General / Robin Keck / 06 October 2009 / Leave a comment Free £25 Bet

Our man's on a roll thanks to the exploits of Bailey and Dow...

It's hard to put pen to paper about the stable form of Kim Bailey and Simon Dow when Sea The Stars has just done that. I feel like Mervyn King proffering thoughts about the next movement on interest rates while the PM confirms there is a nuclear bomb heading our way. I can't skip on though without a small homage to the great one. Sea The Stars pulled like a green two-year-old for the first half of the race and if I'd place laid him at BSP [1.24] I'd have been sitting pretty. We all know that horses that pull hard and still win may have tons in hand of the rest of the field but can this really be true in the Arc?

One day my grandchildren (my daughters are aged 7 and 5 so I'm hoping it will be a while) will rave about an amazing horse that is racking up Group 1s. On that day I will offer nothing more than a Gallic shrug and ask "yes but did he pull for his head?" Perhaps that's how my grandparents feel when I discuss Denman and Kauto Star in the same breath as Arkle.

Let's get back to the future and first of all recap on this column's rules:-

1. Each accounting period runs from Tuesday to Sunday with a virtual starting bank of £250 (in the event of a Bank Holiday Monday the 'rest' day is delayed to the Tuesday).
2. Hot stable horses are backed to win at the Betfair starting price with a virtual £5 per bet.
3. Cold stable horses are place laid at the Betfair place starting price with a virtual £10 per bet but exclude all horses with a win BSP of bigger than [10.0].
4. Unless specified in the previous column all 'Cold' stables are automatically sacked if they have a winner or two consecutive placed horses (horses with a Betfair starting win price of less than [1.8] are excluded from this caveat).
5. Horses running from stables 'under consideration' are excluded for betting purposes.
6. Naturally I can change or refine the rules every week to try and make myself look more profitable/less stupid than I actually am.

Early season stable form is a very useful part of the equation as some stables simply don't aim to get their horses 100% ready first time out. Aidan O'Brien on the Flat is a good example of this. The master trainer rarely has much success in May these days but the market still takes a couple of weeks to factor that into the price.

Thus far, I'm particularly taken with Kim Bailey who has started with form figures of 1171 including winning BSPs of [5.51], [25] and [9.33]. After so many years in the doldrums I'm convinced this trainer is now on his way back to the big time as he has a stable jam-packed with well handicapped horses. I'm hoping to leave him on the hot list for a number of weeks but will be analysing his horses very closely. Any horse that has regressed significantly from its peak and is now potentially well handicapped will carry the Keck millions until I see any deterioration in the stable's form.

Andrew Balding and John Gosden were on last week's cold list and despite both making me a small profit they sacked themselves from the list with a winner. I was saved by the end of rule 3 above on a couple of occasions.

I'm very proud of my Ronnie Barr and Simon Dow selections who have now both been on my hot list for some weeks and continue to deliver weekly profits. Dow is becoming dangerously obvious now (three of his last six runners have obliged) as his hot stable form is explicit in the RP tables so he may be on his last week.

Just £289.23 to go to hit my target with around 12 weeks left. Keep the faith.

Total Starting Bank = £250.00
Closing Bank after Week Eighteen = £662.52
Week Nineteen Result = + £48.25
Closing Bank = £710.77

Tags: Kim Bailey, Sea The Stars, Simon Dow