No York? Who Cares?!
You may be forgiven, dear reader, for labouring under the misapprehension that because the month is August, the season must be summer... As the wet stuff continues to tumble from top down, so one of the great flat meetings is abandoned for the second day running.
Poor old York: one of the prettiest racecourses in the country, and proudly parading its multi-million pound renovations at its blue riband meeting. Two days washed out, the likelihood that more will follow.
But me, I couldn't care less! The reason for my brazened apathy in the face of sporting postponement? It can only be one thing...
As long-standing (long suffering?) readers will know, September marks the beginning of the jumps season in my calendar. Now I know that the infinitely wise stuffed shirts have deigned that the obstacled variant of the Sport of Kings should be all year round now.
But let's face it: you don't see too many Gold Cup or Champion Hurdle contenders dragged away from their Summer holidays to lollop around Stratford of a July Sunday, do you?
No, for me the jumping action gets going in the latter part of September. And I have to concede to a personal preference for the older bigger lumps of horseflesh you get pedalling their pilots around the likes of Exeter and Sedgefield.
These are true working class heroes: the likes of Mister McGoldrick, the redoubtable 11 year old, who won no less than his FOURTEENTH race when popping up at 66/1 at the Cheltenham Festival in March.
Far more engaging than their rather pampered flat-bred brethren, in my book...
Now don't get me wrong, I do love the flat season. I just prefer the jumps and, for some reason, find it easier to back winners over hurdles and fences.
And then of course there is my statistical manual, TrainerTrackStats (TTS). I say 'my', but actually this season I've been massively helped by your usual humble scribe, Gavin.
For those of you who don't know what TTS is, where have you been hiding?! It's a little manual that I've been producing for the last few seasons, and that has done good things for its followers.
The concept is simple: identify trainers who do well with a particular subset of their string, say younger horses, or hurdlers, or - in the case of Philip Hobbs at Exeter - novice chasers.
The reason that I mention Hobbsy and Exeter specifically will become clear when you visit this page, where I've done a little video demonstrating how Gavin and I put TTS together.
I'm not sure if you'll like it or not - I'm no Stephen Spielberg! - but you might find it interesting to see what goes into researching the product, and that there is actually a bit (a lot!) more to it than your average racing system. Just click the 'play' button to get started.
The video box is quite small, but if you click the little 'x' button in the bottom right of the video area (it's near the little 'i' button), you can run it in full screen.
I'd really love to know what you think of it, good or bad (and I'm braced for the worst!), so do pop back here after and add a comment below this post!
Gavin will be back later with an update on the tipping competition, but I can tell you that I am currently none from four, and one of my selections was last seen swimming across the Knavesmire.... Bring on the jumps!
Matt
Poor old York: one of the prettiest racecourses in the country, and proudly parading its multi-million pound renovations at its blue riband meeting. Two days washed out, the likelihood that more will follow.
But me, I couldn't care less! The reason for my brazened apathy in the face of sporting postponement? It can only be one thing...
As long-standing (long suffering?) readers will know, September marks the beginning of the jumps season in my calendar. Now I know that the infinitely wise stuffed shirts have deigned that the obstacled variant of the Sport of Kings should be all year round now.
But let's face it: you don't see too many Gold Cup or Champion Hurdle contenders dragged away from their Summer holidays to lollop around Stratford of a July Sunday, do you?
No, for me the jumping action gets going in the latter part of September. And I have to concede to a personal preference for the older bigger lumps of horseflesh you get pedalling their pilots around the likes of Exeter and Sedgefield.
These are true working class heroes: the likes of Mister McGoldrick, the redoubtable 11 year old, who won no less than his FOURTEENTH race when popping up at 66/1 at the Cheltenham Festival in March.
Far more engaging than their rather pampered flat-bred brethren, in my book...
Now don't get me wrong, I do love the flat season. I just prefer the jumps and, for some reason, find it easier to back winners over hurdles and fences.
And then of course there is my statistical manual, TrainerTrackStats (TTS). I say 'my', but actually this season I've been massively helped by your usual humble scribe, Gavin.
For those of you who don't know what TTS is, where have you been hiding?! It's a little manual that I've been producing for the last few seasons, and that has done good things for its followers.
The concept is simple: identify trainers who do well with a particular subset of their string, say younger horses, or hurdlers, or - in the case of Philip Hobbs at Exeter - novice chasers.
The reason that I mention Hobbsy and Exeter specifically will become clear when you visit this page, where I've done a little video demonstrating how Gavin and I put TTS together.
I'm not sure if you'll like it or not - I'm no Stephen Spielberg! - but you might find it interesting to see what goes into researching the product, and that there is actually a bit (a lot!) more to it than your average racing system. Just click the 'play' button to get started.
The video box is quite small, but if you click the little 'x' button in the bottom right of the video area (it's near the little 'i' button), you can run it in full screen.
I'd really love to know what you think of it, good or bad (and I'm braced for the worst!), so do pop back here after and add a comment below this post!
Gavin will be back later with an update on the tipping competition, but I can tell you that I am currently none from four, and one of my selections was last seen swimming across the Knavesmire.... Bring on the jumps!
Matt
posted by Matt at
09:03
1 Comments:
Had some problems loading the video to begin with, all seems ok now though.
Interesting stuff - i look forward to the next part.
JP
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