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Getting the most out of Timeform in time for this year's Guineas
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 Simon Rowlands is a handicapper and time analyst at Timeform, the form student’s bible. In an exclusive article for INPLAY Extra Time he presents some thoughts on how to get the most out of Timeform in time for this year’s fast approaching Guineas meeting.
Timeform was launched in 1948 and has long held a reputation as one of the foremost authorities on horseracing in the world. The service embraces daily, weekly and yearly publications – including the prestigious Racehorses and Chasers & Hurdlers annuals – and its scope now extends to the coverage of racing in all the major racing countries of the world. Timeform's approach combines statistically based analysis – outlines of some of which can be accessed by clicking on the links in the following article – and more intuitive considerations of such things as paddock inspection and race reading. Timeform products tend towards analysis rather than the simple presentation of facts, but the goal is to educate the customers so that they can make informed decisions about the likely outcomes of future races themselves rather than simply providing tips.
Ante-post betting can be a perilous business at the best of times, as anyone who backed the short-priced favourite Best Mate for the Cheltenham Gold Cup in March before his late withdrawal or laid the eventual winner Kicking King at up to 1000.0 on Betfair when he was thought to be a certain non-runner can testify. Leading Guineas fancies Etlaala and Divine Proportions are just two of those who have fallen by the wayside for the first two classics of the British Flat season in the last week or two. So, even at this relatively late stage, it is with more than a little trepidation that I attempt to predict what will happen at Newmarket in a week’s time.
Punters considering the credentials of the likely runners for the Two Thousand Guineas on April 30th and the One Thousand Guineas on May 1st are faced with putting their trust primarily in form achieved last year when the horses were two-year-olds or in the various trials that have been run this season. The former has paid off on many occasions over the years, including with the likes of Cape Verdi, Russian Rhythm and last year’s Two Thousand winner Haafhd, all of them identified as likely classic candidates over the winter by Timeform. The processes involved in two-year-old handicapping, not to mention handicapping in general, are often misunderstood, and an outline of them is given in the Features section of the Timeform website.
2005 Two Thousand Guineas (30th April)
In the anticipated absence of last year’s leading two-year-olds Shamardal, Motivator and Ad Valorem, Dubawi stands out as comfortably the best juvenile colt of 2004. Dubawi earned his position at the head of the Two Thousand Guineas market with three runs and three wins last term, culminating with an impressive victory in a good time in the National Stakes at the Curragh. Since then he has been the subject of highly encouraging reports from his winter base in Dubai, where he won a racecourse trial on April 11th. Dubawi is sure to be at least as effective at a mile as the shorter trips he has contested in public and is a worthy favourite, but his odds are now very short, and I for one think it’s worth looking elsewhere.
Other good two-year-old colts of last year likely to turn up in the Two Thousand include Iceman, Oratorio and Footstepsinthesand. The first-named also figured prominently in the Craven Stakes over Newmarket’s Rowley Mile earlier this month and did his prospects no harm in finishing a close and seemingly unlucky fourth. The Craven is a race that lends itself to sophisticated analysis thanks to the presence of sectional timing at the course. Sectional timing is a welcome development for form and time students and is an aspect of racing analysis that Timeform has long been interested in: more can be found about this subject on Timeform’s website. In truth, the closing sectionals of the Craven were not especially impressive given the relatively slow sectionals that preceded them, but Iceman and the promising runner-up Rob Roy both seemed inconvenienced by the run of the race and can be expected to do a fair bit better. The Craven still looks a better trial than Newbury’s Greenham Stakes, in which the first two places were filled by horses not even entered in the Two Thousand. Oratorio and Footstepsinthesand both represent Aidan O’Brien, trainer of past winners King of Kings and Rock of Gibraltar, but neither have appeared to carry all that much stable confidence until recently. Of the pair, Oratorio achieved more as a juvenile and would be a tough nut to crack if at his best for his seasonal reappearance.
2005 One Thousand Guineas (1st May)
The One Thousand Guineas the following day looks more open at this stage. Damson owes her position at the head of the market to good wins in the Queen Mary Stakes at Royal Ascot and the Phoenix Stakes at the Curragh (where she beat the aforementioned Oratorio, so her supporters will be interested to see how that one goes 24 hours earlier). But she has not been seen since disappointing behind Magical Romance in the Cheveley Park Stakes on this course in September and may not even run if the going turns soft.
The two recognised British spring trials for the One Thousand – the Nell Gwyn Stakes at Newmarket and the Fred Darling at Newbury – were won in workmanlike style by Karen’s Caper (by three quarters of a length from the scopey Cape Columbine) and by Penkenna Princess respectively. The form they showed would not normally be good enough to win the One Thousand, but this year’s edition is beginning to look as if it could be substandard. The Godolphin-owned Satin Kiss could certainly be in the shake-up if she reproduces the form she showed on dirt in Dubai earlier this year.
Penkenna Princess’ win paid a compliment to Maids Causeway, who gave her 3 lb and beat her by a short head at two years, and Barry Hills’s filly has come in for support in recent weeks after pleasing her trainer on the gallops. The unbeaten Shanghai Lily, like Maids Causeway, will probably go to Newmarket without a recent outing under her belt, but she has more to prove on the form book.
The truth is that I think both races are difficult for backers: and what’s bad for backers should be good for layers. What I’ll be doing between now and the off of the two races is looking to lay many of the contenders in the two races with a view to locking in a profit whatever the result or at worst sustaining a small loss if things do not go my way. There are many ways of trying to achieve this, but perhaps the most straightforward is to lay each horse to ‘take out’ a fixed sum, including the stake. For instance, if laying to lose £500 then that would be £50 at 10.0, £30 at 16.5 and so on. The idea is to lay each horse at the odds most advantageous to yourself (easier said than done!) and layers even have the option of trying to tie up loose ends by laying “in-running” when the race is under way, so there’s no need to rush in. If you get to the stage where you have taken more than £500 in bets but stand to pay out a maximum of £500 whatever the result (as in the above example) then you will have a guaranteed profit, and this will be indicated by your profit/loss settings ‘going green’. Going green is the goal of many layers and traders on Betfair.
My favourite poet T S Eliot once wrote: “April is the cruellest month….” In horseracing it is certainly a time of year when dreams can become just memories (as I, an ante-post backer of Etlaala, know too well) and desires have a habit of clouding a punter’s judgement. But, in the days of the betting exchange, when backer can become layer and layer can become backer, it is worth remembering that for each losing bet there is a winning one. The trick is to come out on the right side more often than not. Making full use of the flexibility available on Betfair should give you a fighting chance.
simonr@Timeform.com
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