Fancied horses to fail the test
I took an e-mail from Generalite A. Jackson, asking me if he should follow his 2 favourite horses Triolo D’Alene and Katenko in next week’s Grand National. I told him to keep his money in his pocket. I think he was a bit taken aback, but after I showed him the table below, he understood why I couldn’t suggest he part with his hard earned.
As you can see below, young horses have performed poorly over the last 10 years even though they have had had a fairly healthy representation. In each of these years horses aged 7 and/or 8 have totalled 15%, 20%, 20%, 22.5%, 15%, 27.5%, 32.5%, 10%, 17.5% and 27.5% of the field but have failed to register a single winner. That is under performing of a high order.
Clearly as the race has become of a higher quality, with Gold Cup class horses being much more prominent and being given a better opportunity to win, the race is taking it’s toll on the younger, less experienced ones. You now need to go faster for longer. In the old days, they used to say hunt round for the first circuit and if you’re still standing then you can ride a race on the second circuit. But in modern times, it pays to be prominent from the start, as highlighted last year with three of the first four always being up with the pace.
So I’ll leave it up to you; if you want to ignore the figures and wade in to Triolo then help yourself, I certainly won’t be on that bandwagon. But if you want to follow the figures then you will concentrate on the older horses and more than likely land yourself the winner. Just one more question for you all to answer. Triolo D’Alene won the Topham last season over these fences – how many winners of the Topham have gone on to win the Grand National? Answer that and then tell me if you’re still with Triolo.
