On 9 July at Leopardstown, BURFORD BEAUTY (3:58 Brighton, 9/4) finished a nose in front of a horse that has since won off a mark 29lb higher than the one it raced off that day. That is a huge amount of improvement for one horse to find after the event. It means the race she was in was a good deal stronger than it looked at the time, and a nose is as close as two horses get. The price this afternoon does not seem to have counted it.
The form figures are no help. They read 0-9308, she was only eighth last time, and she has been off for 73 days, which is the one real question. The third three runs back is the better guide. She has run over this trip and on this ground before. Today she races in a ten-runner class 6 handicap off a mark of 56. Saffie Osborne rides, and Osborne is 4 from 19 at Brighton over the last 12 months. That is 21 per cent, against 14 per cent overall. At 9/4 she is the one we want in the race.
Huntingdon has only four runners at 4:16, over just short of two and a half miles. With a field that small, one horse whose form has been franked counts for a lot. DATSALRIGHTCHARLIE (4:16 Huntingdon, 6/4) is that horse, but first he has to show he is the same horse after 202 days off. Before the break he was placed in three of his last four, a second, a third, then a sixth, and he signed off with another third. The run we care about came over this course last December. He was beaten a length and a quarter that day, and the horse that beat him has since won a class 4, which is today’s grade, and is now rated 8lb higher than when they met. Another horse from his recent races has also won since, so the form has worked out more widely than that one race. He has run over this trip and on this going, and he races off a mark of 102. The layoff is a fair worry, but 6/4 in a four-runner race already allows for it.
SECRET RIVAL (2:41 Leicester, 7/1) is our longest price and our thinnest case, so we will keep this short. She is winless in six, but her last three read 7, 5, 3, and that third 19 days ago was her best run in the sequence. At Newcastle on 2 September she finished three quarters of a length in front of one that has gone on to win, only a class 6 and off a lower mark, but it is a winner behind her all the same. She has run over this trip and on this going before. In a fifteen-runner race, 7/1 is a fair price for a horse whose results are pointing the right way.
Yesterday our five headline picks had no winner and two placed.
Southwell this evening
INSUSPENSE (7:00 Southwell, 2/1) won last time, 19 days ago, and she has 1 win from 3 runs over this course and distance. Read her form figures left to right and they show a horse coming back to herself. Two seconds early in the sequence, a dip to seventh and fifth, then a third, then the win. At Yarmouth on 30 August she was beaten a length and three quarters, and the horse that beat her has won since. So the win was not a bolt from the blue, she had been running to that level already. She goes from a mark of 66 in an eleven-runner class 5 sprint, on a surface she already knows. We are happy to take 2/1 about a course winner arriving in form.
Tom Clover has had 5 winners from his last 11 runners in the past fortnight. That is the stable sending out REVELIO (8:30 Southwell, 9/2), and the yard’s run of winners matters more for this one than for most, because his own record is a list of near misses. He has finished second, fourth and fifth in his last four starts without winning. At Haydock on 3 September he went down by three quarters of a length, and the horse that beat him has won since. He has run over this mile and three furlongs before and races off 60 in a nine-runner class 6. He has been off for 33 days, which does not worry us much when the stable is in this kind of form.
He is our last runner of the day, and he comes from a stable that has won with close to half its runners over the past fortnight.