To answer two questions arising from my summary piece:
1) Lee's selection Top Dirham won on 19/07/04. (When I wrote the summary piece I also referred to another of Lee's selections, Double Vodka, whom he selected when it won its first race, but on reflection I think that example may confuse, so I have edited it out);
2) re Lee on consistency, the following quotes from two of his Gummy contributions should help:
"The method that relies on consistency as its driving factor is one that selects horses showing an upward curve of form: improvement. Most, but not all, of these examples are going up in class for the prize money. But VDW knew that this would leave him vulnerable to other types of winners, and so it is my understanding, from studying EVERY example he gave, that the Roushayd method was to combat this angle. In this method he isolates another 3 horses for consideration, the 3 that are coming from the highest class. Obviously sometimes they may also be one of the most consistent.
This gave him a way of answering most questions that are asked by any given race, when used in the types of races he suggested. By isolating the 3 most consistent AND the 3 that are coming from the highest class, you are seriously fishing in well-stocked waters. Deciding if there is a good thing amongst them is another story though!" (27/05/04).
"How do you go about those that aren't consistent, like Roushayd I mean?" (15/11/07).
Lee took the view (and may still do) that although there were similarities the "consistency" and "Roushayd" methods were distinct, the latter allowing for the selection of horses who did not necessarily figure in the former as they did not have one of the three lowest consistency totals from among the first five (non handicaps) or six (handicaps) in the betting forecast. Roushayd, who did not qualify on this basis, was thus not "consistent" but was identified for particular consideration because he came from one of the three highest class races when one checks the last runs of the whole field.
This interpretation, though understandable, is in my view incorrect, as it doesn't give sufficient weight to the evidence:
1) long before the Roushayd example, VDW was naming selections which were not consistent horses on the basis of three lowest totals from the first five/six in the forecast. Indeed his very first selection, Prominent King, was one such (unless one allows oneself to believe the nonsense that VDW would have scored his last run as a ten) and there were others such as Love From Verona and Son of Love - all before the 1981 article which some see as the fullest statement of the "consistency" method;
2) some of VDW's "non consistent" examples would not have been picked up by the addition to the horses with the three lowest placing totals among the first five/six in the forecast of those Lee suggests: indeed Son of Love is the only one of the three named in (1) above who would have been added, and later selections, eg Righthand Man, would not have been picked up in that way;
3) in his letter of February 1996, reprinted in "Systems in my Racing", VDW referred to "Systematic Betting", where he first discussed Roushayd, as "only advancing my methods slightly". That is surely suggestive of advancing methods already presented, not providing us with a new one.
Thus I think the better interpretation (ie the one that fits all the available evidence) is that there is just one main method, which finds Roushayd as easily as the horses found on 7 March 1981 such as Little Owl, once one is alive to the fact that sometimes VDW did add what I refer to as "discretionary" consistent horses to the "automatic" ones (those with one of the three lowest placing totals from the first five/six in the forecast). And in my view VDW had objective rules for identifying "discretionary" consistent horses, it was not (and is not) an arbitrary matter.
And indeed, a little more speculatively, I go further and suggest that, beyond the "fraction" of what he knew that he did reveal (the February 1996 letter refers) VDW also had a means of going beyond both "automatic" and "discretionary" consistent horses and bringing into full consideration a third category which, following the language he used in the "From Start to Finish" article (reprinted in "The Ultimate Wheil of Fortune"), I think of as the "less obvious" consistent horses. As with the "discretionary" consistent horses such as Prominent King, Love from Verona, Son of Love, Righthand Man etc, where VDW left us to work out how he found them from the totality of his examples, so I think he did with what I term the "less obvious" consistent horses. With Gaye Chance, VDW flagged up a line of thinking which needs to be explored imaginatively, but here we are on much thinner ice, evidentially speaking, than with the "discretionary" consistent horses, as apart from Gaye Chance I can only think of two other VDW selections to draw upon (Park Express and Rakaposhi King), although obiter in his discussions of the 1985 King George and the 1988 Mackeson also seem to me to be highly relevant.
