The last couple of weeks have been awful for me with real health issues. I find myself often trying to do something so I sift through the cards. This one caught my eye because the favourite Operateur is on a five timer. He ran last night at Hamilton and despite drifting in the betting he won well. I have looked at the race again and his rating for last night was about 6lbs lower than his previous 3 wins. Now the race was poor, these horses are not the kind you should rely on.
I have attached a screenshot from Proform which shows how this horse Operateur has performed at various courses on different going, track direction. You will see he loves Hamilton as all but one of his victories have been at this track. He also won at Catterick which is undulating - similar to Hamilton...don't shoot me as they not that alike but they do undulate and I think that seems to suit this horse. The interesting stat is his runs on a sharp track and you will see he has run 8 times and he has never even made a place! Well Musselburgh is a sharp track and it's also very flat and so that is a concern.
He looks like a definite lay doesn't he? Before you reach for the lay button read on a bit more.
What is going to beat him? Now we have a problem, as the opposition is very poor. The trainer has already said this horse has won bad races and once again he has found a bad race. If you look at the opposition and check for races run over 1m4f and thereabout you will find very little in terms of reliable form. The only horses with any semblance of form at this distance and on this ground are Vittachi and Grand Diamond. The latter is 10yo so is unlikely to improve and his only win at this distance was 14/06/13 at Musselburgh but he was running off 51 that day and he is 4lb higher today off 55. We could be lenient and recall his win at Musselburgh over 1m4f but that was an amateur Ladies race and surprise it was between two Jim Goldie horses and he does have two today which just adds to the puzzle.
Vittachi may have offered something but he is now a non-runner!! He wasn't when I started this ramble!
If we look at another horse to beat this favourite the next in the betting is Rocky Two but he isn't straightforward!! He won over 1m5f at Musselburgh but it was not in a good time and it was also a very poor race. I don't think he enjoyed the undulations at Hamilton and he carried his head to one side. Perhaps dropping back 1f and returning to Musselburgh will help but it requires a leap of faith.
Next is Ronald Gee the other Jim Goldie horse which makes this puzzle harder. This appears to be a jumps horse as he started aged 5 in NHF races. There was no success so he switched to the flat. His best race came last time out when he was 2nd to an odds on favourite. I have looked at this action and it is what I would call "scratchy" I mean he is not fluent and looks to be working harder than he should be. I then looked at the ground he's tackled and it has mainly been on softer than good or good. If you check the times of the races it throws up some anomalies on the going i.e. it was heavy for one when the Racing Post gave soft or it was Firm when they gave Good.
So have we found the missing piece of the puzzle? Well I wouldn't stake too much money on it but you have to ask yourself why is this horse now tackling Firmer ground over 1m4f100y when it seems to have been campaigned on mainly slower ground. Looking at his action it suggests he may go on faster ground. If you then look at his very belated handicap debut he did fight with the odds-on favourite all the way to the last 100 yards and they were 11 lengths clear of the remainder!
You can see how hard it is to solve a poor handicap with just 7 runners and a couple of runners you can easily ignore. Proform helps with this but it still amazes me when I see other people who claim they can handicap a race like this in 5 minutes - I wish I could!!
