Betting Strategy / Editor / 18 August 2009 / Leave a comment

Mr Keck gets a little political as he goes through the trainers he will be backing and laying in the week to come...

"Linda Stubbs' team have been eating their four Shredded Wheat for breakfast. Her last seven horses have been placed 2211114 and three of them were juicy double figure prices. Having watched all of these races again, her horses seem to have been relieved from a bug suppressing their true ability and are now running with great zest."

A small loss on the week for this column with my hot stables not quite hitting the back of the net. Ruth Carr's horses are still running well with the impossibly consistent Raccoon obliging again at [3.4] BSP after hitting 18 in running. That's not easily done when you're a front-runner but her horses are acquiring a Mark Johnstonesque reputation for gameness and he battled back after being headed to win going away. That said, as a successful female trainer Ruth is in the news spotlight now and that's not where I like my stables to be as it encourages over backed, poor value runners so she has been cut, with regret (as I type this she has a winner!).

Speaking of gender, will someone tell me why the RP website describes her as 'Mrs R A Carr' and whereas the men are simply 'D Pipe' etc? I know the sport is littered with old fashioned expressions like 'stable lad' etc but surely male and female trainers can be treated and described in similar fashion. I know many people out there will think this is irrelevant but if you put The Daily Mail down for a minute and consider that this may be one of the many reasons why people are put off our insular world (for the record my mother-in-law reads The Mail and she's lovely so they can't all be bad). (Note to picture editor - as I'm fighting the cause can we have a picture of Emily Davison falling in front of the Kings horse, Anmer, in the 1913 Derby? Aside from that being an immense sacrifice for the suffragette movement it must be damn tricky to time your fall to catch a specific horse going around Tattenham corner. Does anyone know if it was deliberate?)

Enough politics and back to the horses. I missed the Paul Green party a couple of weeks ago and his stable has settled down to par form so he is also off the list. On paper, Ronnie Barr's zero winners from six isn't a result but with three big priced second places I'm sure there's more fruit on that tree and he's staying on the hot list.

Michael Dods was my sole 'cold' representative and made up for most of the damage above. His string grabbed a couple of third places but plenty of low priced horses are getting stuffed from this stable and I suspect their lean period will continue a little longer.

Linda Stubbs' team have been eating their four Shredded Wheat for breakfast. Her last seven horses have been placed 2211114 and three of them were juicy double figure prices. Having watched all of these races again, her horses seem to have been relieved from a bug suppressing their true ability and are now running with great zest. She may well have other well handicapped horses running over the next week or two and I'll pay my virtual fivers to find out if I'm right. On the flip side, Debbie Mountain's horses seem to be over respected by the market with only one of her last 13 getting placed despite having four favourites. She'll have a week on the cold list.

Total Starting Bank = £250.00
Closing Bank after Week 11 = £314.92
Week 12 Result = - £20.25
Closing Bank = £ 294.67

Tags: Debbie Mountain, Linda Stubbs, Michael Dods, Ronnie Barr, Ruth Carr