There's a rule every punter learns early. A horse back out within a week or ten days is being rushed, and a horse off for three months is unfit. I believed it for twenty years. I've stopped, and January is the month I'd point to if you asked me why.
Eight and a half points up, from sixty two bets, and a good share of the winners were horses that ran within a fortnight of their last race. The old me would have crossed most of them out before I'd read the rest of the line.
Here's what changed my mind. Trainers don't guess at fitness any more. The big yards measure heart rate, recovery, work times, the lot, and they know on the Wednesday morning whether the Saturday horse has come out of its race well. So when a decent yard runs a horse back in eight days, it's usually not because they're desperate. It's because the numbers said go. The market still prices a quick return as a worry, which means the price is sometimes wrong in my favour.
The same goes the other way. A horse off for ninety days isn't unfit, it's unexposed. It might be fit, it might not. What I've stopped doing is treating the gap as a mark against it. It's a question, and the answer is in the rest of the line. Did it win fresh before. Does the yard do well with horses off a break. Is it a type that improves for a run or one that's always ready.
So the days between runs still go in my questions. They just don't carry a verdict any more. A number that used to say no now says look harder, and in a month where half the cards were on the sand and the fields were small, looking harder paid.
The other thing January did was keep the place bets busy. Soft ground on the jumps, favourites getting beaten by things that stay better, and the quarter points landing one after another while the win bets had a slow fortnight. The quiet half of the list, again. Two years on I've stopped being surprised by it. The members' card had every one of them, with the reason, before the first race.
February is usually thin. If it's anything like last year's twenty seven bets, I'll be writing a short post.
Lee
PS: the win bets are back on a full point this quarter. The review on the first said the main list had earned it, and the book doesn't argue with itself.
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