This, That & The St Leger

Well Enceladus won't win the Leger - here's why

Bigmouth Strikes Again!

Twitter @RacingWhat

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Greetings everybody and welcome to this episode 23 of the Wrap, the What's Racing About podcast. Thanks very much indeed for showing up, as I always say. It's been a month since our last little get together, wherein I talked about National Racehorse Week, so more of that shortly. This is by way of a bit of a sort of catch-up on what's been happening over the summer, what I've been up to, what ratings have been up to in the last four weeks, and then we have a little look forward to the last classic, the St. Ledger, and some hopefully interesting insights, particularly from a breeding perspective, on the key protagonists that are going to be doing their thing at Town More. Okay, then. First things first, I have been away on holiday. I went to the beautiful island of Jersey. You've got to go there, you must go there, it's absolutely beautiful little island. The weather helps, it's been red hot there. Not as hot as it is in the mainland UK, and that was a blessing. It was 25, 26, 27 degrees, bit windy. Anyway, that was the meteorology and the climate. The important thing from a racing perspective is that on one of the days the missus and I decided to go our separate ways, she to a horticultural centre, me to a Leyland race course, up in the northwest of the island. Cycled up there, and just basically had a tool around, walked around the course. Think Banger, but Bangor's probably got much more pretension and grandeur about it. Leyland is well, it's rustic and it's rural and it's pretty unpretentious, but it's it's very nice. I enjoyed my time there. There was no racing on, so I just walked around the course, and it's great. It's on the cliffs. There's a view over to I think it's Herm and Sark. The weather was perfect, and it was really nice just to walk around the course, get a feel for feel for what the action there might look like on a race day. This is all very sad act racing completist because I acknowledge that I doubt whether many of you would make a trip specifically to sea racing there. They run for a couple of thousand pounds per race. It it's not it is not Longchamp on Arc Day that for deaf, but it's a great-looking little course, and I would urge anybody to get out there and try and sort of sample its goods if you're on holiday on the island because it does look um a very scenic course, probably the most scenic course I've ever been on. And I can just imagine that race day there is a bit of a hooling. I imagine people sort of have a proper sort of good time there. It's a very tight little course, you're really sort of close to the action. It's like chester with Martello Towers in the background. It's interesting, it's tight, and I I would definitely urge anybody to get out to Leyland. So this part of the podcast has been brought to you by the Jersey Tourist Board subsection horse racing because Leyland certainly hit home with me. If you do go there, back the Malzard horses. You know, Victoria Malzard, the jockey that won on Kansas City Chief. Chief won on plenty of other horses, but Kansas City Chief at Cheltenham and the November meeting a few years back was a biggest win. Her and her folks train out there right on the course, and she seems to get plenty of winners there. So if you do go there and are interested in racing at Le Land, back the Malzard horses as a default position. So Leilonde, I just sort of was wandering around there thinking, you know, on pointless, if you get asked to name race courses in the UK and that's your pointless question. I wonder if you could get away with Leilonde. Is Jersey in the UK? Don't know, you need to ask Alexander Armstrong about that, but that would be a pointless answer if it was allowed. So that's my my last my last thought on Leyland as a uh as a race course and venue. Get there if you can, check it out. I spoke about National Racehorse Week the last time we got together. That's been and gone, that was last week. I got over to Stuart Edmonds' Yard in Leighton Buzzard, my probably my closest yard. And it was a thoroughly well-organised day out. I guess there were 80 of us there, ranging in ages from you know pensioners to me there with my little grandson, and we had a right old time being shown around the yard. And I hope, I hope it fulfilled the objectives of National Racehorse Week. If you want to go back to I think it was the second podcast that I ever did where I interviewed Richard Phillips, and he outlined back in 2021 his hopes for National Racehorse Week as a touch point for racing with the wider community, where people could come along, could see upfront and personal what racing is all about away from the race course, how the horses are looked after, and care and attention that goes into them when they're not racing. And and I hope and I think National Race Horse Week has succeeded in that objective. Certainly, if the day out at Stuart Edmonds' Yard was anything to go by, the staff were professional, knowledgeable, on point, approachable, questions were asked by the assembled throng, and answers were given to the best of people's ability. And we had a thoroughly entertaining time from patting the horses, and it's a very trite and superficial point, but these animals are big. You just do not realise how huge they are until you actually do get up close to one in a stable and do a fairly sort of passive. And my little two-year-old grandson had a whale of a time being next to these big, huge, imposing creatures, but very, very gentle, very, very placid. Not all of them, I'm sure. I'm sure there's some right thoroughgoing bastards, but for him it was lovely. It was a lovely way of seeing horses, meeting horses, and I think it was for the assembled throng as well. There was a farrier demonstration. It was good to be able to be amongst knowledgeable industry professionals, putting across that knowledge to an interested and polite crowd. You know, we asked our questions honestly uh but politely, and they were answered professionally. Answers were accepted in good grace. You hope that that does lead to a wider understanding and uptake of well, what race is all about, and it hopefully it dispels some myths and rumours that we flog these animals to death. There was but there has been criticism of the event or an event that was organised down in Portsmouth by you guessed it, the the Green Party. I make no party political comments in these casts, but the Green Party were thoroughly against an event that happened on their turf down in Portsmouth. Lucy Bridgewater, campaigner for Portsmouth Green Party, said many Portsmouth residents care deeply about animal welfare. We don't think an event designed to promote horse racing, particularly to children and families, is something our city should be celebrating. Behind the polished image of racing is an industry in which horses are seriously injured and killed in the pursuit of entertainment and commercial gain. Bringing racehorses into a shopping destination is a clear attempt to attract new audiences, etc. etc. As usual, they have got hold of the wrong end of the stick. It's not designed to promote racing, it's designed to answer people's questions. Militant people's questions in some cases, and hopefully, it's a way of racing, changing the dynamic and the debate, such as it is, around horse racing and around this whole notion of cruelty to racehorses. National Racehorse Week hopefully addresses that head on and gives people like the Green Party and their supporters, if they will bother to attend, a platform to ask questions, as I say, politely, and have them answered by industry professionals, and then it's down to them to make up their own mind as to whether they think that racing is cruel in light of information received. I can only stress that my experience, and I'm prepared to admit I'm biased, I'm a racing fan, but my experience at Stuart Edmonds' Yard was fantastic. And going back and reiterating the point, they were very knowledgeable, very welcoming, and very on point in terms of the answers they were able to give to the questions that people there were asking. Okay, that's uh sort of look back over what I've been up to in the last sort of few weeks. My bad for not delivering any more of these podcasts over the summer. I've had this thing called a life that I've had to be involved in. So podcasting comes a remote fourth, fifth, and sixth down my particular priority list when it comes to the holiday period. But I'm back from out of space. So um looking forward then to the last classic, the St. Ledger. I'm gonna get into this, or I'm gonna give you an angle into this, which you can choose to take or leave. The dosage index, the pedigree analysis that I've talked about in the past. I would point you back to September 2021, to the fifth ever episode of The Wrap, wherein I did a pretty sort of thorough analysis of the 2021 St. Ledger from a pedigree perspective. And whilst not necessarily coming up with the winner, I was able to highlight a couple of horses which I didn't think could win based on their pedigrees. Hooray for me, aren't I Clever? That was uh proven to be to be the case back in 2021. So let's go for a repeat, let's try and reheat this one and come up with, if not a short list, but you know, some idea about horses that may win um or maybe in the frame purely on their pedigree and some that may not, again, based purely on pedigree. What am I twitting on about when I talk about the dosage index? If you go back to that 2021 episode, you can hear about the history of the dosage index and dosage profiling and the technical discussion on the mathematics behind it. It's a hack, it's a pedigree hack which looks at a horse's propensity to speed at one end of its spectrum versus its propensity for stamina at the other end of the spectrum. Putting it very simply, uh horse's dosage profile is a shortcut pedigree by numbers, and and to reiterate, we're basically looking to establish the stamina potential for horses that are going to be running in the ledger. Because by and large, none of the horses have run over the one mile, six furlongs, and the ability to stay is pretty much paramount in terms of looking at a potential winner of the race. So, how do I go about establishing the template for the the best horse with the best sort of stamina profile for the big race? I looked at all of the winners of the race this century and looked at their dosage profile. The dosage profile is essentially eight numbers, it's a spectrum indicating influence from speed to stamina. I looked at all of the horses that have won this century and looked at their dosage profile and established a template of what the Saint Ledger winner, broadly speaking, looks like from a pedigree perspective. As you'd expect, most of them have a fairly sort of high stamina index. Scandinavia last year was a little bit of an outlier, he was more sort of speed-oriented, but before that, there was only him, harbour law, Arctic Cosmos had a fairly high dosage index, Lucano also, and rule of law back in 2004. Other than that, you know, most of the winners had had a very high influence for stamina. So you would tend to think that this sort of analysis does have broadly a success rate in terms of identifying horses that are likely to be suited by the step up to one mile and six furlongs. So having established the ideal template based on the last sort of 20-25 runnings of the race, I put the horses that are currently uh entered into the race through the cruncher and have sort of come up with a few thoughts. Firstly, the second favourite Enceladus is pretty appalling. He has a very high speed index, very high speed sort of profile. He would be the have the highest dosage index of any horse this century if he were to win uh at Towmorin. I would definitely put a line through Enceladus. Oh, Encaladus, Encaladus. It's currently trading at 11 to 4. Don't like that purely from speed perspective. The favourite Christmas Day, yep, hits all of the marks pretty much on the money. Ditto, third favourite Pierre Bonard. You cannot really struggle to quib any of the numbers on their sort of dosage profiles. Both have to be worthy sort of favourites at the top of the market. Going sort of further down, I don't like the look of Del Maro. I think that might be it's it's not bad, but it could be better in terms of its dosage profile. The the the one horse, which which really sort of sticks out, and again, you know, I'm not sure about its its form to date, but Hateen, purely in terms of its breeding and the dosage profile, is it is a very, very close sort of temp uh match the template, the winning template. So I would be tempted by at this stage by a small punt each way, maybe on Hattine at around about best price, 16 to 1. Of those or bigger odds, Amelia Erhart has been introduced at 40 to 1. Size Camelot, good influence for stamina. Hits six out of the eight sort of profile categories, and 40 to 1 if you're prepared to take a risk on Amelia Earhart turning up. Couldn't put you off of that particular horse. Of the rest, most of the horses at bigger odds deserve to be purely on their breeding figures. Highwayman, pretty appalling. Gold of Story, Montreal. Alderman's not too bad. It seems to have some sort of influence for stamina. Rebel Rock Rebel Rocker Action, Port of Spain, eh. I'll be putting lines through all of those as their pricing suggests. So, to reiterate, Christmas Day, yep, Pierre Bonard, Ditto, Enkelatus, pull a line through him. Do not like that at all on breeding. Hateen, yes, I would be interested potentially in an each way bet at this stage on him. I'm gonna wait, see if he turns up on the day. And really huge odds, Amina Hart, if um that horse turns up on the day, also. So there we go. A quick and grubby look through the dosage aspect of the 2026 Saint Ledger. I hope it was of interest. I hope it's given you some sort of angle into the race, more of which when the action starts at Town Mall. That's it for now. Thanks very much indeed for showing up, and thanks very much indeed for people that are exploring the back catalogue of the rap. There's been several large numbers of downloads of old episodes of the rap going back several years now. So thanks for getting involved in those, and thanks for listening to what I had to say a few years back about races, and thanks for your more recent interest in things like National Racehorse Week, which I talked about in the last rap uh at the end of July. It means a lot. It does. Honest to God, thanks so much for your time and attention and thought that you put into downloading and listening to my ramblings. The ramblings of a madman. Anyway, that's it for now. Thanks for showing up. Be back again in a couple of weeks' time. All the very best. Be lucky.