I've received a couple of emails following my post yesterday asking if I could expand a bit on John's approach to finding class horses likely to win.
I first came across John when in the early 200os we were both members of the Gummy forum: he was one of several critics of the VDW approach that Guest, Lee and others were discussing. Thereafter we were fellow members of at least two further forums, though about a year to 18 months ago John ceased to post. So what I know of John's approach was up to about 18 months ago and I have no idea about how he may have developed it since.
Apart from noting John as a reasoned critic of VDW's, I did not really take a positive interest in his ideas until April 2006 when he posted, before the race in question, the to me at that time wholly unexpected 14/1 winner, Little Flora. That led in due time to some discussion on the vdw.yuku.com forum, mainly on a section entitled, perhaps misleadingly, "Jock Bingham's ideas".
John then gave his emerging ideas some concentrated attention and in early 2008 came back with a list of horses he judged ready to win class 2 handicaps. He started spectacularly on Lincoln day giving, before the races concerned, the winners of both the Spring Mile (Don't Panic @ 13/2) and the Lincoln (Smokey Oakey @ 10/1), and followed those up quite quickly with at least one 20/1 winner. There were also a number of losers.
I suppose the essence of John's approach at that time was noting horses who had shown they had a certain level of class (not necessarily a very high level, as in the case of Little Flora) who could realistically be expected to win again under appropriate conditions. The interest from my point of view was that John was opening up the possibility of finding a more satisfactory way of handling the "class" issue than VDW had shown us in relation to his main method.
Anyone interested in John's ideas - at least as they were over the period 2006 to 2008 - is therefore advised first to think about how he found Little Flora, Don't Panic and Smokey Oakey, and second to glance through his posts on the vdw.yuku.com forum, especially but not exclusively on the "Jock Bingham's ideas" section.
