this IS possible one of the most difficult things to teach you.  I sometimes get this wring myself.  Let’s face it, if I chose Salesti’s most recent run I get a faster time than the previous run. Now if next time we rate Salesti we rate him on the current run we may be right or wrong, depending on whether or not Salesti will reproduce his Best form or his latest form in the race we are about to study.  If may be that, as I suspect, the extra weight anchored the horse.  Then again it may be that Salesti has had enough this preparation and needs a spell or a let-up.

you have to be prepared to be wrong.  In fact, most of the time you will be, If this wasn’t true, I would be on a tropical island somewhere enjoying life’s simple pleasures instead of waring out a keyboard.  Not even the horse could tell you he’s had enough, at least not until the race was well underway, and even then he might be faking it!

There are therefore a few Key rules to follow.  If you follow these rules you will be right at least as often as not.  What we are looking for is the horse’s fastest recent run, and evidence to prove that the horse is capable of showing it in today’s race.

For a horse well into the current preparation you will have no difficulty, unless the horse has not yet been placed to his best advantage.  If, for example, the horse is unsuited by wet tracks yet has been forced to race on wet surfaces for all of his current preparation, you may need to look back to the previous preparation to find his form.

In Racing Pays I wrote about the horse Mighty Pat.  Now here was a horse that raced from April 1988 through to July 1988 without success.  Mighty Pat was a duffer in the wet and here he was caught in the middle of Sydney’s big wet when every week the track was rain affected.  in assessing the form for a race on July the 30th.  I had to look back to Mighty Pat’s previous preparation in December 1987 to find the correct dry track form.  On the first dry track Sydney had seen for months Mighty Pat bolted in at good odds.  You see the revealed form of the other runners was all wet track form.  Once dry track racing resumed those wet track pretenders faded right out of the picture.

Sometimes a horse’s qualifying run is obvious.  Take my own horse Lord Chris.  In a Gosford maiden over 1600 metres, Lord Chris got a great start and strode along out in from until the turn.  It always happens, in this race a smart up and comer named El Dragon (later to race with success in Brisbane) collared Lord Chris shortly after the turn and went on to win by 6 or 7 lengths.  The point is though that Lord Chris beat the third horse by a similar margin.

Soon after Lord Chris was entered in an Improvers race at Cessnock over 1500 metres and there were no El Dragon’s entered here.  Backed form 8/1 into 4/1 Lord Chris recorded an impressive 4 length victory.  The Gosford run was the pointer to his success.  Sadly, from my point of view, the race was a disaster.  Unable to get time off from work I missed the race.  The course photographer also missed the race, and the race commentator, who normally makes a recording, forgot to turn his recorder on.  Worst of all my trainer was only able to get a few dollars on the horse for me.  But if you think that’s bad luck, just wait until I tell you about Royal Liege in the chapter on the one’s that got away.

The qualifying run will be as close as possible to the conditions of today’s race.

In the case of Lord Chris we were comparing 1600 metre form against Improvers form (in Class terms that’s just one step).  Because Lord Chris was stepping up slightly in Class he was also in receipt of a weight drop.  The situation could not have been more ideal.  If we can find races where all contenders are assessed on runs of similar conditions we can be confident that our assessments will be correct.

I noted earlier that we were seeking the horse’s fastest recent run.  We are assuming that, given the same conditions, the horse will run up to that form.  Now that doesn’t mean that if the horse ran 1200 metres in 1.10 and then won his next race in 1.11 that we take the 1.11 run.  The horse proved his fitness by winning the race.  He may not have needed to run 1.10 to win but probably could have if needed.  As long as the horse is running consistently I will keep using his best run until his performances tell me otherwise.

When assessing a horse on his previous preparation (which you will have to do if a horse is having his 3rd or 4th run after a spell) you can quite rightly assess him on his best run in that preparation until it is obvious that the horse will not perform up to that standard.  Whilst I would like to see that at least one of the horse’s first two runs back was a good one, it is not necessary as many horses will fail early and then apparently inexplicably hit form.

At some time you will have to make a crucial decision on when to change your assessments of the qualifying run.  There will be times when a horse will make a once only Star Performance.  You will follow this horse for sometimes tow or three runs before realising that the run may never be repeated.  In cases like these I may hedge my bets a little by making such a horse equal to the next best runner.  By doing this I will retain all but one point of the price should I be right in my assessment, if I am wrong and the next best runner wins I will be on the winner again, and again only one point worse off.  In these circumstances I generally find the winner in roughly half the races.

The qualifying run will be as close as possible to today’s distance.

One of the hardest things for a horse to do is to successfully compete when coming back in distance.  The vast majority of runners will fail if coming back more than 200 metres in distance,  The same can often be said about horses whose next run is over a steeply increased distance.  We need to look at the run nearest in distance to today’s race.  It would be pointless assessing a horse for a 1200 metre race if his last start was in the Melbourne Cup.  Equally, we would not want to start a horse in the Melbourne Cup if his last run was over 1200 metres.

Once we get those absurdities out of the way though we must start to look at the possible exceptions.  A horse may be tried at a distance for the first time.  He fails miserably so is reverted to sprints.  His first run back in sprint company is usually a failure unless he is a frontrunner and ran this way in the staying test.

Frequently you will see a situation where a hose is being tried over 2000 metres for the first time.  Almost invariably, their last run will have been over 1600 metres.  It is not unusual, particularly for 3yo’s, to sight whole fields of horses who have never before run the distance.  In these circumstances we can only assess them all on the runs we have available and perhaps use our intuition as a guide.  In the past two or three years I have been particularly successful in selecting winners in 3yo races further than 1600 metres.  One point to remember.  A horse that runs slowly over 1600 metres is not going to run quickly over 2000 metres.

One thing that you should be aware of in assessing horse over a longer distance is pace.  A horse that can win when the pace is one may well fail in a slowly run race.  You should be aware that a performance that looks like failure may not be the fault of the horse and allow for this.  Again, you may note that a horse, a natural frontrunner, ahs been getting run over in the closing stages of a shorter race.  It may well be that given a longer distance to run, the horse may be able to maintain a faster pace than his rivals and win.

At the beginning of this chapter I warned you that you would more often be wrong than right when making your assessment.  As long as you stick to the guidelines I have listed, you will not be too far wrong.