The pick of the prices in Sunday's Irish Cambridgeshire....

26th August 2016

Good afternoon, friends,

In today’s ATC Extra bulletin….

• The yards producing profit in the top handicaps….
• Targeting Beverley and Goodwood tomorrow….
• The pick of the prices in Irish Cambridgeshire (Curragh, Sunday 5.00)….

The yards producing profit in the top handicaps….

A slight change in the procedure this weekend in that we’re targeting the Irish Cambridgeshire which will be run at the Curragh on Sunday at 5.00pm….

We’ll get to the betting in a moment. But first a report on which yards are doing the best work in the kinds of races we like to target for prices – the handicaps at class 2 level or better….

We find ourselves at the end of August and looking at the autumn – and there are multiple such races to look forward to in the weeks ahead.

The Ayr Gold Cup, the Portland, the Cambridgeshire and the Cesarewtichwill all be on our radar across the next few weekends. It’s an exciting time of the year….

And it’s a good time to figure out exactly which yards are excelling in the best quality handicaps this term….

I’ve been extracting the data from 175 qualifying races sand crunching the nubers this way and that in a bid to find out. And I’ve come up with the best 3 men on the stats. They might not the the names you’d expect. But they are certainly worth keeping mind as the season rolls on into the autumn….

• Ed Dunlop is my idea of the top man in the top handicaps this term. Nobody matches him for place strike rate. He’s only saddled 26 qualifying runners in total – but 13 (50%) of those hit the frame. If you’d backed all those horses to level stakes of 1 point each-way to SP – you’d be looking at a profit of 43 points. That’s excellent in this sphere.

• Ralph Beckett is another rhandler with a strong place strike rate in the big handicaps. His 32 qualifying runners have produced 5 winners and 7 frame finishers – 12 places in total at a rate of 37.5%. Beckett has also been profitable to level stakes of 1 point each-way to SP. Backing all runners produced a profit of 13 points.

• Charlie Appleby is the other handler of note on the stats. He’s saddled 7 winners in qualifying races this term. Only Mark Johnston and Richard Fahey have saddled more (12 apiece) but required three times as many runners to produce the defecit. In addition to the winners Appleby’s 54 runners also produced 13 placers. Backed to level stakes each-way at SP profits for backers run to 26 points.

These are the form men in the top handciaps. These are the handlers producing betting profit for backers. These are the trainers worth bearing in mind for the big handicaps in the weeks ahead….

The pick of the prices in the Irish Cambridgeshire….

Mick Halford has a pretty decent record in this particular race. It reads 2 winners and 3 additional palces from his last 10 participants.

A field of 24 is set to go to post on Sunday afternoon – and 4 of them will be saddled by the county Kildare handler.

You’d expect Shane Foley to have the pick of the quartet and he’s plumped for HASANOUR – who can be backed this afternoon at a nice each-way price of 16s. 

Last season the 6yo won a brace of mile handicap events at the Curragh – which resulted in him rising from a mark of 88 to 105 – prompting his handler to say that a mile on good ground on the Curragh were the horse’s ideal circumstances.

Given the dry forecast, it looks likely he’ll get those ideal circumstances again on Sunday afternoon.

The horses is back down to 101 now. That’s still 6lbs above his last winning mark. But a second place finish in a listed event at Naas over an inadequate 7f in May suggests this horse can perform off this kind of mark as and when he gets his ground – which he did that day.

On the face of it the rest of his seasonal performances make for underwhelming reading. But he was consisred good enough to go for the Royal Hunt Cup at Royal Ascot in June.

He didn’t produce that day. The ground would have been against him. But, if nothing else, the trip served to highlight that connections consider the horse one to target at a big pot.

The ground is key. You might want to wait until Sunday before getting on. If it turns soft, the horse is best swerved. But if it stays dry and the ground is good, he can leave his general form behind and make full use of ideal conditions.

That’s all from me this week. Enjoy your weekend.

Against the Crowd Extra

P.S

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