The Brocklesby 2026

Some unique angles on the race and a couple of each-way pokes that may give us a run for our money!

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Transcript

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Hello everybody, and thanks very much indeed for showing up for this episode 10 of series 2 of The Rap, the What Racing About podcast. We're in I'm going to take a look at the Brocklesby Stakes 120 at Doncaster on Saturday, the first two-year-old race of the season. I'm looking at it basically because it's a race that fascinates the hell out of me. There is zero form to go on, and it rewards the diligent and hardworking punter, me, podcast Pete here, who is prepared to put in some hard yards, generating fairly sort of left field stats as a way of kind of getting an angle in into this pretty sort of trappy race with 15 two-year-olds that are going to post at 120 at Doncaster on Saturday. And this is going out, um, it'll probably be out by about 10, 11 o'clock on Thursday evening. So it's got a really limited shelf life. I'm gonna be in and out like you know having sex with Lewis Capaldi. You won't know it's happened. You know, it'll be over and done with by 24-48 hours. That'll be it. That's the shelf life of this particular cast. So apologies for if you're uh coming to this in April, May, June time, you you had your chance and you blew it. But this this is this is my take on the Broccolsby. 24 hours and it'll all be uh over and done with, and we move on to bigger and better things. There's various sort of coefficients that that I sort of look at when presented with a field of unraised two-year-olds. The first one of which is the dosage index. If you are a long-term follower of the wrap, you can go back to episode 5 of the first series of the wrap, which went out I think in about 2020, 2021. It's still downloadable. I looked at the dosage profile pedigree handicapping for the St. Ledger in that year, and it came up with some interesting and as it turned out, pretty useful statistics and put it onto the pointer of that particular race. This is the other end of the scale. I'm looking at dosage index to look at fast, speedy, two-year-olds, which is what it's going to take to win the Brocklesby. What the hell am I talking about here? It's a bit dull and for the Anorax, but dosage theory has been around for many years. The Arga Khan built a lot of his breeding operation on dosage theory. It's a hack, it's pedigree by numbers. And basically, you need to go to a website called pedigreequery.com, and pedigreequery.com enables you to pump in the name of any horse in training, any horse pretty much that's ever been in training, and look at four generation pedigrees for that particular horse. And at the top of uh each page on that database is uh a series of eight numbers, and that is their dosage index or dosage profile. What am I talking about here? Basically, there are the first five numbers are five categories showing a progression of aptitude from brilliant through intermediate, classic, solid, and professional. In the 1980s, a doctor, Dr. Steve Roman, decided that brilliant and intermediate categories were influences for speed, classic was for intermediary, middle ground category, and solid and professional numbers were influences for stamina. Not only did Dr. Roman make dosage theory more accessible, he made it more usable in a real-world pedigree analysis. He added up all of the influences for speed in a horse's pedigree, divided them by influences for stamina, and you had a number called the dosage index for a horse suggesting the optimum distances that they should theoretically be able to perform at. The numbers that were generated by Steve Roman's theory came from uh the recency of a sire in a horse's pedigree. So a sire will allocate twice as many points to the dosage index as a grandsire and four times as many as a great grandsire, etc. And Roman came up with a list of sires that imported imparted these numbers to their progeny. So it's very, what can I say, stat heavy. You might think it's a bit of voodoo, but essentially, what I have done is taken all of the last 15 winners of the Brocclesby and have broken down their dosage profile to look at working margins for each of those eight numbers of a horse and come up with a profile dosage figure for a typical, if you like, Brocklesby winner. You could have taken it back, or quite taken it back further. That gives us more numbers or a greater degree of statistical certainty to work with. It also makes for very time-consuming and kind of, and I'm prepared to admit, very boring, laborious sort of work for me, and more so listening for you. In fact, if you've stuck with me so far, I commend your internal fortitude. Cutting to the chase, the best horse on Saturday, or the horse with the closest match that I've found to the typical Brocklesby winner over the last 15 years, Gary Josh's Moore Horse, see the goals. Of the eight figures of a typical Brocklesby winner, see the goals hits seven of those working margins for those uh those figures. I like the look, therefore, of see the goals purely on breeding profile. The current favourite, Blix and Force, only has one, two, three, four, five of the eight categories within an acceptable, what I would consider an accept statistically acceptable working margin. Another horses at the top of the market, a Bear Affair has one, two, three, four categories that it hits an acceptable margin. Ocean Club, a little bit better, that has six out of eight. But Cedar Gold has seven out of the eight categories of the typical Brocklesby winner over the last 15 years. In addition, again, a bit of sort of technical activity here, but this information is available on the Racing Post website. You need to look at when a horse was actually born, when a horse was actually fold. And the reason why I'm saying that is because we all know that the race is for two-year-old horses, so far, so wonderful. But not all horses were born on the 1st of January 2024. In fact, very few horses are born on the 1st of January in any in any year, but they're given a birthday. Every horse's birthday, every horse in training's birthday is the 1st of January. But a horse that's born in January 24 and Hero in March 26 has 26 months of life of maturing. One born in April of 2024 and Hero in March 2026 has only 23 months of maturing, and those three months difference can make a lot of difference in terms of it certainly the maturity of a horse and in terms of its physical makeup and you know it just its its basic sort of strength. So going through all the horses in the uh race on Saturday, the Brock Horsby, I looked at the actual birth dates of all horses in that race. And again, see the gulls comes out. That was bought actually fold on the 1st of February. Step to Glory fold on the 5th of February. Blixen Force the favourite, 26th of February. In fact, if you go all the way through, probably the one of the worst horses in terms of its maturity is Bill the Bull, trained by uh Adam Kirby. Actually fold on the 5th of April. Now, yeah, something like See the Goals, therefore, has got two months more maturity than Bill the Bull, and that might count for something when it comes to uh being able to put their best foot forward uh at 120 on Saturday. Something else you might want to consider is sire and trainer. How good is the sire in getting two-year-old performers, and how good is the trainer in uh getting two-year-olds uh to uh win their races early on? Again, you know, a trainer like Ralph Beckett who trains Dancer Jig, 21% hit rate with his two-year-olds, that is pretty impressive stuff. You don't know how somebody like Robson D'Aguila, the trainer of Blixen Force, um, is gonna do. He's a first season trainer, don't know what he's gonna be like, and the sire of Blixen Force is Persian Force, who's a first season sire. So it's a little bit of a step in the dark when it comes to looking at Blix and Force. You don't know what his sire's like with two again in terms of getting speedy two-year-olds or winning two-year-olds, you don't know what his trainer's like in training two-year-olds. So you're taking a little bit of a chance on something like Blix and Blix and Force in terms of his breeding and in terms of the trainer. Let's say somebody like Dancer Jig, Ralph Beckett hits 21% of his uh two-year-olds in the last few years, have been winners. Somebody like let's let's like take a look at sire. Somebody like Katai Glory, um, step to glory sire, 12% hit rate, that's pretty good going. That's fairly sort of impressive, certainly when compared with something like a sire like Mason of Invincible Isaac, who only has a 10% hit rate with his two-year-olds. So, again, you know, it's interesting to look at this sort of interplay between sires and uh trainers, trains of two-year-olds, trains that are capable of producing a good early season two-year-old, right, for this sort of particular race. The final metric that I would look at would be the sales price of a horse. You would have to expect that horses that go through the ring at fairly sort of high value levels, the owner is looking for a very sort of quick payback on their massive sort of investment, and that is something certainly where Blix and Force comes to the fore. He went through the sales ring at Goff's UK um premier sales in August of 2025.£110,000. Interestingly, Salt Lake was also declared by the same owners Ammo Racing, who incidentally have won this a couple of times the last couple of years. Salt Lake was declared at the five-day stage, wasn't entered overnight. I thought that looked a much much better bet uh for ammo racing than Blixen Force. It had a better dosage profile, it had an earlier birth date, and went through the sales ring for 135,000 guineas. Um, so you know it was a higher priced horse. It's not declared for this particular race. Blix and Force was by ammo racing. Look out for Salt Lake because that's going to be declared at some point, you'd have to think in the next month or so. You know, you'd have to think that Salt Lake might well end up being the better of the two horses once it gets its head on the track. Other horses that uh went through at a fairly sort of the sales ring at a fairly sort of tidy sum. Uh something like Build the Bull 28,000 guineas, Babylon Time, trained by Adrian Keithley, went through the sales ring£32,000 at Goths UK Premier Center in August 2025. Um, right now to something like Never Not Remember You for Kathy Turner only went through the ring for£2,000 guineas, um Tat October book three. So, you know, you've got to look at the sales price of particular horses to see what was flashly bred, what went through the sales ring at a high price, and you don't have got to figure that those are animals that the owner is looking for a quick payback on. That is a lot of information to take on board, and a lot of it's fairly sort of arcane stats. Uh, I'm prepared to admit that a lot of it hasn't been particularly well explained by yours truly, and you've basically got 36 hours to take that on board and get your money down before 1.20 on a Saturday. By 1.30, the race will be over. We'll know uh whether all of this is balmy old cack or whether it's actual gold dust. So there is a lot of intensity to this. This is more intense than a than a Henry Rollins concert. So I'm fully aware of that, so and I do apologize, but you know, these are the cars that we're dealt with. This is the Brocclesby that we're talking about, and you've got to look at hardcore stats and fairly sort of left field stats to come up with a short list. And my short list, top of that sort of short list for me, is See the Goals. I do like his dosage profile. I like the fact that he was the oldest horse that's going to be competing on Saturday. I don't like the fact that Gary and Josh Moore only get a 2% hit rate with the two-year-olds that they send to the track, and the sire of Twilight Sun is only got a 7% hit rate with his progeny, his two-year-old progeny. But he went through the sales ring at 27,000 for 27,000 guineas. No huge sum, but not certainly not the cheapest horse in the race. A really good sort of synthesis of all of the sort of key variables that I look for in a horse in the Brocclesby. Let's have a little look and see what he is currently trading at. So this is seven o'clock on Thursday evening. See the goal, pretty much 12 to 1 across the piece. As an each way bet, I would go with that. Or certainly have that on your short list, and you might want to do some have a look at draw analysis. You might have to look, uh, want to have a look at trainer and jockey 12-14 30-day form going into the race. You know, all the usual good stuff that you would look at in a race, but certainly in terms of the arcane left field stats that I've sort of outlined in this particular cast, see the gold. I certainly like the look of I like the price of 12 to 1 as a knock-in sort of each way bet for me. With the little caveats regarding the Moore's ability to get two-year-olds, Ditto Twilight Sun's ability with his progeny to uh get two-year-olds. Of the rest, I'm really interested in Step to Glory. Uh fold on the 5th of February, so second oldest in the race, pretty decent profile. Dylan Cooner, the trainer, won the race a couple of years back with his miniature, knows the time of day, went through the sales room for 15,000 guineas. Currently trading at 16 to 1 you can get for step to glory. So, you know, if you like a double figure price, that might well be of uh interest to you. Blixen Force, well, he's the most expensive horse in the race.£110,000, as I say, at the Goss UK Premier August sale last August. Ammo Racing do really well in this. They've had uh sort of several winners of the race in the last few years. Any band sort of golf favourite currently trading around about the 15 to 8 mark, you'd have to buy into him just purely on the ownership and the sales price of the horse. His breeding profile doesn't look great. He's not one of the most mature horses in the race, so you know, buy beware on that front. But my two against the field will be at this stage, see the goals and a step to glory. That is, I will admit, a very hardcore and intense, whatever it's turned out to be. 17 minutes or so. I hope it's giving you an insight into what is a fascinating race. I say, buy and beware, you might want to take this on board, you might want to think, what the hell is he crapping on about? You've just wasting 20 minutes of my life. I could have been having a fag and having a pint and I've had to listen to this load of old shit. But there it goes. That's a bit of sort of hardcore spade work that yours truly has done for you, my audience, my people, and I hope it's of interest. Don't know when uh the next podcast is gonna be. We will possibly I'll possibly do something for the Grand National meeting. I've nailed my colours to the mast in terms of what I think of the Grand National. Not an awful lot. I'm not very impressed with that. I think it should uh be taken outside and shot, quite frankly. But there we go. I I will have a look at the meeting, I would think, and then we can quite put the jump season to bed and get stuck into the good stuff of the flat with the Craven and the Guineas meeting coming up in uh just over a month's time now. So that's a quick look at the future, but in the immediate, short-term future, the Brocklesby. I am gonna be very interested in seeing how see the goals and step to glory go. Those are my two against the field. Good luck if you follow. There are no way tips, but uh horses that I will be backing, and if if they win, we're gonna be grinning like wanking jabs. That's me over and out. Thanks a lot for showing up. Be lucky.