The Be Friendly Handicap (2.30 Haydock) is the race that interests me most today. It is hard to keep up with the constsnt stream of non runners but with just 12 left at around mid day I have Favourite Girl as the class/form horse, well short of having an "80%" profile, and Anglezarke, Archers Road and Haajes the other probables.
The most interesting question, though, is surely whether the top rated on ability and third in last year's race, Strike Up The Band, really has deteriorated 13lb over the last 12 months.
Strike Up The Band won a class 172 race of average OR 97.3 off 94 at the 2008 Shergar Cup nonsense, eventually peaking with an OR of 104 and dropping back to 100 by the time of last year's Be Friendly, where he came 3rd off 100. Since then he has shown very little in the half a dozen handicaps he has contested, and as a result his OR is down to 87. On his last run, at Epsom on 30 August, he showed some sign of returning to form, coming a reasonable 3rd, albeit in a lower class race than today's. He looks dangerous in today's race off the same mark of 87, as the following comparison with last year's race makes clear:
05/09/09 class 187, average OR 93.9, off 100, 3rd, beaten 1.5l.
04/09/10 class 156, average OR 90.0, off 87
It may be that Strike Up The Band has genuinely regressed nearly a stone over the last twelve months, or it may be that he retains his ability but hasn't been found the right opportunity to date. If the latter he will surely win today and the profit from the arb. I've had will seem small beer. But if he really has deteriorated nothing will be lost.
