Before I start backing the comeback horses in the spring, there's a distinction I need you to have, because the whole bet rests on it. A P in the form book and an F in the form book both mean the horse didn't finish. They don't mean the same thing. Most of the time they mean the opposite.
P is pulled up. The jockey decided the horse had nothing left and stopped riding it. That usually happens because the horse was beaten, often well beaten, and the kindest thing was to stop. A P is a bad run with a merciful ending. The market is right to mark it down.
F is fell. The horse was running, perhaps running well, and it hit a fence and went down. Falling is not a form figure in any useful sense. It tells you about one jump on one day. The horse that fell at the third last while travelling in the first three had a good run right up to the moment it didn't, and nothing about its ability changed on the way to the ground. The market marks that down too, almost as hard as the P, and that's the gap I'm going to try to bet into.
So the question isn't whether a horse has an F. It's what was happening when it fell. Was it in the first three. Was it going well. Was it in a race it had every right to be competitive in. The form book doesn't tell you, the race replay does, and the comments in the form do if you read them, which almost nobody does for a horse with an F. When one of these goes on the members' card, the reason line says which letter it was and why it doesn't matter.
There's a third letter, U, for unseated rider, which is the F's cousin. Horse stayed up, jockey didn't. Same idea, same questions.
The rules for the actual bet are coming in April and they're strict. Jumps only, first three before the fall, back within sixty days, price 5.0 or under, half a point. Until then I'm just asking you to see the two letters differently. One is a verdict. The other is an accident.
Lee
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More from the notebook: Why £49, and why only 150 of you · Why I stopped worrying about a quick return