Wednesday, December 15, 2010

Wednesday all-weather racing preview

Inter won as expected, and I think they'll go on and win the final. We'll get to that when the day comes.

On Thursday, I like the first horse on the card at Southwell. If You Whisper, the son of record-breaking first-season sire champion Iffraaj, should be in the first 2. In fact, I think he should be breaking his maiden in this race. The distance will suit and he also has the best form going in the race. Because it's his first time on fibresand, I will stick to a Place recommendation, which will be safer than an outright win. Let me explain. Although the 4 synthetic surfaces (Wolves, Lingfield, Southwell, Kempton) are tagged all-weather surfaces in England, one might think that the form on one inevitably translates to another; i.e., if a horse likes the surface at Lingfield, it is bound to like that at Southwell. From what I've seen, that is not necessarily the case. I would say Lingfield and Wolves are pretty similar, and if a horse does well on one, chances are that it will do well in the other. Southwell's fibresand is different from those two. There is definitely more kickback, and some horses who like polytrack might perform differently on the fibresand surface. Finally Kempton is different than all the other three because it is the only right-handed all-weather track. Some horses are  indifferent to the track orientation, while others will prefer one to the other (think High Chaparral who lost both his races at right-handed Longchamp). I could go on with more relatively minor differences such as draw importance etc, but the above are the most obvious. So, as you can see, all-weather form is not easily transferable from one track to another.

With that in mind, If You Whisper is a Place recommendation at Southwell.

Place: If You Whisper

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