Seeing as I'm working this morning and can't get to Oakwell, I'm using my time wisely - by picking the horses. Now, most people think the Grand National is a complete lottery and it isn't - by using historical trends, you can eliminate most of the field. Here we go...! Firstly, no teenager has won since 1923 (none even placed since 1969), so dear old TIDAL BAY is eliminated. As is SWING BILL. Then at the other end of the scale, the drought for seven year olds is almost as long (1940), so bye bye TRIOLO D'ALENE and KRUZHLININ. On a similar note, only one eight year old has won in the last twenty years (the reason probably being that they lack experience of big fences and lots of runners) so ta ta DOUBLE SEVEN, BUCKERS BRIDGE, OUR FATHER, VINTAGE STAR, TWIRLING MAGNET, VESPER BELL and ROCKY CREEK. That's over a quarter of the field zonked due to their birth certificates. Onwards and upwards... The next Fonzie stat to take note of is horses arriving here who haven't run in a while. This usually means that they're revved up and mad keen as they haven't been out their stable yard in a while. Using two months (1981 the last time a winner hadn't run for more than this) as the cut off, this eliminates BATTLE GROUP, PRINCE DU BEAUCHENE, THE RAINBOW HUNTER, ROSE OF THE MOON and ALVARADO (note, some horses are in more than one of the categories so far, but as they're already eliminated I can't be arsed to type them again). The next thing to look at is stamina. Has the horse won over at least three miles before? Every winner since 1970 already had done so. Three mile virgins include WALKON, LAST TIME D'ALBAIN and HUNT BALL. Similarly to stamina, the amount of weight carried is also an issue. Only two runners in the last 18 years have carried more than 11 stone to victory, so I'll wipe off everything above this weight. Ta ra LONG RUN and QUITO DE LA ROQUE. The final negative trend to apply, is can they jump? Even though the fences have been modified recently, there's still 30 of them to navigate. Horses that have fallen on three or more occasions in their careers so far are not for me - COLBERT STATION and GOLAN WAY are discarded. So I've elimiated 23 horses, leaving me to work with 17 (deep breath), which is still a long list. To streamline this, 16 of the last 24 winners were aged in double figures, so anything aged nine is getting the elbow here. MONBEG DUDE, BIG SHU, MOUNTAINOUS, HAWKES POINT, RAZ DE MAREE an ONE IN A MILAN. Down to 11. BALTHAZAR KING WAYWARD PRINCE MR MOONSHINE TEEFORTHREE ACROSS THE BAY LION NA BEARNAI BURTON PORT CHANCE DU ROY PINEAU DE RE THE PACKAGE SHAKALAKABOOMBOOM What I will do now is eliminate horses who have never raced over the Grand National fences before - either this race, or thr four others ran over the fences during the year. This ciao's WAYWARD PRINCE, LION NA BEARNAI and BURTON PORT, leaving us with 8 - which is still probably 2 or 3 too many for a shortlist to be backing them now. The final round of cuts will be the three horses who have run in the race before (going against a trend I know), and blatantly did not stay. BALTHAZAR KING, SHAKALAKABOOMBOOM and ACROSS THE BAY have all run well before in this race for at least one lap of the course, but then faded late on when their stamina ran out. (Having said that, I would not be suprised if Balthazar and Shakalaka improve this time as they are now both aged ten, and so were running in the race before when they were young and perhaps did not have the required stamina). FINAL SHORTLIST MR MOONSHINE TEEFORTHREE CHANCE DU ROY PINEAU DE RE THE PACKAGE All are decent each way prices (apart from Teaforthree) and with a bit of luck, all should give you a good run for your money. As an added bonus, I'll even give you the order in which they finish. THE PACKAGE (finished third at Cheltenham and the two horses who beat him both won yesterday) TEAFORTHREE PINEAU DE RE CHANCE DU ROY MR MOONSHINE Even if 13 year old top weight Tidal Bay wins I'll not mind, because this has killed a lovely hour of work this morning.
If you've made all that up, well done! I've just put £10 each way on The Package Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
It's not my own work no, the trends are on the web for all to see. You've still got to spend an hour or so applying them to the runners for each year thou.
I've lumped on Quito De La Roque, therefore ignored your method, based purely on the jockey being a Mr B.O'Connell. You Reds.
Had £6 win on Teaforthree and £3 each way on the rest. Stake £30 returned £81. Four out of the five were in contention coming round the final bend, and yes Tel, I was cursing when Balthazar King appeared as I'd only really eliminated him on shaky grounds as I needed to get down to a more streamlined short list.
I had a tenner win on the Mo Fo' so was hoping for a rally from the elbow, but to be fair Pineau De Re never looked like being beat after the last. Like Jay said mate, I really enjoyed the read and well done on your winnings. I'm 50 quid down on the race, so instead of logging on to the Betfair Account, I'll just pop round to yours and give you it up front. Cut out the middle man.