icing on the cake. (The cherry on the icing was another success for the Double Dutch!).

And all this is great, but Friday is another day and here at Geegeez, we don’t take a day off until Sunday, so I’d better crack and tell you about my selection in today’s…

4.50 Nottingham:

Which is Stuart Kittow’s only entrant of the day, the 9/2 BOG shot Mad Endeavour, a horse making his handicap debut here in a race some 3 furlongs longer and two classes lower when last seen at Doncaster just over three weeks ago. He was ridden very conservatively that day in a strange tactical display and as a resul was well beaten back in 8th place of 10 runners.

Prior to that, he had shown some promise when finishing third at Chepstow three weeks earlier. Stuart Kittow is hardly one of racing’s leading lights, but he does OK with what he’s got and one of his favourite (and successful) methods is to drop his horses in class to get them winning.

Over the last four seasons, his record with horses dropping in class is 22 winners from 118, a strike rate of 18.6% generating 118.4pts profit at an ROI of 100.3%. Whilst that’s a great ROI, it does suggest there might be some higher priced runners in there, so it’s often best to apply a simple odds filter and if we imposed a 7/1 cut off point, we still get decent figures of 14 winners from 48 (29.2% SR) for 41.4pts (86.2% ROI). that’s still a very healthy profit margin, but with a much more satisfactory strike rate.

In his three maidens to date, Mad Endeavour has looked like he wanted further than the 7f he was competing at and there are some statistical precedents to suggest the extra 3 furlongs will benefit him here, as over the last four years 3 yr old horses running in UK flat handicaps at trips of 7f to 1m6f, stepping up by 2f to 4f have won 187 of 1711 (10.9% SR) races on the back of an unplaced effort last time out.

And whilst 10.9% isn’t a brilliant strike rate, the 418.9pts profits and subsequent 24.5% ROI are very palatable indeed. Even with just a simple 16/1 odds cap, the strike rate becomes more like what we’d want from a large sample size with a record reading 174/1143 (15.2% SR) and this has generated level stakes profits of 313.8pts, or 27.5% of all stakes invested.

The step up in trip is obviously a bit of an unknown factor here, but Mad Endeavour is related to several winners at this trip. He wears a tongue tie today, which is hoped will help his performance and the booking of Luke Morris is both interesting and positive here.

There’s not quite the same barrage of stats as yesterday’s selection, but at the odds available, I think Mad Endeavour is a decent enough bet at 9/2 BOG. That price is with Paddy Power, using some of yesterday’s winnings, whilst 4/1 BOG seems to be the norm elsewhere.

As always, the whole market can be seen quite clearly, if you just…

…click here for the latest betting on the 4.50 Nottingham

Don’t forget, we offer a full interactive racecard service every day,

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REMINDER: THERE IS NO STAT OF THE DAY ON SUNDAYS

Here is today’s racecard.