The TechTeam will be introducing a new column every Tuesday called ‘Form Pointers.’ Typically, we will review a situation that occurred in the prior week’s racing to highlight either some pitfalls or paydays for the benefit of the Hong Kong punter.

 

Class and Victor The Winner

It is a hard and fast rule that for a horse to win a Group Three Handicap in Hong Kong they must have run a TechTeam Time Form Rating of 124 in a previous start. The only exception to this rule is if the horse is very lightly raced and the cut-off for this is at a horse’s 10th start. In other words, we will not consider a horse lightly raced after the ninth start.

Victor The Winner had a great deal against him last Sunday as follows;

(a) The TechTeam Time Form Ratings he had achieved in his previous five runs were 116, 118, 110, 118, 118. These are not the Ratings of a Group One winning horse or a horse capable of winning a Group 3 at the top of the weights. In fact, Lucky Sweynesse, a true Group One horse rates 131 and has done so three times. Interestingly he won his Group 3 with top weight on 4th June last season having won his Group 1 the start before and rating 131 in both starts.

(b) The other major hurdle for Victor The Winner on Sunday was his lack of performances over the Straight 1000 meters at Sha Tin, a big hurdle indeed. One has only to look at the placings in the Class 3 race over this track and distance (TD) on Sunday where the three placegetters, Pleasant Endeavour, Flying High and Cheval Valiant were multiple winners at the TD. In fact, there were only five horses that had won more than once at the TD (the boxed tierce paid HK$8,465 for a HK$600 investment, odds of 14/1) Fancied runners Packing Treadmill (4.8 win odds) and Flying Ace (4.6) had also never raced at the TD. So, we have three runners to eliminate as winning chances at odds of 4.1, 4.6 and 4.8.

In summary there are two especially important form pointers to glean from these two races, namely “horses for courses” particularly at the Sha Tin straight 1000m and as the great Pittsburgh Phil once stated, “Show me a man who can class horses and I will show you a millionaire.”

More from the team next Tuesday and watch out for our Tech Team Tips this Saturday!