Review of the day

The predictive powers of pre-race market movements, is an area I’ve touched on a few times lately…

Whilst watching the racing during the afternoon, I invariably keep an eye on Betfair and monitor price fluctuation for the horses I am interested in.

They have always been quite revealing, but over the past few months, they seem to have become unerringly accurate –and scarily extreme !!

I’ll come on to today’s extreme example later – but even todays tip, Etxalar, had it’s fortune told quite accurately by the pre-race market…

When I tipped the horse this morning, it was available at 13 on Betfair (so 12/1).

By lunchtime, it had been backed in to a low of 6.6 (so 11/2).

Admittedly, there was a NR (accounting for around 10%) – but even so, this was quite a strong market move.

To be honest, I wasn’t overly surprised. As I said this morning, a case for it did leap out, so I could understand it being backed…

However, in the 15 minutes prior to the off, the horse started to drift.

And by the time of the off, it could be backed at 14 on Betfair – this is rarely a good sign !

Now, I ‘m not suggesting that anything untoward took place: in the race itself, Etxalar ran as well as I believe he was capable. It’s just that the market seemed to be pretty sure before hand, that this wasn’t going to be good enough.

Unfortunately, his best wasn’t even good enough to get him placed – which was a disappointment.

He eventually plugged on for fifth place – but never looked like threatening Chartreux, who was a quite convincing winner (even if Upham Atom did give him a late scare).

So, back to the extreme market movement…

As I’m sure you will recall, I was half tempted by the chances of Cnoc Seuda this morning – to be placed, at least.

I decided against putting her up because she was only available at 8/1 – and as I thought her an unlikely winner, the place part of the bet would only just have covered the win part – assuming she had finished second (which is what I expected her to do).

First thing, she was available to back at 12 on Betfair. That is a bit longer than the 8/1 with bookmakers – but as Betfair offer win only, that is not too surprising.

What was suspiring however, was that she had drifted out to 22 – with a large amount of money available to back her - half an hour before the off.

That got me suspicious – but it was nothing compared to the drift that followed in the crucial 10 minutes before the off…

At one point she touched 65 on Betfair – yes 65 !!

Now that clearly is crazy – and extremely suspicious.

She did come back in to around 30 at the off – but that is still a ridiculous price about a horse who was 8/1 this morning  - and on ratings the second best horse in the race.

The way she ran didn’t make me feel a whole lot better about things either.

She took up the running early – but was effectively a spent force by half way and pulled up before 4 out.

Episodes like that don’t leave a pleasant taste in the mouth…

Earlier on the card, Quito De La Roc was a surprise winner of the Kinloch Brae.

In theory he was good enough to take the race, but he had been out of form for a good while – and I didn’t expect the 2m4f trip to play to his strengths.

However, under a forceful ride from Paul Townsend, he made all and held off Roi Du Mee quite comfortably.

Joncol ran on to take third place – as I thought he might…

Back over at Wincanton, the market predicted that Ballyalia Man would prevail in the handicap chase – and so it turned out.

And that was despite Definity also being quite strong in the market – and running a fair race.

The 2 of them were pretty much backed to the exclusion of everything else, and at no point during the race did it look like the market was going to be wrong…

It is certainly some tipster this ‘market’ – if we could only harness it’s powers then we really could have something to go to war with !!

TVB.