Festival week is over and I'm tired in the way you only get from four days of watching horses you've a point on. It was a decent week for the short ones, and that's not luck. Cheltenham is where favourites are favourites for the right reasons.
Think about why a horse is at the front of the market on a wet Tuesday at Fontwell. Sometimes it's the best horse. Often it's the one with the famous trainer in a race nobody has studied, and the price is doing the thinking for the crowd. At the Festival the opposite happens. Every runner has been argued over for three months. The money is deep, the form is exposed, and when a horse is 2/1 it's because it has earned 2/1.
That suits me. I don't need a price to be wrong by miles. I need it to be fair, and a fair price on a horse that's better than the field is the best bet in racing.
Fact To File on the Wednesday was the kind I mean. Second season chaser, had been going the right way all winter, 1.72 on the exchange. Not a price you'd shout about in the pub, but he was the best horse in the race by a fair bit and he won like it. Galopin Des Champs in the Gold Cup was the same at 1.97. The market said even money, the form said he'd win, and the two agreed. Both were on the members' card by nine that morning.
The place bets did their job too. State Man was 1.13 to place on the Tuesday and did (he ran into one that was simply better, which happens). A place bet at 1.13 earns you pennies, but it earns them nineteen times in twenty, and over a week like this those pennies are what pays for the win bet that didn't come in.
One did get beaten. El Fabiolo on the Wednesday, pulled up, after being backed to place at 1.13. That's the week's lesson in one line. Nothing is certain, which is why nothing gets more than a point.
Aintree next, which is a different animal. I'll write about why I leave the National alone.
Lee
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More from the notebook: Aintree, and the race I leave alone · The jumps are back on Friday