Betfair Official Blog

Don't write off a Guineas flop

Jack Houghton has comforting words for those trainers who don't saddle the Newmarket winner

By the time this article appears the 2,000 Guineas winner will be known. There will be a feeling that vital questions have been answered. We now know who the best of the crop is. We now know which horses we overrated.

Having made these ticks and crosses we can look to other questions. Could this winner go on to be really special? How will he fare against older opposition? Will he stay the Derby trip?

But experience suggests that such rapid pronouncements in the aftermath of the first Classic of the year are unwise. The result of the race tells us a lot, but not everything. Think of the 2,000 Guineas as Genesis; a lot is still to happen before Revelations and its final judgement.

So don't write off horses who haven't run as well as expected on Saturday. In recent years a number of colts have been prominent in the betting at Newmarket, but after failing to win have still gone on to collect decent prizes, often at handsome odds.

In fact, if you took the top six in the betting for the last four 2,000 Guineas (a sample which balances a desire to present something that looks factual with a general laziness preventing more in-depth analysis, cue Wayne Bailey) and backed them blind in their next three starts, you would have made something like £18 to a £1 stake. (I'm not precisely sure what the exact profit is. I was scribbling the results on a small piece of paper and things got a bit cramped... but you get the gist).

I'm not suggesting you follow this system. Cack-handed scientific methods apart, last year you would have made a loss. If you're after systems of the sort "backing Frankie Dettori when riding mares born in April in selling hurdles on figure-of-eight tracks would have yielded a five million pound profit to £1 level stakes" then you're reading the wrong column (seriously Wayne, where are you? I need help here).

No, I'm merely using these statistics to demonstrate that, as punters, we can perhaps be a bit quick to discard horses just because they weren't able to perform on the first Saturday in May. Take a horse like Rob Roy. Sent off as 6-1 second-favourite in the 2005 Classic he finished last. Two starts later he won a Group 3 with an SP of 17-2. Grey Swallow disappointed some with his fourth in 2004, but popped up to win the Irish Derby at 10-1 two starts later. Whipper, Haatef, Sir Percy... the list goes on.

It's perhaps understandable why, on the whole, punters view the result of the 2,000 Guineas with such finality. As a race, rightly or wrongly, it is burned into our consciousness as a maker-of-champions. And so, it follows, if a horse is unable to win it, then they're probably not the champion we're looking for.

And most trainers and owners probably feel something similar. If you've got a good colt, there must be an overwhelming desire to target it at the first Classic in the knowledge that, should he win it, he will automatically carry an eight-figure price tag. And so some will be running over the wrong trip. Others won't be fully fit. Others might just have had an off-day. Others had circumstance (draw, ground etc.) conspire against them.

Whatever the excuse might be, it is worth being more forgiving. If a horse is one of the favourites for the 2,000 Guineas, it has usually done plenty to warrant it. And so if New Approach, Ibn Khaldun, Raven's Pass or Perfect Stride didn't show brilliance, it does not mean they won't show it at some point in the near future.