I get that Stick but clearly here he has ridden to instructions and I suspect it is rife up and down the yards. Best is infamous with handicap gambles and whilst some may have profited from those bets, a good many folks are ripped off in the runs that precede it, and it is not fair. For me they are both bang in the wrong.
BHA are out to get him, but no smoke and all that. I mean him name dropping AP yesterday sounds hilarious
TRAINER Jim Best was sensationally found guilty of all charges relating to the running and riding of Echo Brava and Missile Man at a disciplinary hearing on Friday. Best had been charged with instructing the jockey Paul John to stop the two horses. He was also charged with acting in a manner prejudicial to the integrity, proper conduct or good reputation of horseracing. Paul John was found guilty of two charges of intentionally failing to ensure horses ran on their merits. Best now faces the possibility of a long ban from racing, although penalties may not be decided until a later date. Conditional jockey John had told the disciplinary panel that his former boss had told him to stop horses on two occasions. The pair were referred to the panel over the running and riding of Missile Man at Towcester on December 17 last year. Four days before that John had been banned for 14 days for his ride on another Best-trained runner, Echo Brava, who was making his hurdling debut in a novice event at Plumpton. On both occasions John was deemed not to have ridden the horses to achieve their best possible placing. John alleged that on both occasions Best had told him to stop each horse. John told the hearing that he had been instructed to get Echo Brava beaten 33 lengths at Plumpton, and that Missile Man was "just having a run". The jockey said he had deliberately gone wide to "lose as much ground as possible" and both he and Echo Brava "finished full of running and energy" in fifth, beaten 24 lengths.
How many plot horses are running next week - how many trainers think that they have a horse "well handicapped"
Never mind next week, there is the favourite for the Imperial Cup tomorrow who "wasn't given a hard ride". I am in no way defending them here but "why them?". Why not so many other yards around the country. Every yard that lands a punt in a handicap has basically fiddled the handicapper and the general public. Seems to me that this yard has been targeted, singled out by the BHA. Why not David Pipe?
Fair enough points Stick but none of them have horse in their yard called Willshebetrying. The types that run racing don't like the serfs taking the piss.
I virtually stopped betting on National Hunt racing more than twenty five years ago when I found out how crooked it was from a couple of guys that owned horses that the trainers made sure only won or placed when they wanted. If I were sat in front of the box next week, I would have a couple of bets purely to have an interest. Most of the handicaps at Cheltenham should be avoided as the form is worthless thanking to a season of fiddling to get a decent mark; and most of the non-handicaps are being contested by horses that have avoided each other all season by cherry-picking the valuable weekend prizes on both sides of the Irish Sea against no real opposition. All that is guaranteed is an exciting spectacle and the bookmakers going home in big cars while the punters queue for the bus.
Don't more favourites win on the jumps? I hardly bet these days, but I always found Cheltenham provided excellent punting opportunities, with the form standing up well in the Championship races. Royal Ascot, on the other hand always seemed to be a punter's graveyard.
Yes, a leopard never changes its spots... The only statistics I could find about winning favourites percentages dated back to 2012 and there is a paradox there: over hurdles, the win percentage was 35.5; over fences (chases) it was 34.7; and on the flat it was 32.3, so that would mean more favourites win over obstacles. The paradox is that blindly following favourites to a level stake, a flat punter would lose 5.6 per cent of their money, over fences they would lose 5 per cent of their money but over hurdles they would lose 8.3 per cent of their money because there are a lot more short-priced and odds-on shots turned over. The Championship races at Cheltenham usually do produce form-horse winners but frequently there are short-priced favourites who have done nothing but beat no-hopers in their two or three victories that season; and if I want to back a short-priced favourite I would rather look at the three-horse races known as football matches. As regards Royal Ascot, I always used to say that if you do not win on the first day – when almost all the races are non-handicaps – you have little prospect the rest of the week because there will be short-priced favourites in twenty runner two-year-old races and big handicap fields to avoid.
