Horses to Follow : May 2013

[erhaab1965]

I'm starting a horses to follow thread, which I hope may be of interest to some and hopefully we can highlight some future winners. I know this sort of thread has been tried in the past ,but they have been too long or not refreshed for long periods of time and thus died. The intention is to start a new thread each month . This will prevent an elongated thread which will make it hard to search and reference specific horses. I personally only watch 15 to 20% of the races so I probably won't be making many contributions. I do hope it'll be of use to the community, only time will tell , I hope it doesn't fade away. PS, if there are a lot of horses, would it be possible for someone to make a plain list of the monthly horses at the start of the thread for ease of finding them on one post. PPS, anyone who wishes to highlight a horse, can you include an explanation in your own style brief or long, it's up to you.

[erhaab1965]

Re: Horses to Follow : May 2013 Discovery Bay, OR 71, Brian Ellison. Ran in the 3.50York today over 1m4f. Been very busy this year having run very well off a higher AW OR and winning once on the AW flat and twice over hurdles. Today was a £10k handicap with 18 runners off bottom weight. I backed it in the morning and was happy to see it shorten just prior to the off, given who trained it. For the first half of the race SDS sat just off the pace travelling with plenty of ease. 3 furlongs out there were a wall of horses in front of him and each time he tried to get through the gap closed. even with half a furlong he was travelling the best but time ran out and didn't bother riding for a place which was well within his compass. As I have mentioned numerous times on this forum Brian Ellison runs a gambling stable and the conversion between him and SDS would have probably been something like.."...the money is down today, the horse is well handicapped, if for one reason or another you are not going to win, don't bother with place money, it's better to leave our money than incur a rise in the weights..." I'm not sure about the structure of the staff but one of the main owners is professional gambler Kristin Strangeway who runs the Koo Racing Club. With horses from this stable you need the secret nod before putting your money down, often form can be deceptive so be careful. Probably most eagle eyes punters and journalists would have recognised this was the best horse under today's conditions and it was a shame the money was left behind. I'm not saying it's going to win next time out because the trainer might run it as a red herring with the intention of putting the money down when the majority aren't expecting it win and also when there's plenty of liquidity in the market to ensure they can put on more than a wheelbarrow of notes.