The quality kept coming on Friday didn’t it! Goshen, Saint Roi and then this cracker. Just as a completely pointless nugget of information, I love the look of Lieutenant Rocco as a horse. Big white face, big white socks. Brilliant.
This division is one that some years I can get a bit lost with. Some of the winners are horses I’ve never have considered but this year was a good year for the novice staying division. There were around 10 horses I liked going in to the race and as plenty of people are anticipating this race looked a good one.
Monkfish made that “really bad” mistake down the back but he didn’t lose much ground at all, half a length at worst? That’s when Thyme Hill is making nice steady progress. After that Latest Exhibition makes a move to get into a nice spot too. Those three are in a line as they turn to go down the hill. Fury Road is the one who comes from a bit further back, although not that much further and he makes a move at the same time as Thyme Hill but has things a lot smoother. There isn’t really any huge value to work out which of them is the best, as they’re all clearly so closely matched. You can’t like one and not the others, so it’d be great to see where they go next season. I can certainly imagine a ‘related multiple’ with Thyme Hill and the others if he stays over hurdles. I do like Thyme Hill for the Stayers, the 16/1 that I know others have had is a fair price.
What doesn’t make a raft of sense is that Monkfish (8/1) is half the price of Fury Road and Latest Exhibition (16/1). There is a bit of 10s actually for Monkfish but that’s still 6 points shorter for a head victory? Fury Road should have just as much scope for chasing given connections and if I had to back one of them now, it’d be Fury Road at 16/1 RSA over the others. I actually like Latest Exhibition the most but can’t recall what the plan is with him.
They’ve all come 10l clear of the rest, usually the AB throws up some future winners that get well beaten, so for me this’ll be a race I come back to time and time again.