After his race at Kempton on 3 April I wrote:
"Ceremonial Jade was the horse of most interest to me and was one of the six hampered during incidents after a furlong. None of the six came better than 6th (Vitznau), and CJ's 7th, beaten 2.6l, was very acceptable in the circumstances. He now goes on the "watch" list and hopefully will be put into a slightly less strong handicap off his current mark (or maybe a pound or two less if the Handicapper is charitable)."
Today CJ re-appears in a slightly less strong handicap off the same 100 he ran from on Saturday.
Considering today's race first from the basic VDW method, the ability rating ranking, best to worst, is:
Flipando
Prime Defender
Ceremonial Jade
Baldemar
Fantasy Explorer
Fol Hollow
Ebraam
Crimson Fern
Imprimis Tagula
Secret Asset
Beat The Bell
Swiss Franc
Five Star Junior
and the first six in the Post's forcast are: 3/1 Prime Defender, 5/1 Baldemar, 11/2 Fol Hollow, 7/1 Flipando, 8/1 Ceremonial Jade, 10/1 Fantasy Explorer.
The horses from the first six in the forecast with the three lowest consistency rates are:
15 Fantasy Explorer
19 Baldemar, Prime Defender
20 Flipando, Fol Hollow
This raises a methodological issue, as a consistency aggregate of 20 is not one of the five lowest in the field as a whole, so should we consider the horses on 20 as "automatic" consistent horses? In my view no, because there is no evidence that VDW ever went below the five most consistent in the field. So I have Fantasy Explorer, Baldemar and Prime Defender as the "automatic" consistent horses.
No less than seven other horses are potentially discretionary consistent horses: Beat The Bell, Ebraam (14), Five Star Junior, Secret Asset, Swiss Franc (16), Crimson Fern (18) and Imprimis Tagula (19). VDW's criteria for discretionary consistent horses not within the first six of the forecast are not quite clear cut, but in my view none of the seven can be regarded as meeting the description he gave in his March 1981 article, so I am left with the three "automatic" consistent horses which become the probables.
Of the three, all are in the top five of the ability ranking and therefore potentially bets. But are they form horses? Taking the three in ability ranking order:
Prime Defender: whether he is a form horse depends on whether one thinks Inexile was entitled to beat him in his last race. A close call in my view.
Baldemar: in my view a regressive profile and not a form horse.
Fantasy Explorer: clearly not a form horse.
So we have one possible probable with form in Prime Defender, though his status is in my view open to discussion. If he is regarded as the class/form horse, his profile from the "winner in the race" perspective is quite strong (he is of course dropping in class from 227 to 106), but with the doubt over his class/form status he is not a horse I regard as 80+% likely to win.
Looking at the field from what I regard as a more advanced VDW perspective, on their records in handicaps I'd be surprised if Secret Asset, Swiss Franc, Imprimis Tagula, Baldemar, Five Star Junior or Fantasy Explorer won, as though the first two named haven't many races under their belts and could yet show improvement.
The other seven have in my view shown enough to suggest they have the capability to win a race of today's class off their current marks. Top on the measure I use is Prime Defender, which arguably underpins his status as (probably) the class/form horse. But his position depends on (a) his handicap win three years ago and (b) his recent runs in Meydan. Not quite as solid as I should like.
Fol Hollow comes 2nd on my ranking, and he has much more recent good UK handicap form than Prime Defender. But there is a questionmark about his capability on the AW - no placings from three runs.
Third, and clear of the other four "possibles" from this perspective, comes Ceremonial Jade. His good UK handicap form is more recent than Prime Defender's, and unlike Fol Hollow he goes at least as well on the AW as the turf. He's won on the course and although that was over 7f he is probably as good over today's 6f. My difficulty with him is that today's race, though much lower in class than Saturday's from a VDW perspective, is not all that much lower from an OR based perspective, CJ runs off the same mark, and because of the interference sustained last time out we can't be sure how poised he is.
CJ is out only six days after his last run, which suggests his trainer believes him to be in form and wants to try to capitalise on that. And the change of jockey from a claimer to Seb Sanders again suggests the horse will be "off". CJ runs from stall 7, which is not ideal but not as bad over 6f as over 5f. (Peter May's draw analyser tool suggests there has been no winner from stall 7 in 47 6f races to 31/12/09, though as there have been winners from stalls 6, 8 and 9 that is merely a quirk of small numbers.)
In sum, from a basic VDW perspective, if there is a class/form horse it is Prime Defender, and if he is regarded as the class/form horse his profile, in terms of the "winner in the race" characteristics, is good. He also scores well numerically from what I regard as a more advanced VDW perspective. He beat CJ by 2l in Meydan on 5 March, and CJ is now 1lb worse off. Although CJ has a reasonable chance today, I am not sure he'll beat Prime Defender, and the race as a whole strikes me as more competitive than it seems as first glance. Frankly when I posted after Saturday's race I'd hoped CJ would next face a somewhat easier task than he does today.
I can't view CJ as a serious bet this evening, though at a double figure price (12.5 on Betfair when I last checked) I see him as worth a modest bet. The subsidiary question is whether one tries to cover oneself, and if so by trading, by backing CJ to place at around 3.8, or by backing Prime Defender as well, to win. I'll take a view during the immediate pre race period, depending on the price at which I am able to back CJ.
