Betfair Chase: Namejacking guaranteed to make you profit in the Long Run

Betfair Chase at Haydock / Jamie Lynch / 18 November 2011 / Leave a Comment

Poor Ortis Deley.

"..on the announcement that Ortis Deley would be fronting the Channel 4 coverage of the World Athletics Championships, one of these cybersquatters probably thought to buy the domain name www.ortisdeley.com in the belief that he would be the next big thing."

Timeform Chief Correspondent Jamie Lynch takes a roundabout look at Betfair Chase day, or is that Betfare Chase day?

Let's say you've had a few beers and mistyped, or perhaps you've recommended Betfair to a mate and they've used a different spelling on their first visit - it doesn't matter, because betfare.com and even batfair.com send you directly to the Betfair homepage. Good news, except for the 1% genuinely looking for some sort of bat conservation site who are instead welcomed by Lee Dixon or Paul Nicholls to a world of gambling and a passport to millions. Maybe that explains why Terry Nutkins was spotted at Glorious Goodwood this summer.

Clever stuff, and it doesn't happen just by chance. Betfair, like any self-respecting, forward-thinking business, will have hoovered up all the domain names in closest proximity to 'betfair' in order to safeguard the brand. Domain names are where it's at. There's a reason domain names are referred to as internet real estate. In 1994, Joel Noel Friedman - as if he already hadn't enough going for him being called Joel Noel - purchased israel.com for next to nothing and, fourteen years later, sold it for almost $6 million.

Naturally, some domain names are more sought after and therefore valuable than others. It says plenty about today's society that the dotcoms of 'beer' and 'casino' made significantly more than Israel when auctioned off, while no doubt the Post Office Recruitment Network would have got a shock when discovering that the cost of securing their acronym is upwards of $10 million.

Then there's the phenomenon of the cybersquatters, the people who strategically buy up certain domain names in the hope and expectation that, one day, somebody somewhere will pay top dollar to get that web title. For example, on the announcement that Ortis Deley would be fronting the Channel 4 coverage of the World Athletics Championships, one of these cybersquatters, or namejackers as they're sometimes known, probably thought to (and probably did do judging by what's on the site) buy the domain name www.ortisdeley.com in the belief that he would be the next big thing. Oh dear.

Poor Ortis.

Poor, poor Ortis. Not fluent first, mistake second, blundered third, blundered badly fourth, not recover (ever), soon pulled up. Not seen since.

The racing equivalent would be to buy a yearling, christen it Lexilaylagabriel and pray for a name-your-price call from Dr Koukash. Or has this process been subtly going on for a while now? I'm thinking in my warped way about the French jumps horses who have very un-French names, and whether they have very un-French names because their owners have half an eye on selling them on to Britain at some point. Certainly not a deal-breaker, but it may just help grease the wheels as they say.

The last French-trained winner of the Gold Cup couldn't have had a more quintessentially English name, being The Fellow, and the last French-sounding winner of the Gold Cup was trained by an Irishman and owned by an American who only settled on L'Escargot because it was a bit like Let's Go, the unavailable name he had originally wanted.

Three of the highest-rated chasers in Timeform's history are in action on Saturday; Master Minded goes at Ascot, while Long Run and Kauto Star head the star cast in a renewal of the Betfair/Betfare/Batfair Chase which makes it seem as if the Gold Cup never mind Christmas has come early. All three have sober, British-sounding names, and yet all three were born, raised and initially raced in France. The only pronunciation problem any of us have is with Kauto - for my sins I still alternate between Kay-toe, Cor-toe and Cow-toe - and that has nothing at all to do with any residual Frenchness.

Long Run is the exception amongst the trio in that his channel-crossing was definitely pre-planned, owned since day one by the very British Robert Waley-Cohen, and Long Run is also the exception amongst the trio in that, aged six, he's at the peak of his powers, powers that have him head and shoulders above the competition at Haydock, which makes him the right bet, even at odds on.

When Long Run stormed away from Denman and Kauto Star at Cheltenham, it wasn't only an exceptional performance in Gold Cup terms, but it was also a symbolic changing of the guard; out with the old and in with the new. With just five opponents, and none of them front runners, there's unlikely to be too much pressure on Long Run's jumping, which is the one department he could still be knocked, but you can be sure Nicky Henderson will have worked on that during the close season and you can be equally sure that Nicky Henderson will have him raring to go first time out - the Betfair Chase is a £200,000 race after all.

If Long Run does what I expect him to at Haydock, and again at Cheltenham next March, then a certain car service and restoration business in Ontario, Canada may just be subject to a polite enquiry (and potential windfall) on behalf of the Waley-Cohens about the availability of their website www.longrun.com.

I'm well aware that I can't just come here, waffle on, and then tip Long Run, so let's find another bet at Haydock. Tamarinbleu. A French-sounding name, but no French background, though his general background is what makes him so appealing off a handicap mark of 140 in the Betfair Multiples Chase at 15.40. On this day four years ago, Tamarinbleu was second in the Betfair Chase itself. He hasn't raced much since then, and he missed the whole of last season, but in the meantime he's been leniently dropped in the weights and the absence is if anything a positive in his case given Taraminbleu's record when fresh, not to mention the form of David Pipe, whose four winners at last weekend's Open Meeting at Cheltenham were all returning from a break.

If Taraminbleu can do the business, I'll be halfway to buying Lexilaylagabriel.

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