I analysed four races yesterday but did not find a bet and didn't see any of the races as sufficiently interesting, from a methodological point of view, to be worth posting about. However there has been some discussion about one of the four races - after it had been run - on a public forum where, in my view, more heat than light has been generated, so I thought I would set the race out here in as much detail as I am prepared to give.
The race had ten runners and the Post's Friday evening forecast, which I used, was as follows:
7/2 The Scorching Wind, 5/1 Bravo Echo, Elna Bright, 6/1 Seek The Fair Land, 8/1 Autumn Blades, Everymanforhimself, 10/1 and above the rest.
Taking the instructions VDW gave in his most important article - that published in March 1981 and reprinted as item 39 of Tony Peach's "The Golden Years Of Van Der Wheil":
Rate entire field for ability
That generates the following ranking (highest to lowest)
Bravo Echo
Elna Bright
Kyllachy Star
Everymanforhimself
Carcinetto
The Scorching Wind
Tourist
Autumn Blades
Seek The Fair Land
Wigram's Turn
Select most consistent from the first 5 (non handicaps) or 6 (handicaps) in the forecast
In this handicap the consistency figures for the six were:
05 Elna Bright
08 Everymanforhimself
09 Bravo Echo
12 The Scorching Wind
13 Seek The Fair Wind
15 Autumn Blades
At this juncture VDW advises: mark off the four highest ability ratins and three most consistent from the [first six of the] forecast:
That gives us
top four on ability
Bravo Echo
Elna Bright
Kyllachy Star
Everymanforhimself
three most consistent from first six in forecast
05 Elna Bright
08 Everymanforhimself
09 Bravo Echo
So three horses whose names occur on both lists: Bravo Echo, Elna Bright and Everymanforhimself, and those are the core horses for consideration. (Both in the March article and in examples discussed before and afterwards VDW makes it clear that sometimes additional horses are considered - indeed Prominent King was one. One of the tasks in understanding the method is to work out when additional horses are added - there are objective criteria to be discovered - but in this instance no additional horses qualify for consideration.)
In considering what VDW sometimes called the probables, his advice was "always start appraisals by looking at the horse with the highest ability rating", so here we start with Bravo Echo, then consider Elna Bright and finally Everymanforhimself.
In this case everything is fairly straightforward. Bravo Echo has the highest ability rating (87), compared with Elna Bright's 82 and Everymanforhimself's 70, and he has as good form as the others and arguably better. If we take each horse's last three runs (for which there is plenty of evidence that is what VDW did), and especially the last run, we find the following:
Bravo Echo: last run 2nd, class 104, 2nd last 2nd class 42, and 3rd last 5th class 111
Elna Bright: 3rd class 67, won class 100, won class 104
Everymanforhimself: won class 68, 4th class 104, 3rd class 115
There is not too much to choose between the three: Everymanforhimself's 3rd in class 115 is the highest class run, but only a tad above the other two's runs in class 104s, and Bravo Echo has the best last time run and, arguably, the best three run profile. He has arguably shown improvement over the three, while it looks as though after winning in classes 104 and 100 Elna Bright is dropping out of form as he could only come 3rd in a markedly lower class race (albeit only by a neck), while Everymansforhimself dropped a little in class and performance in his second last race and although he won next time out he was dropped markedly in class to do so. Back well above the class of the handicaps he ran in on his 3rd and 2nd last runs, and off a mark 4lb higher, he doesn't look very appealing.
So at the end of the early numerical procedures Bravo Echo emerges as the most likely winner, the horse VDW often referred to as the class/form horse. The best on ability of the consistent horses and with arguably better form than the other two. In that sense he stands on a par with the four horses VDW identified in the races for which data was tabulated in the March 1981 article: Little Owl, Sunset Cristo, Gaye Chance and Kenlis.
However, VDW made it clear in that March article that just because a horse was the class/form horse in its race that was insufficient reason to back it - and elsewhere he wrote that he backed less than 20% of the horses he thought likely to win (the class/form horses). And in the March article he discriminates the four class/form horses, finding two (Little Owl and Sunset Cristo) strong enough to back but viewing Gaye Chance and Kenlis as not sufficiently strong.
How VDW reached these judgements needs to be worked out from his examples, but in my view Bravo Echo was a class/form horse in the same category as Gaye Chance and Kenlis - one to be left. A comparison between Bravo Echo's profile and those of Little Owl and Sunset Cristo should help those interested to work out why. In the event Bravo Echo won, and those who backed him made money, but in my experience they will lose more than they win backing this type of less-than-strong class/form horse.
Two final points. First, VDW recommended crosschecking findings by applying at least one rating method to see how the class/form horse came out on that. I haven't been able to work out how VDW derived the ratings he used in the final two columns of the four tables in the March 1981 article, so I generate my own. On those Bravo Echo came out well - 3rd and close behind the top two - so that played no part in my decision that he was a class/form horse to leave.
Second, it is worth noting that although VDW gave seemingly precise instructions in the March 1981 article - "mark off the fur highest ability ratings and three most consistent from the [first 5/6 in the] forecast" etc., his examples show he went a little beyond them in specific circumstances. Prominent King, for example, was a consistent horse but not one of the "three most consistent" and occasionally he backed a horse (such as Pegwell Bay) just outside those with one of the top four ability rates. A key task with VDW is working out, mainly from his examples, when he went beyond the basic instructions. Thus in relation to the race I've been discussing, one needs, for example, to know exactly why The Scorching Wind was not a consistent horse, or in fact from a VDW perspective any kind of danger to the winner, even though he beat the winner on their last run on 30 January.
A good many class/form horses win - indeed two of the other races I analysed yesterday were won by the class/form horses (Gaily Noble and Tranquil Toger). But if one can work out VDW's criteria for which class/form horses to back and which to leave one will have a much higher strike rate.
