A great result for the blog yesterday with just one selection posted, and it was a winner with BRICK RED holding off the challenge of the runner-up to secure the spoils at an SP of 3/1, although readers of the blog should have been able to avail themselves of the advised early odds of 4/1.
And we very nearly followed-up later in the afternoon, when Theatrical Star - of whom I thought had a great eachway chance - managed to run well enough to be 2nd at an SP of 7/1. Although I didn't advise him as a firm selection, those of you with the bookies money from the success of BRICK RED in your wallet may well have taken the odds eachway.
The race won by BRICK RED was a good result for the formbook, and also was a good lesson in the merits of value punting. On known (recent) form, BRICK RED was the horse holding the best chance of winning at the weights. There were a couple of other horses with recent form - Ballygarvey and Arkaim - who may have raised their game to form a decent challenge; and there were another couple - French Opera and Festive Affair - that had shown decent form last season that put them in with a chance of winning if able to repeat it. That's why I thought that BRICK RED had a 5/2 chance of winning, and anything longer than that was "value". If he'd been available at just 2/1, then I would not have had a wager as those odds would've been too short to represent his chance of winning the race - and he came close to getting beat!
The ground at Sandown - described in the morning as "good-to-soft" - turned out to be heavy in places, and no better than soft. The Cleark of the Course needs a new going stick, if you ask me. Although a winner on heavy ground, BRICK RED's best form has been on soft, and it showed yesterday as he made some jumping errors and looked laboured coming past the "pond" on entering the home straight. As it happened, his closest challenger was the 20/1 outsider My Brother Sylvest who was having his first run since November 2013. He never came into my calculations, having been off the track so long and having shown all his form on much better ground, but he appears to have come back better than ever, and this was a great reappearance run. Let's hope the handicapper isn't cruel on him,
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