Indeed. You'd want that for Facile Vega to even make the festival, IMO.
I'm much more inclined to go with my gut and opinion and back the race I think he'll end up in. In this case, the Ballymore.
Though admittedly, some prices appear short 6 months out (but they didn’t seem so short in the hours after the festival,
when really, if you can, you need to be using what evidence you have to make an informed choice for 12 months later, if it’s a way you use to obtain value…..) - your thoughts of 6/4 on Facile Vega to even make the festival (or realistically what you’d like) are sadly, for any bookmaker, very wide of the mark.
If any bookmaker was giving you odds of any specific horse ‘making it to the festival’ in 6 months time, the harsh reality is, they’d be offering you 1/5 a specific horse, and probably shorter.
If they offered 6/4 any horse to just make the festival, you’re admitting it’s odds against making the festival, when in reality, that most definitely is not the case. It’s most definitely very short odds on that any horse will make it - certainly those with no injury records.
The prime market to use as an example is the ‘selected for Qatar England World Cup squad’. The large majority of the key players we know will be going (Kane, Sterling, Stones, Rice etc….) range from 1/12 to 1/25 across a variety of bookmakers, and they’ve each still got 5 or 6 matches left before the final squad is announced at the end of October - matches of a high physical nature where any amount of injuries, however niggly, could see them miss out on Qatar.
We all know Harry Kane is the first name on Southgate’s teamsheet, but would you take 1/20 on him getting through a few highly competitive matches without so much of a scratch? Probably not, I would guess.
But it’s a market that, with horses in a similar position (3,4 or in some cases 5 races of high physical activity - with rest in between) it’s a comparable market in my opinion to observe.
If you put say Honeysuckle, Energumene, Allaho, Facile Vega & A Plus Tard at 6/4 each just ‘to make it to the festival’ - I could have 3 of those ‘not make it’ at 6/4 and still break even exactly. The probability is that any 3 of these will be present at Cheltenham, most likely 4 of them, and a reasonable chance all 5 of them. Just 3 from 5 would make you a profit.
Bookmakers don’t want you making a profit, at all.
If we were thinking it’s 6/4 odds against that a specific horse make it to the festival, there’d probably be no festival - or in a best case scenario - 4 horse races like last year’s Marsh Chase.
